# Pinball FX delayed until 2022

**Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2021-10-03  
**Duration:** 84m 9s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Pinball-FX-delayed-until-2022-e1bkfq9

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## Analysis

BlahCade hosts discuss the official Pinball FX delay announcement from Mel Kirk (Zen Studios), revealing the game will launch in early access on Epic Games in March 2022, with full PC/console release targeted for summer 2022. The delay stems from onboarding new developers to Unreal Engine, continued work on Star Wars VR and Zen Pinball Party, and substantial iterations on Pinball Royale, which now features HD video capabilities and a clan/tournament system. Hosts also discuss Arcade 1-Up's removal of cross-platform table sharing and speculate on Zen's evolving design direction under new female designer Anna Lengel.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Pinball FX will launch in early access on Epic Games in March 2022, targeting summer 2022 for full PC and console release — _Mel Kirk (Zen Studios) on The Pinball Show, quoted extensively by BlahCade hosts_
- [HIGH] The primary reasons for delay are Star Wars VR development, Zen Pinball Party release, new Unreal Engine technology adoption, and onboarding new team members — _Mel Kirk explanation relayed by BlahCade hosts Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan_
- [HIGH] Pinball Royale is on its fourth iteration/overhaul and has evolved beyond its Tetris 99 design inspiration to become a full Zen product — _Mel Kirk statement discussed by hosts_
- [HIGH] Zen can now support full HD video in Pinball FX, enabling movie footage integration into tables — _Mel Kirk announcement about new technical capabilities_
- [HIGH] Anna Lengel is identified as the first female pinball designer for a professional pinball company and designed Trolls and Curse of the Mummy — _Mel Kirk highlight during announcement_
- [HIGH] Early access is PC (Epic Games) only to simplify troubleshooting; console certification processes take 6 weeks vs. 2 hours for PC updates — _Hosts' technical discussion of platform differences_
- [HIGH] Pinball FX early access will include a new clan system and enhanced tournament features that differ from FX3 — _Mel Kirk announcement, hosts' speculation_
- [MEDIUM] Arcade 1-Up pulled firmware patch allowing cross-platform table sharing (Marvel/Star Wars/Attack from Mars) after license concerns — _Hosts' discussion of Arcade 1-Up incident; speculation about licensor/IP concerns_
- [HIGH] This is Zen's longest announced-to-launch timeline in company history (18+ months from January 2021 announcement to summer 2022 launch) — _Hosts' comparative analysis_
- [MEDIUM] Zen's Epic Games exclusivity deal likely includes financial guarantees protecting against losses during development — _Hosts' speculation about business agreement structure_

### Notable Quotes

> "you go into negative production when you're actually onboarding anyone new...that person is effectively unavailable to do work right while they're onboarding people"
> — **Jared Morgan**, mid-episode
> _Explains key reason for delay: training new team members on Unreal Engine slows immediate productivity_

> "They're investing into themselves to get better output later...if you were already going to be spending X amount of dollars on development...and somebody comes in and says, here's a whole bunch of money...you'd be a fool not to take that"
> — **Chris Freebus**, mid-episode
> _Defends Zen's Epic Games exclusivity deal as sound business strategy, not abandonment of customers_

> "as they're running it and using Unreal...it's opening up new possibilities...they're finding out that they can do a lot more than they expected"
> — **Jared Morgan**, mid-episode
> _Explains why Pinball Royale iterates multiple times: technical discoveries enable unexpected scope expansion_

> "they took that opportunity to highlight their new designer...the first female pinball designer...Anna Lengel...she was the designer on Trolls and co-designer on Curse of the Mummy"
> — **Chris Freebus**, late-episode
> _Announces Zen's first female professional pinball designer, notable industry milestone_

> "all the pinball team are up to speed on [Unreal Engine] and are firing on all cylinders"
> — **Chris Freebus (paraphrasing Mel Kirk)**, mid-episode
> _Indicates onboarding phase complete; team now focused on content production rather than training_

> "we can have movie footage playing in it...my bell started ringing...are we moving beyond Star Wars and maybe getting some new current licenses"
> — **Chris Freebus**, late-episode
> _Speculates HD video and movie clip integration signals new IP licensing deals beyond announced Star Wars content_

> "early access is aiming at March depending on how well that does...if there's very few issues the game will be released sooner if there's a lot of issues it releases a little bit later"
> — **Jared Morgan (paraphrasing Mel Kirk)**, mid-episode
> _Clarifies March date is conditional on early access performance; suggests iterative release approach_

> "I don't like [mini playfields]. It's a gimmick to me...there's too much velocity on the ball and it's too much of just twitch reaction"
> — **Chris Freebus**, late-episode
> _Designer preference critique of Curse of the Mummy playfield feature; reflects community divided opinions on mini-fields_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Mel Kirk | person | Zen Studios executive/designer; delivered official Pinball FX delay announcement on The Pinball Show with technical details and roadmap |
| Chris Freebus | person | BlahCade Pinball Podcast host; provides industry analysis and speculation on implications of delay and new features |
| Jared Morgan | person | BlahCade Pinball Podcast co-host (based in Queensland, Australia); contributes technical and operational insights |
| Anna Lengel | person | Zen Studios' first female professional pinball designer; designer on Trolls and Curse of the Mummy; led HD video display implementation |
| Zen Studios | company | Digital pinball publisher; developing Pinball FX with Epic Games exclusivity deal; adopting Unreal Engine; creating Pinball Royale and new HD video features |
| Epic Games | company | Exclusive distributor of Pinball FX early access and full release; providing financial backing; operates Epic Games Store |
| Arcade 1-Up | company | Compact arcade cabinet manufacturer; released firmware patch enabling cross-platform Marvel/Star Wars/Attack from Mars table sharing, then withdrew it due to licensing concerns |
| Pinball FX | game | Zen Studios' upcoming digital pinball game; delayed to March 2022 early access (Epic Games exclusive), summer 2022 full release; features Pinball Royale, new clan/tournament systems, HD video integration |
| Pinball Royale | game | Zen Studios' competitive multiplayer pinball mode within Pinball FX; inspired by Tetris 99; on fourth iteration; network-heavy with clan system; attracted licensor interest via preview build |
| Curse of the Mummy | game | Zen Studios original pinball table within Pinball FX; third Zen original; designed by Anna Lengel; features mini playfields and HD video display placeholder art |
| Star Wars VR | product | Zen Studios VR pinball project; development contributed to Pinball FX delay |
| Zen Pinball Party | game | Zen Studios full game release with four new tables; created in Unreal Engine; development contributed to Pinball FX delay |
| The Pinball Show | media | Podcast/media outlet; episode 8 featured Mel Kirk's official Pinball FX delay announcement with new designer and technical capability reveals |
| BlahCade Pinball Podcast | media | Long-form pinball podcast by Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan; covers industry news, design analysis, and community discussion |
| Trolls | game | Zen Studios pinball table; designed by Anna Lengel |
| Unreal Engine | technology | Game engine adopted by Zen Studios for Pinball FX and related projects; required onboarding of new team members and workflow restructuring |
| Attack from Mars | game | Classic Williams/Bally pinball game; only table remaining available on Arcade 1-Up after cross-platform sharing patch withdrawal |
| Mandalorian | game | Stern Pinball machine; cited as example of well-designed mini playfield with weaker flipper coils at upper level |
| Black Knight 2000 | game | Classic Bally pinball machine; example of mini playfield design; hosts debate whether mini playfields are effective game design |
| Cons Gang | organization | Community tournament organizers; created side-project tournament system extensions for FX3; hosts hope Zen integrates similar multi-table, multi-week tournament tracking in Pinball FX |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Pinball FX release delay and timeline, Unreal Engine adoption and developer onboarding, Epic Games exclusivity deal and platform strategy, HD video and movie clip integration in digital pinball, Pinball Royale competitive multiplayer design and iteration
- **Secondary:** Anna Lengel as first female professional pinball designer, Clan system and tournament features in Pinball FX, Arcade 1-Up firmware patch and licensing enforcement

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.55) — Hosts express understanding of delay reasons and defend Zen's business decisions, but clearly disappointed by extended 18-month announcement-to-launch timeline. Optimistic about technical capabilities (HD video, clan system) and Anna Lengel's appointment, but skeptical about mini playfield design choices in Curse of the Mummy. Acceptance tone throughout: 'that's a far ways' but rational about console certification delays and early access benefits.

### Signals

- **[product_strategy]** Pinball FX delayed from 2021 announcement to March 2022 early access (Epic exclusive) and summer 2022 full release—longest Zen announcement-to-launch cycle in company history (confidence: high) — Mel Kirk official announcement on The Pinball Show; Chris and Jared confirm 18+ month timeline unprecedented for Zen
- **[design_philosophy]** Zen transitioning to Unreal Engine enables new capabilities (full HD video, movie footage integration) and attracts new licensors; represents architectural shift from legacy engines (confidence: high) — Mel Kirk discusses team reaching 'firing on all cylinders' phase post-onboarding; hosts note movie clip integration signals new IP licensing beyond Star Wars
- **[personnel_signal]** Anna Lengel appointed as Zen's first female professional pinball designer; designed Trolls and Curse of the Mummy; leads HD video implementation (confidence: high) — Mel Kirk highlighted during announcement; hosts note significance as industry first for major manufacturer
- **[product_concern]** Chris Freebus expresses skepticism about Curse of the Mummy's mini playfields as gimmick-driven, citing excessive ball velocity and twitch-based gameplay; contrasts with Mandalorian's weaker flipper coil approach (confidence: medium) — Extended design critique; hosts discuss varying opinions on mini playfield efficacy across machines (Black Knight 2000, Haunted House, AC/DC)
- **[gameplay_signal]** Pinball Royale described as 'super network heavy' indicating real-time head-to-head multiplayer gameplay; clan system and enhanced tournaments key features (confidence: high) — Mel Kirk explanation; hosts deduce streaming/real-time interaction from 'network heavy' descriptor; clan system confirmed
- **[market_signal]** Epic Games exclusivity deal for Pinball FX generates community resistance; hosts defend as rational business decision but acknowledge customer desire for Steam availability (confidence: high) — Hosts acknowledge repeated community criticism; defend Epic deal as investor-backed business model; note Tony Hawk Pro Skater still not on Steam after 1+ year
- **[manufacturing_signal]** Early access limited to PC (Epic Games) because console certification takes 6 weeks vs. 2 hours for PC patch distribution; cited as critical troubleshooting reason (confidence: high) — Hosts' detailed technical discussion of platform update processes; reference Farsight Studios Xbox 360 submission rejections costing $50k per submission
- **[product_launch]** March 2022 early access date is conditional on issue volume found during testing; later release if significant problems; summer 2022 full PC/console launch target (confidence: high) — Mel Kirk statement relayed by hosts; described as data-driven release approach
- **[licensing_signal]** HD video capability enabling movie footage integration suggests Zen acquiring new film/entertainment IP licenses beyond confirmed Star Wars content (confidence: medium) — Chris Freebus speculation: 'my bell started ringing' about licensor attachments to Pinball Royale preview; infers HD video signals broader IP strategy
- **[product_concern]** Arcade 1-Up withdrew firmware patch enabling cross-platform table sharing (Marvel/Star Wars/Attack from Mars) after appearing to violate license terms; no checksum protection in original design (confidence: high) — Hosts discuss Arcade 1-Up ISO distribution vulnerability; speculate licensor (Disney/Lucasfilm) unhappiness about software appearing on unlicensed cabinets
- **[design_innovation]** Zen implementing full HD video displays in Pinball FX (vs. legacy DMD downsample); enables animated footage and cinematic effects; Curse of the Mummy shows placeholder; hosts anticipate Stern/Jersey Jack-style constant animation (confidence: high) — Mel Kirk announcement; Anna Lengel led implementation; hosts discuss quality expectations vs. Magic Pixel's minimal approach
- **[product_strategy]** Pinball Royale on fourth iteration/overhaul as Unreal Engine discoveries enable scope expansion beyond Tetris 99 inspiration; becomes full Zen product (confidence: high) — Mel Kirk statement; hosts explain technical discoveries driving iterative redesign; licensor preview attracted immediate attachment

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## Transcript

 BlahCade Pinball Podcast this is the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world it's jared morgan hello everyone how going jared why is it that uh uh our daylight saving time switching arounds aren't the same because queensland doesn't do daylight savings because apparently it fades the curtains and it disrupts the cows so so we don't do daylight saving even though the rest of the eastern seaboard of Australia does. So, yeah. It sucks. I'm waiting for California. We voted to quit with going back to standard time and just stick with daylight saving time. At least I think that's what it was. Yeah, because that would give us the longer nights, or I mean the longer days during the summer. But anyway, but for some reason, there's some holdup that's not letting us switch over, even though we all said, yay! so politics is what it is probably on a federal level probably yeah oh well so your your curtains will fade as well that's the reason it's actual reason yeah yeah so i'm sitting here you know prepping for the show and all of a sudden jared's like um am i early i'm like what oh crap because you know we rely so heavily on on actual you know your phones and all that sort of stuff for your time and when they start to screw up you literally go literally uh what day is it what time is it right it's really tough and i i should have remembered that i actually got an analog clock downstairs in the room it's almost like the uh the redundancy clock just in case something goes weird um i should have just looked at that and that would tell me the time but then you know everything was sort of all the there's a particular like news show that comes on at a certain time of the day and when i got up it was still rage which is a music program a little bit like mtv but locally produced here and it was still running i was going that's odd it shouldn't be running and then i looked at my clock i went hang on i'm just it's not even seven o'clock yet and i was expecting to be oh yeah i need to go upstairs now and actually see if chris is around but no no i was this is the good one where you can go ahead and you're not oh crap i'm an hour behind instead I'm early. I'm early. I can, I don't know. Well, what I was going to do is, you know, catch up on last show's press production because I haven't done it yet. It's been two weeks. So I know I need to get the episode out. But I've got a good reason to do it. I'm still doing a whole lot of stuff around the house. So the evenings and spare time is like literally getting the garage set up and, you know, putting shelving together and stuff. So all systems go here in Studio North Lakes. Yeah, I should point out, Jared is diving into one of his machines again to fix it up and is finding all sorts of interesting things, like somebody installing a fluorescent tube in the backbox rather than putting incandescent lights back in it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Someone had put a fluorescent ballast in the back. I actually got the thing open. I had to drill the lock because the key wasn't working. so I drilled the lock to get into the backbox so I could get the back glass off and yeah it's got a fluoro tube in it which is good because this era of of got leaves that sort of 80s era of got leaves suffered terribly from heat in the backbox so this person putting a fluoro tube in the back of the backbox has saved this back glass it's actually the best out of all three so I'm happy with the dodgy hack that this person's done it's it's literally paid benefit Now what I should really do is go and clear coat that back glass. Oh, yeah, put the triple thick on? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's the question, though. Are you going to stick with that tube, or are you going to LED out the backbox so that it will stay cool that way? LED it, yeah. There's no way I'm giving that thing in there. Number one, it doesn't work. Well, that is an issue, yeah. The fluid tube is gone, and I'm going to have to unwire it from however they put it in. It's probably going to be a total hack like all these African pins are. But the upside is in one of the ones I found $25, Zimbabwean dollars. So 25 cents. I was going to say, it's like finding pesos here. Pretty much, yeah. So yeah, 25 cents. Hey, look, it's enough for one American play of pinball machine on an old one. There you go. So there you go. Speaking of hacks, last time we made mention that there was a, oops, Arcade 1-Up, when they did their firmware or patch for Marvel, wound up, to those that were in the know and knowing how to do, being able to put the Marvel and Star Wars tables also onto their machine and vice versa. And apparently Arcade 1-Up went, hey, we didn't mean that, and has pulled the patch now. All of the images are now gone, I think, except for the Attack from Mars one. Right. Then it's because, and apparently this is a thing that RK1UP does, when you do an update of your machine, it's always with a full image. It's not a patch. Oh. So they give you literally the entire ISO of the system. And, of course, you can go, it's common hardware, so you can just go and load it. There's no checksum or anything like that that seems to happen. It's just this hardware takes this type of image. If you load this image on correctly, it will work. So here's what I'm curious about. does this mean when mel was first showing off the unit that he had at his house and he had all 30 tables available to him and we were like oh is he having to swap out the boards and i'm wondering was he having to swap out the boards or is this exactly what he had installed yeah no i don't think he was swapping out the boards i think he had all three isos installed yeah um and he was just running them like a like three different apps off an android which means arcade one kind of was well aware of this in advance yeah i would have thought like this should not have been a surprise like they should have if they were really hardcore about this they should have put better protections into the hardware to stop them from loading a uh like a a non-compliant rom right you know one that wasn't meant for that cabinet right um because you can imagine that in marvel and Star Wars and Lucasfilm and Disney probably aren't really happy having their software on a cabinet with Martians on it. No, honestly, I think it's less about that and more about the fact that they're like, that's lost revenue to us that you would owe us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a lot of reasons probably why they would have to withdraw those images from the market. But, you know, you can pretty much bet someone's already put that up on Usenet or Torrents. So if you want it, well. As with all things, yeah. All right. There's no such thing as once it's on the Internet, it's available forever. Yeah. So that's what you've got to be aware of. Kids, if you haven't learned that lesson yet. Let Uncle Jared and Uncle Chris tell you. Don't make it creepy. Okay, we're going to dive right into the action here. So the Pinball Show just dropped, what was it, episode eight? Yeah, episode eight this last week. It was very heavy on Pinball FX news. They had Mel in the studio to deliver the news, and Mel in his fancy new haircut. Yeah, sleek as. Yeah, and well, we'll just dive right into the inevitable, which you've already guessed by the title of this show, which is pinball effects is delayed. Significantly delayed. Significantly. And before you start wondering or laughing, going, I knew this was going to happen, you probably, okay, fine, maybe you took the guess. But did you know why this was happening? That's the better question. So Mel kind of illuminated this. So basically, pinball effects delayed until, he said March, probably, of 2022. And then that will be an early access version. For Steamers. No, not for Steamers, Epic Gamers. Epic Gamers, yeah. I'm curious, with early access, does that mean, though, they're charging you still full price? It's going to be interesting to see how they make purchases work. I would think that they will let you buy the content. So I'm guessing you're buying the content with the understanding that you're essentially buying a beta version of the game. I think so, which is, you know, I think a lot of people, it would be, I'm sure Epic has a similar thing to early access like they do on Steam. So it's probably like, okay, here's a game. It is early access with all the conditions that go with, along with an early access game, things could be broken you know you can lose everything you know from a progress perspective your results may vary um you know so i think it'll be like a full game you'll be able to buy the entitlements those entitlements will work when the game is fully released yeah but it'll just be um available early so you can get feedback yeah i would think so uh reasons that he said for the delay. Reason number one, Star Wars VR. Okay. Reason number two. Took them longer than I thought. Yeah. Reason number two, Zen Pinball Party. Yeah, because they did release a full game with four brand new tables. But the more interesting aspect is that because all of these were created in Unreal Engine, so new tech, plus they brought in new people, to which then Mel was saying that with, and this is the case with any design studio uh you've got to now get your workflow going to understand the new tech plus bringing in the new people and having them understand your processes and your tool sets so your your core team is basically training the new people rather than actually working on content um and so basically it's take a step backwards so that you can actually take those two steps forward oh yeah absolutely you go into you go into negative production when you're actually onboarding anyone new it's all like you know training someone up someone's going to do it and that person is effectively unavailable to do work right while they're onboarding people so no it's not a matter of zen is going into debt for this or uh as somebody was speculating oh my gosh they're they're losing money no they're not losing money they're investing into themselves to get better output later. And we'll talk about what the better output later is a little bit from here. You have to realize, too, on the whole, Xen is losing money thing, I'm pretty sure their agreement with Epic Games is probably preventing that from happening. Right. So I think we're safe there. I think Epic Games has got this for them. Which is why it's exclusive. Yeah, there was a... This conversation keeps on cropping up with people doing the epic games. Why would Zen turn their backs on their customers? Why are they doing this? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, here's the thing. They're essentially an investor. They're an investor, but here's the point. If you were already going to be spending X amount of dollars on development of your game, and then somebody comes in and says, hey, here's a whole bunch of money. just to have it on our store which the majority of your customers totally have access to other than your your apple customers who i'm sorry you're still paying pinball effects too so you know what you're not really the customer that that you think you are pretty much um but uh i defy anybody out there to tell me that you wouldn't take that it's kind of like are you telling me that you don't use coupons when they're available to me you know to you do you not shop around for the best price. Do you actually walk onto a car lot and pay the sticker price? No. You're going to go where the bargain is and save yourself. I never pay retail. I always ask for discounts. Always. And so you've got to believe that as a business and a game developer, you're going to apply that same logic. And if it's not going to, again, if you own a PC, you can download Epic Game Store. it's not like oh but my pc only runs steam that's not the case you can download epic game store still you're not being excluded yes it is exclusive to that store and yes i understand oh but i don't want to have two different storefronts i get that completely you'd rather have it in steam but i'm also gonna say you're gonna be waiting a long time yeah so it's a trade-off you can you can wait you can you can say no i want to wait until this of steam it's that important to me and there's no way yeah and there's still no guarantee because uh as far as i know uh tony hawk pro skater one and two remasters that got put out on epic game store a year ago still not available on steam i think that there it sounds like zen has a very clear deal i think you can you can pretty much say that it's going to be a year from march next year but probably well we'll probably actually not i think it's going to be a year from the actual drop date of the official that's what i'm thinking that's what i'm thinking so is that june well okay so there's where we're going to jump around here a little bit uh yeah so basically what mel said was early access is aiming at march depending on how well that does in other words if they've hit the mark right off the bat and there's very few issues that we gamers find then the game will be released a little bit sooner if there's a lot of issues that need to be addressing then the game releases a little bit later uh they are targeting summer for console and full pc release so summer is june july august july yeah yeah when they said summer in the thing i i originally went hang on october next year because i was thinking of australia your summer yeah your summer yeah they really like when they're dealing with international audiences they they've got to use dates because seasons mean nothing uh like they just use dates guys please and you southern hemispheres uh you cause all sorts of problems uh yeah so that's that's gonna be the target that's gonna be the target date uh okay so let's talk about the early access uh why it's important we're going to speculate a bit here, we're going to read the tea leaves the first thing Mel said was the game is super network heavy, so what does that mean to you Jude, super network heavy it sounds like that when I say network heavy, it's going to have a lot of demands on not your PC although I think you need a pretty grunty one to run it but it's going to have a lot of data being transferred and I I have a feeling that network heavy means that there's going to be a lot of data transmitted when you're doing online play and playing with others. So that says a number of things to me. It says that if there's any multiplayer aspects in the game, those multiplayer aspects are actually going to be almost streamed gameplay that you're interacting with. Right. Rather than just a score pop up. so that's interesting yeah i i agree i think that the what they're not what he's suddenly not saying directly is yeah you're going to be doing a lot of interacting with other players yeah and it's going to be in real time yeah as well so real time head-to-head play i think is something you can derive from what he was saying there yeah uh why only pc for the early access Well, as he so eloquently stated there, it's a lot easier to troubleshoot one platform than a whole bunch of platforms. But also, too, do consoles even offer an early access stream? No, not necessarily. And consoles, you know, again, we've talked about this way back with Farsight. Every time you wanted to do a patch, like a large patch, you have to resubmit the game. and now you're so it's not just resubmitting to fix your issues but then the console storefronts have to, you have to run through a whole bunch of checklists of their own to make sure that it meets every single time, so it's not just like PC they can upload the change and it's there as soon as they push the go button two hours or something, across the entire world basically, it propagates whereas consoles, it's push the button and wait six weeks yeah while sony and microsoft goes through their extensive checklist so you're not releasing junk onto their marketplace yeah when making sure that you can play the game with a guitar hero controller like xbox did to farsight um they did well you don't know that story they played the game with a xbox with a guitar heroes control microsoft had a thing that said that all games must be playable with all controllers, I believe. It was something of that nature. That's ridiculous. Right? So Farsight submitted, and they got the rejection. And they were like, why did we get rejected? And it was, well, your game did not play while using a Guitar Hero controller. And they went, you what? And it was like, it's not supposed to. But because Guitar Hero controller used the same, you know, each button corresponded to a joypad. button, or joypad, I don't even know what the Xbox controller called theirs. You know, the controller. But for some reason, Farsights didn't communicate in that same manner, and so therefore the game didn't play, and so they got rejected. This was on Xbox 360, by the way. So, this is back when... If y'all are wondering why 360 just got shafted, it's because Microsoft kept on coming out with BS reasons, and it was costing them like $50,000 of submission. Oh yeah, that was expensive. It was just stupid. Anyway, but yeah, it's easier to troubleshoot on one grouping. If you can get one thing right, and then you start opening it up to others, then if you have other issues, you're like, well, it worked over here. Why is it not working over here? And then you can solve that problem rather than going, it's not working. We don't know what the problem is. Everywhere, for many different reasons. It could be anything. another reason for or that they want this early access so Pinball Royale apparently they're on their fourth he didn't call it rebuild but he called it overhaul sounds like their fourth iteration of the game and basically what it's coming down to is as they're running it and using Unreal and discovering things with Unreal, it's kind of opening up new possibilities. And they figuring out what they can and cannot do In a lot of cases they finding out that they can do a lot more than they expected And so because they can do more than they can expect they kind of adding in But it sounds like it going to look a lot less like Tetris 99 which was their kind of target look, I guess, or functionality. And it seems like they're turning it into a Zen product instead of a copycat. Yeah. So on the note of a Tetris 99 experience, I would imagine their claims of it being rather network heavy being quite true. Yeah. They were doing a Tetris 99 experience because that thing is bringing in 99 views of playfields or 99 views of game fields into your view. So yeah, that would be a problem. He did say that they had a preview build of Pinball Royale going, that they showed licensors, and immediately they had a licensor attach themselves to Pinball Royale. So that's pretty interesting that if you can just show it and somebody goes, yep, we're in. Shut up and take my money. Here we go. So that's kind of interesting. at first Mel said that there was other things that were going to be secret and then about a few sentences later he spilled well I mean it's not spilled we kind of already knew this but there's a new clan system that they need to be checking out with the early access which I know you and me both have been just like clan pinball blockade yes we're going to be doing this it might only be us playing it it's like hey it's our clan Right? We're going to have to draft a couple of these players. But that obviously is going to be network heavy. Also, if you're going to the clan system. And then they also mentioned tournaments, which, of course, depending on what the tournament aspect is. Again, I'm hoping that they've evolved a little bit from what is currently in FX3. But I have a feeling it's going to be fairly similar. I reckon they've learned a fair bit from FX3 they know what the community expects from a tournament experience and I have a feeling that it's going to be pretty rich I hope that they even gave a shout out to Cons Gang I really hope that they're paying attention to what some of these people have been doing that basically is a side project to running a tournament using fx3 and do some integration so that you can actually run a true and proper tournament that lasts weeks over multiple tables and having uh zen keep track of all the data basically oh yeah i i think that i think we had mel on ages ago when we were talking about you know or would you improve tournaments in fx3 and he went into detail about what they learnt and what they will be changing if they actually do a tournament relay and actually redo it. So you can pretty much expect, just go back to that interview that we did a while back. Which one would that be, Jared? Oh, one of the ones that's identified on blackhatedpinball.com forward slash, not forward slash episodes, but if you go and filter on interviews on our website, all the Mel interviews will come up and you should be able to review the show notes and work out what that is. Or you can also go onto YouTube and go to our playlists on our channel and all the Mel interviews are in a playlist. That's right. Okay. It's easy for you to do interviews because they're one of the most popular things we have on the site. Yep. Okay, so speaking of consoles, they're also going to be taking they basically hurt everybody but i also think they saw sales figures and the fact that nobody can get their hands on a ps5 or xbox series x and uh they're also going to be launching for ps4 and xbone which is good yeah that's a huge market huge market yes so i'm sure that'll make a lot of people happy there um however folks i'm just going to say it right now you better start asking that question of so when i upgrade to one of those news consoles is everything going to carry over i mean what is there an upgrade path from four to five that's what i'm saying is it guaranteed i don't know i'm not a console player so i can't tell you yeah but um it's not a requirement from what i understand right so that's what i'm saying Before you start trumpeting and being like, yay, just be aware that that might still be an issue. It's certainly a question that we will, whenever we get to talk to Mel again, that we'll bring up. But until then, maybe hop on the Reddit and on the Twitter and be asking those questions in the Discord and see if you get a response. but again yeah so summer summer 2022 for all the consoles is the targeted date for the full launch of pinball effects and as much as bobby seemed to be like oh that's not far away that's a far ways that's a fairly that's a long time that's a fairly non-scripted far away time considering how long we've been waiting so like mel said this got announced back in january yeah of 2021 so you're talking about a year and a half from announcement to launch a significantly longer longest the longest time that zen has ever announced something and then planned to ship it yeah by far i in the history and zen i would think uh so so that's interesting um Mel then went on to talk a little bit about just with Unreal Engine he says at this point all the pinball team are up to speed on it and are firing on all cylinders in that way so I think basically that means they're not training anymore now they're actually building and being functional and one of the things that is discovered during this time was that hey they can do full HD video now oh hey about time right like we've been banging on about for the last how long yeah uh full hd video for which mel then said you know we can have movie footage playing in it to which immediately my bell started ringing and i kind of went so you've got new licensors that you're attaching to uh obviously there's been no mention of jersey jack or stern but yeah just new licenses and if we're talking about movie clips and stuff and i'm wondering are we moving beyond star wars and maybe getting some new current licenses or something like that of that nature to throw in here well it could very well be the case i mean we there's if they're getting studio involvement and they're actually getting the ability to reuse clips then that pretty much blows open the landscape for what could possibly come into the platform. Right. It really is open-ended. Yeah. Yeah. They, they also, they took that opportunity to highlight their new designer. They're touting as the first female pinball designer, basically in the, all of the history of history. Yeah. As far as, as far as professional companies go, not visual effects designers Anna Lengel I'm guessing is how we pronounce her name she was the designer on Trolls and she is also the co-designer on Curse of the Mummy which is the third of the Zen originals we're going to show you a little bit of just what the play field of that looks like in a moment here but it was during that process that she's also mentioned that she's kind of taken the lead on working out this HD video display. Yep. And it kind of makes me wonder, so are we going to be seeing this only on Curse of the Mummy, or are we going to see it on the other two Xen Originals? I think Noir already has some DMD running. I think we saw footage with that. So that's probably not going to be the case there. i reckon given the amount of lead time they're giving themselves i think they will probably retrofit you think they'll revamp it would make sense to revamp for for the brand new zen originals that are like fx exclusive um not the what they call the legacy tables that they're referring to now like they they will remain just regular dmd but the new ones i think they will all make those um hd video because the thing is that all of the assets that they've got they have to down sample to dmd anyhow from hd so why would they just not down sample and put them in right so yeah i'm pretty sure you'll you'll see all three with an hd display which is well and truly about time and hopefully they don't go the route of magic pixel and just do kind of a lame barely any info no cool animations or footage going on there I mean imagine if you were playing Castle Storm and there was gameplay footage from Castle Storm on your DMD that would be cool as opposed to just some interesting fonts and whatever I'm hoping that there's where Zen's Internals and doing animation of CG animation that's going to be outside the pinball department, obviously, for that. It comes into effect and goes. But let's just show you a quick glance at what the Curse of the Mummy play field looks like. There we go. Lighting looks good, eh? Yeah, lighting does look pretty good. So, a little bit dark. I had a better image and I can't find it, but that's okay. Looks like what we have here, just kind of some looping around ramp action, but there's this ramp way over here that goes all the way up to these upper playfields. Yeah. Two little mini playfields. I'm going to say this now. In general, I'm not a fan of mini playfields. You don't like them? I don't. It's a gimmick to me. And it doesn't matter. And I'm not talking about Justin Zen Originals either or Zacharia. I'm talking about even on real machines. I am not a fan of Black Knight and Black Knight 2000. And that's not even a mini playfield per se, because that's got a full-size flipper. But I don't care for little tiny playfields to bat the ball around. There's too much velocity on the ball, and it's too much of just like twitch reaction to keep it in play, and that's not what I enjoy about pinball. it is if the if they don't down power the flipper coils so the idea with a mini playfield done well is that um the they make the coils weaker up the top so it doesn't feel like you're just bashing the ball around at lighting speed so if they do that um that's good now they've done that on um to an extent on mandalorian where the flipper will actually weaken in strength um as you go up into the more advanced levels of the mini playfield game. And on the pro model, it actually emulates the playfield tilting because that mini playfield actually is on a pitch. Right. So for that reason, it works well on the pro. But in the case of Black Knight 2000 and Black Knight Swords of Rage, I think they've done a good job on those mini playfields up there I think there's no like when I'm playing Black Knight 2000 I don't really feel like the ball is super uncontrollable up there I just I mean I'm even thinking of Game of Thrones it's just that little section ever I've never played that game it does nothing for me I think some work better than others probably um acdc the lower playfields i kind of feel the same way about lower play oh that that is a waste of time that thing is a waste of time and that's what and i guess that's what it is it always just feels just kind of like a oh wow look at this rather than hey isn't this fun to play so i don't know well i mean you know jury's out but i'm just saying i'm not well what about Black Holes mini play field. That's fun to play. Black Holes is okay. Haunted Houses is terrible. I don't know. So, I mean, that's how I feel. Even though they're kind of similar. But anyway, that's enough of my bias. Hey, look! There's the video placeholder. And we're going to call it a placeholder because Anna called it a placeholder and she even said, please, somebody else, you know, take care of Help replace my default art because it's no good. So, I'm hoping that It's not just this score is always here and instruction is always here and then some kind of animatic going here. No, if you're going to do this thing animated, do like what Stern does, do like what Jersey Jacks does, and it's just constantly big and changing and flipping over and doing interesting things. How good would that be, though, in cabinet mode? That's going to make a lot of cabinet builders have to rethink the way they do their cabinet modes because they won't be allowing for an HD screen. Well, and there we go. There's Gen 2 of Arcade 1-Up. Potentially, yeah. I don't think it's going to be running on Android, though. Right? So anyway, I just wanted to kind of show that off so you guys can see what that looked like. So good job, Anna. Welcome to the team. She says she's been there about a year and a half. She'd been there for about a month working on Castle Storm 2 on the balances. Balances, yeah. And then essentially requested a transfer and went to the Bimble department. Yeah. And regarding Curse of the Mummy, it's Deep basically designed it. He did all the paperwork. or she called it the office work i think and then she executed so it is a true in that respect it is a it is a true joint design because there's a lot of things that you have to translate from the paper to make actually function yeah in a 3d space so you know that's that's kind of in a lot of ways how real pinball design works as well yeah so you've got multiple people doing like the actual game concept and then you've got people doing the rules and you've got people doing all the different aspects of it and it is really a team effort to do it so i think zen it seems up until now has had one designer doing the rules doing the play field so maybe actually having essentially someone else looking over the shoulder of the other person is actually going to result in a better gameplay experience here as well. Let's just go to the show that Deep, obviously he's now head of the department and probably overseeing things rather than doing all the designing from start to finish on a game himself. He's very much the George Gomez of Zen Studios. Let's see, what else did they... Mel says there's going to be other new tech revealed with Unreal Engine I'm sure, again, as they play around with it and learn what it's capable of I'm sure we'll see these improvements pop up It seems like they've really bumped the lighting up a lot so that's only the beginning if this is iteration one of that just imagine what they can do once they get really accustomed to the engine Again, think about Unreal it's making the game more efficient in terms of how they render things out. That's right. Because it's a framework. Unreal is a framework that you can just plug into rather than having to, in the case of the PX Engine, do it all yourself. And when you think about the fact that Unreal Engine 5 is what is doing all the visuals for the Mandalorian, for their giant screens when they're filming in their When they're on set. When they're on set. That's running Unreal Engine 5, real time. Kind of incredible, isn't it? Yeah, kind of incredible. Now, obviously, they're doing Unreal 4 for this currently. But Unreal 5 is around the corner. Yeah, but again, can you imagine if you were in-house trying to develop that and playing catch-up to Unreal? No way. Yeah. so the game that's what I'm thinking the game he even Mel even said that like with the video screen that was impossible in their PSX engine yeah that PX engine just could not do video like that yeah it couldn't push the pixels nope speaking of obviously we mentioned Curse of the Mummy that's the third table of the Xen originals so there's Curse of the Mummy there's Pinball Noir And then there's the now officially named Sky Pirates, which I think a lot of people said Sky Pirates. But the winner obviously threw in the colon and put Treasure of the Clouds. So that's what it's officially known as, Sky Pirates, Treasure of the Clouds. Yes. And I believe, what was the name of the captain? Captain Ronnie. Captain Ronnie. Captain Ronnie. Yeah. So that'll be that. So congratulations to Ronnie, whoever you are. Yeah. You're the captain now. You're the captain now. Speaking of original designs, though, so Mel basically seems like they want to get back, like these three tables really inspired them to get back to basics, really dive into Zen Originals once more, which, again, makes a lot of sense because, well, we'll go into it, but he says that the goal is to always have at least one Zen Original in development, actively in development. Yeah. that these three tables inspired them to go back to their roots, which, well, yeah, for many years, they were just doing nothing but originals. They were originals only. Yeah, there was no licensing necessarily. And that one of the problems with when you are doing licensed, even licensed originals like what they just did with these four tables, you're bound by the licensor creating certain rules. and I think Stern has witnessed that a lot where again Game of Thrones if you ever question the artwork, the art package what was happening in the game you can thank HBO for that that wasn't necessarily Stern making those choices as opposed to, and I'm trying to think which there's a fairly recent Stern title and it's escaping me, maybe you know it Jared where they were like, oh my god we had like just whatever we wanted and they were like, yeah yeah that's cool Go for it. Yeah. Does that sound familiar? I think so. Was it Stern there or was it another licensor? It must be Stern. I don't know. But anyway, those are the kind of- I don't know what it is. Yeah. Some licensors are really strict with their IP and others are kind of like no have fun That what we want That why we came to you We want you to actually have your take on it not our clip art that we give you Right Interpret it Obviously with Zen doing their own ideas also then you're not constantly submitting your idea, waiting for feedback, and then reiterating it. Instead, it's literally taking your idea to the rest of the team, going, what do you think? The rest of the team going, yay, and then you're running with it. So, I mean, there is also an efficiency to design on that front. Yeah. And that was interesting. Mel said that currently they've got 18 theme ideas floating around. And he says, and I'm just laughing at this, Snoopy apparently leads their content team, not the animated dog Snoopy, but that must be their nickname for somebody there. Okay. Snoopy, eh? Yeah. Because he pointed out, he said, Snoopy, if you're watching, he's the one that leads our content team. Then he was saying that there's where the 18 theme ideas that they've got currently running. It's interesting that Curse of the Mummy theme, boy, if only they partnered with Universal. Uh-huh. And then you could have movie footage from the Mummy movies. Yep. It seems to me like a missed opportunity. I mean, that's a good, well-known franchise. with a lot of story that they wouldn't have to make up. Yes. Or it could be literally like, although a lot of people thought that Williams' attack from Mars was basically Mars attacks. I don't think Williams ever actually approached Warners about doing a license, but it was so license adjacent that basically Williams got away with it. and everyone calls it master tax yeah as well like they go oh i like the master tax table yeah it's like uh-huh which i mean as far as an original content thing that's a good thing because you're getting a lot of free advertising you don't have to pay any residuals to it it's pretty good deal so who knows maybe that was zen's master plan maybe a lot of their original ideas they have right now are uh license adjacent adjacent yeah that's right riding the coattails. Yes. Okay, so speaking of licenses, this was... Okay, we're going to get into some speculation here, Jared. I don't have the image up because it was like... You can look it up yourself. You can look it up yourself. But every single time you go to the pinball show, they've got that back wall of stuff. Oh, yeah. And the stuff has been changing and accumulating and, you know, whatever. And Mel kind of pointed behind and he goes, Oh, yeah. See, a lot of our friends here are in these games. And I kind of went, hmm, let's push pause. Yeah, what is on this back wall? What is on this wall? Now, apart from there being a lot of Marvel and Star Wars stuff up there, here's some things that I think I saw. I can swear I saw a Pikachu up there. Oh. It was a little yellow mouse-like thing with big ears. I didn't see a tail. Must be Pikachu. It wasn't like a real Pikachu. was obviously a different mold or whatever, but I kind of went, looks like a Pikachu. And wouldn't that be an interesting license? You think? Pokemon? Balls? Yeah? Yeah, right? Kind of natural. Collecting things, you know, building up your Pokemon collection. I can just see, it's kind of like what's in Star Wars Collectibles. No, Epic Quest. where all the insert lights, you're collecting all the insert lights, which is classic pinball design, right? You want to light all the things. Yeah. Anyway, so I saw that. But also, Star Wars collectibles. All these little Pokemon figures around the play field that you're collecting. Yeah, I don't want to talk about Star Wars collectibles. But in the same vein, right? Right, right. That would work. There was an original NES controller up there. Ah. Yeah, there was, too. again. Interesting. Do we have a Nintendo partnership of some sort? Maybe. Maybe the game is out on the Switch. You might see exclusive content for... I don't know. Just throw that out there. There was what looked like a book that said the ultimate 80s quiz. Now that just might be a cute piece of decoration. But I'm thinking about Total Nuclear Annihilation which feels very much like an 80s table. In every sense, like in the look and the style and the music. Oh, its aesthetic is synthwave. Right. 80s synthwave. That would be actually a pretty cool original idea for Zen 2 to go into. I wouldn't mind that. And easy enough now that they've got HD tech. Yes. Display tech. Like going after the spooky license is pretty interesting. That would make a lot of sense. again, there's not a lot of tables they don't pump out a lot of tables so keeping up with them wouldn't be terribly difficult and I think it would only benefit Spooky to raise their stature it would mean that they, I mean they're already selling out tables pretty much instantly when they put them out right but they're not producing a lot, right they don't have that functionality So there's still a lot of players that don't get to play their machines. That's right. They're hard to find. The only reason why we see them in Australia is because Jimmy from Netherworld is a bit of a fan of Spooky. And he buys. We've apparently got a Kaiju and a Halloween table. And that's what I was just going to say. Kaiju, Asian market. What was that Mel talking about a while ago and where they want to crack into? Asian markets. Yes. So just kind of, again, we're just throwing ideas out here that don't be surprised if this is where it goes. They don't come to fruition. But come on, seriously, spooky. Get into the boutique pinball manufacturers. Like, you have to think that engaging the smaller manufacturers will be easier than going after a stern. Yes. Because of all the intellectual property and also the old thinking in CERN. Like, there's places like Spooky, they're going after really interesting left-of-field licenses that, you know, are very appealing to certain demographics. Yeah. So, you know, there's some scope there for sure. last thing that I noticed on the the pinball show the wall I saw a little tiny spinner that looked like the spinner that would be in Twister I believe Twister might be owned by Hasbro oh really as in Hasbro games Twister the board game yes we all know that classic party game throw out the mat everybody be in their socks and basically tie each other up into knots. But if you think about it in terms of what that would look like on a pinball playfield, you would have four, because there's four different colors, there'd be four different colored targets all over the place, I imagine. And for hurry-up purposes, it spins and says you have to hit this color and this color before you maybe have to hit any other color on the playfield in order to score. it can work as a pinball machine and again in terms of insert lights think pinbot yep well the other thing too is I only recently got to bring home the third of the Gottlieb Star Series 80s tables that I had because I've got space for it now it's timeline and when I look at the play field of that it's tic-tac-toe essentially there's like a board game in the middle And you could very easily apply that mechanic to something like Twister. Easily. Yeah. You know. So that's pretty cool as well. So I'm just, I just found it curious. It was a mini spinner too. It was like a little tiny square small one. So it wasn't like the full size one that would normally come in the game. But, and I could be wrong. It may not be a Twister spinner at all. It could just be. Twister is owned by Hasbro and so is My Little Pony and you know license adjacent maybe I'm just saying in terms of you may not think that that would be an interesting pinball but I immediately start thinking of the possibilities and it could be a really good entry level pinball too for someone who doesn't know pinball shoot the colors how easy can that be and if that wall is indeed being used as subtle hints then I'm looking for subtle hints. So, folks, take a look at the video, episode 8. Look at that wall. Somebody else can do a much better job of identifying absolutely every character or toy that they have up on the wall. See if there's anything that sticks out, that stands out, that makes you go, hmm. And please drop it in the comments. Let us know what you think. If sure. What your ideas are. Yeah. um mel talked a little bit about zen pinball party says it is has been tops on apple arcade since launch says the numbers show it's being played a lot and it's garnering attention from licensors it's basically one big licensed show isn't it really yeah one big ad for the ability of Zen to properly represent licensors' needs. And he specifically mentioned the fact that having My Little Pony playing alongside DreamWorks properties. Which is very interesting. Right, because it makes me think, in terms of when you're approaching licensors, saying, look, it's not taking anything away, being side-by-side with these other licenses. It's actually bolstering their exposure. Right, exactly. because you're bringing in the same market of customer who might have come for one thing and then sticks around for the other. Yeah, it's very much... I think this is the thing that I think is apparent with this particular package, the Zen Pinball Party, is that it is not focusing on the license store, which is what Zen has typically done. They've created like a... we talked about with Zen in World VR, bespoke experience that really highlights the license source properties. With this one, what they're actually doing is they're flipping that narrative around. And as you say, they're focusing on the user demographic, not a license source. The license source is a means to an end to meet the user demographics need. And that is the way that you need to go if you're going to be increasing exposure for a platform. which kind of goes into translate that into fx right that is going to be the same medium it's going to be a whole lot of different license or properties in one common platform yep that's designed to attract everyone to see your license which is what mel then said he said licenses that are coming are going to vastly diversify the content which means you're obviously really trying to bring in all different demographics of player and have them funneling into this thing. Because the idea is it's going to be, essentially, FX is going to be like walking into an arcade. Like, there's a whole lot of different stuff in an arcade, right? There's not just, you know, a whole row of Star Wars machines. Like, if you're using that analogy, right? There is a bit of Star Wars, a bit of, you know, Marvel, a bit of Williams, a bit of, you know, Hasbro. you know so having the different themes and different styles will mean that when you're walking down the row the virtual row of pinball machines you're going to find something that resonates with you and as you say chris which is perfectly correct you're going to start getting into that that part it's like the gateway right and then you're going to start going oh what else is here yeah oh oh look here's this is universal oh it's kung fu panda i know that this is the way well and it reminds me I just downloaded an app it's called Beatstar and it's a rhythm game it's a rhythm game app as I've made no bones about it I love me some Guitar Hero and Rock Band and DJ Hero I don't play them hardly at all anymore but it doesn't mean I don't like them and it doesn't mean that I don't occasionally bust out the guitar and be like yeah I remember how much fun this was and I think about how much music I've got music for you afterwards okay but it also it exposed me to a lot of music that i normally would have been just like i got no time for that but because you want to play everything and then you know yeah some of you're still like oh that song is crap and other times you're like oh damn it now i got this thing stuck in my head and it's not too bad i'm kind of like okay fine oh horrible i'm grudgingly liking this you know so anyway this beat star app is similar in that that you there's a whole host of music that you're playing with your thumbs it's addictive that way and that's all cool it has got the absolute worst energy system it's like think about mobile games three or four years ago where it was just like every single time you just start getting into it it's oh you have to stop playing and now wait three hours oh what yeah it's it's that kind of nonsense or if you don't want to wait well hey pay this many you know dollars to you know for all these jewels yes it for anybody that thought that the williams app had smurf berries no this is smurf berry central this is all the swirth berries and all the different stuff to the point that i've gotten so you have to earn stars in order to advance up this progress chart and when you get to certain stars then it opens up and it'll give you new songs stuff like that right I'm to the point where I've got four stars on a host of songs I need to five star every single one of them to get me to the next chest basically that'll open up a new song I'm only at level 5 there's like 13 levels how the hell am I going to get beyond that because it used to be oh earn 5 stars and you would get a new thing now it's earn 25 stars and get a new thing and it only gets more and more as you climb the ladder so I'm literally going I'm hitting the wall any day now just like BAM hard that's what they want you to do and they don't know me You're going, no, they don't. I don't play that way. You don't spend anybody on mobile games at all. But my whole point of what I was thinking was, though, is there's a whole bunch of songs in here I would never, ever give the time of day. And yet I'm sitting here spending all of my energy bars trying to master this one song, therefore hearing it five, six, seven times in a row, uh-huh that's having it that's good marketing folks it's really good as far as a license uh a licensor is concerned that's yeah right so i imagine right so i imagine that's the same thing that's happening with zen pinball party is zen's you know sans of the the paywall other than the monthly uh apple arcade fee but yeah it's that same point of hey look we're exposing your product to all of our customers and we've got the numbers right now showing we've got a lot of customers therefore more eyeballs are going to be put on yours so rather than being oh no i want exclusive and you know stand out on my own standalone app yeah yeah no jump in because Here's the other thing too, right? While it's interesting to have different brands in one product, often what happens, like think about this, like you go into an arcade. We'll use the arcade analogy again. You go in, you play Stern Pinball. You go and play a J.C. Jack Pinball. You go and play Williams Pinball. Each one of those pinball manufacturers has a different way of doing things. The way that the experience will be on each of those games will differ. but the thing is with this zen pinball party app the overall quality and polish is consistent with the brand it's just the actual brand that gets to shine and be the differentiator between what's going on so again that's even better because it's not so much your brand is competing it's on a level playing field with all the other tables, what it's essentially doing is it's just there and it's waiting to attract that demographic in with a similar experience. So that's the other thing too, which is different and good with this particular offering. So the last thing that Mel basically hinted at, and he's kind of mentioned it to us before too, but it's nice to hear it being reiterated uh the goal is to have a table a month yep which sounds to me like less about table packs and yeah more just a single release right which i mean obviously that worked for farsight so i i don't see that as being an issue um obviously it'll make it feel like the release schedule is uh less weight and that'll maybe have people piping down uh in the complaint department no probably not as well like they'll be expecting you know a release a month and if they slip a couple of weeks then it'll be all hell to pay you know but of course if they do a release a month and again i'm thinking about all the licensed williams tables that makes a lot of sense yeah because then you are doing the featuring of one particular one, giving it its proper spotlight, and then just throwing in the mix with everything else. Yeah, that's right. So that was essentially everything that Mel stated in that episode. So we're doing our best to try and get Mel to come on. We don't know when. It makes sense. we were thinking obviously if this was like a December release that we would have him on soon now it's a question of well does he just want to come on and talk or does he got anything else to pitch we don't know because obviously all the announcements are going to the pinball show yeah that's right they have their own vehicle now but it doesn't mean that we can't get him on and take a different stance which we always do our interviews are very different to the pinball show's content By the way, speaking of the pinball show, it did seem that Bobby and Rose were not on prompter this time. Yeah, it seems. Yay! It was definitely more natural. Yeah, Rose felt a lot more natural this time. Bobby still looked like he wanted the safety net, but he was trying. Yeah, he was like, he's giving it a good go. But I think they might have taken some notes from everybody. Not just us, but from everybody. that they just need to loosen up a bit where it makes sense to do so. Obviously, they can't loosen up when they're talking about a license. They have to be on script for that. But, like, you know... But it's not going out live. They do have an edit button. Yeah, they do. And they can, you know... It might just mean that it takes a couple more takes, but, you know, as long as it feels a bit more natural, that's good. I mean they included a bit of a blooper in this episode Yes You know and that was good Like it just keeps it a little bit less robotic and more natural So good on you guys Keep this up This is much better. Much better. Yeah, the blooper was to introduce Akash's little section. Yeah, I liked it. It was good. It felt natural. It was good. Can I make you jealous, Jared? Sure. Oh, you got one. I have the beer, folks. Is it good? I don't drink beer. Oh, come on. So what are you going to do with it? Just leave it there? Well, I might have to have my wife sample it because she would actually enjoy a beer I don't. But collectible cans, folks. Pinball-themed. Yeah, Echo had this sent over to me. He couldn't send it to you because they only ship to the U.S. right now, as far as I know. Correct. Yes. We can't export beer. In fact, on that subject very quickly, exports from the US are screwed at the moment. As I found out when I did my pinball resource order, most of the USPS economy options are screwed now. And because of COVID, they're not offering them. So for me to get my parts from Pinball Resource now, I have to pay an extra 30 or 40 US dollars for a super priority USPS, you know, red carpet experience rolled out. Sucks. It really does. And so, and it's because COVID and they're obviously having problems with deliveries over there and logistics. So to counteract that, they're making it really expensive to export to help people not export because it's too expensive. But I need these parts. I can't get them from anywhere else. I have to order them. So anyway, Akosh had this sent over to me. So, dude, thank you. We love Akosh. We love Akosh. He's a good guy. But yeah, so this is pretty good. I just had a box arrive, and it had a six-pack of these. and I'll just bring this up right here. Here's the website, folks, if you're interested, rivalrybrews.com. It's $45 for the six-pack. It's a little on the pricey side. $45 for a six-pack? Well, we're talking craft beer here. A very limited run. It comes from Birdfish Brewing. Now you know why I'm not cracking it open, Jared? Sell it on the black market. Here we go. It's a classic unfiltered German wheat beer that brings through ripe banana esters with a hint of pear. 5.4% alcohol, which I had to laugh because on the pop bumpers, you can barely see it, they all say 5.4. That's cool. Anyway, this is where you'd want to go, though, if you want to order up. You have to act quick. beer is being shipped and delivered the week of October 15th. Right. So you better order before then. Get on it. If you're interested at all in getting some of this. But I don't know. I kind of like this. I imagine that if I had a lower shelf, I'd have a whole bunch of these pinball beers up there. That's cool. Within the box, though. It's expensive, though, for a craft beer. It is. My oh my. And you might be thinking again, and they mentioned it in there you know why license with a beer well what did our podcast start out being called barcade okay because it was you know the vast majority of the eight people that were on here were all talking about how they like to get their drink on while playing pinball because that is the way to play pinball so when you have inside the uh the box that came though there was other goodies what's in the box in the box so so they gave me a beer cozy all right cool the little uh their logo on there um they gave me a hacky sack yeah birdfish uh for birdfish brewing um they gave me the world's cheapest pair of sunglasses hey these things are like these aren't even dollar store purely a marketing thing that yes marketing we have where when they're out in dicker that looks like a almost like a 3d it does it's got like the blue and and then perhaps what i first i went what in the world is this and then i realized what it was i was like okay cool so all right show it to me okay so here this is this little thing it says too hip now here's what through i know what it is i know what it is it's a coin dispenser yeah the two hip this is from a local radio station called KLOS. They were a classic rock station. Back in the day, they had these exact stickers that had two hip on them. I was like, what in the world are they doing with that? I was like, what is that? But yes, it is indeed a quarter coin dispenser. You put your quarters in there and you pull your quarter out and then it's a spring-loaded contraption. I reckon I was just thinking about this the other day for Netherworld. They need those. At the moment with Netherworld, When you buy a bag of dollar coins over the bar, they give it to you in a little, they're the word baggy. Yeah. It's a little zip lockable plastic bag. When certain times during the year, you can buy the show bag, and the show bag will often have a cloth version of that baggy in it, like a little tote drawstring. Yeah. But they need token dispensers like that with Netherworld on it. I don't know why they haven't done it yet. I would buy one in a heartbeat because I get tokens all the time. And that's where I was stoked. I was like, you know what? Because this particular brewery apparently has pinball machines at their brewery. So it's nice to know that they actually recognize who the customer is for this. Whereas the sunglasses, I was like, what? But this, I was like, cool! Yeah, I would totally be using that. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to have to have a chat to Jimmy and Ben and say, guys, you need to do coin dispensers, please. Yeah, so anyway, again, rivalrobrews.com. I know we're not doing paid advertisements, but I felt the need to actually give a shout-out and have you guys jump on this again. If you want these, order now because, like I said, it says it's shipping October 15th. Yep. So, if you want that unique pinball collectible to, I mean, come on, how many, I don't know. I don't know how many home arcades you've been to. But whenever I've been to any of these houses where people have a whole bunch of pinball machines, this is exactly the sort of thing that they have up on their shelves. Just weird pinball-related knick-knacks. Yep. Pinball curios, as we call it. That's a good one. All right. Indeed. I kind of feel that that's all we have for today, Jared. I think it kind of is. Let me just wipe my screen. Okay, yeah. There we are. You were a little moss-covered there. I was a little bit moss-covered. I was a little bit green. Yeah. Green with envy? Oh. I am jealous that you got that swag pack. I know. When Akos was asking for my address, I was like, oh, I'm going to make Jared jealous. I'm going to show this on the show. And he was like, yeah, do that. Number one, you got beer. Like, come on. I'm Australian. Beer is a thing here, right? Right. And we have a pretty active craft brewery scene here in Australia. In fact, it's actually overtaking commercial beer in Australia. Yeah, it's huge. It's a huge industry here. They're knocking on 4X's door? 4X. We started 4X. There's a reason. You know what other four-letter word is? It's Forex. There's a couple, and they all relate to the flavor of that beer. Am I not mistaken, though? Forex, that's kind of the official beer of your territory? It is the large production-run beer of Queensland, yes. It is served in pubs everywhere. I mean, at least I didn't say Fosters. No, Fosters is only export. Exactly. that's why I'm saying 4X is definitely the Queensland beer it's the one where it's commonly available pretty much in every bar you go to but it's being pushed out by all these crafties coming in and you're getting more craft on there than you are like nationally produced beers now that's a good thing I'd be happy to see no 4X product on a tap in a bar near me I'll mention that on this website This isn't the only beer that's there. There is a buttload of craft beers. Apparently, they've partnered with a whole bunch of breweries. They're basically acting as a distributor, I'm sure, this rivalry is to all the small breweries that are around. Yeah. It's very common that you have a network where you can get a whole lot of craft beers through. I mean, you can go to bottle shops here, or off-licenses, where you call it over there, liquor stores and and get any number of off-the-shelf um craft beers now like they're easy to come by which is good because they're delicious um so yeah you know i'm actually i noticed you're wearing your star wars shirt yes i'm still i'm still waiting for my stuff from zen um from when i won from my token submission for it took a while for mine to arrive too so yeah it's all right i i'm i i can't even remember when i won that it was like episode three or four yeah i think so it was it feels like a while ago but anyhow anyhow all right you know having said that you know it's so hard to get stuff out of the u.s at the moment right from posters service i i have a feeling i understand why um hey just before you go you know how you were talking about the music games before. So people who are fans of the drumming simulation game, Drum Mania, will know that you can install this thing called DTX Mania on your PC, connect a Yamaha or any MIDI-based USB drum kit, and you can actually play a whole lot of Drum Mania songs on your drum kit, your physical drum kit. So what's happened since then is Bimani or Konami and the Bimani range of rhythm action games. They've realized that, hang on a second, we could probably sell this and make some money. So over in Japan, they've actually got a monthly subscription service that you can subscribe to that gives you access to like Beatmania, Drummania, Guitar Freaks, or Githadora as they call it. And you can do that over there. But the other thing is that on VR, they've got this new rhythm action game, which is wild. It's drumming. It's guitar. It's keyboard. It's the whole band. And it actually uses your hand detection in Oculus to actually work out where your hands are and actually you can play keyboard without a keyboard at all, virtually. And guitar is air guitar. It can actually track your hand position. Interesting. Like where you're actually playing. And drums is completely air drums. Okay. So you've got cymbals coming down just like you do in all these rhythm action games. And you're like hitting virtual pads. Now, I've played a version of this virtual pad drumming thing. It was an Oculus App Lab game. with virtual virtual pads coming down and i thought initially that's going to be a really bad experience you need something to whack but it kind of works virtually because your controller buzzes whenever you hit the note in time so you get this haptic feedback and it and you see the drumstick like in real time like going towards the pad so you can get the timing right and I'm really interested to try this game. So what's it called? It is, just let me get my phone and look at my Oculus wish list. Because it's only just recently been released, actually. It's pretty new and shiny. Beat Arena. Okay, Beat Arena. Beat Arena. He's one of these guys that has been an avid VR headset YouTuber. has been paying attention to VR for the past five years and doing stuff. He came across a VR headset that he says absolutely made his jaw hit the floor. It's by a company called Vario, V-A-R-J-O, I believe. But check this out. Resolution per eye, 2880 by 2720. Oh, that's high. There's no street door there. And that's only two of the screens. There's four total. The other two screens are your 1980 by 1080, but they're Super OLED or something like that. Anyway, so playing Trish with your peripheral, it's got LiDAR cameras on the front. He says it literally is like you're not wearing a headset. for AR type experiences. He says, there becomes this merging of, wait, what's real and what is fake that's in front of me kind of thing. Check out the price tag. The price tag. Oh my God. This is clearly designed for, not consumers, but for medical professionals or designers, automobile designers and stuff like that. I believe it was $6,500 just for the headset and then it's a $1,500 a year subscription. Wow, $1,500 a year. Bargain. That's fine. That's fine. Right, that's fine. But what he was saying was they lent it to him for a month. He called over a bunch of game designers that he knows that work in VR. They threw the thing on and they were like, I've never seen my game look like this. They were just like, I'm stunned. I'm staggered. This is what my game looks like. And he said also it's the first time he's ever found a headset where he's gone, you know what? I don't need a monitor. I could do this in virtual space with as many monitors around the room as I wanted to, and it will feel completely natural because it is absolutely dead to nuts crisp on everything. I actually saw this other headset as well, which is interesting, and where and it could be a similar tech where they've got like essentially a regular resolution screen around your field of vision but in your focal point yes that's what this is yeah high resolution right really high yeah and and uh i think it was the guy on vr oasis mike from vr oasis who i follow on youtube um he tested it out and he said it's like playing something like um what is it Half-Life Alyx yeah on it it's just well because he was saying it basically attracts your eyes and that's where it you know changes or upraises that you know particular thing so you're constantly getting the best image wherever your eye focus is going it's incredible but in terms of the thing takes two power bricks to power yeah you have this big old cable running down it was interesting he had this whole clip system on his legs so that the cable wasn't just like weighing on his head or whatever he loved the the the halo the halo yeah so it was the most comfortable halo he'd ever had but this is also a dude that has you know one of these spaces that's 20 by 20 so that you can do full walking around oh room scale yeah right yeah yeah it's wild anyway there's another thing another thing just to close out the show on VR YouTube dump on Pinball Blockhead yeah that's right so there's been some reports floating around on a number of different games on Oculus that are using the cloud backup system now what's happened there is that Oculus is allegedly upgrading the system doing something to it and it's made all these games unbootable including Star Wars Pinball VR now what then have done to work around this problem is they've turned off cloud saving but that means that if you uninstall the game during the period when cloud saving is off all your local progress is lost um so this is also a problem on tetris effects tetris effects rebrand themselves as like tetris expanded or something like that and they they had this whole plan for online multiplayer and I was really stoked for it. It sounds really great. And then they pretty much had to turn it all off because of this Cloud Save issue. And now a whole section of the game doesn't work. So I don't know what Oculus is playing at here, but it seems really stupid to cripple the Cloud Save system that every developer relies on and then make it so that when your game boots, you can't boot it unless you get a connection to Cloud Save. that seems really dumb so I hope that they're pretty fast spinning up their new servers or whatever they need to do to upgrade their servers because that's a pretty bad experience for VR gamers on Oculus so there you go okay folks well I hope you've had your fill we've had our fill as usual we started early and we're finishing around the regular time right yeah we've been doing some long shows these last three shows I don't know what's going on here, but it's like the old days. Yeah, it is. Yeah. You might start using that YouTube chapter feature. No. Too bad. You people just have to scrub. Or wait until I do the show notes, and then you have time. Yeah. There was a time when we were like, you know what? Our episodes are going way too long. We need to pare these down to like 45 minutes. And I think we lasted about three episodes of that before we went. We never. We could never maintain a full-length web-made episode. Ever. But then again, there was somebody that I follow on YouTube that I just saw did a five-hour stream. So I don't feel bad. We're fine. We're free and clean with that. Hey, folks, you want to communicate with us? Easy way of doing that. Boom, right there. Look at the Twitter handles. There's Jared's Twitter handle. There's the show's Twitter handle. You looked the wrong way, Jared. There you go. It's always opposite. Feel free to drop a message there. Yes. You can also check us out on blockadepinball.com, where I am more than sure that there is an email address there that goes by the name of blahblahblockade at gmail.com. You can drop us notes there if you would so like. Or, hey, if you happen to be watching this live on YouTube, when I usually premiere it on Sundays at 9.30 a.m. Pacific time. I was going to say Pacific Daylight, but I don't know how much longer that's lasting. anyway 9.30 in the morning on Sundays I do this premiere of the show live for you guys so that I'm always in the chat and you guys can make your comments there because sometimes I ate notes and then that's what winds up in the next show lots of ways to communicate with us we totally appreciate it that you take the time to watch our little dog and pony show because we enjoy doing it we do, it's a lot of fun thank you to everybody that subscribes and watches. Next time, Jared. Some stuff and things to talk about. Don't know what yet, but stuff and things. Stuff and things. All right. Until then, buh-bye. Buh-bye.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7a6ad9f8-2560-4419-9370-d1647e6db34b*