# Drop It Like Its Hawt

**Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2017-07-06  
**Duration:** 55m 12s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Drop-It-Like-Its-Hawt-e1bkfv2

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## Analysis

Chris and Jared discuss Farsight's latest Pinball FX releases (Wipeout, Paragon, Firepower 2) and criticize the Firepower 2 selection as underwhelming. They praise Zen's announcement of Pinball FX3 with community-focused features including head-to-head multiplayer, league play, and graphical overhauls. The episode includes tangential personal updates and discussion of new glow ball cosmetics.

### Key Claims

- [MEDIUM] Firepower 2 was a cost-saving cash grab by Williams in 1983, designed around excess backbox inventory from failed Hyperball production — _Chris explains that Williams had 45,000 excess Hyperball backboxes and needed to fill them with games; Firepower 2 had only 3,400 units made_
- [MEDIUM] Farsight lost licensing for several tables including Ninja Gaiden, Street Fighter 2, and Rocky and Bullwinkle in the transition to FX3 — _Chris speculates these were exclusive to PlayStation/Xbox and haven't carried over to Steam; notes Explosion Man and possibly one other may not carry over_
- [HIGH] Pinball FX3 will feature 70+ tables with community play focus including head-to-head multiplayer, league play, and team-based scoring — _Zen announced FX3 with emphasis on community play; hosts speculate on team mechanics based on press briefing and UI screenshots_
- [HIGH] All existing Pinball FX/Zen 2 tables will transfer to FX3 for free with no repurchasing required — _Direct statement from Zen announcement regarding crossbuy policy_
- [HIGH] Wipeout table in Pinball FX is mechanically simple and easy, with limited playfield variety — _Jared played it and found it 'mind-numbingly easy'; Chris notes playfield dominated by slalom mechanism leaving scant space for meaningful shots_

### Notable Quotes

> "Firepower 2 is the inferior sequel to the original. That's right. You don't even get any voice... No, it's only a two-ball multiball."
> — **Jared**, ~18:30
> _Establishes technical inferiority of Firepower 2 as justification for criticism_

> "Why? Why? When I saw... Farsight's trolling us. So we get Paragon... and then we get Wipeout... and now almost as if to say F you you whiny little punks for groaning about all the Gottlieb premiere fine here's a Williams enjoy"
> — **Chris**, ~20:00
> _Articulates community frustration with Farsight's perceived tone-deaf game selection_

> "Nobody cares. This is what we're going to get... No one cares. Nobody cares. I mean, any other number of really nice Williams tables..."
> — **Jared**, ~21:00
> _Strong dismissal of Firepower 2 as unwanted by the community_

> "Glow is the new happy face... these are going to be your new balls."
> — **Chris**, ~45:00
> _Suggests glow balls will become default choice for competitive play due to visibility advantage_

> "I would guess that we're talking about leaderboards or crossing over... I can play somebody that's playing on mobile, even though I'm on PC. That's my guess."
> — **Chris**, ~60:00
> _Speculates on cross-platform multiplayer integration for FX3_

> "Farsight, if you're going to be doing head-to-head... then please just look at what Zen is doing. Because I'd suggest that probably they kind of know what they're doing in this field"
> — **Jared**, ~58:00
> _Critique of Farsight's UI/multiplayer design versus Zen's experience_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Farsight Studios | company | Digital pinball platform developer; released Wipeout, Paragon, and Firepower 2; criticized for poor table selection and UI design |
| Zen Studios | company | Digital pinball developer announcing Pinball FX3 with community-focused multiplayer and league play features |
| Chris Frebus | person | Co-host of Blockade Podcast (alias: Shut Your Trap); cast member on upcoming HBO show filming in Portland |
| Jared Morgan | person | Co-host of Blockade Podcast; based in Brisbane, Australia; dealing with Google Pixel device issues during episode |
| Wipeout | game | Digital pinball game released on Pinball FX; Gottlieb premiere title criticized for mechanical simplicity |
| Firepower 2 | game | 1983 Williams pinball; upcoming Pinball FX digital release criticized by hosts as unwanted inferior sequel |
| Paragon | game | Digital pinball table released on FX; competitively complex game with mixed reception |
| Pinball FX3 | product | Upcoming Zen Studios digital pinball platform emphasizing community play, head-to-head multiplayer, league play, and graphical upgrades |
| Williams | company | Historic pinball manufacturer; released Firepower 2 in 1983 during cost-cutting era |
| Hyperball | game | 1983 Williams pinball with failed sales forecast; excess backboxes repurposed for Defender, Joust, Firepower 2 |
| Globalls | product | Cosmetic glow ball variants for Pinball FX; available in multiple colors (green, pink, white); provide visibility advantage in gameplay |
| Space Shuttle | game | 1984 Williams pinball credited as savior of the company during recession era |
| Blockade Podcast | organization | Pinball podcast hosted by Chris and Jared; newsletter-driven news discussion format |
| Pinball FX2 (Zen 2) | product | Previous Zen digital pinball platform; tables transferring to FX3 for free |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Digital pinball platform releases and game selection, Farsight vs Zen competitive positioning in digital pinball, Pinball FX3 announcement and community features
- **Secondary:** Multiplayer and league play mechanics in digital pinball, Historical pinball manufacturing and design economics, Cosmetic enhancements (glow balls) and competitive impact, Licensing challenges in digital pinball transitions

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.35) — Hosts express strong negative sentiment toward Farsight's Firepower 2 selection and overall game curation, moderate frustration with digital platform issues, but enthusiasm for Zen's FX3 announcement and glow ball cosmetics. Personal commentary (phone issues, HBO casting) neutral.

### Signals

- **[sentiment_shift]** Strong community disapproval of Firepower 2 selection; hosts characterize it as unwanted, inferior sequel with no player demand (confidence: high) — Repeated declarations of 'nobody cares,' contrast with stated demand for original Fire; Chris notes Twitter disappointment among community members
- **[competitive_signal]** Zen Studios positioning FX3 multiplayer/league infrastructure as superior to Farsight's approach, leveraging mobile gaming UI experience (confidence: medium) — Jared recommends Farsight use Zen as blueprint; Chris notes Zen applying proven mobile matchmaking patterns to pinball
- **[design_philosophy]** Wipeout playfield criticized as mechanically simple with limited design variety; dominated by slalom mechanism leaving minimal strategic depth (confidence: high) — Jared reports playing experience of 'mind-numbingly easy'; Chris details playfield layout with only 4-5 primary shots and large pop bumper cluster
- **[licensing_signal]** Farsight losing licensing for multiple tables in FX3 transition including Ninja Gaiden, Street Fighter 2, Rocky and Bullwinkle, and possibly Explosion Man (confidence: medium) — Chris speculates based on platform exclusivity patterns (PS exclusive, Xbox exclusive) and absence from mobile platforms
- **[market_signal]** Glow ball cosmetics anticipated to become dominant default choice in competitive play due to visibility advantage, similar to 'happy face' balls in prior eras (confidence: medium) — Chris notes balls will skew leaderboards; both hosts planning to use as default; expect widespread adoption
- **[announcement]** Zen Studios officially announced Pinball FX3 with community-focused features including head-to-head multiplayer, league play, team-based scoring, and graphical overhauls (confidence: high) — Hosts reference official press briefing and UI screenshots showing new menu structure with tournaments and league options
- **[product_strategy]** Pinball FX3 graphical overhauls confirmed for tables including Mars, Epic Quest, Castle Storm; two new unlicensed tables in development (theme park and roller coaster imagery identified) (confidence: high) — Hosts reference official announcement video showing Mars visual improvements; identified new table art featuring roller coaster theme
- **[business_signal]** Farsight's Firepower 2 selection perceived as tone-deaf or mocking community preferences after Gottlieb premiere complaints; characterized as 'trolling' (confidence: medium) — Chris interprets newsletter announcement ('you're fired' visual gag) as intentional dismissal of player feedback; notes pattern of unwanted selections

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## Transcript

 This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Grievous, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, Jared Morgan. And though you won't be able to hear her or see her, it looks like Jared has a visitor too. yes I do Sienna is with me today aren't you Sienna because I told her to be in this room she has to be quiet so she's just leaning up against me offering moral support as we go into the newsletter yeah so after three weeks of basically spinning our wheels and barely having any pinball talk jam packed show of pinball talk so that should be fun. But as we like to do always, we need to warm ourselves up and find out what the hell is going on with each other. Jared, what's been going on this past week? I have been dealing with Google because my Pixel XL got a USB charging port issue and that required me to send it back to Google in, I don't know where, Singapore, I think, is my local Google center. so I because I didn't purchase it from Google directly and I got it from a registered retailer here they said well you got to send it back to us so okay great you know what that's like right? yeah so anyhow I organized the return career to come pick it up it didn't cost me anything to do it mind you which is nice but it cost me time time and convenience Yeah, time and extreme inconvenience because the first time that they did the RMA for me, they got my address totally wrong. The second time, so I had to call back and try and get that rectified, which meant they had to create a brand new RMA for me, which took like a good half an hour on the telephone to get sorted. So after that, I got the second RMA, which is all hunky-dory, got it submitted in. and then the courier picked it up and I got delivery confirmation that it landed in Singapore and two days later I called up Google and said, so why haven't you processed my immediate replacement device? And they said, oh, we don't really know where your device is. I said, well, that's funny. That's funny because I've got a delivery confirmation right here that somebody signed for it with, quote, unquote, company stamp. So I think it's probably about time you found it and then expedited the shipment back to me, please and thank you. Right. I pretty much said it like that. And so another half an hour waiting in line for them to try and reverse engineer what happened. And there has been, you might have heard this ransomware bot going around the world at the moment. Well, I have a feeling that our courier company, Toll, might have been affected by that ransomware bot because, yeah, I found out that one of my friends has been waiting for records to be delivered here in Brisbane. And the guy goes, yeah, well, look, we know it's in a warehouse, but that's all we know. We don't actually know where it is because our systems are basically... We're operating on mobile internet at the moment. because this bot actually takes out your internet. That's the make you cry ransomware thing, yeah. Yeah, so there we are. And so basically what they said is, well, we'll market as received and then start the process, which means, well, in two to three business days, we'll start sending out your device. I said, well, considering that you received it on Wednesday and I'm now calling you on Friday, that's two business days. So how about you expedite this for me because I've been waiting already too long for this. So I'm using a very old Nexus 4 at the moment, and I basically can't install anything on it because it's out of space. Yeah. And it's terrible, and I kind of hate it. And I cannot wait for them to ship the replacement device to me. All right. That's me this week. How about you? Well, I got a phone call or a text message, I should say, because that's how we communicate in our industry. So it looks like I'm going to be on a new HBO show starting up in a week and a half or so. But we start up in Portland. Oh, okay, Oregon. Yeah. And so I hear that Portland, Oregon is a rather hotbed for pinball. and as I'm going to be there over a weekend and we will not be working over the weekend. If anybody knows of a place that I should go visit, that is, here's the deal folks. I could care less about the drinks because I'm not going to have me having a drink. All I care about is the table selection, that they're quality machines and that they're not overcharging. So if you have any suggestions, um, so that I have something to do during that weekend, uh, why don't you go ahead and email those over to blahblahblockade at gmail.com. I'd much appreciate it. Other than that, you know, regular ho-hum week. Ho-hum general life stuff happening. Exactly, that kind of business. Yep. Let's just jump right in then, shall we? Yeah, let's do it. Let's start with the news that we were all expecting, which is that Wipeout has been released on, well, I shouldn't say all the formats, on your mobile and PC formats, arriving on consoles sometime in the future. Not that near. In the next year either. In the next one to 12 months. Yes. Yes. So I went ahead and messed with it for a while today. and as is, like we've been saying, as is typical of Farsight these days, they've been doing a rather good job, graphics-wise and gameplay-wise, of these things, but is it me or is this table kind of mind-numbingly easy? It is, yeah. I mean, my ball times right off the bat are long and I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, Yeah, it's a very basic game. Like I said last week, most of the play field is taken up by that slalom mechanism, including the elevator and then the slalom mechanism on the right. So you've got scant little space to do anything really in the middle, and they put massive pop bumpers in the middle of the table. So what are you supposed to be doing? Like it's just nothing. You've just got a ramp and a hole and the slalom. Well, that's just it. There's no orbits to hit. You've got a dead end shot on the left-hand side. You've got a dead end shot on the right-hand side. And then just above that, you've got, I guess you can, I'd call it more of a U-turn or a turnaround. well no excuse me that's the one that goes to the leads up to the wire ramp or the wire form that goes across and drops you back down to the left side and then you've got the up at the top yeah there's where your U-turn is unless the ski lift is lit and then it goes to the ski lift there's four drop targets that strangely enough are rather hard to knock down yeah they are they feel like they're being I've had the balls just bounce off of them and not collapse. So that was kind of bizarre. But now I'm just kind of like, oh boy, let's play this. And hey, how many times do I have to hear that this particular thing is, was it Psycho or... Psychopath. Psychopath, that's right. Psychopath. Oh my gosh. Shut up. See what I mean about the collapse? See what I mean about the collapse now? They just never stop. And then the Germans from Cactus Jacks apparently show up again. Yeah. Oh, dear. I mean, look, it's not as bad as Class of 1812. No. It's not as bad as Bonebusters. No. It's still not great. No, still not great. I was playing it and I was going yep this is about to end now and then I switch tables and I'm done thank you so you know great so there's that table and then we get the newsletter and I'll just tell you all what it says here so what we got is thank you Farsight so we got a picture of the Donald as if we really need to see him. The front. And he's saying, you're fired, you're fired, you're fired, you're fired, and you're fired, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, hold it right there, power, I see you hiding in the back, you're fired too. All I can say is Farsight is trolling us now. This, because, you know, at first glance you see all the fires, and you think, oh, cool, we're going to get fire, which is an interesting game. It's not a particular favorite of mine, but it's certainly interesting, and it's a System 11, so that'd be cool. But then you realize in that last little grouping where it says, hold it right there, Power, I see you hiding in the back, you're fired too. In other words, I'm going to fire Power too. Why? Why? Has anybody actually been requesting this? No. I got news for you folks Firepower 2 is the inferior sequel to the original that's right you don't even get any voice no it's only a two ball multiball the play field is strangely cramped because of this ramp that they throw in on there but it's like we all there's been lots of requests for Fire I've not seen one request for Firepower 2. No, no one cares. This is what we're going to get. Yeah. Why? Why? When I saw, because there was been some chatter on Twitter, I know Andrew Driver, one of the fully paid up blockade members on Twitter, has been saying, oh, cool, it's going to be Fire. That's all right. He's going to be sadly disappointed when he hears the episode or reads the forum, probably. It's Firepower 2. To which I've got to say, and this is why I'm saying Firestrikes trolling us. So we get Paragon, which people have been asking for for a while, or there was some brouhaha over it since the poll. Since the poll way back when, yes. So although there were people that were happy about it, it's also not exactly an easily gotten into game. It's a tough nut to crack, and definitely not everybody's cup of tea. and then we get Wipeout oh hooray another Gottlieb premiere table yeah wow and now almost as if to say F you you whiny little punks for groaning about all the Gottlieb premiere fine here's a Williams enjoy yeah pretty much it does feel like that doesn't it right like what is the most obscure like you've got to remember that Firepower 2 was put out in the last 1983. Yeah, and 1980s, the early 1980s, were basically like the late 90s for pinball. They basically went to a recession again, and the designs and stuff were really, really light on because they wanted to save money. Right, I mean, Firepower 2 literally is a cash grab. If you remember, 1983, Williams is almost toast. their other tables that they released were like Defender, Joust I forget there was another one Hyperball Hyperball came before it because here's why I say that Hyperball, and I was reading an interesting thing on the internet pinball database and that is that Hyperball apparently, and I cannot believe these numbers they were going to, there were supposed to be 50,000 units That was their sales forecast for Hyperball. Obviously, they realized that was going to fall well short. They actually made 5,000 units. So they had all these extra cabinets and so games like Defender and Firepower 2 had to be designed around that backbox Yeah that right Because it a really short backbox Because they had all these back boxes. They had 45,000 boxes that they needed to fill with crap, and look what they did. They filled it with Firepower 2. Right. Well, they at least filled it up with 3,400 units of Firepower 2. I mean, I still have a hard time thinking that number. That's 3,300 too many. that's 3200 too many yeah I just can't believe that there is that that number 50,000 I'm thinking it may be 15,000 that sounds like a normal production run number until that point nobody nobody ever sold 50,000 units of anything so I'm thinking somebody didn't hear it correctly the 15 became 50 and they put down 50,000 units but anyway no matter the whatever the case yeah, Williams was in cough-saving mode. So that's why you have no speech. That's why they were using some other backbox. It wasn't until the next year when Space Shuttle came out, and Space Shuttle is widely regarded as the savior of Williams. Because just think about it. Yeah, they put out Defender and Joust. They were trying to glom onto the video game market. Well, they are video game division to try and actually reuse the licenses so they didn't have to actually make any money because it was their own ip so that's like wow what can we pump out that will cost us next to nothing yet still give operators a new table to put on site because that's what they expect yeah let's just like do five power two and what what can we do differently in this game well let's just like put a random ramp on it i heard that the boys and girls like ramps now And you think about it, Bally was doing the exact same thing, and this was before they merged with Williams, because at that same period they put out Centaur Tour, Centaur Tour, Centaur 2, and A-Ball Deluxe in, I forget what they call it, the LE edition, something like that. Using their funky backbox configuration. It already was just, let's put out another version run, if we will. That was popular. Don't you want more? Well, look, history has told us this isn't the first time they do that. Take a look at Pinbot and Jackbot. Like, they got to the point in the 90s where they went, geez, you know, we want to release another table quickly now, probably because we're ramping up development and R&D on Pinball 2000 and we don't have enough developer resources. No, you want to know the real reason? What's that? The real reason was that they did research and they found out that people missed the classic playfield design, or this is what they felt, that some of the feedback they were getting back was that the tables were getting too complicated, too difficult to understand, and they were alienating the older, or the audience that had been with them longer, let's call it that, and so they came out with JackBot as saying, saying, hey, look, it's the kind of design you like, but don't you like the DMD also in the new rule set? So that was actually the thought behind that one. Yeah. Well, yeah, and I heard that in the video, the promo video as well. And I went, oh, yeah, cool story, bro. I went, yeah, that sounds like a lot of rubbish. That sounds like, yeah, we asked five users, really old dudes that were around in the 70s and 80s saying, I don't like the new tables. Where's my Zimmer frame? And they went, okay, mate, you're a really good customer of ours. Let's pump out some rehash rubbish that makes you feel happy about your elderly state and harken back to the days of your and put a DMD on it and stuff. And there you go. Now shut up. That's what I got out of the video as a product manager. I went, hmm, hmm, yeah, nice spin, bro. You're not filling it in. Except for you've got to think of it, well, I mean, I guess they might have still had the molds and stuff for it. They would have handled that, yeah. All that stuff they would have had still. And the thing is, though, the difference between the pin bot play field and the jack bot play field, the actual, you know, mini sort of upper level play field is totally different. So they redesigned that, I guess. Yeah, made that a little bit different. But that's about it. So anyway, back to Farsight. What the hell? Come on. This is not what we wanted. It's just, I don't know. We know you guys lost, or I don't know if we know for sure you lost, but there was this dry spell of no Williams and no Bally, and then the two that we get are kind of just underwhelming. Well, Paragon, I'm not going to say it's underwhelming. Paragon is, like I said, it's just kind of, some people love it, Some people are, eh, but Firepower, like I said, nobody's begging for this. No one cares. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. I mean, any other number of really nice Williams tables, and let's not even think about the licensed ones that are out there because they're discounted. Oh, there's still a whole bunch of System 11s to go for. Yeah, beautiful System 11s you could do. Like, geez, you know. And on top of that, you still have an emulated Firepower. Yeah. It's still scripted. Yeah, go fix that. Yeah. At least I guess we're going to get, we're actually going to get emulated Firepower 2, which is something. Yeah, we'll definitely get emulated of that, but I mean. So I guess that's something. I know it's not really great. No. That they went with this one. Surely with access to the Pinball Museum they have now, there's any number of other things they could have like got that, you know, they could have put in like, you know, jeez, any number of other things. Yeah. I don't know. It's a puzzler. It's definitely a puzzler and I hope and pray, you know, somebody else said maybe it's Fireball 2. I mean, that would be, I guess, okay. Not really. I mean, yeah, it's kind of eh. It's not though. It's definitely Firepower 2. The clue is... Right, especially if you read it, like I said, you're fired two power. I'm going to fire power two. It's all where you place the comma, folks. Other news that was in the newsletter and also got released. We mentioned it a little bit before, the Globalls. I finally had a chance to actually play with them. They're pretty cool. There's some that I don't care for. and I'm playing the DX11 version of it just so people know and there was one that was solid white and yes it has a glow to it but there's not any texture on the ball itself to really distinguish it yeah it looks like a white hole instead of a black hole yeah so you know the glowing green is pretty cool the glowing pink is pretty cool you know there's some good color choices, it made me think of a new challenge to play with pinball. And that is, we need to figure out which table, when you turn off the lights completely, so turn off ambient light, turn down the bulb brightness completely, and just have the glow ball on, which table is darkest? Then try and play with the dark ball. So here's where the challenge would be. Play one game with the glow ball, and then play your next game with any of the three black balls that exist in PPA within those same conditions and see how you do. I tried it on one table. I don't even remember which one I tried it on. There was still a little bit too much ambient going on, but it's a challenge because that ball comes out of nowhere. Yep. That would be really difficult. I think, actually, I think they had a preview of what the Globals look like with some. They put it on Star Trek The Next Generation. Yeah, Star Trek The Next Generation. I tell you what, it's pretty dark. Yeah. And also, there's some very strange lighting happening going on the shield on that gif that they've got in the newsletter. It's like the shield is actually broken up into six lights when it's only three. and I don't know whether it's just the way the frame rate's being clipped on the GIF, but it's looking very strange. It's like the bulb is actually a black hole in the middle of the shield in the email. But I reckon it's probably just a byproduct of the GIF. But yeah, apart from that, geez, you guys are lucky on PC. That lighting is real nice. Yeah, it looks pretty cool. Oh, yeah, geez. So nice. I wish. So to describe for those that you haven't seen what the glow balls look like, if you've ever seen the PlayStation Move controller, it's got this ball at the end of the controller that glows LED style. And it's a very soft glow. It's not a shiny glow. It's just a soft glow. And that's what the glow balls look like, too. It's a soft light, non-reflective glow going around. what I wish that they would do as, say, making a sequel to the glow balls because they also just released their Doctor Who balls. And one of them in particular is the TARDIS inside what they basically call a marble. A clear marble with the TARDIS inside of it. And so the TARDIS is just tumbling end over end over end. I want that, the glass ball with plasma strands of glow. Oh yeah. and doing it that way. That would be really cool. I think that would look really slick. That's what I thought the glow balls were going to be, so I was a tad disappointed when I first saw them. That quickly dissipated when I played with them, because like I said, they are fun to play with, and I suspect a lot of people are going to use those as their default ball, because you're never not going to see where that ball is. That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm playing it on things like Funhaus and stuff like that, and there is zero chance of you losing that when it actually gets kicked out from behind Rudy. Yeah. You know exactly when it's coming down underneath that ramp. It's very prominent. It actually makes it easier to play the games. Yeah. So I would suggest, it's going to be interesting to see if, I know that all packs aren't actually exempt from leaderboard rules, but I would think that this is actually going to skew leaderboards a little bit with the extra benefits you get from these flow balls. So basically all of you that used to play with the happy face ball, these are going to be your new balls. Yeah, these are basically your new happy face. Yeah. Glow is the new happy face. And I'd say probably for me the green is the one that I seem to be selecting the most on all the tables, like the dark green, because it's really on mobile it's probably the most prominent of all of them. Well, it also, I think, is because most of your inserts are not green. They're usually an amber color, an orangish or white. So, yeah, the green would stand out even if it's going over a lot of inserts. Yeah. There is something funny, though. The blue glow on Doctor Who, the original Doctor Who, the ball completely disappears when you're up at the time expander. It totally vanishes, which is very interesting because it's exactly the same blue as that upper blade field area. And it's like, whoa, where'd the ball go? And then it suddenly appears again as it pops out of the target commander. It's funny. So, yeah, experiment with the balls and let us know what your favorite color is. And you can do that through all the social medias like BlackHade on Twitter and blahblahblackhade at gmail.com if you want to go long form and do an in-depth analysis of globe balls. so yeah I mean you know this month Farside yay for GloBalls good job on Wipeout but we don't care and boo on picking Firepower 2 that was a horrible choice rubbish yeah there must have been a reason why they went for that surely there has to be mitigating circumstances for them going geez Firepower 2 I guess we have to pick that one because because there can't be a good reason for it. I don't think of any good reason out there that you would want to pick Firepower 2 unless the argument was, well, we want to complete the trilogy. What trilogy? Firepower and then the sequel to Firepower. That's just a sequel. There's no trilogy there. No. It's a double. It's a double. It's a back-to-back. I used the word wrong. There you go. Oh, well. We'll call it a foreign language difference. Yeah. And also I was thinking of like all the coaster series of pinballs. And that what I was thinking That what I was thinking But really it just it just a sequel Yeah Well let let let talk about news that did make us happy Hmm So Zen came out with a big announcement and that is they are doing Pinball FX 3. Yeah. And you may go, well, why do we need Pinball FX 3? Well, the main reason why is because they are making it all about community play, meaning they're going whole hog into... Into head. head-to-head, multiplayer. If you're... If you read the press briefing, that's all we've read, too. We have not got inside information, so we're going to do what we like to do best, which is speculate like crazy. All I can imagine is right now what you're used to when you're approaching a friend's score and whether you're going to beat it. I can imagine it's that kind of thing, just more. Yeah, you're more integrated because There's a few screenshots they posted of the, not the game itself, but just kind of your menu, if you will, your user interface. There seemed to be a lot more going on. They're talking about a lot of tournaments, a lot of changing challenges. They're talking about league play. And what I'm hoping, what I'm really, really hoping is that they go ahead and make a team-based league play. that would be cool because right now what you can do is when you have your friends that are in your list you all kind of score a mass grouping you compete against a mass grouping of scores you get your super score that you compare and what I'm hoping is that maybe the teams can be super scored maybe they're taking a page out of the mobile market with what they do with their games and having clans and whatnot. So that the more people in your group that play more tables, the more points you get, and maybe that ranks you higher in team play. I don't know. I think there's a lot of opportunity. Yeah, it sounds interesting, the whole team play aspect. I think we'll go into more about what's going on with PC, and then we'll try and speculate on mobile, because I think it's two very different things. Ah, okay. So one thing to note is across the board is now going to be known as Pinball FX3. For those that were on PlayStation, it's been known as Zen 2. Yeah, and that's mobile as well. Okay, well, they're rebranding. All across the board, it's Pinball FX3. So don't have to worry about that confusion anymore. That's good. Other news. They said the games that you have are going to transfer right over into Pinball FX3 for free. No repurchasing. Thank you very much, Crossbuy. Right. There is a few tables, apparently, that they have not gotten the licenses back for. If I were to guess, I would say we're looking at Ninja Gaiden, Street Fighter 2, and Rocky and Bullwinkle. Probably. Because those were exclusive to... Ninja Gaiden and Street Fighter were exclusive to PlayStation. Rock and Goldwinkle was exclusive to Xbox 360. Neither of those have carried over to Steam. If there is any other license that they might lose, and that's because I know it's not on mobile for Jared, it would be... I'd say basically, I'd put money down to say that's the one that's not coming over as well. Because if they can't do it for mobile, then they're creating a brand new game, essentially. There's no way going to have the license for that. And I think this is, again, bringing everything under the same house, because if they're truly going for a sense of community, I would guess that we're talking about leaderboards or crossing over, mixing with each other, or head-to-head is mixing, so that I can play somebody that's playing on mobile, even though I'm on PC. That's my guess. Probably Ms. Explosion Man, probably in that case as well. Because maybe that's one that... Was that an original title or was that just like... No, it's a... I believe it's a comic book and I'm not sure if it's Marvel or not. It might not be Marvel. I don't know, but that is possibly one they could not carry over to. Yeah, because we don't have that on mobile. Oh, you don't? Okay. That's a good hint as to something else. But they said they've got 70-plus tables. Which is a lot. Yes, and they're hoping to get most of them ported over, and by most of them, they were talking about the vast majority. Because all they need to do, from what I understand, all they'll be doing is adding in the competitive modules into the tables so that you can actually compete. And, of course, what I'm going to be very interested to see on PC, and I'm going to have to live vicariously through you here. But I'm going to be very interesting to see the matchmaking slash lounge experience in that game, right? Right, because I can tell you it's going to be better than Farsight's. This is a bit cheeky of me, but I'd say, look, Farsight, if you're going to be doing head-to-head or if you're really going to go in on this as well, then please just look what Stan is doing. because I'd suggest that probably they kind of know what they're doing in this field and you should probably use them as a blueprint. Not copy, but use them as a blueprint about how your lounge and head-to-head system should probably work. Well, again, when I saw the screenshot, it just reminded me of some of the mobile games that I play and what their head-to-head match-up lounge looks like. and we know that Zen has experience with mobile games. They do. Mobile gaming. And that's why, to me, it looks like they're just kind of using that mold and transferring it over to here, which is pretty smart to go ahead and do. Whereas what we've seen from Farsight, it's very much them creating it for the first time, it seems, and going through all the trial and error that goes through with that. Yeah. There's got to be. I'd be very surprised, just going on a slight tangent here, I'd be very surprised if there isn't drop-in lounge slash matchmaking things that you could put right, libraries that you could put into games that you wouldn't even have to develop. You just have to integrate them and probably pay a licensing fee for. Sure. you have to think about the cost versus value, right? Like, is it actually worth going down and completely redeveloping or reinventing the lounge system when there's probably stuff out there now which you can use that does exactly what you need, all API-driven, and it will just work? I'd be very surprised if it wasn't already there. It looks like also tables are getting a graphical overhaul. Um, okay. You really clearly showed Mars, uh, right off the top of the video, the announcement video. And I went, boy, that's looking. So yes. Yeah. Really much more so than what I'm used to seeing. Um, and in the video, they basically, they showed Mars, they showed Epic quest, they showed, uh, castle storm. They also showed two new tables. one of which I did a still frame of basically you see a mind juggling it looks like a theme park when you look at it in the dead center your main art is people in a roller coaster lap bars on hands up in the air screaming and one of the ramps even says loop so it looks very much like we're talking about a theme park could it be roller coaster tycoon or a licensed theme like that it looks completely unlicensed to me. This looks like an in-house creation. The other table that they showed, they didn't really show the table. They just showed a character and a big serpent dragon, if you will. But the character, a lot of people are going, Hercules? It definitely looks something mythical. Oh, okay. Greek myth, that kind of thing. It's a guy with a big old, basically wearing a loincloth and a big belt, and he has a giant club with him. Anyway, so those look like two in-house IPs, but they also said that they're going to have new partners, is the way they termed it. We might also be getting some licensed business out of this. Quickly. They were saying at launch right at the beginning, but who knows? I don't know. Zen likes to sneak up on you and go ta-da i love that about them i love how they actually wait until everything's fully bagged and then when they they they basically they're the apple i feel of the um the pinball companies at the digital pinball companies out there at the moment basically they don't tell you about a product until it's ready to buy basically yeah um and you go yep you can get this and it'll be out in two days and there you go it's ready to go and ready to play and it's at a high level of quality and you know it's a little bit different to some of the other companies out there who take longer or release early and I guess maybe share things a little bit more up front but then Zen made their announcement they then posted looking for beta players on Steam they're saying they're looking at a summer release and the way Zen typically works they make an announcement and within a month it's released in terms of the tables when they announce any of their tables that seems to be sometimes it's as soon as two weeks sometimes it's been a full month but like I said they got it in beta right now I'm guessing that that they are probably going to take two to three weeks in that and then drop it on us if I had it. I mean, because if you wait until August, that's, I mean, yeah, summer, but you're really deep into summer at that point. Yeah, true. Okay, so they've done a little bit longer because normally when they announce something with just a normal table release, it's generally out pretty quick afterwards. Yeah. So maybe I'm just going to be confused with the seasonal thing going on at the moment, where you guys are currently in the season. Right. But, yeah, normally they're pretty quick. So I guess for something this big, perhaps they wanted people to get a bit more advance notice on and let the hype build a little bit, or maybe they plan to do a little bit more promotion of it and reveals as the time goes on and sort of trickle it out. So here's the other thing. People were asking, well, why do they even need to come up with a new, why do they need to do Pinball FX 3? Why don't they just, you know, add this on to Pinball FX 2? Well, it's quite simple, folks. They're dumping the old generation stuff. They're doing what everyone should be doing and killing off old products. Because this is not coming out on 360. It's not coming out on Wii U. It's not coming out on PS3. This is going to be Xbox One, PS4. People have asked about the Switch. They said Nintendo is a great partner of ours, and we're looking into things. So that kind of thing takes a little time. But also, this allows them to fully integrate what they want to do community-based with this game. Because they were making a big push about that, that pinball is a community thing. It shouldn't be solitary. So if you built that into the DNA of the tables themselves or the game itself, it'll function smoother. Yeah, that's right. it makes it very hard to do in a reverse engineered sort of backwards compatible way. Like it's pretty much all or nothing like to do this. It's, this is basically deprecating. It's the equivalent of deprecating iOS eight, because you need a minimum iOS nine or 10 to do things on same thing. They're basing everything new around this brand new platform and it needs to cut things off. So folks, for all of you that always sit there and go, Oh, well, you know, when Farsight goes from PS3 to PS4, of course they have to charge more because it's a new game. Well, Zen did this with what I knew it as was Zen Pinball when they went to Zen 2. And now they're doing it straight to Pinball FX 3. Porting over your games for free. I mean come on folks It called customer service which Zen has been spectacular at There's no doubt about Zen when it comes to how they value their customers. They really cherish the feedback. They even said, somebody asked them about cabinet support, and they were like, of course we want all of you people that have built these absolutely gorgeous cabinets by hand to be able to play our game in there. We're going to be making an announcement about that real soon. So, no, it won't be at launch, but they're making no bones about it. It's going to happen. And since we all know it obviously was supported in Pinball FX 2, you have no reason to question it. They're going to back out of that, yeah. Which, you know, theoretically, they could because they're doing a brand-new platform. They could actually go, what do we really hate supporting in our products? Well, Kevin supports one of those things. Let's get rid of it because we can because it's a brand new tab. But no, they're going to move forward and do it. No. This also allows them to separate from the pinball effects VR because obviously there was a slow rollout of tables with that. I wonder how that's going for them. I haven't really seen extra tables released on that platform. No, I haven't heard an announcement recently. But they've said all the resources have been going forward with this. Yeah. I just wonder if this FX3 will actually pave the way for more VR interaction because it sounds like the way they're re-architecting this, you'd probably need something like DX11 anyhow to run VR with Oculus Rift. So I wonder if this is basically just allowing them to single code base the whole thing and then add VR support as a module. so modularizing the whole VR experience on top of it I just wonder, it's interesting but one thing that's very very lacking in the announcement is any news about how this is going to affect mobile at all, so it seems like FX and certainly FX2 was different to Zen Pinball HD on mobile but i wonder if news about mobile is coming or whether it's only really going to be a steam and console thing like are they actually starting to move away from mobile a little bit and focus more on the steam ecosystem because i don't know certainly there seems to be a lot of movement by a lot of companies to actually go more down the Steam path because it seems to just be easier to manage as a company. Well, one thing to note, they did say that it, specifically they said Windows 10. And the reason why I mentioned that is because Windows 10 is being used as one of these platforms. Like for instance, My son plays Minecraft handheld, or I forget what they call it, but basically for mobile. Yeah. And that more or less is running on Windows 10. It's not running on Linux, but it's not Linux. Damn it, help me out here. It's the old Flash. Oh, yeah, Flash. Anyway, I can't remember exactly the format that it used to run on, but it's not running on that anymore. I'm trying to see with the announcement. You're right. It says Pinball Flex 3 released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows 10, and Steam. Yeah, you're right. They may not be ready to do mobile just yet. I, for some reason, had just assumed that it had said that in there. No. It's nothing. it's basically the i i got that immediately when i saw the press release oh no it's called fx3 and then it was like windows 10 steam and console i went uh where is android and ios um in there nowhere so um that's interesting the thing is with windows 10 of course um you do basically if you've got a surface you've basically got a mobile version of the game so technically they are using mobile on that but the thing is I'm sure that the Windows 10 releases yet another sandbox sort of that they have to cater for because it's not Steam I don't even know if you can run Steam on something like a Surface I mean it is basically a laptop yes you can, like a Surface Pro? yes you can so they do have a client for it that's good like I said I think it's more for the tablets certain tablets. Yeah, the Windows 10, like all the Lenovo ones and stuff like that that you can convert. Yeah. Well, tell you what, we're going to bring in our old pal PinballBiz45B because he is very knowledgeable about the Zen things. And he popped up, started throwing up comments and what say you? I can say FX3 has a lot of potential so far I can't say exactly what's going on internally because I'm in the beta it's practically an NDA at this point so far from what I've seen it looks really good so far cool So are we correct in surmising that the graphics are different than what we previously have seen? Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay. See, there you go. So your source there, for instance, on the Steam page, you can tell that the artwork is very much different. I think I've scaled it. I think I would say more cartoony, but with the children. What about, have you noticed any difference in the play itself? And what I mean by that is like the elasticity of the rubber, you know, how the ball behaves, if you will. I'm not sure if I could comment about that yet. Okay. Is it safe to say this? Would you call it a brand new build, a brand new game, if you will? FX3. Not just a simple port. FX3. from what I've seen in a trailer, it is looking like a brand new game. Right. So there you go, folks. It's a brand new game with brand new tuning. Even though Paul can't confirm, we basically confirmed that it's got brand new tuning. I did not know about that. Paul didn't say that. We did. Yeah, we did. This is totally the opinion of the BlackAid team and not of Paul. We're fairly good at intuiting what is and what isn't from some of these things. Because a lot of times it's like, well, what's the point if you didn't do that? Exactly. Because I know that in the past when they were talking about tuning those, well, we can't because we have to go back through every single table and retune the whole lot to get different elasticity. Well, guess what? You've got the chance to do that now. So why don't you do that? So it's so funny because just, I don't know, was it last week or the week before we were going, God, yeah, we haven't heard anything from Zen in quite a while. They put out the Rogue One table, and that was a single table. Ages ago. Ages ago, back in December. And it was like, really? Just one table? You didn't even do an additional table for that movie? It's like, yep, this is the reason why. This would be the reason why. That's cool. Well, I'm sure that we'll start seeing sanctioned YouTubers doing demos of the game once it gets closer to release. Maybe they'll start up their own leagues and tournaments based on that. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be pretty interesting. If there becomes a situation where we do do a team or we can have a team, I can tell you right now there will be an official Blockade team. And we will want our listeners to join us because, you know, Blockade, we're awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Plus, if we can convince John here to join us, then we'll have a ringer in terms of somebody that can just rock the pants off of the game. Maybe bring in some driveway cheese along with that. Oh, yeah. Oh, driveway cheese. Look out. Blast from the past. So, big time blast from the past. Yeah. All right. real quickly, just because we were mentioning at the beginning of the podcast, are you ticked off too about Firepower 2? Because you should be. If they don't bring Firepower emulation, then yes. Yep. Agreed. Agreed. So there you go. If you've ever wanted customer feedback, there it is. I mean, you're able to do Black Knight. You're going to do Gorgar. You might as well do Firepower. Right. And get rid of all the script jockey from your code. Yeah, because then we'll officially be done with all the scripting, well, of tables that can be emulated. I mean, Genie and things like that, I don't mind. No, because that's actually okay. I don't really see any problem with that. Going nuts. There's actually nothing available to... To emulate it. Yeah. Yeah. Because it is actually its own bespoke system. Right. Yeah. Plus, it works just fine, too. Yeah, and who cares anyhow, right? Exactly, who cares? Yeah. So in summation of our podcast, it's Boo on Firepower 2. Go play with a glow ball and turn off all the lights on the table and see how much fun that is and then throw in a black ball and see how much fun that is. And yay on Zen. Can't wait to dive into this. And please bring to mobile. Don't forget, you're people on mobile. Don't forget the people. Alrighty. Well, that's, like I said, that was pretty much a wall-to-wall pinball today. It sure was. Yep. well because we need to save at least something for next time if there is anything to save we're going to call it quits right now so folks why don't you go ahead and follow us on twitter the show is at blockade then you can also go ahead and follow Jared he is at Jared Morgz your trap if you haven't shut your traps shut your traps yeah I always get pretty confused where I am just singular and where I am plural since you're in here what's your pinball handle there pinballwiz45p there you go an excellent virtual pinball player and also apparently not too shabby on the real stuff see you replay FX in a month oh you're going to that yeah there you go going to all the big festival things also feel free to drop us an email at blahblahblockade at gmail.com and visit our website blockadepinball.com you may also remember in closing that we said we might be looking at new logos well guess what we are and work has started so you'll have to keep your eyes out for a new look and feel to the blockade logo coming soon I've seen the first volley of artwork and sent notes so we'll see where it goes because this time we're actually having it professionally done, not by me that's right that's right but you know, in saying that that logo's been fine for 100 plus episodes so you know, it's perfectly fine. Your initial work was fine. And it's on the t-shirt, so whatever. Whatever. Exactly. Whatever. Alright, well, until next time, thanks for popping in there, John and Jared. We'll talk to you next week. Bye-bye. See ya. Later! WizardAmusement.com The site to visit for custom pinball shooter modes. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. River amusement.com sales, restoration, customization. Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and place it in ball.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v1)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 89c98dbc-8ec9-4329-88c4-c2af96fbabae*