# Change in Programming

**Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2018-04-20  
**Duration:** 48m 6s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Change-in-Programming-e1bkg5u

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## Analysis

Chris Frebus discusses his son's successful brain surgery recovery and personal relief, then pivots to pinball league format changes in Orange County that shift from WPPR-scored competitive play to a casual, inclusive format with pre-selected tournament tables and 50% advancement rates. He also covers Zen's FX3 tournament feature updates (shorter tournaments, play attempt limits, classic mode) launching April 17th alongside Star Wars tables, contrasting these to Farsight's minimal updates, and expresses frustration about feature delays for non-FX3 platforms.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Chris Frebus' son's brain surgery (arteriovenous malformation) went 100% well with full recovery expected and no activity restrictions — _Personal announcement at podcast open; confirmed by co-host positive response_
- [HIGH] Orange County Pinball League transitioning from WPPR-scored Tournament of the Month format to casual, non-WPPR single-player format with new advancement rules — _Direct league participation; witnessed rule implementation and scoring sheets_
- [HIGH] Zen FX3 implementing play attempt limits in tournaments, addressing grinding problem that plagued Pinball Arcade — _Official announcement via Zen blog post; features launching April 17th_
- [HIGH] Zen's tournament updates enable 1-8 hour flash tournaments and limiting starting balls/extra balls in Classic mode — _Feature list directly from Zen announcement_
- [HIGH] Jared Morgan was terminated from employment at LabRokes on Friday prior to podcast recording — _Direct personal statement by Jared; seeking new employment as product owner/technical writer_
- [MEDIUM] Star Wars pinball (Pro version) heavily dependent on pre-play character selection that creates information overload for casual players vs. Guardians of the Galaxy — _Tournament observation; player experience assessment during league play_
- [MEDIUM] Guardians of the Galaxy Premium and Pro versions have different rule sets in same v0.87 update (Groot vs. Orb multiball prioritization) — _Tournament staff unable to give 'definitive answer' during league event; hosts speculating on version differences_
- [MEDIUM] Orange County Pinball League originally created when few leagues existed; now many competing leagues, leading to format reset to casual roots — _League leadership rationale provided to Chris during announcement_

### Notable Quotes

> "all went 100% well as they were hoping. And apart from him just healing, he'll be absolutely normal and unrestricted from any activities henceforth."
> — **Chris Frebus**, 0:45
> _Personal health update resolving episode-opening tension; frames podcast recovery_

> "It's pinball. You don't think you shoot. It's not a game of chess. It's a game of pinball. You don't want to use strategy when you're doing pinball."
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~18:30
> _Core design philosophy critique of Star Wars' pre-play selection mechanic; reveals accessibility vs. competitive depth tension_

> "Top three players for each table advance to the next round... Fourth player is determined by whatever the 100,000 mark of the score is... So even if you didn't play well, you still have a chance of advancing."
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~10:00
> _Details new inclusive advancement format addressing prior competitive gatekeeping_

> "And this time, nothing got turned off. So if you weren't playing one of the four tournament tables, then you could play whatever the heck you wanted"
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~12:15
> _Key operational change improving player experience during downtime; reduces FOMO/frustration_

> "I really like Guardians of the Galaxy way more than Star Wars because Guardians is not so dependent on who you pick pre-play"
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~17:00
> _Direct game comparison influencing tournament play experience and accessibility_

> "players may set the maximum number of available play attempts... I am so excited for that because it's like thank you no longer can people spam like myself a table"
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~33:00
> _Recognition that Zen addressed grinding problem Farsight ignored; tournament format enabler_

> "LabRokes terminated my employment on Friday. So interesting. Here is 30 seconds for a sweet resume."
> — **Jared Morgan**, ~5:45
> _Unexpected personnel move in podcast co-host's life; affects production setup_

> "Where's the love? Where's the love for Zen Pinball on Android, iOS, and all the non-FX3 platforms?"
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~36:00
> _Frustration with feature parity gap; raises platform equity concerns_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Chris Frebus | person | Blockade Pinball Podcast co-host; Orange County pinball league participant; electronic music producer; experienced podcast producer losing infrastructure after employment loss |
| Jared Morgan | person | Blockade Pinball Podcast co-host; technical writer and product owner; terminated from LabRokes; broadcasting from phone due to infrastructure loss |
| Orange County Pinball League | organization | Pinball league transitioning from WPPR-scored Tournament of the Month format to casual single-player format; includes ~45 players per tournament; operates in private collector homes |
| Zen Studios | company | Virtual pinball developer releasing FX3 tournament feature updates April 17th; implements play attempt limits and classic mode options; slower to communicate about mobile platform parity |
| Pinball FX3 | product | Virtual pinball platform receiving UI and tournament feature updates April 17th; supports Create Your Own Tournament with new 1-8 hour, play-attempt-limited formats |
| Star Wars | game | Stern pinball machine (Pro version) used in Orange County league tournament; criticized for heavy pre-play character selection mechanic creating information overload and skill gatekeeping |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | game | Stern Premium pinball used in Orange County league tournament; less dependent on pre-play selection; apparently has different rule sets for Pro vs. Premium in v0.87 (Groot vs. Orb multiball prioritization) |
| Blockade Pinball Podcast | organization | Pinball podcast hosted by Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan; covers rules changes, game updates, and community topics; website at blockadepinball.com |
| Taxi | game | Classic pinball machine used in Orange County league tournament; described as 'brutal' and challenging |
| World Cup Soccer | game | Pinball machine used in Orange County league tournament; Chris strongly prefers it |
| Farsight Studios | company | Virtual pinball developer of Pinball Arcade; criticized for ignoring tournament feature requests like play attempt limits; received no updates per episode discussion |
| Pinball Arcade | product | Virtual pinball platform by Farsight; tournaments plagued by grinding problem; lacks play attempt limit feature |
| LabRokes | company | Company that terminated Jared Morgan's employment on Friday prior to podcast recording |
| Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure | game | Pinball machine in collector's home; Chris found mode shot difficult to hit; described as fun but challenging |
| Match Play | product | Tournament software platform; Jared suggested OC league could use for real-time scoring visibility; praised for functionality |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Personal health and family emergency, League tournament format changes and player inclusivity, Zen FX3 tournament feature updates and competitive depth
- **Secondary:** Pinball game design philosophy (pre-play selection vs. accessibility), Virtual pinball platform feature parity (FX3 vs. Pinball Arcade), Podcast infrastructure and production challenges
- **Mentioned:** Rule set variations across game versions (Guardians Pro vs. Premium), Collector machine curation and maintenance philosophy

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.72) — Relief and joy about son's recovery dominates opening; enthusiasm for new league format and Zen features; frustration about employment loss, feature gaps, and Star Wars design choices temper overall positivity

### Signals

- **[community_signal]** Zen implementing short-window tournament formats (1-8 hours) enabling synchronous real-time play for global communities; addresses prior accessibility issues for non-traditional tournament times (confidence: high) — Chris: 'if you set a tournament for three days and but you only get two attempts... you're not eliminating players because of their availability'
- **[community_signal]** Orange County Pinball League pivoting from competitive WPPR format to casual play reflects broader shift in mature league markets with oversaturation—leagues refocusing on social engagement over ranking system stress (confidence: high) — Leadership stated: 'when they started the Orange County Pinball League, there was hardly any pinball leagues happening. And now there is a ton of them'
- **[design_philosophy]** Star Wars pinball pre-play selection mechanic creating accessibility/skill barrier tension; casual players experience information overload while competitive players must strategize character choice, reducing fun factor for new audiences (confidence: high) — Chris: 'Star Wars just floods you with so much information the second you plop the quarter in... Your match would be over before you even plunged'
- **[market_signal]** Tournament format redesign enabling 50% advancement rate and inclusive wildcard scoring suggests operator response to player burnout from prior all-or-nothing competitive structures (confidence: medium) — New format: 'top three players for each table advance... Fourth player determined by wildcard... basically what the tournament director was saying was about half of the players that are playing will advance'
- **[personnel_signal]** Jared Morgan (Blockade Pinball co-host) terminated from LabRokes employment; now freelancing as product owner/technical writer; impacts podcast infrastructure and production capabilities (confidence: high) — Jared: 'LabRokes terminated my employment on Friday... I no longer have my laptop... MacBook that I normally use to do broadcasting from'
- **[product_strategy]** Zen's play attempt limit feature addresses systemic grinding problem in virtual pinball tournaments that Farsight ignored; enables true tournament formats on FX3 (confidence: high) — Chris: 'I have begged and begged and begged Farsight for to put into their own tournaments, and they just listened with a blind ear and here Zen is plopping in'
- **[sentiment_shift]** Growing frustration in virtual pinball community about feature parity between FX3 and mobile/non-FX3 platforms despite year-long promises of cross-platform updates (confidence: medium) — Chris sent support request to Zen expressing frustration about being 'left out' on Android; no response received
- **[technology_signal]** Guardians of the Galaxy showing version-specific rule changes within same update number (0.87 Pro vs. Premium with different multiball priorities), creating confusion for tournament operators and suggesting inconsistent version control (confidence: medium) — Tournament staff unable to confirm if different versions exist; hosts speculating: 'Guardians of the Galaxy version 0.87 Pro and... 0.87 Premium'

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## Transcript

 You are listening to the BlahCade Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Drap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, Jared Morgan. Hey, hey, everybody. Hola. So I'm just going to get this out of the way since I have gotten comments, and I posted on Twitter about it too, But regarding my son and his brain surgery, all went 100% well as they were hoping. And apart from him just healing, he'll be absolutely normal and unrestricted from any activities henceforth. Awesome, awesome news. I'm really, really glad it worked out for you guys. That's such good news. Yeah, huge sigh of relief. Oh, mate. I have no idea how much relief you must be feeling at the moment. You know, it's one of those things where my wife, she's always told me that, you know, I need to be the rock and can't show any emotion or whatever so that she's free to just break down however she needs to. And so I kept up a good stiff upper lip for this whole time and everything. and once he was done and out of surgery and seemingly healthy and alive, it was just like, okay, let's switch sides. You get to... For me to be an emotional wreck. Exactly. Oh, man. Because you have to let it out, hey, when you have something like that. It will happen eventually and you're better off just doing it sooner rather than later. It was like that once he only got diagnosed as well. like I was being the you know we're both well you know Kim and I were both being strong when Sina was diagnosed with type 1 but you know she was much more visually emotional than I was but they're all like I'll just be watching this tv show like this movie and a slightly emotional scene would be on on on there and I just lost my shit you know it was like oh clearly clearly that's been brewing for a while. So, yeah. It's one of those things, eh? It'll catch up with you eventually. Well, and I was distracting myself in every way possible to prior to it. So, me going to the movies, I went to the pinball league, which we're going to talk a little bit about the rules changes that happened that I thought were kind of interesting. But I hadn't been to one of my pinball leagues in about seven months. Now, most of that was due to my knee. Yeah, because you took an arrow to the knee. Yeah, something of that nature. But I was like, I need to go to this this time and just get my mind off of it. I need to blow up steam. It was actually good because one of the guys that's in our league, I believe this was probably about a year and a half ago it happened, but he suffered a major stroke and has subsequently had three brain surgeries. Oh, jeez. Of which he said the second one, he only had a 5% chance of living through. 5%? Yeah. Wow. Buy a lottery ticket, mate, because you just won the jackpot. He essentially, he says there's about a four or five month gap in his memory from which he doesn't recall. But so I talked to him for about, I don't know, probably about a half an hour, 45 minutes. Just kind of, you know, and honestly, whereas his was a stroke, my son's was this arterial venous malformation bit, so completely different, but on the same hand, stroke is bleeding on the brain, and my son did have bleeding on the brain, so there were some overlaps, but it wasn't nearly, I mean, his recovery was much, much, much more difficult than obviously what my son's going through. But so that was one of those things where it was like I was glad to have gotten out of the house and also glad to have connected with somebody because it made me feel better going into the surgery and stuff. Yeah, so we're going to talk a little bit about that league. We're going to talk a little bit about Zen's announcement with fixes that they're making to FX3. And I don't know. We'll probably touch on some other things like we normally do. Oh, you probably normally do, yeah. One thing before we start, my audio quality might be a little bit different this episode because I'm doing this on my phone with a Bluetooth headset. The reason for this is I no longer have my laptop. My MacBook that I normally use to do broadcasting from. And the reason for that is because LabRokes terminated my employment on Friday. So interesting. Here is 30 seconds for a sweet resume. Go. Sweet resume. Hey, my name is Jared. I am a product owner and a technical writer. I can help you out both with running projects and documenting projects. So if you need some help in that regard and you want someone to kick ass and it's really easy to get on with, come and give me a ping on Twitter or LinkedIn. Nice. There you go, folks. Jared's for sale. I am for sale. My rates are reasonable, but not cheap. Yeah, yeah. Let's go ahead and talk about this. what changed in my league tournament-wise. So if any of you played when we were doing tournament of the month, you were familiar with the format that my league was running on, which was playing multiple tables, four people per table. The people that you played with each time was scrambled. And it was a very interesting format because I felt that it gave people the chance to be better than they actually are. And it wasn't just a straight up whoever's got the highest score and can score best because then you would constantly feel like you were stuck in the middle of the pack. And this gave you the opportunity on certain occasions to leapfrog higher than you normally would have. But after all this time, it's also kind of wears on everybody because you have to attend throughout the entire year, all the league matches in order to get your points. And that would kind of also affect the tournament vibe itself, if you will, because some people were very, very competitive and would lose their minds if the slightest infraction happened on a table. Points were being reported to the IFPA. For whoppers. Yeah, right. And then also, on top of that, some of the tournaments could just go on forever. Like hours. Hours, right? Basically, the tournament started at 4pm and there was many times when it didn't finish until, say, 7.30. 7.30? That's better than our 1.00 TPC, but continue. It might seem short to you, but we were cranking through. We usually had about 45 players per tournament. Oh, jeez. Playing on... Each person played six tables, but there was probably eight to ten tables from which everybody was scattered. But the problem was that you'd finish a round, and sometimes there would be a 45-minute gap between then and when you got to play again. Due to other people not being available to enter into the round that they were supposed to, or there being a malfunction on a table, or, worse yet, having one of our guys that is highly, highly, highly ranked in the IFPA get on a table and go on a 15-minute run per bowl. Yeah. That's the problem with that sort of layer, isn't it? Because if you have to wait for everyone to finish their bracket so that you can proceed to the next round, you're just sitting around, eh? And it's no fun. And that's no fun at all. Yeah, it really kind of sucks the energy out of playing. So we got noticed that this season was going to be completely different. They were going to try a whole new way of doing this. It would no longer be IFPA scoring, so this would be a much more casual, friendly affair. Part of the reason for that was they said when they started the Orange County Pinball League, there was hardly any pinball leagues happening. And now there is a ton of them. And so some people have joined other leagues and but still want to keep their toes in this. And so, you know, it's one of those things where it's like, well, let's just get back to our roots, which is a group of people coming together that enjoy pinball. So seems like a good premise to join in on. Yeah, not a bad premise. So how things changed differently this time was there was four preselected tables. Of which you're only going to play on three of them. and you would play single player, so you're not paired with anybody. You just get to play your three balls straight through. Then you would write down your score on this sheet. Once you were done playing your table, I'm going to how they track down who the next player is, but it actually worked really well with how it went, because that's also another mystery is tracking down players. Where are they? Who are they? I don't know who this person is and some people are very rude in that they expect people to come and get them rather than them paying attention to what's going on and standing by waiting. At our pinball league, if you're in that style of play and people have to track you down, it's your job to keep on it. Otherwise you lose. You lose your round and that's it. That's the rule and it works real well. I'll tell you. But the biggest and best part about this was in prior tournaments, whatever tables were not part of League got turned off. So we're in whereas you play in an actual arcade, we're playing in private collectors' homes. Yes. And there'll be tables that you're just like dying to play. Yeah. That if you didn't show up early, you didn't get a chance to play. And there they are sitting there looking pretty, oh, but they're turned off. You're not allowed to play them. with... Yeah, they're so dandalizing. I want to touch it. Especially if you have that 45-minute gap between... What am I going to do? Just stand around and look at it? Right. That's terrible. This time, nothing got turned off. So if you weren't playing one of the four tournament tables, then you could play whatever the heck you wanted with the other things. So I'll go into what we got to play, which was a pretty sweet collection this guy has. So here's the interesting thing with the scoring. Top three players for each table advance to the next round. So basically you have your qualifying round, which is what everybody plays. And then you have your first round of play, which was top three players advancing. Fourth player is determined by whatever the 100,000 mark of the score is. so those three numbers if you had a score of 870 000 your score is 870 all right if that happened to be the top 100 000 score out of all the people that played on that table you advance and you get the fourth the fourth spot so it's kind of a wild card um random miser you might say uh just to get somebody in. So even if you didn't play well, you still have a chance of advancing. That pretty good I been using that rule a lot probably People were kind of questioning if anybody was going to game it, you know, if you noticed that your score was... Yeah, 970 was built, and that's kind of one of those things when looking through the rules that have been written, there's quite a few TBDs in the rules section as they work out the kinks and stuff. So, So that, I think, was one of those where it's like, you know what? I don't think everybody's going to be too happy if you try and game it that way. Everyone will give you the dirtiest, the stink eye if you do that. Oh, boy. And then the other thing with the tournament was, let's say you were top three on three tables. Nope. You only get to play on one of the tables. Oh. So you have to choose. I can't remember how the choosing process went. but yeah, you'll wind up being put onto only one table, and therefore that opens up a slot for if one person is eliminated, well now let's drop down the scores, who's the fourth place player? They get to jump in, and then there's, you know, so it kind of ticks down, and basically what the tournament director was saying was about half of the players that are playing will advance to the next round That's really good But that's such an inclusive way of actually doing a tournament. Exactly. So I didn't actually get to see if that worked for me because my scores were dismal, and I didn't have a single good 100,000 score. No. So I wound up, and this was the two days before the surgery, so I kind of wanted to get that. You were a little bit preoccupied. Yeah, I was a little bit preoccupied. but he was like, well, you still might qualify, you still might qualify. But I was also kind of like, well, I don't want to sit around for the next 45 minutes while everybody else finishes and scores are tabulated to know if I can come back or not. Did you actually go to Match, whatever the Match Play software you're using, to actually see what the tournament was? Did they set it up on Match Play so you could view the scores live? No, no, no. As far as I could tell, it was all being done by hand. Oh, man. I don't know. We always use MatchPlay, the MatchPlay software, which is just a website that you can set up your leagues on. Jeez, that's good because at any time you can see your standings because I'm one of the scorekeepers at Brisbane Pinball Club, so I'll go around and enter the scores from the sheets. And it means that you get a real-time idea of where you're sitting in the tournament. It's really good. But that sounds like an interesting format you guys are using, So I'm not sure if Matchplay actually have a tournament style for that. I'd be surprised because they probably do. And, well, you know, if they don't, they're probably willing to add it in as another option as well. So they're pretty good. So, yeah, Matchplay is pretty cool. So I'll just briefly tell you what tables were used for the tournament, which was Taxi, which by the way was brutal always is always is it was mean we also had World Cup Soccer which I absolutely love that table and then we had Star Wars the pro version boo and we had Guardians of the Galaxy the premium edition yay so So, yeah, I and what was funny with Guardians was somebody was like, well, which version of the software is it? And they were like, it's the most recent version. Yeah, but there's two versions of the recent version. What are you talking about? And apparently there's there's depending on whether it's a pro or a premium or something like that, but also it determines which multiball is worth more. I don't know. it was one of those things where it was like, really? There's multiple rule changes for the same update? So it's basically Guardians of the Galaxy version 0.87 Pro and Guardians of the Galaxy version 0.87 Premium. Is that what you're saying? That's what we were thinking, but nobody could really give us a definitive answer, but it was just kind of like, well, that's kind of crazy. Yeah. I guess one of them, Groot multiball winds up being the thing to go for that it has the highest score. And then the other one it makes the orb multiball the one that has really good points, which makes more sense. That's hard to get to. Yeah, that's a really difficult one. That's tough, yeah. But I gotta say, I really like Guardians of the Galaxy way more than Star Wars because Guardians is not so dependent on who you pick pre-play. Yes. And once you pick, you've got to finish out the mode and all that. Star Wars just floods you with so much information the second you plop the quarter in, and if you've never walked up to the table, you're like, I don't even... What is this? And then if somebody walks up to the table, if you were playing with somebody that did know what they were picking, they would school you. Your match would be over before you even plunged. So yeah, I really appreciate multiplier on Star Wars, it turns me off deeply. I don't want to be thinking about what I need to do. It's pinball. You don't think you shoot. It's not designed for you to go, it's not a game of chess. It's a game of pinball. You don't want to use strategy when you're doing pinball. I just don't like it. The fact that you have to means you have to if you're playing that game in tournament, but it just wrecks everything. Like, I don't want to stop and press the button and use my flippers. It's stupid. But yeah, you're right. It's the only way you can get good. If someone else is playing that way, you've got to go, oh, use the stupid button. Whatever. But then, so those are the tournament tables. Now check out what we had just sitting around playing your leading account tables. Flashing away at you. Yeah, you know, you've got a Twilight Zone. You've got a creature from the Black Lagoon. yuck you've got a shadow yeah that's fun yeah that's fun you've got a Star Trek Next Generation you've got an Indy 500 oh yeah you don't actually see that that often they're good you've got an Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure oh yes you've got it it was a lot of fun to play I gotta say I was having a good time on it that's not the easiest table in the world for me it's not i can't hit shots to save my life like starting a mode is brutal for me uh that that mode shot is i reckon they yeah just quickly because i know you're rattling off the list but that mode shot is like i reckon suddenly putting it at the very last minute they went oh crap mode shot where do we do it oh uh we can just sneak a sorcerer in just under this little area that's got a gap in it let's just put it there i guess yeah yeah that's wide enough for a pinball to fit in, right? Yeah, okay, good. Just so long as it's wide enough. It's literally... Just wide enough. It's literally parking a pickup truck in a compact space. Yes. You can get the car in there, but you can't open the doors. No, you can't get the sunroof. You know, sitting right next to the Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters Premium. You know, I was trying to get some games in on Ghostbusters, but I gotta say my attention kept on going back to Indiana Jones. There's Ghostbusters isn't grabbing me. It's just not grabbing me. I can see the fun of it, but it's also kind of painfully brutal. Not necessarily in a fun way for me. I don't know. It's the first time I've actually sat there and actually played a couple of games in a row on it. So, I don't know. It just kind of was weird for me. But anyway, moving on, there was also a Revenge from Mars. There was also, oh, yeah, Wizard of Oz. Oh, right. Okay. Let's see. There was a Circus Voltaire that was tricked out with the new color DMD. Oh, like the color LED DMD. Yes. You know, the one from color DMD. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually LED, not like LCD screen. Right. That would be amazing to look at. Game of Thrones Premium. Oh, right. And there was a dialed in. Oh, right. So just, wow. And they chose those tables as the tournament tables? Well, the reason why they chose those was that they wanted two tables, which would be World Cup and Taxi, that most of the players probably knew. and then two tables that were kind of just bonkers out there that nobody would know, but they didn't want to make dialed in one of those because they figured everybody's going to want to play that. Everyone's going to play it outside of that because they don't want to get a chance to. And that's really nice that they actually did that. The fact that, no, we don't want to tie that table up because we want people to be able to have a go. That's good. That's real good. I was going to say, you know what, I forgot about the rest of the rules to what the tournament was since I wasn't there. But apparently it was going to be who won each of the four tables, then they would get lumped into the final round and play. They would be up to the tournament director and the host to pick which table they would all compete on, and then those four players would compete to see who was the winner of the whole tournament. Okay. Final round probably went pretty quick. Yeah, that sounds like a really good format. Yeah. And the game selection sounds fine. oh god right far out man gee you know top tier talent right there you gotta love our collectors they um oh geez i wish i had that kind of disposable income oh totally right i bet you all the machines were led and they looked amazing no not necessarily um this particular collector doesn't go nuts with LED. He kind of likes a classic look to his machines. He does like them to play well, but he isn't bonkers about them being just polished to an inch of their life. So they're all in good condition. They're all in fabulous condition, but they're not in that show quality condition. One of our other guys that hosts, his tables, his whitewater is so unbelievably sparkly. The clear plastics are like jewels. They are window clear perfect. And he LEDs out everything, and he doesn't just stop there. He's got the pinball toppers, and if there was any kind of mod to a stern table, his Walking Dead was modded to absolutely every degree possible with everything that Stern sells. So, yeah, that's kind of the difference there, whereas you go to other guys' houses and it's just player quality pins. They've got a good collection, but they're not these restoration quality deals So it Mechanically they play really well but they might have a bit of playfield wear and some of the inserts are a bit dodged There one guy house and I described it before who he's got a ton of EMs. The EMs are rough, but you get to play them. It's kind of fun. It's not like going to an arcade and suffering through poor management. of tables. These are guys that they love their tables, so they make sure the tables work, but some guys like the tables quirky to show their age, and other guys don't want to admit that they're old. They like to look in their patina, so to speak. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think it's kind of cool. I think that's kind of the approach that I'll be taking in some respects to Star Race, right? Yeah. It's an old table. It's going to be, in some respects, it's going to look a little bit old. Yep. yep hey uh let's talk a little bit about what zen is uh about to drop um yeah they've got some uh fx3 updates that are going to be uh coming in as interesting comparing their updates and bug fixes to farsights with pinball arcade um because these are so minuscule. It's a little bit of a contrast, isn't it? Yeah, they've added a couple of new general features, which is just kind of like how displays pop up and menus pop up. Nothing fantastic. Some new quick play features have been things. Basically, it's all UI-based. Just ways of navigating through the UI a little bit better, cleaner, faster that people have requested. But where my interest got peaked was with the tournament features. So if you guys have been listening to us over the past year, you realize that I'm in love with what Zen has done with their Create Your Own Tournament. That's why I do one every single week when I can. Just search Shuttertrap. Extenuating circumstances excluded. Just search Shuttertrap. Usually on Mondays is when I post it to do five-day tournaments. But now that some of these new things are in, I don't know. I might change up even that. I'm just going to rattle through what the new tournament features are. You can now create new tournaments with shorter lengths between one and eight hours. Wow. Okay. If you want to do a flash tournament, boom, you could do one. Essentially, you could do a Tuesday night tournament, for example. Yeah. Everybody check in at this time, and we're only going to be playing for this amount of time. That way, you know that everybody is active, and if you were able to have a message board going or something of that nature, you could all just be real-time, you know, talking to each other. Exactly. Exactly. So good. You know, there says a new permission filter has been added that shows private games only. I don't really deal with private games, so I'm not concerned with that. And tournament and game notification added to alert players. Tournament has a new mode game which is real classic without perks. So where this is nice is there's sometimes when I turn off all of the upgrades because I want to see people play the table without the benefit of all the bonuses and did they pick the right bonuses and stuff like that. So this just makes it easy to select without having to deselect all that stuff. It's a one-click instead of like a five-click. Exactly. Then next, you can set the number of starting bowls and turn on-off extra bowls in the new Classic Tournament mode. That is key. That is key. right there. Because even if you were able to, you know, if you played a classic three-ball game and you turned off all the things, you could still earn all those extra balls, and on some of these tables, oh my god, you could still grind away. So the fact that you can limit the balls and turn off the extra balls, that's fantastic. And then, oh, this is the one that we have begged and begged and begged Farsight for to put into their own tournaments, and they just listened with a blind ear and here Zen is plopping in players may set the maximum number of available play attempts oh so good yes are you kidding me I am so excited for that because it's like thank you no longer can people spam like myself a table it's like now we can truly see who can do what and this sets up the ability to play real tournaments um no i am i am so ecstatic about that i think that is fantastic uh yeah and i think it'll really attract a lot more players to your uh two tournaments yeah if you turn off basically that shit thing should be adjust the grind yeah because the grind really is a real thing i mean it's it is it's gross like it is yeah it's horrible and the thing is that they could have actually let that feature out in some ways if by just by implementing that four hour rule because that essentially limits the grinding like you've only got like four hours to grab it now they've said no it's four hours for example plus you get two shots like that is just oh so good and the thing with the thing with the four hours because we did uh when we were uh just abusing the hell out of uh moon night and i was setting tournaments for one day a lot of people actually complained about that saying oh my god i felt that i i had to log in and if i missed a login then that was going to affect things and you know especially when you got people playing globally that becomes an issue but now it's like well yeah if i set a tournament for three days and but you only get two attempts well it's play at your own time but everybody has the same it's balanced um you know so you're not yes you can do the same thing by setting a two-hour tournament but you're not eliminating players because of their availability. I'm stoked about that. I'm going to be definitely implementing that in future tournaments. Oh, by the way, none of this is going to be happening in the game until, they said, April 17th. In other words, when this podcast that you're listening to is live. And also when the new Star Wars tables are out. Oh, yeah. Why didn't I put those two things together? Of course they're putting it out with the update. Oh, yeah. Clever, clever. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, man, I really wish. Actually, you know what I did the other day on the subject of these cool features? I got my green-eyed jealousy eyes on because I read this and I went, where's the love? Where's the love for Zen, Pinball on Android, iOS, and all the non-FX3 platforms? Because I did say when they released the updates very early on last year that they said, oh, yes, we do definitely plan to bring this to the other platforms. We just have to wait a little while. I think they're still working on them actively, but as with Zen, they're going to release them when they're polished and ready to rock. They're going to release them when they're ready to, and they're rocked. It might be with a re-release of everything. They might actually re-release FX3 on mobile and do it that way. So, look, I'm okay, I guess, to wait, but I'd just like to know if they're any closer. So I sent them a support request. Just hate being left out. That's the main thing. I said to her, I support requests. And I said, look, you know, I'm keeping this off social media because I'm kind of a bit frustrated. And, like, my podcast co-host, he constantly talks about how awesome these Steam FX3 features are. And here we are on Android just holding our hands out going, what's going on? So do you have an update for us? It was a very jovial email that I sent them. and I don't think they haven't got back to me yet unless it's gone to a spam or something like that. But I'd be really good to actually, if they listen to this, which they probably don't, they would return the email, let us know what's going on because we'll definitely share it to let people know. Although again, they've got no problems with communication. They can probably do that just as effectively as well. Yeah. I'm not going to go into what their bug fixes are other than to say it's purely UI-based. Nothing to do with the actual tables themselves, which says something about their tables. And if you want to look at the blog post yourself, we will have it posted on our website with all the show notes for this particular episode. Just go to blockadepinball.com slash episodes and then click on this and you'll know. There might be a slight delay, not that you'll actually know this until you actually listen to the podcast, but there might be a slight delay getting this one out because, well, I've lost all my infrastructure. Great. I think Samsung have this thing that looks a lot like GarageBand, actually, on their tablets, which is like an audio editing suite. So I'm going to give that a go and see how that works to edit the show. I think it's going to work pretty well because the thing that I have is they have this thing called S Pen and it's like a... Have you ever seen artists using the bamboo tablets and stuff like that? It's very much like that. Well, hopefully it all works out because if it doesn't, then there'll be no podcast and nobody will know that it didn't work out. So there you go. That's right. You'll be shredding this podcast. What else do we got? Do we got anything else to spout out a bit about? Boy, that was an awkward way of saying things, wasn't it? Let me think. So an update on Farsight. There's no update. No update. We've heard about this. Moving on. Let's see. Other than that, I don't know. I just posted a review of Ready Player One. which oh should i read it i'd like to go and see that movie you haven't you don't do spoilers in your review i try not to do spoilers um i try and instead just give my my general thoughts and feelings but for example with this particular one if you've seen the trailer for it you may have been worried like i was and your worries are completely founded in that it's that virtual swooping camera that has no basis in real world physics of how you would actually place a camera to film something. Video game camera. Video game camera. And that takes me out of... I'm already having to suspend my disbelief because everything is a CG environment to begin with, right? But if you look at a movie like Avatar, where I knew the whole thing was CG also, Cameron, the way he uses his camera is the way a real world camera is used. Would be used. Right. It can't fly through narrow gaps in trees. It can't do these incredible, going from zero feet to 500 feet and then zoom right back into a tight close up. It can't do any of these things. He very much keeps it with real world camera placement. Spielberg just went nuts. He just went, yay, video game camera I going to do I could go right through a car do a close and then drop through the floor and look underneath and go reverse backwards And it just becomes this swirling mess that I lose all connection with And so there was that issue. And then there was also the issue of this thing is so chock full of 80s Easter eggs. Yeah. But the problem is that they're blinking. You miss them. Oh, I like. and so it's kind of a movie that's meant for pausing so that you can look and see everything yeah and in my review the way i refer to it is basically you're presented with a table full of sweets and spielberg tries to shove every single one of them in your mouth at the same time so yay sugar but you have no you can't process what's going on right um and if you look at a movie like say Who Framed Roger Rabbit where there was all the cartoon Easter eggs, those were kind of slowly dealt out and they were on screen enough for your brain to register and go, oh yeah, have the nostalgia kick and still enjoy the movie. Whereas here, literally things are you have two seconds to identify it and it's gone and never seen again. And the problem was that there was 15 other things just like it at the same moment. so it was it was a case of which 80s um trope do you resonate with the most and your brain resonates with the most so pick that one but even that is just you you kind of were spending this time but wait did i just see what i thought i saw and now i've been the next five seconds of the movie right you know so yeah i that's really good you want to see it in the movies though right you want to see really play one in the movies first. I will say, yeah, I mean, I'm I will say that it's entertaining for the two hours that I watched it, and then when I was done with it, I was done with it. I just, you know, so it's not terrible. Yeah, it's not terrible, but I kind of refer to it as Spielberg doesn't, you would think that the guy that kind of defines what an 80s movie is like would know how to do a movie with lots of 80s references. And he instead, if you've seen everything from War of the Worlds to Minority Report to any of his latest releases of blockbusters where he's kind of out of touch and more interested in the technology. Shoot, just look at Indiana Jones and the Crystal Kingdom or Crystal Skull or whatever the heck that was. And that whole moment of Shia LaBeouf tarzan-ing through the vines, it's so ridiculous and not even remotely grounded as compared to... You just gotta go, wait, this is the guy that did those other three Indiana Jones movies? How come this one feels like a poster? What happened to you? That's kind of where I feel with this. If you watch something like the TV show Stranger Things, that thing is one giant love letter to the 80s. But they're not bombarding you with 5 billion different references in it. It just is. It is. It's 80s. It's set in the 80s rather than referencing the 80s almost. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. That was my gripe with it. It's not that it's a horrible movie. It's just this whiff of cotton candy. Yeah. It's 80s crack. Yeah. I did go see it. I did see it in 3D and no. Alright, okay. I won't waste my extra five bucks on it. Well, here's the thing. They missed out on a beautiful opportunity and that is that they should have, every time they were in the real world, the movie should have been 2D. And every time somebody puts on a virtual headset, it should have been 3D. Oh, totally. Why didn't they do that? Stupid. I don't know. That, to me, would have made the experience worth it. Absolutely. And then couple that with a whole lot of going out of the frame things like Ghostbusters did. Right. Oh, man. Imagine if they did that. Well, and the other problem that they did was they did a lot of lens flare. And the problem with lens flare is it basically makes you aware of the window that's in front of you, as opposed to you being through the window. It really flattened things every single time there was a lens flare. That was kind of like, people, understand the medium that you're working in. That's frustrating. Maybe just see it in 2D. I just heard my wife pipe in and go, nobody's going to care except for you. That's true. well yeah see i live vicariously through you so i use your reviews as like a watch that i even bothered trying to attempt to see in the movie theater right and i think um a quiet place is one of the ones that i need to make time you need to go see that you need to go see that one yes that's going to be amazing and i think this week i'm gonna go i'm gonna go try and catch Isle of Dogs, which is that Wes Anderson stop motion. And then I might suffer through this cheeseball horror movie, Truth or Dare, just because... Oh, that looks terrible. I know. But because it's... It'll be terrible, but probably good. I need the terrible because in anticipation of next week, it's Super Troopers 2. which is... They're doing a two of that? They're doing a two, and they're up in Canada. They're doing a number two of that. That'll be fantastic. And then also there's this new Amy Schumer movie called I Feel Pretty, which looks hilarious. It looks... Well, yes, but you know what? My wife and I saw the shorts for that, and it's like, you know, it takes the charm of Shallow Hell and flips around to be all about me. That's what it looks like to me. It's like Shallow Hell, but flipped to be all about, in this age of self-obsession and all that sort of stuff, they're basically tailored. It's basically Shallow Hell 2, but I'd be very interested to see your review on that one. Yeah. That's my read on it, from what I saw from the thing. Yep. Because after that, after that weekend, it's full-on Here Comes Summer assault of movies, because Avengers... Really? The new Avengers movie opens up the week after that, and that's, you know, hi, welcome to summer movies. Righto. Well, that means welcome to winter movies down here. Oh, yeah, you guys get winter movies. Yeah, which is good because your summer movies are our winter movies. Yeah. And particularly now they realize, hey, you know, people are actually getting these on the internet now. Maybe we should release them parallel. Right. We actually don't have to wait two or three months to see them generally. well and that's literally why Avengers is opening up a week earlier than it should have because the rest of the world was going to get it and then we were going to get it a week later and they went maybe we'll just let everybody see it at the same time yeah because you know it is just digital now essentially it's a file isn't it that they give and it's like encrypted and it's got like keys like a dongle or something you need to decrypt it or something like that and special I'd imagine special like there must be some special sort of equipment they have in the cinema to decode the thing or something. It's not just a DVD you chuck in a... No, it is an actual... I don't even think it's a file that's... I don't even think it's anything physical. I think it is literally they boot up the internet connection and download the movie to their hard drive that only will play in these digital projectors. It's not like you can copy the file to your computer. So essentially it's licensed through a projector or license through the server that stores the file. The other thing about that is that it prevents theaters from doing what they used to do with film, which was they would string it, they would punch a hole through their wall of their projecting rooms and have a movie playing. The film would go through the projector and rather than going back on the spool, it would go into the next room, into the next projector, and then project another screening of the movie side by side. but the theater only had one copy of the movie. So they were essentially stealing an entire audience from the profit. So they were multicasting a movie. Yes. Wow. I had no idea they could even do that with the fragility of film going through such long distances like that. Yep. I knew of two theaters that used to do that. That's very well said. that was that was the worry with the digital thing where they're like well wait a second you know what's preventing them from just playing it on multiple projectors and the studios were like no no we've got that taken care of if you want to have we thought of you we thought of you guys we know what you're up to man and the funny thing the other thing that i remember about that was uh this is back in the day when uh dts audio uh was the the rage that played on a separate compact disc right and it read the code yeah it was a it was it played on the the soundtrack was on a compact disc and so it synced to there was a code on the side of the the film frame and that's what it synced to for sound okay all right but then when they sent the film into the other room well they didn't have an additional dts disc and so it would read the sound just off the basic soundtrack that was always included on the film strip itself. And so you would look in the newspaper and you'd be like, oh, okay, here's the show times, but in this auditorium is DTS and in this other auditorium it's just stereo. And so you knew which one was getting the... The real deal. Yeah. Right. Because the stereo was actually on the film roll itself. Yes, that would be on the actual film track. Yeah. I had no idea DTS was actually like a disc. They actually had the sync... Yeah, it was an actual disc. disc as opposed to Dolby Digital, which was still encoded on the film strip itself. Right. There you go. I've learned lots of things today. This has been very interesting. Wow! We saved the interesting stuff for the end. I probably won't even be cutting this one up because I actually felt that it flowed quite well today. I'm wearing Jared's waist. This is fine. There will be no cunning. Also, I don't know how I'm going to do it. Let's just leave this one as it is. Let's leave it as it lies. I'll work out what's going on later on. Well, hey, folks, why don't you go ahead and follow the show at Blockade on Twitter. Or you can follow myself. I am at ShutYourTrap on Twitter, and he is at JaredMorgz on the Twitter. You can also drop us an email at blahblahblockade.com. Or no, let's try that again. At the gmails.com. Yes, blahblahblockade at gmail.com. There we go. And as, like we've said before, visit the website. That is blockadepinball.com slash episodes. All right. Until next week, we'll see if any news drops that we feel the need to talk about. Okay. Hopefully there is. I don't know. We'll find out. Okay. Bye-bye. Hey, guys. Bye-bye.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: cf6e4601-3666-433b-9a95-05aa698ba4bc*