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Homeworld Pinball Let's Play

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 18m·analyzed·Sep 5, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Blockade discusses Zen's roadmap teasers, VR tech, and playthrough of new Homeworld pinball table.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss National Cinema Day and a Jaws 3D reissue, VR technology and Meta's Quest 2 price increase, Zen Studios' new abbreviated show format, and the Zen Pinball FX September-November roadmap including the new Homeworld original table. They speculate on mystery releases (World Cup '94 teased, possible Square Enix/Marvel connections) and celebrate Digital Pinball Fans forum being saved from closure.

Key Claims

  • Zen Studios is moving to shorter, abbreviated episode format focusing on monthly table releases rather than padded content

    high confidence · Mel announced this direction on the latest Zen Pinball show; hosts confirm this is official direction going forward

  • Zen Studios roadmap shows September big remaster pack + surprise table, October Williams release, November Zen original + big remaster pack

    high confidence · Direct roadmap announcement by Zen; hosts analyzing the specific timing and implications

  • World Cup '94 pinball table is being teased via merchandise (Striker cup visible in Zen show)

    high confidence · Hosts spotted Striker (World Cup '94 mascot) in cup on recent Zen Pinball FX show set

  • Embracer Group purchased Square Enix, which previously held Marvel video game license

    high confidence · Chris confirmed via Google search; ties to potential Marvel pinball licensing questions

  • Digital Pinball Fans forum is being saved from closure after anonymous sponsor covered hosting costs

    high confidence · Gord (forum webmaster) contacted about sponsorship; no policy changes, just hosting covered

Notable Quotes

  • “Rather than pad out episodes, which then winds up taking them longer to produce the episodes, it's going to be much quicker hits, shorter-length episodes, basically concentrating on whatever table is being released that month”

    Jared Morgan (paraphrasing Mel from Zen) @ ~11:30 — Official confirmation of Zen's strategic shift to more efficient content production

  • “The one thing that I said I would swear I would do when I got my VR headset is watch movies in 3D and watch them in VR. I never did that, of course.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~4:00 — Humorous admission about VR aspirations vs. reality

  • “So gee, I wonder what's coming up, which is pretty awesome. That World Cup would be on the horizon.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~24:30 — Acknowledges teased World Cup content without formal announcement

  • “They would have had to start developing a table before they even had the license for it.”

    Jared Morgan (hypothetically about potential Tolkien table) @ ~28:00 — Speculation about Zen's development pipeline relative to Embracer's Tolkien acquisition

  • “So we were talking through the—there's actually one of our members, Bowlingman88. He was talking about, and what packs should we actually be looking at, like he wants to buy another 1,200-ticket pack”

    Jared Morgan @ ~14:30 — Community engagement showing remaster pack anticipation among collectors

Entities

Chris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen StudioscompanyHomeworld: Journey to HilgardgameWorld Cup '94gameMelpersonGordpersonMeta/Oculus Quest 2productEmbracer GroupcompanySquare EnixcompanyDigital Pinball Fans forumorganization

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade Pinball migrating primary discussion from YouTube comments to dedicated Discord server with episode threads and permanent invite links

    high · Hosts providing Discord setup instructions and noting improved moderation/threading capabilities vs. YouTube comments

  • ?

    community_signal: Digital Pinball Fans forum saved from closure via anonymous sponsor covering web hosting costs indefinitely; no policy changes planned

    high · Gord confirmed sponsorship arrangement; hosts note historical forum content remains indexed and searchable

  • ?

    leak_detection: World Cup '94 pinball table teased via Striker mascot merchandise visible in Zen Pinball show; not officially announced but strongly implied

    high · Hosts spotted Striker cup on set between Bobby and Rose during show; mascot is unmistakable connection to World Cup '94

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Embracer Group's acquisition of Square Enix (which held Marvel game license) may impact future Zen Marvel pinball licensing on Switch platform

    medium · Hosts speculate connection between Square Enix Marvel license and previous Marvel pinball licensing delays; Zen confirmed to have Disney approval but platform availability questions remain

  • $

    market_signal: Zen Studios shifting to abbreviated, efficient show format focusing on monthly table releases rather than padded content; official direction per Mel

    high · Mel announced format change on recent Zen show; hosts confirm this reduces production time and focuses on substantive content

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.235

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world it's jared morgan hey chris hey everyone hope you're doing well yeah so guess what today is jared uh around these parts you're never going to guess i don't know but i know what day it is for me around these parts how about you go first so it's national cinema day huh okay to celebrate national cinema day all the movie well i shouldn't say all the movie theaters but you're the three biggest players here in the states um are all doing three dollar movie day any format any show time any movie wow three dollars so i already went to the movies today at 10 a.m you'll be going again later on yes i will um because they just released uh a reissue of jaws but in 3d oh really yeah and okay that seems out of the blue but Right. Me liking 3D films, though, and having never seen Jaws on the big screen to begin with. Well, it's a no-brainer, isn't it? Yes, it is. So I went and enjoyed myself some of that.
1:34
Interestingly enough, so seeing it in 3D, it didn't really add anything to the film. It thankfully didn't distract from the film either. It's just kind of there, which completely makes sense because the movie came out in 1975. It wasn't exactly like they had any intention of it ever being converted into 3D.
1:57
No way. So it's very much a depth only. Absolutely nothing pokes out at you at any point in the film. Even when there was like one or two opportunities where I thought, oh, they could have had it come out at you, but they didn't.
2:16
So it's purely all about depth. But the nice thing is because film editing was so much slower back then, and you could just sit in a scene before it cut to another angle, it means it was very easy to watch in 3D. Because your eye had time to adjust, find the characters, and enjoy it that way. So it was kind of cool seeing that. But the main thing was just being able to see it on the big screen, which, again, I'd never seen it in that way. No. And there's the, everybody knows it, is the jump scare moment that Spielberg regrets having had to put in the movie when he did because he would have rather had the chumming jump scare moment be the first scare of the movie, but it was too long into the movie, so that's why he chose to use the other one. But even that little jump scare moment, which I knew was coming, I was like, oh, here it comes, here it comes. It still made me kind of bump in the seat. All right. Just because in full surround with the audio kicking and having that image be that large on the screen. It's like, whoa. It worked. I knew it was coming. I full on was like, here it comes. It's right there. I'm waiting for them. And it still made me kind of, whoa.
Blockade Pinball Discord
organization
Bowlingman88person
  • ?

    announcement: Zen Studios officially announces Homeworld: Journey to Hilgard as new Zen original pinball table based on 1999 space combat sim franchise

    high · Direct announcement in recent Zen Pinball FX show; hosts doing live gameplay commentary

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen Studios releases September-November roadmap: Sept (big remaster pack + surprise table), Oct (Williams release), Nov (Zen original + big remaster pack)

    high · Official roadmap shown in recent Zen announcement; hosts analyzing timing and implications of each category

  • ?

    technology_signal: Meta raising Quest 2 MSRP $100 without hardware changes, likely positioning budget tier before Cambria/Quest 3 launch with improved resolution and AR features

    medium · Hosts discuss pricing strategy as marketing tactic; speculation about Cambria/Quest 3 roadmap with pancake lenses and full-color AR cameras

    • 3:35
    It's interesting that it was still effective in that manner. it's interesting you say that because i think for a lot of these movies that you know people probably have only really experienced on dvd or blu-ray yeah now and you know while tvs are you know big now they're not that big they're they're not they're not movie screen big and that's sort of how the directors could like made the movie they made it for the big screen not for you know the video you know not for a phone not for a phone oh no you wouldn't why would you do that um i get mad at people that are watching stuff just on laptops i'm like yeah you're watching it on a 17 inch screen maybe usually more like a 15 inch screen uh it's going to lose all impact yeah the one thing that i i said i would i swore i would do when i got my vr headset is higher movies in 3D and watch them in VR. I never did that, of course.
    4:37
    But, you know, that might be a substitute for, you know, watching some of these things in 3D and experiencing them on a simulated big screen, right? Yeah.
    4:50
    Because at least it's dominating your entire field of view. And that's the impact, isn't it? Like, it's about that, like, full immersion. I had a friend who he watched a lot of movies in VR drove me I was always like I don't know how you can do it because the resolution just isn't there but he was like yeah but it's great for watching in 3D and I'm like yeah but the resolution still isn't there but one of the things that he would do is he would watch it in cinema mode which is actually having seats and there being a screen yeah I've done that before And he would watch it in that way, so it was still giving him a movie theater experience, you might say. Yeah, I watched, I tried that out and sat and watched just some, it was just some free TV channels that were on there. Yeah. That were streaming old syndicated shows. And it was quite good. Like, having the screen actually does feel really big, and it really does feel like you're in a cinema. So the effect does work. And with a decent set of headphones on, you actually get a pretty good experience. Sure. Yeah.
    6:08
    We're going to circle back around to the VR in a second. Is there something that recently popped up? But the other movies I'm planning on going to see today, there's a new George Miller film called 3,000 Years of Longing.
    6:24
    Yeah, that's a reinterpretation of the whole genie trope. Right. Yes, yes. But it being George Miller, who you might know as the man behind Mad Max, the trailer is absolutely gorgeous looking. It looks really good, the movie. Yeah, yeah. And then the other one, which I've literally not seen one clip of, Bullet Train with Brad Pitt. Oh, yeah. I just know that the director is the same guy behind Deadpool 2, and he was the co-director on, I think, the first two John Wick movies. Okay. So he knows how to do it, actually.
    7:08
    Both the directors on John Wick were former stunt coordinators. That's why their stunts are so good in their movies. Yeah. And from what I could tell, just reading Bullet Train is literally just like, all right, here's ten minutes of this kind of stunt. now you're going to do 10 minutes of this kind of stunt. That's where I got it from it too. I looked at the trailer and went this is just back to back stunts rolled into one cinematic length thing. Yeah.
    7:36
    So that's probably going to be the other two that I try and check out today. The VR thing. So we won't even talk about the $100 price increase on Quest 2. Yeah they just bumped that up.
    7:51
    No different hardware it's just the same. to me and and i'm sorry it has nothing to do with demand because you can readily get one of those things right now uh it seems to me like they bumped up the price just so they could put it on sale at christmas time for that same price probably done a classic uh uh one up arcade one up yes um but the other thing is is i'm sure it has something to do with the Meta's codename Cambria or whatever right around the corner because that's going to be so much more expensive that by raising the price of the Quest 2 it makes it so it's not quite more expensive I don't know it's kind of weird yeah you're probably right like that is around the corner and we don't know a lot about it well I mean there's a ton of leaks that have come out about it that sound really really nice yeah they've done a lot of They've done a lot of good things in there to improve resolution and stuff, but that's a whopping price tag. I won't be getting one. I'll just say it now. I'm not going to be upgrading my headset. I've already said that, well, especially now that they raised the price of the Quest 2, I'll just be waiting for the Quest 3.
    9:05
    The Quest 3? Yeah. When it takes everything that they're throwing into Cambria, they figure out how to do the less expensive version of it and throw it into that, which means full-color AR camera, thinner lens, more lightweight headset, faster processor.
    9:31
    Pancake lenses instead of the Fresnel lenses. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. All these sort of enhancements. Look, I would probably be in the same boat as well. I actually put the headset on the other day because I had to set up my Meta account, and they recommended you don't link your Meta account with your Facebook Oculus account. They said you don't do that until you've actually upgraded your headset, and then you do the sort of changeover. So I did that, and I thought, oh, I'll chuck on Star Wars VR pinball and give that a go as well. And I still like pinball and VR. Oh, yeah. It's much better. It's just that the VR build, like the non-PC VR build of Star Wars VR, when you look at pinball effects on PC, it's just incomparable.
    10:26
    It's noticeably lower fidelity in every way. And aliasing and everything aside, which I've commented on before, I think that's just part and parcel of VR at the moment until the resolution bumps but it's still yeah it's yeah the the native vr on quest to using the android build it's it's obviously less so and that was my one of my initial reasons for why i was like not jumping on the quest to bandwagon um just because it was like and you know why i was curious your uh thoughts on it when you saw it because i was just like the resolution is gonna drive me nuts until the resolution is uh resolved resolved to the point that i'm like not going oh i can still see screen door you know even though i know the screen door is gone but it's still that i want high def text crispness you know all that and then throw on top of that that it has the processing power to actually do really good imagery.
    11:37
    That's why I'm just kind of like, oh, wait, I'm not in a hurry. And I keep on saying this too. Until Zen puts out a VR version of Pinball FX,
    11:51
    or, yeah, I don't see the rush. because... No, I mean, you can certainly use it on like VPX and VR apparently is amazing. Yeah. But, you know, it's... There are, you know, even though people say it's easier to set up now, and I'm sure it is, you know, it's still... It's still harder than just putting the game on and making it work, so... Yeah, I agree. One interesting thing I saw, though, they're now selling a new speaker attachment,
    12:21
    which is... goes on the outside of the ear basically to do surround sound that way rather than getting an ear plug um which allows you then obviously to hear the your whole room as people are coming in and i think this has to do with the idea of again going into ar um so that you're not so isolated that you are aware of your room especially if you have the screen showing you the room um So I thought that was kind of an interesting approach.
    12:54
    So they're essentially like, it's not like a headphone like these headphones. It's more like an array that sits over your ears. Yeah, right. That is the right way to go because it does have speakers built in that do have like a simulated surround effect in them. But they're small and tiny. But still, it's like noise cancelling also.
    13:12
    Well, to an extent. I mean, if it's not an enclosed cup like these headphones that I've got on now, it's still going to be you're still going to get bleeds there won't be noise cancelling but if you're right i think it probably does speak to their drive for ar experiences and you're right you don't want to have that disconnect from the outside environment we've in saying that though there are ways of managing that um such as um microphone pass-through and stuff like that the quest headset does have a microphone built into it um so you can do that sort of thing just like you know noise cancelling headphones have pass-through mode yeah um it's same same thing so you know there are ways around that from a hardware perspective as well rather than having to sacrifice isolation of sound and give you a really good immersive experience because if you have noisy kids in the background and you're trying to play a really suspenseful like 3d shooter or so like you know one of those games it ruins it and you you you really do notice it i'm just like I think I need those distractions if I'm playing a tense game that's going to spook me. So you don't poop yourself. Pretty much. I need that grounding in reality.
    14:28
    Right, yeah. Could be a fair point. It's the reason why I quit playing Bioshock the first time I ever went through. I was like, nope, not playing with the little sisters. Nope, nope, I'm out. Gone. See ya.
    14:40
    Bye-bye. maybe one day um i tried half-life alex in vr um which is well you know what half-life's like yeah so in vr yeah nope too much for me uh it's it's hardcore man uh so did you happen to watch the latest Zen Pinball show?
    15:08
    I didn't, but I've heard enough about it. So, a much abbreviated Zen Pinball show, and this apparently is going to be their tact going forward, according to Mel, in that said show. He said basically, rather than pad out episodes, which then winds up taking them longer to produce the episodes, it's going to be much quicker hits,
    15:38
    shorter length episodes, basically concentrating on whatever table is being released that month, talk with the developer, should that be necessary for it, and basically that's it. Hit and run, we're out. And then, now and then, they'll have the big episode, which will then be the full tilt if they have a lot of news that they want to cover, a lot of different angles to go. So it will be essentially, I would imagine you're going to see that when they finally do their console announcement and that they're coming out of early release. That's probably going to be the next time you see that kind of thing. The big show. Yeah, the big show. Because this will allow them to not have to set up their studio, So get Jack and Rose.
    16:29
    Bobby. I'm like Jack and Rose. That's Titanic. It is Titanic. Bobby and Rose. Guys, that's your challenge for the next pinball show. I need the two of them on a door. Yeah.
    16:46
    So, yeah, it'll just be a lot easier to produce the show and get it out there quickly. It makes total sense. Why bother filling it with fluff when you can just focus on the facts of the matter and get it done? That's what people want. They've been wanting that for a long time in the comments. They've been asking for that format. So give the people what they want. That's why we don't record every other week.
    17:10
    Why record a show when there's nothing really to talk about? Yep. What, not for our sparkling personalities?
    17:18
    Well, you know, I'm sure people would like to just hear us talk about stuff, but probably not, actually. Probably not. So, yeah, this episode, in addition to announcing that factoid, also they were announcing the new Xen original Homeworld, Journey to Hilgara, which is based off of, I guess, an old, well, I don't know how old. I know that they're up to Homeworld 3.
    17:44
    1999, apparently, is when the original one was released. It's a very, very long-running RPG. Yeah, so it's based on that We're going to actually do gameplay of it And we'll talk about our thoughts while doing the gameplay That's coming up in just a little bit But instead, what we're going to focus on Is Zen released us another roadmap We like the roadmaps And I think this roadmap is rather interesting Especially given, now that you all are hip to the back wall clues that they're giving us. So I'll just run through. Here it is. September, they're saying we're going to get a big remaster pack and then a surprise table release.
    18:36
    October, we're going to get a Williams release. And then in November, we're going to get a Zen original and a big remaster pack release. so let's talk about the remaster packs first what ones what tables don't we have yet so basically what we're dealing with here is we have the marvel pack obviously we have the aliens pack we have the balls of glory pack yes yeah am i missing anything um there was one more i think that i have forgotten as well and it was uh one of those sort of like three packs um i can remember as i look up to the ceiling but if i had to imagine i know if I had to imagine one of these big remasters is going to be nothing but Marvel And the other big remaster will be everything else. That's what my guess is. Probably. Because there's some Zen, there's some certain originals in there that haven't come out yet.
    19:52
    I'm pretty sure, right? So it's like Epic Quest. That was the other one. Oh, that's right. We still haven't gotten... Yeah, those ones. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So I think that was the other one. I'm just opening up our Blackade Discord because we were talking about that on the Blackade Discord. If you haven't joined yet, you should. Jared, how do they find it? Because that's what I just keep on getting questions asked about. I know I put it in the show description last time, and apparently the link didn't work.
    20:18
    I've made the link permanent. So the link that I put into the latest show notes should always work. It doesn't expire. so if you want when we're creating links you can set any expirer in the link so you just don't let anyone join that you don't want to join but I've just gone with the never expire so go and have a look at the show notes for the last episode and there's a link there to join it's up the very top, above the fold before you get down to the it's just below the description so it's really easy to find that's blockapinball.com folks in case you're wondering that's right the the one and the only website that we have um so you could do that and there's also um i think i've updated the um get in contact with this page on the website as well to link to the permanent discord link as well so yeah try those out if they don't work let me know because i can easily fix them it's like a five second fix but yeah you should just be able to go and link to there i think The Twitter post I put out also linked to the room as well. That's what I eventually copied and replaced for last episode's YouTube. That first link that I shared did expire after seven days because I didn't know how to set the expiry. But now I do, so that one won't work. But the one that I put in the show notes now is a forever link. You can join it forever and ever, ever. We're a professional show army. links are hard right the internet is hard it's a wonder it works at all anyway so you're talking on uh discord about uh the packs that we're missing yeah that's right so um we were talking through um uh the there's actually uh one of our members bowlingman88 he was talking about and what packs should we actually be looking at like he wants to buy another 1200 ticket pack oh okay with the lead up to all this content coming out and he was talking about i'm just looking at the phone now you know what what would you need to get like you know he's saying you've got the marvel tables coming out um there's also things like fishtails as well which we know from the show is going to be getting special treatment um in the uh when it finally comes out we don't know what that special treatment is so um that'll be interesting um so there's earth defense mars Epic quests that haven't come out yet So will we see those There's the Bethesda Collection as well and all the Fox Tables obviously which are balls of glory And yeah so I mean Bethesda is one of those Ones that you often forget because it's just that stand alone Doom table But yeah I mean that's a thing as well So Yeah there's a few things Coming around that Could fall into those categories Right yeah so that leaves us then wondering what i mean obviously we don't know which order any of these remasters are but um no it could be any order but i think the sheer fact that says big remaster pack not just remaster pack i think a lot of tables are going to drop suddenly just like bam yeah so i'd say unless you're on the pinball pass you should probably start like looking at tickets and working out what you want from those packs um because remember there are bundling discounts so that leaves our September Surprise and October Williams so I find it interesting that it's not a, it doesn't say Surprise Williams or Surprise Valley it's just September Surprise which, oh boy, that's so open-ended which is exactly what we like here on the Black April Podcast we like a little bit of speculation because the other thing if you were watching like you said that pinball show uh well mel was wearing a soccer jersey uh sitting in between bobby and rose was a cup with a friendly little puppy that all of us know from world cup 94 striker striker so gee i wonder what's coming up which is pretty awesome that World Cup would be on the horizon. So there's the question. Since they've basically teased it now in the wall, would that qualify as the surprise in September, or would that be the Williams' table that they're talking about for October?
    24:59
    Well, that's an interesting question, because if they've already given you hints, is that a surprise, or is that... I don't know. That's what I'm saying. Well, for the astute among us, it's not really a surprise because you know what it is. But I don't know. The other thing is that the actual World Cup doesn't start happening until the end of November.
    25:22
    So I would think promotion-wise, which I know Zen was saying that they wanted to kind of start somewhat lining up with things.
    25:31
    Promotion-wise, it would make more sense for that to come out in October. Yeah, probably not September. It's probably a little bit too far away. Right. So, September. Surprise. Are we just talking a surprise license?
    25:46
    Like a surprise announcement about a new license acquisition, maybe? No, because it's going to be an actual table release. Okay, yeah, yeah, it is. So it's going to be an actual table release. So is it a new...
    26:00
    Like, right now they have Williams Valley. Is it a new pinball manufacturer license? Like, is it spooky? Or who knows? Yeah, well, yeah. It's not Zacharia. We know that. No. I highly doubt it's Gottlieb, but it could be, you know.
    26:20
    I don't know. It's really kind of interesting what that could be. Or is it just a big license that they're going to throw at a Zen original? I mean imagine we just found out like we said last time that Embracer is now owning Tolkien what if all of a sudden they had imagine if they already had one to go ready to go surprise!
    26:48
    that would be pretty awesome just imagine the internal machinations that would have had to result from that happening they would have had to start developing a table before they even had the license for it Yeah. That's pretty wild if they did. I was also looking up, because I just, with regards to World Cup, and I keep on seeing all these posts about EA battling FIFA right now. I don't know the internals of all of that, but I guess FIFA wanted something like $250 million for the license per year.
    27:21
    What? That's a lot of video games to sell. Apparently, NBA 2K, that license costs them in the $150 million range.
    27:31
    Oh, jeez. I know. Sports games. Expensive. Yeah. Real expensive. Not to be outdone by music games, apparently.
    27:39
    Yeah. You know. But anyway, it got me wondering. I was like, okay, so has Embracer bought FIFA and we haven't known about it? So I typed in exactly that in Google. And instead of what popped up was that whole concept of Embracer having purchased Square Enix.
    28:03
    Square Enix, obviously, is the one who makes Tomb Raider currently. Okay. Which is, I don't know how that would work as pinball, other than Zen has done a Zen original, Eldorado, and Shaman. Hey, there's some more tables that haven't come out yet.
    28:25
    Those ones I won't be racing to buy. Unless I've had a massive graphical overhaul and sound overhaul. So they've tried their hands at the adventure table. So it'd be, I mean, it's not like unheard of that you couldn't do an adventure table. Obviously, Indiana Jones is an adventure table that you could do Tomb Raider. But in line with that, it turns out that Square Enix also had the Marvel license.
    28:51
    Oh. Hmm. Things coming together, maybe? They had the Marvel license for video games. Yes, they did. Oh, that's interesting. What did they produce that was Marvel-related?
    29:04
    I'm just trying to recall if there's any big Marvel games that are out there. Just Google search Square Enix Marvel and see what happens. Yeah, yeah. They were saying that could Embracer do Marvel games, and they were like, yes, it's just pending on the approval from Disney. Well, again, we already know that Zen has the approval from Disney. So maybe this has been what the holdup is, why we have not seen Marvel pinball with the Switch.
    29:33
    Maybe. Because it's quite possibly that Square Enix had that wrapped up nice and tight. Also, though, I'm thinking with Square Enix, you know another little property that they were responsible for final fantasy well that's the first thing you think about when you think of um square enix like it's final fantasy well it was i thought of a square back then and then yeah enix was the one that had tomb raider and then yeah you combine the two but yeah definitely so tomb raider is it really um i mean uh sorry Final Fantasy is the big one. But it would be interesting, a Final Fantasy table, because think about this, especially Final Fantasy VII, earning your, what do they call it, was it mana? I don't remember, but it was the orb jewels that you put in your sword that would allow you to summon the various beasties. That would be a pretty epic table, I think, especially if it became one of those where your ball is changing colors and being glowy around the table. It's very Skyrim related. That's another one we haven't seen. Skyrim.
    30:41
    Wasn't that part of the Bethesda? No. I think so. Yeah, I think that was part of the Bethesda, I thought. No, no, no, because it was... No, who does Skyrim? That's... I can't remember. It was Skyrim and Fallout.
    30:59
    Oh, yes. Fallout. And... Oh, no, it was Bethesda. It was. Yeah, it was Bethesda. Yeah, it was a triple pack. It was, yeah, Doom and those two. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, you're right. Bethesda is the one. But, yeah, you know, that's a very similar... They could do some stuff like they did with Skyrim for that, like collecting mana and then, you know, saving it to, like, do something like Doctor Who did with the different doctors adding different elements to the playfield and, you know, increasing playfield multipliers or, you know, doing other stuff to the playfield to modify it and increase scoring. That's a lot of cool stuff they could do with that line of thinking.
    31:42
    So we'll have to see. Obviously, we won't be having to wait long because it's now officially September. So we'll find out what our big surprise is relatively soon.
    31:53
    If you guys have any thoughts on what you think that relative surprise is, be sure to comment for us. Or do it in the Discord. Do it in the Discord. Don't comment on YouTube. It's way better.
    32:05
    Yeah, while comments and stuff are nice, on Discord. We are actually going to start referring people over to Discord in the comments to continue the conversation. Especially because Gerard created an episode section. Yeah. By all means, pop into the episode section and make your comments about a specific episode like this one. You can even make a thread because Discord's cool in that you can actually make threads.
    32:28
    And I think I've set the longest expiry to them. So if they don't have any action for seven days, they'll disappear. But if we keep bumping them, they'll keep alive so we can thread things in there, a little bit like a forum, which is some other related news we should probably mention, Chris. Oh, yes. Why don't you go ahead and take care of that? Yeah, so on the subject of forums, you might remember a while back that we had an episode reminiscing about digital pinball fans and the fact that it was closing down for good, sad face.
    32:59
    But it's no longer closing down. Someone has contacted a friend of the show, Gord, who is the webmaster of that forum. Who apparently is also a giant.
    33:11
    Giant, giant pinball fan? No. I just saw on his Twitter he was talking about something related to what goes on in his neighborhood. He talks a lot about what goes on in his neighborhood. At which point he announced he's 6'8". That's really tall. Yeah. Side story. We had a basketballer come and speak to Zach's school. and he was closer to me and it's like wow man you would hate to walk into most places like the max headroom in those places oh yeah anyhow so yeah tangents break me at the moment I don't know why what were we talking about the forum oh yeah the forums thank you So, yeah, someone has come back and said, hey, I'm going to pay the web hosting for you so you can keep the forum open. And from what I've heard from Gord, there's going to be no change to the forum, no policy changes or anything. It's just covering the hosting costs.
    34:23
    And that's it as far as I know. So that's really good news. There's a big body of work. I actually got there the other day and pulled down all of our early Blycade episodes to sort of get them off there as much as I could.
    34:37
    And, yeah, I don't have to do that anymore because they're up there. I still did it, though. Hooray. We have them. We saved them. But, yeah, it's great. It's great to have the forum still remain because there's a lot of history on that forum that still turns up in web searches today if you actually do searches on digital pinball. So it's quite well indexed.
    35:02
    All right. So we are going to shift over here. We're going to actually show you good old Homeworld and do a little bit of play and talk about it at the same time. Let me just bring this on up. No, not that one. That one. That's the one. Not the infinite. The infinite mirror effect. Let's see.
    35:28
    As it starts to load up for me. So as normally happens here, Chris can't really talk and flip, so I'm going to probably do a fair bit of the yakking in this one. I'm sure that Chris will interject here and there.
    35:46
    All right. So right off the bat, you can see there, now Gearbox also has its own section. Not that that really mattered in the past, because in FX3 there was a few that only had a one-section board. But it is exciting to think about that there could be more in Paramount. I would like to think that they're eventually going to be filled up.
    36:10
    I think there's going to be some more horizontal tiles in there, for sure. Oh, this is the other interesting thing to note. Homeworld, you do not purchase with tickets. This one is a direct purchase from the Epic Games Store. They wanted to try this out due to people making their voices heard regarding tickets.
    36:33
    So there you go. For those of you that wanted it this way, you can have it that way. And you cannot get it via tickets.
    36:41
    Which is going to be interesting to see how that whole thing plays into Cross-Buy. well again I think we're in early access right now it could all change back again once we get it to regular maybe this is just an experiment I think it very much is an experiment they can do a quick catch on data and see what's going on I'll just let this scroll up no lie I love the various insert lights and getting proper jewels in there yep they do look really nicely jeweled And the overall feel of the table is... It's interesting. When I first saw it, I thought, hmm, it's a bit bland. I was just going to say, it's a bit bland. There's not a lot of toy action going on there. There's no drop targets. You have a couple of stand-up targets off to the side, but it's a big, open, middle playfield kind of thing. A little bit like space, really. isn't it wide and expensive the other thing that you'll note uh other than just the three pop bumpers back there uh this is a spellarama table which you know jared and i are not fans of at all no spellarama is a bit meh um but it's not put it this way it's not let spell thunderbirds are go to get an extra ball. It's not to that level, but it's still... There's probably a few letters too many on there. All right, so let's do the skill shot here. So you give your plunge, and you then shoot either the center or the ramp. So the center will give you one million. The ramp will give you two and a half, I think. Yeah, I don't even bother trying for that ramp. Because it's very easy to brick it. So easy to brick it. So there's your stand-ups over there at the home. Yeah, that's right. You've also got... At the home targets. I don't know if I can hit it on cue. Oh, I can. There you go. You've got a scoop over there.
    38:52
    Yeah, that's right. And that's... If you shoot that little loop that runs behind the ramp that was just shot there, you can actually light the carrier multi in there which is quite neat A lot of center drains A lot of side drains too Yeah it is a draining table It is draining But the funny thing is that you get a pretty long ball saving In fact, I think it doesn't really go out until you actually drain a ball. It's almost like guaranteed play for the first ball or so, which, you know, it's going to be interesting from a grinder's perspective, like a really good player's perspective. um it's um what one you'd like to play in view too yeah no i want to uh just show so i'll free view it yeah free view it um take note of these little rings back here because this is a hidden ramp so basically right now if i shoot this ramp your ball is going to come around curve around here and come down the uh you know feed right into your in lane same with the other side here This Bentusi ramp comes up, feeds right down there. But if I shoot that little sinkhole there, it upkicks to this blue ramp, which will then turn on this bridge that will then make it so that if I shoot this ramp up here, it'll feed right into that tube and come around and then drop back down the other side of that ramp. So it's kind of a... Turns it into a loop, essentially. Yeah, turns it into a loop. Which is interesting and also a little bit risky. Yeah, also a little bit risky.
    40:30
    But, you know, it keeps you on your toes, I guess, which is good. The other thing to note is when you shoot this middle pie thing, and it takes forever and ever and ever. Oh, hey, there you go. You've got to do that. Okay, hold on. Watch this real quick. Six times. There we go. So now you can see that that ramp has gone. I'll try and shoot that one of these two ramps so you can see then what happens to the ball yeah so you gotta hit that middle thing six times that's what you do in order to start a mode there you go it goes around so even starting the mode is a grind and I say that as a grind because of how long it takes for it to do its little pop. Yeah, I don't like that mechanic at all. This table just takes forever to do anything. Whether you're spelling on the ramps, getting a mode start, or... Hold on.
    41:38
    Doing this again. I will say, on that one, it annoys me with the DMD. I think as soon as the ball goes into that area, the DMD... should get information up instead yep it lets the ball settle and then finally gives you the information as the ball is floating down and drains yep which is pretty much it's too late you should so they need to do you should be able to read the dmd before having a ball kick if it's getting exactly what they changed they changed that on the um on the blue ramp which actually has a name but it makes no sense um well unless you're probably really deep into the game but the actual lock ramp they've changed the animation to be more front loaded in that so before it used to only display when it got into that little flip flop section in the middle and drained and exited the ramp but they've promoted the animation up as soon as it hits the saucer which is what they need to do with that center hole as well. It just makes for a better game mechanic and it might actually solve some of the problems of the delay that you have to endure every time you shoot that thing as well, because you've got something to look at on the DMD. Because that's what I was going to comment. I'm not opposed to a wide-open middle.
    42:52
    If you get gameplay like Ritchie Table, where it's just fast and a lot of combo action. I've made no bones about it. I am a Lawler fan. Okay, watch this. Eight more shots to light a ball lock. To light a ball lock. Yeah. It's nine in total. Is it nine or ten? 10 shots total in order to light a ball lock that means you have to hit that thing 30 times before you're going to get a multi-ball no that's not true no? am I lying? yeah you're lying so I actually decided to deliberately do that and go for that multi-ball the other day and yes it was a grind but once you've done once you've lit the lock you only then have to shoot it another three times and you will get a multi-ball so you basically you qualify the lock and then you shoot it three more times and you'll get a multi-ball out of it. That's still a lot. That's a lot of loss. My favorite tables out in the wild are tables that, by ball three, you should have had a multi-ball given to you. Your first multi-ball, it's like a drug.
    43:59
    The first one's free. And then, I mean, because there's plenty of the old Williams games that literally, if you have scored, like, done badly by ball three, by ball three it practically gives you the multi-ball on launch yeah that's true so it's yeah it's not as um i don't know it's it still is you got to shoot a lot of shots to get things but it's that aspect at least it's not hard if you actually focus on a shot and and deliberately go for it you can actually qualify it relatively quickly and i think i was i was really when i first played this when we first both got our hands on it in the press period we were going oh dear okay this isn't great um but then i thought okay why i started to question why do i feel this way about this game i have no idea about the franchise like literally this was the first time i'd ever heard of homeworld ever because i'm just not into rpg so that was problem number one i was coming to blind with what this game's about so seeing a pinball table based on it i was really losing a lot of context in what i was supposed to be seeing here so i went onto the scene page and i had a look at some of the the rolling video demos of the game uh and i started to realize okay so this is an RPG, a space RPG,
    45:30
    and it's all about basically surviving the journey. So you've got to collect resources. Honestly, the RPG looks like a slow grind. Oh, it's a collecting resources game, absolutely. Yeah, it's a slow grind, and you've really got to watch your resources in this game.
    45:49
    Alright, so you've qualified. I'll go and start the mission, but I'll continue this. Do you have one that you want me to try? Let's do the graveyard, because that's probably the most interesting of the missions. Yeah, the graveyard's good and this is the effect I don't get. But we'll talk about that fading effect in a minute. But going back to the whole premise of this table is I think that it feels slow and it feels grindy because that's essentially what the RPG is. It's... Oh, yeah, that happened to me. You brick on one of those things and it's like, bye-bye. You didn't even get to show at all what that was about. Yeah, and now you've got to do it six more times. And now I've got to do it six more times to get it going. What a punishment, right? So, yeah, it is absolutely a punishment.
    46:33
    So, yeah, and then you go, wait for this thing. That wheel really grinds my gears for one of a pun slightly intended.
    46:43
    But anyhow, so this is why I don't play RPGs, right? Because I hate the grind in these games. I'm not about that. I don't have time to sit down for eight hours a day and play an RPG and get qualified for the missions and get my resources up. It just bores me to tears.
    47:04
    And I've got to say, this table does kind of have that effect on me as well, which is a pretty harsh comment, I know. But this table is just not one I walk up to in the arcade, in the Pinball FX arcade and put money in. Because once you play it once, you get a taste of the game mechanics in it, and I just don't... it's just not something that appeals to me.
    47:35
    It's not that it's badly designed, that's the thing. It's just that... It's code. It comes down to code. And this is what we keep on saying, is Xen needs to not be so afraid to touch the code of their games. There are multiple games that would... The layout is fine. It's just a matter of the code being fixed. I'm going to pick something else other than...
    48:01
    Yeah, that one. Which was this one, Return to Kark? Yeah, that's not bad. That's where you've got to destroy the... So that fading effect that you're seeing on the playfield now doesn't work in that view, right? Because you see... It should... If you're playing on a lower view, the whole and ooh that was a lucky save mate the whole fading effect works much better if you're down on a lower view because it looks like the whole table is sweeping across like the warp drive system in this game like you'll see the big mothership in the top right hand corner of the screen when the game starts it appears in a essentially a hyperspace sort of wave that goes across and it's a really cool effect but in this table the effect is broken because you see the borders of it and I don't know maybe the the top borders are visible because that's the height of the pinball machine so I see that top board is coming along it's the height of the pinball machine so maybe you don't want an infinite height because there's a top and a bottom to the the warp wipe that comes in but it's still when I first saw it I thought oh that's and the other thing too is that it should when it wipes, the whole table should disappear. Yeah. The entire table should vanish, just like the ship does. But it doesn't. It just sort of wipes over the playfield, then the screen fades and it comes back up again. It shouldn't do that. It should be an actual wipe, and then the entire table appears again, just like the enhanced effects on Belly Williams' tables. It should have that same wipe up and down the playfield like it does on the Belly Williams' tables. That would be a really cool effect. But again, maybe they wanted to do that, but they didn't have time to do it in this cut. But it would mean a much more impactful... You really get the whole thing that you are actually warping to another area in the universe if they did that. It just would be more apparent.
    50:02
    That's my rant over. All right, rant over. So apart from me failing at getting a mission even remotely... Ugh. All right, hang in there.
    50:11
    Getting a mission close. what you'll notice with your missions and I learned this not through play because I was getting frustrated but by reading the table guide on how to play this game most of the missions involve shooting all the lanes and that's how you win the mission there's like no variation to that it's all the lanes are lit shoot all the lanes that's how you're going to end the mission and that's incredibly boring give me different combinations of things have them flashing lights moving kind of thing I mean because when you think about it Attack from Mars is similarly that way right? Yeah it is. But then it also throws in other things on top of that so that that's not your sole focus while shooting. There's multiple I don't even know what I'm supposed to shoot right now? Because I heard that Ben Toosie thing and now I don't know what.
    51:18
    I think you've got to shoot. I don't know. I'd like to trade with Ben Toosie, so Things are blinking? But everything's blinking. Exactly.
    51:30
    So I don't know what. I've got kickbacks blinking, I've got random resource blinking, I've got these little insert lights blinking, but none of them are stop blinking when I shoot them, so I literally have no clue what I'm doing. Yeah. And that's, again, my biggest... Well, I shouldn't say my biggest complaint, but it's another complaint. Chase lights. Chase each of those lane lights. There's a stack of three of them. Actually, strobe them. The ramps actually have an effect. One of the things you didn't do in this game, try and do the salvage mode on the right ramp, because this is one of my other big gripes with this table. Oh, okay. Yeah, so you've got to shoot the spell salvage. Yeah, gotcha. And then you get this mode. You probably would have already seen it in the previews for people watching, but, you know, if you play this game. But there's a whole mechanic in there where, like, it's a, you know, again, you've got to shoot all the different shots to get all the things. but the thing that really threw me the first time I saw it is the fact that the ball gets this sort of a reticule around it. Oh, I know what you're talking about. It gets a square around it, and then as you shoot each of the rounds, what you're doing is you're salvaging stuff in space so you can build up your resources, which I totally get. It's a key part of this game, and you want to represent that in the mode. So that's good in that perspective, but far out. Like, the distracting reticules around the ball,
    53:06
    I just went, what is this when I first played the mode? Like, it is really off-putting, and it actually makes aiming the ball a very, very different experience. You've actually got to focus solely on the ball so you can actually work out where the shot is, because the offset...
    53:27
    Are you kidding me? The target system? What was that? Oh, there it goes. I was like... Salvage wasn't lit, and I was like, are they really making me have to start from square one? I was about to be a great man. That would be table flip, do you think?
    53:43
    But I was still in skill shot mode, that's why. I was like... Yeah, that's right. I was like, come on.
    53:50
    All right, so you're nearly there. Nearly finito. Oh, yeah, and then you drain. Luckily, you've got one more ball not to drain on, hopefully. Curse words. Although, you know, this is pinball, so there's no guarantees.
    54:04
    Yeah. So, yeah, the whole mode itself is really... There we go. Whoa. So, how visually intense is that thing around the ball? Number one, it looks...
    54:19
    I don't know. Maybe that's what it looks like exactly in the game. I'm sure that that's what it looks like in the game when you're selecting enemies. but that does not translate to pinball well at all. But what's interesting, though, is a bit of an inside baseball thing here. If you shoot the pop bumpers now, if you can get it up there, shoot the pop bumpers and see what happens to the ball tracking when you go down the pop bumpers, if it actually dribbles down into that hole and then comes back down at the bottom of the playfield. So dribbling down, and it sits there and then, oh look, disappears and comes back again. So, you can see how Ball Hand, there's pretty much an inside baseball about how they track balls and send them to ball tables. Looking at that, disappears and then warps to that point. That's funny. So, there you go.
    55:12
    Lifting the veil. Do not, just don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain. So, even here though, I'm collecting salvage, right? Yeah. But wouldn't it be better, and once I go over an X for the first or one of those boxes for the first time then it disappears from wherever I did that, right? But, hey, here's an idea. How about letting me collect all of them?
    55:35
    Yeah, like Like at the same time. So now I'm there, I collected that one piece of salvage. Let's go back to gardens.
    55:52
    so oh this isn't what i was wanting i want the graveyard but um oh yeah so now look at that we have little ships and where are they they're all blocking all the lanes yeah yeah and so you still got the the target around the um the ball so you're actually what i call in target jail at the moment because you can't actually you can't actually complete the salvage mode while you've got this on right um but it's still it's still stacking it as if you could except for nothing's happening too late well can you can you actually shoot the shot and do it like shoot one of the shots without a thing on it nope so any oh no you can't so you can actually do like the red oh that time i collected the red yeah so you can do you can do a mode where you've got a ramp mode activated so that's that's cool um i guess but even still i want to be able to collect all of them.
    56:51
    So let's see. Hold on. A few of them are out. Let's see if I'm talking out my butt or not. I'm going to try and collect one of those other three red boxes that are available.
    57:05
    Nope. So you can only collect one at a time, which again, turns this into more Spell-O-Rama mode, essentially. It's not efficient playing. you know that's that's right and then with how they want you to play it yeah and you know i've seen that that's been in some uh i think it might have been iron maiden western there was a mode or no i mean iron man one of the two there was a mode that if you didn't actually complete it you were essentially stuck in jail in that mode this mode yeah yeah in that mode until you finished it and it's just not cool. Luckily, this one doesn't do that. Although we are still stuck in salvage mode until we finish it. Until you finish it, yeah, you can't, you've got to keep on grinding it. But again, so here's where I told Jared before he'd started playing this, I said this is Mars 2.0 except for I still like Mars better.
    58:06
    Yeah. Because it has kind of the same vibe. Oh, what was that? That was a traded shot, i.e. the brickie.
    58:20
    Mars has more interesting things going on, truth be told. Yeah, I haven't played Mars for a while, because I've been waiting to experience it on FX, and obviously it's not there yet. But I do remember I played it on VR semi-recently, and it got a nice aesthetic to it like the number one it looks flashier than this again they not they not coding something or creating it an experience that is supposed to conform to any sort of prior art so I guess they got freedom there but I don't know it's sort of beyond the looks I'm just saying the modes that you do are more varied like once you starting a modem are so not easy but once you have no it's not lit once you have the mode lit it's not the same old shot over and over and over and over no and that home mode again that home mode is is kind of unsatisfying like it's one shot it's always the same place shoot that stand up that appears in that lane you just shot there and you You can get it. So essentially it's a hurry up, target-based hurry up. But that's a mode. That's one of the things you need to qualify for, Wizard Mode, apparently.
    59:46
    Again, haven't got to Wizard Mode yet. Again, this entire time we've been playing, have anybody seen multiball?
    59:54
    No. Have you actually deliberately shot for it? You would have had one by now. Yeah, exactly. If you were playing Indiana Jones, you would have seen. You would have had multiball by now. Multi-ball now because it essentially it drives you to it so it makes me wonder Is multi ball the most lucrative mode in this game like if if I was looking at from from it from a designer said it about other Ways of making pinball it seems like multi ball isn't something you should really go for here Like the points are not there like is the mission points. Yeah, I think the
    60:30
    The discord community has talked about this as well. They've actually suggested that you get nothing unless you're actually in modes. Like, each shot's like 5,000 or something like that until you actually enter a mode, and that's where the points start coming. So you've really... You've kind of got to be in modes all the time, and unfortunately, by way of playing the table, like, you end up entering modes that are less desirable, like, you know, salvage mode. You go, oh, not again. It's a little bit like, to me, salvage mode feels like video mode in Harley-Davidson pinball. You get it all the time, and you don't like it.
    61:10
    Because it's just, oh, no, not video mode again. It's a bit like that with that mode for me. It's my least favorite thing. I just wish it was easier to qualify for good shot. Oh, that was quick. You really knocked that over. Amazingly.
    61:26
    He just got them all. So here's my thing, though. So, again, looking at this, I've got a random resource light over at the left orbit, I've got the launch lock, which I understand. I've got a whole bunch of vessels that are lit up, but I don't know what they're telling me. Is it telling me I need to collect those? What am I doing with it? Why are they blinking? Because if I shoot the shot, they don't necessarily disappear, I don't think.
    61:50
    And also, it's almost like you need to know what those insert lights mean. Yeah. because there's that shot behind the... that loop shot behind the right ramp. That's actually a multiball qualifier. So you shoot that thing behind the ramp there and you light the eject hole for a lock. But it doesn't scream that to you when you're playing it. It doesn't say, hey, this is a really valuable multiball shot here, guys. You should really shoot this a lot.
    62:22
    But it doesn't scream that to you. It's like the same colour. Everything is blue, and I get that that is the aesthetic of the game, and you need to operate within the design parameters of it. But from a pinball machine's perspective and an intuitiveness perspective, it does nothing for it. And that's the problem. Like, they're all blue. Everything's blue. And they all blink at the same... Oh, and that's not true. They actually don't blink at the same intensity. No, but again, what am I... I've got a carrier there for that little horseshoe loop on the right, and then whatever... And you've got Ben 2C lit now. So there's... See the carrier? Yeah. See how it says carrier, but it doesn't say carrier multi-ball. No, it doesn't tell me anything of what I'm... Usually, in any normal manner, if something is being lit in front of a lane, you shoot the lane, that thing then stays lit.
    63:12
    Yeah. In any normal... Or it has a stack, like on Medieval Madness, where it goes, like, oh, you've got one qualifier, two qualifier, three qualifier, now shoot the castle or the saucer to collect that big score from doing that. But again, there's no indication of that. It just stays lit. And it doesn't change in intensity.
    63:33
    Like, there's no... To me, there's no clear indication about the priority in which you should shoot things in this table. And that's, to me, a miss as far as playfield design goes.
    63:51
    That being said, it's sort of like... You don't want all these Zen originals to play the same. No. And that's the other problem. Like, you want there to be... Here we go. Salvage mode jail again. Yep. You know, enjoy that.
    64:08
    Warp all. Go. So, you know, the whole... The way that this game sort of is engineered and what it's driving you to do, it does it definitely does give you an rpg feel but skyrim was sort of like that as well and it still managed to give you varied gameplay like skyrim was still very much an rpg style experience um i mean like you said let's face it you should never go oh crap i started that yeah that's right and and there's a lot of oh crap i started that yeah so if you can't guess by now folks we're not necessarily recommending this table no well I wouldn't rush out and buy it unfortunately yeah I mean honestly if you got pinball pass fine give it a go yeah but wait maybe wait until it comes on rotation for this one folks and see what you think about it um I'm not sure about this one unfortunately it's not one like I played it a fair bit this week so we could actually have commentary on it but that's probably the last time I'm going to touch it for a fair while um yeah so maybe when it comes back in tournaments again I will play it but only if it comes into rotation because we have to like I said I would like to see it just be...
    65:51
    It's going to need another pass-it code. I think we need to just say this about a lot of Zen originals.
    65:59
    I'm cool with putting it out there with the players. Stern does this all the time. They put it into the player's hand. They let players comment and say what they like, what they don't like. Obviously, if you have a real machine, the play field's not going to change. But you can change the code. You can make the table score and play completely differently. You can add in new video, new DMD, all that jazz. And I would really like to encourage Zen to listen to feedback from the players once they've gotten their hands on this. Really find out what they like about a particular table, what they don't like, and then address it in code. let the code dictate and try and make the table uh more fun a better experience uh based off of that feedback um you know we've said they did it with epic quest they did it with mars um yeah they need to do with this they need to do with this absolutely now a really good example of that is batman 66 by stern like it was like when it was released it was like super basic code in fact it was pretty much a spell-o-rama when it was first released. And people were going, why did I spend so much money on this really expensive, super premium pinball machine when this is a code? But you look at it now, after literally two years of code refinements out in the wild, with Lyman Sheets doing code work on it, and it is an absolute stackable beast of a machine, but the playfield layout hasn't changed. Nope. Same with something like... yeah well a lot of those stern that um era of stern they were doing iterations out in the wild on the code yeah and you know it made the tables fresh and the same thing goes with like brighter pinbot and brighter pinbot 2.0 like that 2.0 code blows apart what that game is like and i still haven't managed to experience what it's like but it's no longer left ramp it's a completely different game well and i've said the same thing regarding cactus canyon um exactly i haven't played the the latest thing but i played cactus canyon continued um and it was mind-blowing how incredible it made that play field play and the sheer variety of shots that you were then required to do um yeah so so there's there's opportunity to take this from what could potentially be argued as if they were taking that approach this is basically the like day one release of this table now iterate on the rules nine zero on the code and we need to get up to uh you know a one point something yeah i think so i i really hope that this is what's going to happen with this and they take a hard look at the the way that you qualify for modes and the way that some of the modes are structured um and just speed things up because if the game was faster to achieve things i think that would save some of the challenges with it as far as uh wanting to do and also change the way that either the the target selection thing works on the um salvage mode or change how you qualify it maybe make it harder to get but like the points are more valuable or something like that So when you're in the mode, it feels like it's something special, not just something you can get by shooting combos.
    69:38
    It's real simple to me with that one. It's a very simple fix. If you collect one salvage and then immediately go cash it in, it's worth a very basic price. But if you risk it and you stack and try and collect them all and then shoot the salvage, now you're in for a whopper of a price. Yes, that's such an easy change. And it's so minor, but it makes there have a strategy to what you're going to do. Is it collection? It's risk-reward. Exactly. And that's what all Belly Williams tables do. Yeah. Yes. It's what all Belly Williams tables do. They are risk-reward tables. Like, you can, like, great example, right? Yeah, you're right. Jackpot, like, casino run. Excellent example. But even in medieval madness, you've got, oh, do I cash in all of my multi-ball madness modes now, or do I bank them for something incredible at the risk of losing my ball?
    70:40
    Pinball is risk-reward, and this doesn't reward any risk. And I'm not saying multi-ball should be handed out like candy. It's that first multi-ball. Give them a taste. Yeah. Then make it harder to qualify. Make it 10 shots. but the first one should be five. Yeah, exactly. It gets more difficult. And again, virtually every multi... Molly Williams does this. The first time getting a multiball is really easy. If you look at Roadshow, it's so easy to get multiball going right off the... Smack the dozer five times and you get a lock. But then it becomes...
    71:16
    Then it becomes, oh, you've got to smack it, that lights it, smack it again, that sets up the lock, you know, and then you've got to shoot the lock. you know so it's like it just becomes increasingly more so that you're not just dominating the table you know every single ball um but now you're actually having to show off your skill in order to do it but that first should be easy uh and then make the insert lights tell you something they did a really good job of this on grim yeah that's right we know zen can do this They just didn't with this. I don't know why. This is a backward step in rules design. Yeah. Now, do we... It's fixable. Yeah, it's fixable, but do we actually think that they're going to change the code? No. Unfortunately, probably not, because they've got other fish to fry, and that's a real shame, because this table has the layout there to make it quite interesting. Which basically means they need a lime and sheets kind of person at Zen. Well, they need the person that did the rules on Grim to take a second pass at this. It's potentially what needs to happen here now. I say that without actually knowing who did the rules on Grim.
    72:30
    So I might just caveat that, because it could be the same person. I don't know. So, yeah, there you go. That's what we think about it. I think I'd like to say, and please tell us this either in the YouTube comments or in Discord. Discord will be better. But, you know, did we get it right? Do you actually feel the same about this when you're playing this game? Like, are we on ball? Are we being too critical? Tell us, you know. We'd like to hear what you think. We'd like to hear if we've got the zeitgeist of a table right. So, yeah, tell us. I mean, it would be certainly nice if we could like every single Xen original, but we know from pure history of Xen originals, that's not the case. There's plenty of them we don't like. Yeah. But you know, those tables that we don't like, others do. And this goes back to what Mel was saying about the whole thing they're trying to do with pinball effects. Like some people like, and the other thing too about this game, it's pretty chill. Like the one thing that we didn't really touch on is that it's kind of like the music isn't vibrant. You're in like a pretty sort of a chill feeling. like you cruise around space you might say you're in a state of zen yeah you could say that but you know that could be what people want like sometimes people don't want an in-your-face you know medieval madness style experience so maybe they go to this when they just want to flip a ball around for a bit and yeah but if when i want to flip the ball around a bit i also want things to happen sure i don't need in my face happening but i want to like i'm actually making progress not just grinding grinding and chilling with some music that's completely not fun to me um and and that's my that's my biggest gripe with this table nothing about it is fun i don't i'm not there's no mode that i'm like oh god i started this mode i'm there's no shop that is like oh nailed it there's nothing that i get satisfaction out of in this There's no real fireworks when you actually do something really good in this game. It's very, like, there's no big flasher effects. Everything's very toned down and neutral. Just think about Whitewater. When you hit that crazy ramp waterfall shot, it's satisfying. The whole table goes nuts. But it's satisfying. You feel like, yes, I hit that shot. And all it literally is is shoot up to an upper playfield, shoot the mini playfield to the ramp. That's it. shoot a wobbly ramp basically but getting on that wobbly ramp is really really cool there's nothing here that I go yes got it did it no it's like and so if I don't have that experience just with the basic table shots around then I need code to make it that kind of satisfaction and that's what I'm not getting so yeah alright enough rip and rip there's our not so I can't really call it a hot take because we've been playing enough of this that we've experienced we haven't sure we haven't got to wizard mode yet and I find it amusing well and I find it amusing that Zen is on their socials going have you got to wizard mode on homeworld yet I go nowhere close mate at all so you know if you've got to wizard mode on this already tell us what it's like you know what I have an idea for another episode here. It just popped up to me. I think we're going to have to work on this, because it's going to take us some time to go through and do this. I want us to pick our five Zen originals. So it can be Star Wars, Marvel, anything. Any Zen original that we think would benefit or desperately needs a code revamp.
    76:28
    Okay. where we think that with a new code that the play field is fine because there's some that we just plain don't like the play field. V12. Yeah the play field is also not good. Yeah. No. Where it's good play field, bad code. So I think that's what we need to do. And to keep it do I want to keep it simple?
    76:53
    I was going to say should we limit it to what's currently available in PIN effects or should because they're remastering, I'll leave it open.
    77:03
    Wherever you want to pull from. If you want to just go look at what's in PinFX and go from there, or if you want to look at PinballFX 3. Shoot, I'll even throw it into FX2 just in case, you know, any of those five tables that isn't coming over suddenly comes over, like we suspect that South Park will be coming.
    77:23
    It's got to be at some point, right? Yeah, you would think. You hope so. That's fun. So anyway. That is a good table. That is. And so by that very thing, folks in our Discord, yeah, we're going to promote the hell out of this.
    77:35
    Do the same. Name your five tables that you think would benefit vastly from code change. Rules 2.0. Yep, rules 2.0. Okay? There's your sign, everybody. All right.
    77:48
    Good stuff. That being said, what are we doing next time? Do we ever know? Of course not. But as usual, it's up to Jared who loves to do things like... Stuff and things. Our favorite things and stuffs. Ye the free car. All right. Until then, we'll catch you all later. Bye-bye.