this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap and joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan it's me jared Morgan. Hey, look at that, Jared. I have video again. That was so annoying last week. So annoying at the last minute to lose internet. Yeah. I don't know. Then again, last week's YouTube video, which, man, we've gotten just a bunch of people to start using that, was our most downloaded, so maybe not having speaking me as the answer. I don't know. Well, maybe not having visual you. Visual me, that's what I mean. It's an enhancement. You're never going to get rid of speaking me. No. That's right. If you have to go via Brian Morris code, you're going to... What's that, Chris? Yeah, that's right. That's going to be a very dry podcast, that one. So, yeah, folks, this is our 150th episode, which... Not too shabby. It's pretty auspicious. It's auspicious. For which we have nothing exciting planned. Go figure. No. all the excitement as it came right before, but that's okay. We're going to use this week to kind of, uh, debrief ourselves of, of everything that we've learned and what we've seen happen and, uh, just kind of go over stuff of that nature. But, uh, I, I did want to comment, um, as some of you have, if you've listened, listened into the past, uh, basically a year ago, uh, on the 25th of September is when I had my accident and severed my patellar tendon. oh yes you took an arrow to the knee yes so um I went and did a job last week where basically it was an earthquake had happened and so the sets were all canted 45 degrees like a building had kind of crashed over and that was a treat trying to crawl around in that with my knee not being 100% stable and that kind of thing. But I got through the first half of the day was in that kind of set and I was like, okay, that's no problem. But then we had to deal with this tilting gimbal set and while I didn't have to be in it while it was gimbaled I did have to navigate the stairs that went all the way up to the top of this thing which was probably set I don't know, call it 20 feet in the air or so, maybe a little higher. Fairly high. But the point was, I'd have to go up the staircase, do my slating, and then come back down the staircase all the way because everybody had to be off the staircase while the whole set was tipping. So I had to do that a couple of dozen times, which was, as the day got longer, rather trying. Yeah, I would imagine. So that was enjoyable to to basically see how I could perform, but I survived, so that was all good. Well, that's good. That's good that you survived, and you're here for our 150th episode. Well, I don't think the knee would necessarily prevent me from doing... No, it would probably enable you to just sit there and not actually... Yes, sit there much more so than I normally do. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Sit with much conviction. you i saw how we're doing a little something on your table yeah finally finally i just went you know what yesterday i just went i can't not do anything more in this thing i want to get it done by christmas is what i've set myself to do okay and so yeah i just thought otherwise it's going to sit there i'm not going to do anything on it it's like literally nearly been a year now because I got it last Christmas, I think. So it's taken way too long. But, you know, as these projects tend to do, life gets in the way, right? Yep, and then you lose your fire and life's not in the way anymore, but you're just kind of like, eh. Oh, I'd rather play Zen Pinball Beta, you know. I was really having that battle yesterday. I was going, oh, look, I've actually got a little bit of spare time at the moment. What do I do? Do I actually go out there and get on the tools or do I sit in front of the computer and actually play a bit of Beta Pinball? and I went, oh, I should really go and do some stuff out there. So I'm glad I did because what I did is I bought a whole lot of LED bulbs from the internets and they were good for us and because Got Leaps System 80s don't have any problems with ghosting, you can get the cheap bulbs. Nice. So I got 200 bulbs and that means I'll have about 60 left at the end because invariably they will blow at some point, like even though LEDs are pretty long last. a long life, they will die, particularly in a pinball machine when they vibrate a lot. So, you know, you've got to have a few spare. I figured, well, 200 is pretty good. But the problem was that because LEDs are not as slimline as most bulbs, the ones that protrude through the play field, they weren't quite fitting. So I went, oh, well, you know, there's only one thing I can do about this. I'll just have to drill the holes out slightly. So that's what I did. And it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I just got a drill, a really sharp drill bit, and just went straight into the play field. There wasn't very much ratcheting around the edges of the holes. This is unfortunate because I've just clear-coated it and everything, but it actually wasn't that bad. And besides, all these things are going to be under plastic sending out, so even if there is a bit of roughness around the holes, it actually doesn't matter, really. Yeah, that's what I felt like when I cut out the notches in my firepower playfields for if I wind up doing drop targets at some point. I was like, hey, cut them out now before and I got to tell you, they ain't precision. They're kind of ugly. We didn't know how to do it nicely and so they're kind of eh. But then I was also like, it doesn't matter. They're hidden. Well, that's right. Because it's actually not the front, it's the back. Even if you only have the stand-ups, it's behind the stand-ups and then there's plastic there. Yeah, exactly. So it's really not a big deal. and the thing is with the Star Race play field there's actually quite a bit of play field shielding on it so all the lights are actually covered up with things anyhow so it's not a really big deal so I thought that's a low risk to do that and it would save me having to go and try and find bulbs that fit because I mean there's so many different LED bulbs out there that it's just you just can't do it right so I went no I'm just going to drill them out and it was a good thing like it actually was they fit really nicely now and that was lovely. So I thought, well, okay, now what's the next thing I would need to do if I wanted to put this thing back together again? I thought, well, I need to put the side rails back on the playfield. So the bits of wood that run the length of the playfield that actually give the playfield strength. And I actually just rested the wood on the playfield and you'd be surprised at how much of a dip the playfield has without those wood bits on it. it's a good, well, it'd be a good quarter inch dip. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's like in the middle, it sags really badly. Wow. So those playfield rails, the wooden rails that go either side, they play a really crucial role in keeping that playfield level. So I had them often, good old Gottlieb back in the 80s. Everything was wood grain, of course, right? Yeah. So back in the 80s. So it just came out of that glorious 70s period with wood grain and everything. So I thought, well, let's carry this look over onto pinball machines. But, you know, we've got to keep costs down. We can't use really great quality wood on the bits that aren't the actual play field. Like on the play field, you use good quality, you know, oak or whatever they use. But on the other bits that aren't actually really important, let's not really use that. Let's just use basically cheap pine that's been joined together in the usual way that cheap pine is joined together with the finger joints, I think they call it. So I thought, well, that looks a bit ugly. What are we going to do that's not going to cost a lot of money to solve that problem? Well, let's cover it with book covering, hey? Yeah, laminate. Because that's a great solution. It's cheap. It'll protect the wood from being banged up against with balls because as a Gottlieb, we've seen what happens to these side rails. So it'll definitely help that out. But 35 years later, it looks like crap. I've got news for you, Jared. It ain't just Gottlieb because my firepower has the exact same thing. After all the work I put into the playfield, it really detracted from the look of the playfield. so I went no I'm going to strip the stuff off and it was a bit of a mission because the adhesive even though it was 35 years old was actually pretty good still so I had to get a sort of like a scalpel blade oh it was really bad I had to get like a scalpel blade and just like pare it off basically I first started using one of those mouse sanders with a sandpaper pad on it and just sort of like sanded off the adhesive. That worked, but it was gumming up all my sanding had, so I thought, no, there's got to be a better way of doing this. So I reverted to scraping and then doing the final finish with the sander. And that was really good. Jeez, it came up all right. I have to say. Yeah, for my firepower, I'm not even going to bother. My dad works with wood. I'm just going to give him the dimensions and have him cut me some new rails out of real wood and be done with it? Oh look if you have that option then yeah definitely do it but you know there was on this particular bit there was a there was a cutout on one of them that was for the guide rail where it goes in and I didn't have the tools to actually do that easily so I figured no I don't think I'm gonna I'm not not up for that I just want to actually get it back to it looking pretty decent so I went down the restoration path on it and but yeah definitely if you've got someone with the tools you don't don't waste your time just go and get new ones done um and you probably even use you probably have to spring for some better quality wood as well and um in that way but they look good now i varathane them last night and they're surprisingly even for cheap cheap wood they've come up really nice the grains come through everything better when you make a shiny yeah exactly right so i'm actually okay with that and i should be able to put those back on um shortly and that'll be the next little tiny phase done. Then after that, I think I just need to start putting all the metal bits back on again and get those back on. I have to go through my photos and see where they all go because I've completely forgotten. I've done eight months. Exactly. This is where, and I think I've mentioned it before, I watch a lot of these car shows where it's garages either doing custom mods or just restorations of old hot rods, any manner of things. But I watch probably, it's like maybe five different versions of these shows. And they're all different aspects, but they all apply the same methods. And every time I watch one of these, because they'll take something that is just... Like a Russet Hulk. Barely a car is even left. And they'll go out there and they're creating their own sheet metal and making everything, forming and doing. And the end result, you're like, wow, that is amazing that anybody can do that. And I always sit there and go, God, I'd love to watch a pinball show of this exact nature. Like an absolute junker. Right? Yeah, like a pinball machine with a tree growing out of it, essentially. And I'm kind of surprised because the guys over at the TNT Amusements, they put out videos all the time, but it's never a restoration video. It's almost always, hey, look at this machine that we just finished or just about finished with because obviously they're trying to make a sales. I'm kind of surprised that nobody has approached them other than the fact that, again, pinball, very niche, and what channel would you possibly put it on? But, man, I want to watch that show. I really want to watch that show because it's just fascinating what people, what extents people are able to go to to bring something back up. And if they can do this with a vehicle, sure as hell they can do it with a pinball machine. And we've all heard, you know, there's these, if you ever dip over on the pin side, there's certain restorers who are revered for what they can do. And there's all manner of... That's one of them. What's that? There's a guy called Vic on there, who's just like an amazing guy to contact when you've got food trading issues. I want to say it's they call it HEP but I don't know I just know there's a couple of people but there's also again there's different manners of restoration there's those that are modifying machines and restoring them there's those that make it so that every last component is practically chroming the entire machine there's not a speck of dust everything is true and lined up properly and then there's those that are just doing basic, you know, a step above what you and I hope to be able to do to our machines, which is, you know, just make them playable. So, I don't know. That's, I would love to see that. Copyright me. Yeah, exactly. But do you think about it, though? As a production person, you know, you'd have to, you'd start the project and then, you know, you'd have to wait six months. That's what happens. No, that's literally on these car shows. there's some guys that they crank out these cars within two weeks, a couple of months. And then there's this other show that I was watching where literally it's two years. Now they condense the entire two years into one episode, but that's how long they've had this car in their shop and that they've been documenting it with camera. Wow. So crazy. It is. It is. It's a long, you know, you think if you're a production house and the idea was to make it look like somebody is actually filming this themselves, how easy would it be to say, hey, look, when you're going to do work in this car, get someone to film it for you, and here's the rig, and just do it lo-fi, and then you could actually use that footage and then overdub professional audio at the top, for example, and all that sort of stuff. There's plenty of ways you could actually do it. Oh, certainly. Certainly. But, oh well, it's not going to... It's probably not going to happen. Who would watch it that would demand it be its own? You know, it would actually be a prime candidate for like a YouTube series. Certainly. You know, and if that was the case, then, you know, it would be a very easy thing to get up and running. And, you know, there's money to be made on YouTube, those YouTube series and the YouTube creator things. And, you know, another thing is that. it all comes down to the, I don't want to say casting because it's not like they cast the mechanics in these shows, but they certainly look at the crew and they go, are there personalities? Are there anybody that's going to hold our attention beyond the actual work that's being done? And you look at them and to it, to a show, every single one of them has a unique voice thing. Exactly. Right. So yeah, there's a, I, we do get the show American restoration down here and those guys, like I really admire what they do because they take, you know, old fridges and stuff like that, you know, with coat fridges. And they're just basically almost falling apart. And they managed to find motors and they do the outsides and they powder coat things. And it's just like, it's amazing to watch these guys bring these things back. And the fact that they can reproduce all this, like, reference art and stuff like that, there's some real talent there. And I love watching American Restoration for that very reason. you know because it's not cars it's just things things exactly so speaking of things that have been restored let's let's dive into everything that we've learned with zen their williams collection um just our impressions of of things that mel said uh i don't know just i don't even nowhere to begin necessarily, other than there has been a fourth version of the beta. I think we might even be on to our fifth right around the corner here. Right. They have been, so there's the version that you and I first got our hands on, that we were like, yeah, he's kicking our butt. Then the next version came out, we kind of went, oh, it's not quite as difficult as it was. And then there was a version after that where it was like, okay, great. We've got flipper tricks, but no, this is way, way too close to a pinball arcade version. Or even, we couldn't mention at the time, to the Zen single player version. Yes. You know. And then it got announced that you know and everybody could play the classic version Or excuse me you could sample what the that was this last week when we talked about it that you could sample the Zen version and suddenly the difficulty got ramped right back up on the classic version. And I was like, nice, hey, this is good. And then I just loaded it up to Gen Today and had a go, and we have access to now not the timed version, but the full version of the table again with the new current physics going on. Holy crap, to a table, it kicked my butt. It was just brutal. This was Fish Tales? No, this was Medieval Madness, Getaway. Everything. I was just once again going, okay, this is back to what it felt like that very first time we booted it up. I spent some time on Medieval Madness doing my best to not just flip around and see what things were going, but to actually play the table. I don't think I broke $15 million. That's pretty indicative for medieval madness in real life, right? I think I had a great game on it in my tournament the other week, and it was like a $17 million game. I was going, that's a great score. I'm happy with that. You need to be excited when you actually hit the replay, not just... Oh yeah, it's a replay. well replays tended to be like a signpost to me where it's like oh okay I'm on ball one I just finally hit my replay okay yeah this is where we're supposed to be going yeah yeah okay as opposed to I'm on ball three going am I gonna get the replay you know it's fraught with danger and bad things it does bring up and I don't know you know it's something that we have not brought up to Zen since when this first got announced to us, I hope that it retains ROM status, even if you exit out and come back to the game. My point being that when you hit the replay, the next replay goes up by a few million. Until you've played it a couple of times and not hit the replay, and then it drops back down again. It has that compensation mode, but it actually carries out between games. It actually snapshots the ROM state. That would be really good. And the same thing it does with... You can pick up your game again. So you know how Xen allows you to like, oh, you've been playing this game of Moonlight. Would you like to continue a game? So that does indicate that they are snapshooting the ROM. And it does it with when you play Epic Quest. It remembers all your achievements with the armor and everything that you've put onto the game. Same with what you call it, Skyrim as well, I think. Clearly, Xen has the capabilities of doing that within their own games, whether they can snapshot the actual ROM and do that. Because I want to, for my own single personal play, if I become loop champion on something... I want to retain that. What's that? you want to retain that so you can I want to retain it so I can try and beat it again later yeah exactly so that's something that we should, we'll have to inquire maybe we'll we'll ask Mel because that's something that would it's just that fine little touch that you don't really think about until you've been playing a table for a while yeah and to essentially have one in your house and you're playing it and you're beating your own scores and yeah imagine it's essentially like having the batteries fail on you and it wipes every single time when you're playing on TPA and that's no fun. And certainly I would like the option to be able to just go, okay, let's start fresh again. Reset high scores. Reset. Yeah. But that would be certainly... Just think about if they eventually bring Safecracker in, you know, that's going to be really important because the percentaging and the way that tokens are actually handled in that game, the thing that people don't realize is that actually it will give you tokens easier if you had a couple really bum games so the board game will actually compensate and actually allow you to progress further rather than just being hard all the time like it is in TPA so yeah it's designed to sort of pay out a certain amount of tokens just like a slot machine What do you think the odds of Safecracker getting ANR? I think it's possible Honestly, when I was thinking about this, because people were in one of the threads that they were talking about. Their wish list. Yeah, their wish list. They want new tables also. Are they going to get everything that was in TPA? And at one point, Mel even said that it's not a guarantee. There's going to be tables that don't get brought over, and there's going to be plenty of tables that will, that we never got a chance to play. And so I kind of looked through the list, and I was like, you know, a table like... Which one would it be fine not to see again? Well, it's not that it's fine not to see again, but which are likely or are going to be a pretty low priority. I honestly think Safecracker, due to its odd shape and it didn't really get good reception in Pinball Arcade, as much as you and I like it, it didn't get that great a reception. It's an odd table. That one might be one that doesn't. Same thing with Firepower 2. Are they really going to do that? They don't need to bring that one over. Hurricane? Is anybody going to be clamoring for that again? Probably not. I don't really play it that much, but that's me. Spanish Eyes, Wild Card, Fireball. Those are all EMs. And part of this is that people were saying they... Some people were just kind of like, oh, that's it. Screw Farsight. I don't have to worry about that. Other people were like, oh, I feel burned for having spent all my money on it. I was like, well, look, you don't have to wait to play any of these tables. You can still play them and let Zen do their thing and when Zen comes out with their table, you're like, hooray, but you're not like, oh my god, I want to play this again. You've got it. You can still mess with it. Yeah, you play it. If you think as it, Zen most likely will actually do discounts on them. So, you know, if you want to build up your collection, you just wait. There's no pressure. You don't have to buy. We can tell you this. You don't have to spend your money. You can just sit on the one-to-one. Most people were feeling burned. Some people were like, I felt like farce. I put a gun to my head. No, they didn't. Oh, my God. They didn't put a gun to your head. But you know what? Put the gun down and realize what you do have, and it's going to take a couple of years. Let's just say Zen puts out 16 tables a year, which that's on the high side for what Zen usually puts out, right? They won't be all Williams tables. Well, they're going to be Williams Bally tables. Let's say they are, though. Let's say it's 16 Williams Bally tables throughout a year. It's still going to take almost four years to catch up, and that's if they were only doing everything that was in TPA. So obviously we know that they're not by the hint that Mel is basically saying, by pack four we probably will see licensed tables. That's the soonest that we'd be able to. And they're going to start doing licenses I would imagine that Farsight wasn't able to do. That's what they'd be gearing up for, for sure. That's what they'd be gearing up for, yeah. They're probably trying to negotiate the licenses for them now, right? So they can actually do the runway that they're going to need to actually produce these things, right? Right. So, again, you're going to be waiting on certain tables. And so, I mean, I think people are going to be... They shouldn't feel like that they got robbed by Farsight by any stretch of the imagination. Because like I said, you know, hey, you want to play Tales of the Arabian Nights? Go for it. Do it. Right now. You don't have to wait for Xander to make it. You can grumble about, oh, this doesn't feel as good as Fishtails, but at least you can play it. You can play it. If you really need that fix, it's right there for you. It's just waiting. Do you think that... And this is kind of going with what the next table pack is going to be. And I was just reading a thread about this today where they were like, hey, maybe the next four tables are going to be nothing but ballet. And that makes me wonder, is there going to be another column? So you're going to have the Williams column, and then you're going to have a ballet column? I hope that they do that, because otherwise the Williams column is going to get really crowded really quick. and then that made me think because Mel also was talking about how when it comes to license tables, you're not going to be able to put out a pack that is Indiana Jones and Star Trek. No, they weren't even mixed licenses. You can't mix licenses, right? Let's say you do what my suggestion was which was you've got Indiana Jones and then you make short round the table. And Marion the table. Whatever. And so you have those two unique tables. Well, does it just get its own column then that says Indiana Jones? And the Indiana Jones table does not get put in with the Williams Collection? Oh. That's getting tricky, doesn't it? Right? Again, with a licensed one, if they're saying that they don't want to mix, you'd have to separate them out, right? They'd have to be a separate brand. But what kind of sucks is that, like, with Williams and Portal, it's called Valve, right? But there's only one table underneath those columns. It's barren. You want more. You know? That's right. So, yeah, these are the things I think about, folks. It's going to be... I didn't even give any consideration to how they group it. I would have thought that it would just be all Williams, Pinball, and then maybe have a sub-selector for Williams, Belly, and then my own creation tables. underneath the Williams pinball banner. Because that's probably how I do it. I'd have a sub-filter under that column to filter what you want to see. That's how I do it. But use a different toggle button to actually trigger it and cycle through the tables. I should point out we won't be getting any more Walking Dead tables because Telltale Studios is going kaput. They fired everybody but 25 people. Oh, yeah, I saw that. I actually saw Mel comment on that. Well, that's why I was like, what? I went and Googled what happened. I was like, ooh, that ain't good. No, that's really bad. Because Telltale, they do some good games. Well, not only that, but Telltale had just signed a deal to make Stranger Things games. And what table did Mel say that he wanted to do? He wanted to do a Stranger Things table as well as, I forget what the other one that he mentioned. Pickle Rick. Sorry, Rick and Morty. Oh, Rick and Morty, right. So I was kind of like, I wonder if he was talking to Telltale prior, just like he was walking dead and basing off what their artwork was, and now it's like, poof. Bye-bye, table. Oh, jeez. That would be frustrating. Right. But, yeah, I really feel for the studio, because it's rough. yeah, they've run out of runway. This is the term I'm hearing a lot lately. Yeah. They've run out of runway, which means they've run out of money. It's a startup term. And in case you're wondering, folks, we have no idea how long the deal is that Zen signed with Scientific. My best guess, it ain't the two year deal that Farsight was signing. I imagine it's probably a five year minimum. because why would they want to bother renegotiating every two years not going to want to renegotiate in two years but five years a lot can change in that period of time too yeah exactly yeah so I that's kind of what my gut is telling me with absolutely zero information but as you can tell two podcasts ago we work well with zero information yeah we do work well with zero information yeah we didn't get a whole lot of feedback though on our speculation podcast other than people just kind of going oh that was pretty interesting but I don't know if you people didn't believe us but we kind of got it really right we kind of got confirmation out of Mel that no we nailed it yeah you kind of pulled us up on that in this interview, so go back and listen to that if you go, uh... That was why I purposely asked him about FX3 if it was designed with Williams in mind, and he pretty much said yes. Yeah, it is. Or was. My timeline is rather spot on, mate. Yeah, spot on, mate. Other things that... Oh, one thing that we got out of with regards to the Mel interview, other than a lot of people just really enjoying it. But, oh, you cabinet owners. Greg over at Spacey's Arcade, if you watched his latest Beta 3 video, he kind of cursed us out for a moment there, Jared. Oh, did he? Yes, because he was sweating that we went an hour before ever mentioning cabinet. And he was like, you've got to be kidding me. These guys are not going to mention cabinet at all. And then he goes, this is me doing an imitation of him doing an imitation of me. He goes, and then Chris just kind of goes, oh, yeah, cabinets. So what do you got to tell us about that? Just kind of throwing that out there. Oh, yeah, there's cabinet people. What about that? Yeah. Here's the problem, folks. neither of us have a cabinet. So the cabinet questions aren't at our forefront. We just don't... We don't really know what to ask. Yeah, I mean, we can try and muscle up the enthusiasm for it, but it's us asking a question that somebody else asked, not necessarily knowing the context from which they're asking it. So we're going to talk about this a little bit later, but I have a solution that was a cheap solution that hopefully we'll try and bring me up to speed on this. Right. Other comments. This had not necessarily anything to do with the information that Mel gave, but other than more or less the impression that Mel gave. A lot of you now like Zen Studios a lot. Yeah, you're really waving the flag hard. Yeah, you're like, you know what? I like these guys' attitude. I like their approach. I like the perspective that they're coming at this from. You know, hearing that story about just, and talk about not realizing how far we've come and yet how short ago this was. But the fact that a lot of the designers there at the Budapest studios in Hungary were under Soviet rule when they grew up. Yeah, that's insane. It seems like a millennia ago and yet, holy crap, he's right. That's just the 80s. That's the 80s. That's when I was growing up playing pinball. I mean, I was a teen. It's just amazing to think what an impact pinball has had on their lives over there. It's sort of like the only escape that they had, really. Isn't that crazy? And not only that, it's not just, when you think about this, it's not just pinball being an escape. This was something from the West. yeah this is opening up the basically breaking down the wall yeah because I guarantee you they weren't getting our movies over there no way over in the Soviet Union but a pinball machine hmm that managed to make its way in you know just imagine them playing taxi over in with Gorbachev on it something tells me the taxi didn't make its way there yes or if it was it's you know in this whatever the speakeasy version of a pub was there you know yes da comrade we've got the taxi taxi taxi taxi yeah oh dear it must have been a trip to be in that that part of the world in that time it just yeah so it makes you appreciate what the passion is that they're probably approaching this with I think it's probably something that we didn't So let's try that. There we go. Yeah, now it's back to a normal level. Okay, cool. Technical difficulties, folks. Sorry about that. You on YouTube. I'll just keep this. I'll just keep this open just in case it speaks. Yeah, it's creeping up, eh? It must auto-level. Yeah, now it's auto-leveling, but sometimes it just goes... Yeah, it just speaks really bad. Yeah, I thought I wanted to try it this time to see if... And here it goes It spiking again How weird I don know This is something else that we just sidebar here Something else that we looking into again due to some of the donations that we've gotten. And we're hoping we'll be getting more because T-shirts, folks, we have a new place you're going to be able to purchase them from that will heavily discount, I assume, the shipping. Jared went ahead and already ponied it. Did you try and test it? Yeah, I made a purchase. I got one of each style on different types of shirts to see what they look like. Hopefully, yeah, they come out all right. I should get them, I think, later on this month. Yeah, so once we have confirmation that we like what they've done with them and how the pricing on shipping is, then we'll go ahead and advertise that, and you all can have a crack at it. but it's not going to be just t-shirts either. It'll be, Hey, do you want a blockade mug? Go for it. Do you want a blockade sticker? We got them. Yeah, that's right. Merch up. Merch up. Now I've lost completely my train of thought. Oh, no tech wise. Yeah. So, um, we're, we're hoping to maybe get, uh, some actual software that will allow me to adjust mic levels and maybe even do live audio drops so that our friends on YouTube will be able to hear all the stuff that gets put into the regular podcast that Jared edits. That's right. Basically, it's just bump in, bump out. That's what you get at the moment. But we'll do more if we have more of the opportunity. We want to bring up the quality of the show, and that's when we say that we want donations, the whole purpose is to put that back into the show. Yeah, that's right. We don't take a celery for this. No, we're kind of working. So we've been kind of saving so that we can do something of this nature to do that. So that's what we're currently investigating, and we'll go from there. I think a lot of the time you can do that sort of stuff with the broadcasting software that Twitch folks use. Yes, I've been told that. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do a lot of that. Particularly, that works okay if you're in the same place together. Yes. But if you're trying to do things remotely like we are across the world, it makes it really difficult to actually set up, I think. If anyone's listening out there that has tips about that and actually does a distributed recording or session with this tooling, come and get in touch with us and give us some tips. Yeah, if you can explain it in nice, easy layman's terms, that's good. It's a simple 27-step process to get your recording. you know you lost it you lost us at step one uh yeah feel free to drop us an email at blah blah blockade at gmail.com um other impressions of of the interview that we had with mel you got any that uh stand out um just the the way that their studio operates and the fact that they like just when he was talking about the way that they prefer to actually develop things they don't like to be in constant crush like TGA was with their DLC. They actually prefer to have that space in between releases and actually structure things in a way that focuses on quality rather than delivery timelines. And like you said, if we're filling the crush, we hire more people. Yeah. It's like, oh, who would have thought? I mean, I hate to say it, but it's that old axiom. It takes money to make money. Make money. It does, really. And I think that that was one of the things that was always kind of like, oh, come on, Firesight. Whereas if they were almost afraid, it seems, to pull the trigger, to reach that next level because it was, hey, we've been functioning in a manner that guarantees our doors stay open. And there's a bit of risk, obviously, with stepping beyond and maybe putting yourself out there. And I don't think that they were ever wanting to put themselves out there. and I mean, truth be told, now because they've lost the license it's probably a good thing that they didn't but who's to say they couldn't have retained the license had they hired more people and invested again over and reinvested and reinvested Yes Zen fortunately since they weren't dependent upon the license, they were dependent upon their own creations was able to take those steps and ramp up gradually to where they are now so that it is a matter of, hey, if we need to hire more people, we hire more people. Our doors are going to stay open. Yeah. You know. And that's really good. They've got a pipeline, and it's not just pinball. They've got other properties that they're actually supporting. They're very good properties. So, you know, they're not going all in on black, which I think is a little bit what Farsight fell into. Yeah. So, no, you're right. it is interesting about the structure of their company and how they kind of operate and facilitate with that. I was actually thinking of bringing this up, and this was to do with Farsight, and I think probably some of the comments that we made about on mobile, the Big Buck Hunter and Wonelly games that we played. I actually read in one of the, I think it was in the graphics or art thread on Digital Pinball Fans. Oh, the Polycount. the poly count so on pc it's a 200 000 poly count on mobile it's 55 000 yeah so there would be the reason why mobile looks well crap and really we only have ourselves to blame for that because well we don't have well i guess we're not to blame but it is mobile and we're playing on mobile so therefore mobile doesn't have the the polys and i actually made the comment saying so you're telling a quarter of the polys are available on mobile. It's a one of the thing isn't square. Like with that drop in triangles, it's just ridiculous. I don't know how they make it look the way they make it look. Well, you realize that there's a, you know, some people are like, I don't understand how come I'm not able to just, you know, set the angle however I want it to be set. Well, in the case of mobile, I'm sure there's a lot being hidden. don't look if you look just as slightly across the corner you'd see a world of ugly so or basically a carpet you'd basically see carpet because they don't have to have the wood there which is polys right so oh geez yeah there'd be so many shortcuts and i think um rob when he was doing some of the edits he kind of lifted the the um the veil on some of that stuff as well because he was saying i would do this angle you could see all sorts of horrible things because it's an angle that players aren't supposed to see so if you're free cameraing this you'd be able to see all the grossness underneath the um curtain no doubt about that what is next that's i think the biggest question um you know what is it going to be belly next is it going to be, well, it probably will be belly, and it probably will be a pack, I would think. And I think, is it going to be a three-pack or a four-pack? I'm not quite sure. Somewhere Mel said a four-pack, but it could be a three-pack. Who knows? If it's the belly, and assuming it's a four-pack, A, I'm going to say it's what was dropped in the manuals, and B, I would probably, if I had to guess, I would go Circus Voltaire, Attack from Mars, maybe Champion Pub Black Rose yeah those would be good, I'd be happy with those they're unlicensed so you could go forward with those yeah you could pretty easily go through with those without any trouble and you know it would be pretty nice to see a strobe multiball in AFM what about the discussion to do with Pimble 2000 I was interested in this discussion Yeah, we didn't touch upon it, did we? No, we didn't. And it's interesting to bring it up because my feelings about it are kind of mixed, if that's one way of putting it. So the thing about Pinball 2000 is that its big claim to fame was that it basically brought in 3D elements into the game. Yes. Into the game of Pinball. and it's essentially that, I forget the effect that they call it, but it's... It's not a hologram. It's basically what happens with a teleprompter. You've got a mirror at 50 degrees. It's a 50-degree mirror. It gets projected down on there, and then you see, and your ball is appearing to go through things. It's the same effect that they use on Ghostbusters Premium and LE. Yeah, but... But so the thing that is interesting about... bringing pinball 2000 into zen so first of all yes i think it would be great if they did it but there's some interesting points to sort of dwell on i think and that is that if they're going to do it how would they switch between pinball 2000 traditional and pinball 2000 zen and that's the suck part because people are going to want the traditional version i personally am like screw it who wants it i think i actually think i would want the original version because that is it's interesting in and of itself because with the lighting right and the view perspective right it would look really good if they did it right yeah you know the here's the one thing you don't actually have to duplicate the mirror aspect right you can do the animation directly on the table you know on that fake pane of glass you don't see the pane of glass yeah you just sort superimpose the bubbles like the it's in the case of you know the the last jedi um or not the last jedi the phantom menace like you'd see jar jar beans jumping around like an idiot right but actually on the bits of the play field like he would be superimposed in the correct areas where he was with the screen um or the screen effect of projection the top-down projection but it would just be he would be rendered as a 3d model at that point yeah is that what you're saying so you'd say that yeah i think that's fine but the thing about the the game is that up the back of the playfield there you got some really interesting light effects because everything was really dim yeah the back of the playfield and so replicating that dimness and that sort of almost cinema quality to the back of the play field is something that I'd be probably keen to maintain but then you think about it you know when you go from classic mode to zen mode and you actually superimpose all the stuff over the top like all the digital stuff yeah you know how would you actually gracefully do that there'd be a lot of stuff you're taking away when you do that swipe. You know what would be interesting? For once you'd see what the back of the playfield actually looks like. There's not a lot to see. There's not a lot to see. But there's where they could do full environment effect. They could actually basically make that back of the playfield better themed than it is because it was deliberately lo-fi and deliberately sparse because they knew they had to project all the stuff. Exactly. They could actually make it a lot better than it is. And there, here we go again, what I was saying with okay, you got the Star Wars license for that, right? Would it appear in the Williams? Would it appear in the Williams? Yeah. I personally would put it with Star Wars. I wouldn't bother putting it in with the Williams. Yeah. Yeah, it's so hard. It's so hard to work out where they'd actually ship these things now. I mean it's a license it's a Star Wars license but it's not yeah it's both places let's put it everywhere just to have all these Williams tables scattered far and wide throughout the collection makes it look like there's more tables than there are you could have essentially five tables for one because they're all scattered far and wide but you think about it though as a I guess this is the question right as a consumer would you actually like you know that they're Williams table because they might have a little W or belly or something like that on the, on the table tile. But, you know, having it aligned with the, uh, the franchise, it's actually seems to make sense to me because you want to put it there and play a Star Wars table. Where are you going to look? Star Wars. So the Star Wars column. So having it in there does actually make sense. But on the same hand, if you want to put it in the Williams column, because that way you know that, Oh, Hey, classic mode is going to play a whole hell of a lot different than single player mode. Yeah. That's true. You know what? Not our problem to solve. Not our problem to solve. We can just bring up some ideas that they'll probably already have a plan for anyhow. Let's be serious. So speaking of plans, and this goes back to our then cabinet discussion, I am seriously thinking, for those that saw it on Twitter or basically there's this guy, Jeremy Williams. And he after playing pinball effects to VR was like, oh, there's got to be something better than just holding a controller in your hand. So he went ahead and designed a as wide as a pinball table, but only I think it's 10 inches deep, 8 or 10 inches deep cabinet. Just wide enough to put your hands on So with flippers on the side, plunger button on the front so that he could play it standing up and feel like he was at a cabinet while playing VR. Posted the plans, went ahead and made another version out of wood, and it just hooks up via USB. It's not exclusively for VR. It would work just fine because your computer recognizes it as a controller once you have it mapped correctly. So I started thinking about it, and I was like, you know, if I want that cabinet experience, I'm not going to build a virtual cabinet. No. A, it's going to cost me way, way, way, way, way too much money. And B, then I'd have to go out the garage with all my other machines, and I want to be able to sit at my desk and just go, hey, I feel like a game of pinball. So I'm seriously thinking of building one of these. I've only got about half the funds for it right now. And basically I need about another hundred bucks to, to be able to, to do it. And, but my friend, he's got a CNC machine so he can do precision cuts on the wood. He's got a 3d printer so he can do all the plastics that need to get purchased. Um, and he's really good with, he's built his controllers for himself previously too. So he, he's got the know-how. Um, I'll certainly go and assist and learn, but I'm like, I want to build this, and then I can actually, I guess it's got an accelerometer in it. For nudge purposes, they tore apart a 360 controller and put the rumble features on the bottom of it so you can feel the feedback. He came up with an ingenious way of putting a real plunger on the machine to be able to use that. And then I started thinking, ooh, but how could you make it even better? Well, what if you put a coin door in the front? just for the look so that it looks like the front of an actual cabinet. And a lot of coin doors had a start button right there so you could even activate that as your button. You could. And then, well, what else is, because his is just made out of wood, and obviously if you got your hands on it, it's going to feel like wood, right? Yeah. Well, so what if you put aluminum around the edges and made it feel like the aluminum that encases a machine. What if you put a lock bar on the front? Carved it out so that you have a lock bar on the front because you're making it as wide as an actual pinball machine. Why don't you just cut the front of a pinball machine and be done with it? No, we're not going to do that. Why don't you just cut the first eight inches off the front of the pinball machine and be done with it? And then I was thinking, I was like, hey, but okay, so fine, you got the metal on the rails. You got the correct buttons. It's still not going to feel exactly like a pinball machine. because you got to have your hands on glass. And so he was like, well, so you get two little rectangles of glass and you put those on either corner and you got to feel. So that's what I'm thinking. I'm like, I want to really have this feel like it. So here's my question to you, the listeners. Do you have any pinball legs that are just kind of rusted out and you have no intention of ever using again? Care to donate? Do you have an old coin door that again is non I don need it to function I just looking purely for looks let us know it needs to be a coin door it doesn even need to have coin mix or anything on it no just a coin door um you got a plunger mechanism that is again i not looking for anything polished or whatever shoot if it's if it's that ugly i'll just spray paint it black and be done with it you know and you're not talking about like one of those swanky digital plungers. You're just talking about a regular pinball plunger. Regular pinball plunger. I mean, I can buy this stuff on Marco Supplies or whatever, but the point is I want to do this on the cheap. I want to really... This is a prototype. To see if it's something you want to do. And here's the beautiful thing, folks. If I do this and it functions well and works well, my buddy will have all the files in his computer. Seeing this stuff out again is not a problem. so it would be one of those things that maybe we could work something out for you but it's all about building that first one and there's plenty of people that again you can look up all you have to do is look up Pinsim type in Pinsim and Google all the articles will pop up the instructions on how to build it yourself if you want to build it yourself, have at it. But there's plenty of people out there that either don't have the supplies, don't have the means, or just don't have the know-how to do one or all portions of this, in which case it would be nice if it was just readily available. So anyway, that's what my thought process is. I'm kind of trying to gauge. I'm surprised that somewhere like Highway Games doesn't make something like this in Australia. Well, this is what we asked Mel about, you know, where I mentioned Red Octane, and then he was like, oh, yeah, I used to work at Red Octane. I was like, oh, my God, come on. Yeah, exactly. This is all we're asking for, people. If Guitar Hero and Rock Band could put out a full drum kit and keep the price under $130, there's no reason why this could happen. Just shut up and take my money and make one. And Mel even made a point about saying how he said that when they do, they were thinking about doing a retail version of the game, of Williams. But if they do retail, they want to make it something special, right? Yeah. That there's something unique about it. It needs to be one of those, like, you know, packages with all the things in it, right? And that's what I'm saying. when you've got 20 or so tables already out and you now it's time to put out a disc with 20 or so tables if you packaged it with a pins you know an actual controller box yeah screw your own legs on too boom money yeah i need the bank um things i have to consider though like with the with the way this thing is constructed it's only one flipper button on each side well what happens when Zen makes the Shadow? What happens when they make Black Knight and we need Magna Save? Or World Cup Soccer and we need Magna Save? I'm going to have to have two buttons on there. What about when playing a standard Zen game and there's a Magna Save? You do that by activating the A button on your controller. It's not activating a flipper. Farsight had that stuff with the trigger flippers. Zen didn't go the trigger flipper route they just went with using one of the control buttons so it's figuring out where to map that to do you have it near your finger or do you have it just slap the top of the control box I think you're breaking the illusion if you do that though you expect it particularly if you're in sim mode your fingers are like down the side of the cabinet you need the there Yeah. Yeah. But it's also, I'm thinking about what about pushing shift for the getaway? If I only have a standard plunger, I'm going to need another button, but when that button is up on top, you could, you could always put that button in the center like Stern has for the, you know, the, uh, yeah, the punch it and the punch it. Just make that the punch it, make it a punch it button. Don't even try and hide the fact that I've noticed. I've noticed that, um, in the getaway, when you're in video mode, you can only seem to gear up. You can't gear back down again. Yeah, there is no gear down. Yeah, so it's only gear up. So basically... Not that anybody geared down. Nobody ever geared down. No, you always gear up to like four. I think four is pretty much the maximum that I can go to before I start dying on it. The only time I've ever beaten is by going to five. Crazy enough. I went to five immediately. I didn't even wait. I was like, up into five. Go! Up into five. Yeah, just go left and right, left and right, left and right, dodge the cars. Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see if you get any takers to give you donor parts, particularly legs because they're sort of necessary. Yeah, but then there's also plenty of people have rusted out hulks of legs that they go, you know what, do I really want to sit here with a Brillo pad and scrub the bejesus out of these and they're never going to look all nice and chrome or I can spend the, you know, $22 per leg and buy nice shiny chrome and not have to worry about it. Whereas me, I'm like, I don't care how rusted it is, I'll spray it in bed liner and it'll look fine. I'll tell you for sure that I know exactly what's involved in getting legs that are rusted and crap back to something that does not suck. And it is non-trivial. You have to do a lot of mouse sanding on them to get them back up to... And I just ended up putting this Rust-Oleum silver rust inhibitor spray over the top. They actually look pretty good, but it was a pain to do. It really was. My buddy just goes, powder coat them. Yeah, powder coat them. Exactly. So that's why I'm like, yeah, I don't care what the – so long as they're not bent. Yeah. I don't want a door that looks like somebody punched it. Exactly. but you can just beat that out like you just if it's a door you just take all the hardware off and just bash it but if it's looking rusted and old and has you know that patina on it hey that's kind of cool you know what I can work with that I can make it you basically stand it back seal it in and you're done yeah I mean just seal it the way it looks right there and then and you know now you've got this cool looking box that looks like it's been around the block you know yeah exactly we'll see what happens so like I said folks if you have a line on that if you feel like donating any of that sort of thing. It'd be appreciated. And it'd be one of those things that, you know what, I'll fully document this. I might even put a video to this and give our YouTube channel something other to watch than the two of us. Tilt Cycle. There's an account on Instagram that I follow called Tilt Cycle. And this guy is just getting all manner of donated parts. He even gets donated playfields that he turns into art. So, yeah, Tilt Cycle might be someone to knock on the door. I mean, he's doing it for money, so he's actually turning these things around for money. But I think even he has parts that are unrecoverable, and he'll just junk. He'll just put them randomly somewhere and say, no, I don't want this. Go and pick it up. So, yeah, he might be one. Okay, last thing for this episode, and this happened a few weeks ago, and, of course, we've had things to talk about, not just boring BS that we pad our show with. But if you watch YouTube, you notice me and Jared, we hold these little bad boys in our fingers, which are the uh fidget cubes although none of us neither of us have the official ones by antsy which are truly called fidget cubes mine are both from this one i think is actually a proper antsy one is it a proper antsy i think so my white one here is uh called a stress cube and the bottom one here is the spinner cube which yeah i did the kickstarter for it in which i love those things awesome we play with these during the podcast because it does this strange thing with allowing you to not say um constantly weird odd trick but i use it all the time anyway i got an email from stress cube i was like what are they emailing me about it looks like somebody got a court order to apologize they more or less had to send out a notice that was saying um yes we recognized that ANSI Labs, creators of the Fidget Cube, had a patent that we pretty much stole the design from, and it doesn't matter that they never made a spinner cube that spins. The fact that it's a six-sided object with stress-like toys around it is now the copyright of ANSI Labs. That's theirs. It does anybody that produces something that looks square, and has toys on it is in direct violation of anti-labs. And so I imagine that they had to send that out to all of their former customers. As part of the make good for their bridge. Exactly. A way to not have to pay a ridiculous fine. They probably started to pay a fine, but just not a ridiculous fine. Not a ridiculous fine, exactly. So it was one of those things where I was curious because after the Kickstarter, and the Kickstarter went fine, a lot of people kicked in. There was no issues with me getting my spinner cube. It came on time. and then I went on to the website to just, I wanted to comment and there was no website. It was gone. I was like, that's rather odd. Now I know. Some Chinese manufacturers probably already knocked off their design and now have got them on eBay, so you'd be fine if you need to get another one. Unfortunately, I don't need to get another one and I figured out how to properly service this one, which if you go through all of our YouTube videos, you'll actually find that video. find. Yeah, that's right. The fact that you have to service a stress cube is ridiculous, but look, whatever. Hey, some people, that's how they fight stress, by tearing apart things. Yeah, that's right. They take down things. Exactly. Fortunately, I had already taken apart the stress cube one time to try and figure out how it worked, and I didn't take it apart properly the first time, so I kind of ruined a couple of things, but then I learned in the process. So when the stress spinner came out, or the fidget spinner came out, it was no worries. I was able to take it about without damaging anything and found out how well constructed it is compared to the stress cube, which was built out of junk. Oh, it's real simple. You pop off the spinny dial. You pop that off. You'll notice some screws. Once you start unscrewing those, other screws are revealed, and eventually the whole thing splits apart. So this part, the little spinny zip-zip, is the... That is the keystone to the whole thing. That is the hidden entryway, yes. Alright, the back door. The only door, but... Which cracks me up, because there was a video of some guys wanting to... It was this dad and his kid wanting to know how they were constructed, and they took a chisel and a sledgehammer to it, basically, to crack into it, and I was like, brute force really you didn't think to figure out a way that how this opens up but okay whatever whatever you know people like to watch uh iphones get shot with bullets too when they first get released so yeah because i don't know why because people are weird yeah yeah um but we appreciate the weirdness that is pinball fans so again thanks folks for really for these past couple of podcasts have garnered us some rather large numbers that we really appreciate, and we hope that you're sticking around, even when we don't have interviews and such. However, we are going to have an interview, not next week. I think we're going to be taking next week off because Jared's going to be uptown. Yes, I am. But possibly the following week, we're going to have Mike Lindsay from Farsight to talk about Stern Pinball Arcade VR. Oh, that would be awesome. I'm trying to arrange to get me a preview on a friend who has a VR headset so that I can actually talk with some knowledge, that would be handy right? I should probably see, we've got two of them at work so we've actually got two Oculus Vs at work oh there you go, so maybe you'll be able to maybe both of us will be able to come in with knowledge I should actually get it installed the problem is I'm going to have to log out of somebody else's account and log into mine on the box but that's fine I should definitely do that so anyway that'll be coming up in I can't guarantee it's two weeks from now because I haven't actually hammered down when but it's going to be soon we'll have Mike in and we'll be able to talk to him and that should be an interesting conversation too just somewhat we haven't talked to him since all this went down so that'll be fun and hey you know what else folks because seriously I want to we're looking to improve things around here God forbid, we have viewers, maybe we should give them something interesting to look at. Does anybody know how to spruce up what this YouTube version of things is? Let us know. What would you like to see on YouTube, essentially? If you want to see some opening pizzazz... Let us know what the pizzazz is. And then let us know how to do it. if it's as simple as us making a video that we can drop in before we actually go live that's we can do that um but if you want yeah just let us know because we we really up until you know all the zen news dropped really the youtube channel was there for us to actually get the audio so we could produce a podcast and that was literally all it was for and then you guys started subscribing and viewing and we went damn okay well this is a thing now so let's perhaps do something about this that makes it look a little bit less like a video that we use just to get the audio from exactly exactly so yeah look folks we're looking for all sorts of manner if you if you have ways if you know software there's uh uh you know won't break the bank that is easy to use That's actually easy to use, which is the biggest thing that I've found. I saw this thing on Amazon. I texted it to Jared to go, can we get this? It was this little box, and it's got 15 LCD screens on it. They're all programmable. All you have to do is just push the button, and it'll do audio drops. It'll do video drops. It'll do whatever you want, basically. I was like, yeah, can we get that? It's only $200. needs more donations Chris that's a heck of a lot more donations but shoot I'm looking at just is there a way of making it so that my keyboard you know I just push a button on the keyboard and it magically happens this is territory that I'm unfamiliar with so if any of you know this territory and know software that is easy to use and relatively inexpensive to get and works with the whole YouTube, Google experience. Please, we're easy to get a hold of. Email us, blahblahblockade at gmail.com. Go ahead and fire us off a message on Twitter, either at Blockade, or you can contact us directly at ShutYourTraps or at JaredMorgs. Visit our website, for God's sake, please do, because awesome things are always showing up on there regarding this actual podcast, because then links and pictures and stuff. It kind of adds a visual touch for you that those that you are not using YouTube. Go to blockhatepinball.com slash episodes and you'll find all that. Maybe I should start embedding the YouTube video into the podcast. Oh, don't get stupid. It's like I'll close the loop and just have everything linking to everything. I'm trying to make it so you don't have as much work to do with editing everything together, Jared, and you're adding more. Well, dropping a link into a video isn't that hard. That's true. All right, folks. People who want to watch can watch. People who want to listen can listen. That's right. That's all we got for you this week. And I know it's not as exciting as it has been, but we can't make it. Believe me, we kind of were like, okay, we can take a breather for once. We don't have to worry about is this embargoed or not. It was just really hard. we literally for this is the first time in weeks we've been able to talk about whatever the hell we want without censoring ourselves yeah exactly it feels good yeah all right well until then uh folks thanks for listening we'll talk again um in two weeks time bye-bye wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter bugs Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. Wizardamusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization. Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.