BlahCade Pinball Podcast this is the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan well hey there Hey there Heidi, ho there Yeah, hello This is not the This is not what we were hoping to be doing Well, you know Well, we like doing the episodes But we weren't expecting quite to go live This quickly But it seems to be the recurring thing November and December Is the month of back to backs Well, that's actually not what I mean I meant we were hoping that we were going to have a guest oh yes we were yes so I had to scramble and do something last week which was me posting the 22 table Gottliebs that are going to be on the ad games unit just because I felt like let's put something out and let's actually do some gameplay video yeah gameplay video and we were hoping hoping that maybe the delay of not being able to line it up last week with Mel, that maybe by now we would have a new lineup. Still not the case. We're going to get into that in a little bit. We'll have to just pin that. Yes, we'll pin that. Exactly. But otherwise, you know, holidays are coming. Yay. Oh, yeah. Just put up a tree today. Oh, really? kim my wife had put up a tree late november which is you know what this year sucks let's have christmas now and i need some christmas tree i need something to make this year not suck yeah no it uh it's one of those things we don't like putting it up until december yeah and then based on when the weekend hit it was like i don't want to do it this weekend so then it fell onto this now. Well, you know, 13th of December or 12th of December or whenever you put it up a couple days ago, that's reasonable. Like, it's December. We've put it up later. Oh, really? Like, just in time for Santa to put those little presents under the tree. Yep. That has happened. There was one year where we got the tree up and I put the lights on and just kind of went, yeah let's not put up the ornaments let's just you know i think the there's you can buy leds now that are that good that they will actually do patterns like led patterns going up the tree like i've seen them on you know all the promoted ads that i get on instagram now um and uh these look pretty good man i don't think you need a lot of ornaments if you have these things running on your tree. My problem is that, and I've got to do it again. I've got all the lights up except for the very top because I ran out of strands. Why do I run out of strands? Because every single year, all my lights are working. I pack them up. I put them in the box. The next year, I pull them out of the box. I plug them in and half the lights are out. And I don't understand why. What happened? Last year, I got silly about it and actually checked all the bulbs to try and make, because literally, I think half my strands were only partially working. And I was like, okay, this is dumb. And some of them, I know for a fact, were the ones that I'd bought the previous year. That's really weird. It's not like you're mistreating or tangling, because if you're anything like me, you'd be putting them very carefully back in a very organized way in a box. I make a loop, and then I put them in a box. But I'm not just crunching them and dumping them in. And just dumping them in. So they're a big rat's nest, basically. Right. No, there's... A degree of method to your madness. Yes. Yes. I agree. But that's why I'm saying I don't understand what happens in that time period. And the thing is, when I went and checked the bulbs, there weren't that many that were dead. And I would replace them with real ones, and still the light strand wouldn't... And so it's like something in the wire. I don't know. Anyway. I just get LED ones. Are yours LED or incandescent? Yeah, mine are LED. Mine are LED. But as is the case of every year, I need to go out and buy yet another strand. Do you have a big tree? I guess big is hard to define. How big is your tree in height? I believe it is six and a half feet. Right, okay. That sounds about the size of ours because we've got high ceilings here. We've got nine-foot ceilings. So I think that's about the size of ours. and we've got a, I think a 200 strand light string. It's funny, like Kim is in charge of the decorations. I'm not really super Christmassy when it comes to decorations and stuff like that. I enjoy looking at them, but I have no interest in setting them up at all. So like I will just, I will admire the tree. I go, that looks really nice, but yeah, don't involve me in setting it up because it just makes me cranky. I really am the grinch when it comes to that sort of thing. so this year it's just white white lights that don't blink they just stay on, they're just really basic but last couple of other years we had like lights that are like full on multi-coloured and they strobe and we found that the blue ones they actually made the place look like a shooting gallery as in a drug shooting gallery it was like they were that blue that you could have a blue light disco in there. Yeah. And it was like all your shirts would glow, you know. Like this shirt would be like super like glowy. Nice. And it was so, like the strobing of the lights was so intense. It was like sitting in the middle of a pinball machine during multiball. Like it was so bright. And we just said, no, we can't have that this year again. Like it's too intense. Like the random motors is too intense. yeah so uh hey merry christmas all and happy hanukkah that's right because this may be the last episode before christmas official official episode yeah yeah so i've got a plan to entertain you all and kind of entertain myself and let jared off the hook for if he needs a weekend off from now and then, because he does. Because I do. Let me explain the reason why Chris is having to do this. So, Netherworld, for the first time all year, is running a Little Monsters event, and the Little Monsters event is a chance for all the kids to go along to Netherworld, who normally could not go to Netherworld because they're too young, to go there before the pub opens and get a bag of tokens and go to Blips and Chits and go crazy and have fun. so uh yeah i they've been pestering me for ages oh when is the next little monsters on can we go and i said well now's your chance let's go do it and school holidays so that's why next sunday is no can do for recording so what are you going to do chris so here's the plan because apparently people like watching gameplay videos which is i don't know it's a mystery to me i enjoy playing I'm not much for watching. But I've now done this a few times, and each time those videos have gotten quite a lot of views. So I thought I would start a new series of play here. We're going to call this 10-Minute Pinball. And what it will be is I will play one particular table for 10 minutes. And my current idea is that it's just what is the high score? I can get within that 10 minutes. If I'm out within three minutes, I start it back up again and try, or if I'm just blazing on the table, I stop right at 10 minutes, and that'll be it. That'll be my high score. My question becomes, though, a factor of, should I have different rules? You know, should it be a thing where, hey, I only get one chance at this? Can I, if I'm playing on FX3, can I use upgrades? and the wizard upgrade and the passive upgrades, or do I only have to play it straight? Obviously, this can vary and change, and I think I will kind of leave it up to the audience as to what that's going to be. The way I'll do this, though, is in one sitting, I'll probably do five different tables, but they're all going to be either five tables from Zen, five tables from tpa or five tables from zacharia because it's really hard to switch between programs and still have the broadcast feeding yeah it is yeah so you need to like pick pick your um pick your program yeah so right so it'll be uh pick the program and then within that pick five tables and i would like you the audience to determine what those are going to be and while you're... So it'll be... Post your five tables that you want me to play. Post them to our Twitter account, at Blockade. And whichever one gets the most likes, that'll probably be the one that I do. And if you want to create your own rules for me within that 10 minutes, I'd be fine with that. I would even be willing to, you know, put a piece of paper over my flippers on the screen if you want me to play blind pinball. Not that that would translate necessarily. Yeah, exactly, Tommy mode. You know what I reckon you should do? You should do shaky cam video demo mode and only play with one flipper. And all you can do is just play with one flipper. While holding the webcam? Yeah, that's right. Yep, that's how you play. That's how real people players play. That's right, that's right. Anyway, and then I will... when I do those, the five tables in a row, that will be live streaming like I did on the Gottlieb. Comments will be flowing up there for all to see and feel free to rag on me and entertain me while I'm doing this because I find that when I'm playing, I don't do so well at talking and playing at the same time. They both kind of suffer. Yeah. I think heavy narration while you're playing is really hard. It's really difficult. I think the odd reaction to what the ball's doing, like I see, I actually decided to watch a full stream of Rick and Morty that Deadflip did the other day just because I needed to understand how to actually get the wizard pin at Netherworld because they got a wizard pin that you need to get 20 million on that game. And that is not easy. So I went, how can I get this wizard pin? I need to watch Deadfoot playing it. And through doing that and watching him live stream, I find that he's very much the same. Like he doesn't tend to commentate a lot during a ball, but what he'll do is he will play a ball, and then when it drains, he'll then flick over to the comments and interact with the community that way. And then when he's finished doing that, he'll then switch back into gameplay again. And that works really well. That's a really nice balance. So that's the plan. That's what I'm proposing to do. I will do it. So obviously next week, Jared's already out, so I'll just log it in right now. On that Saturday, what is that, Saturday the 18th at 2 p.m. Pacific Standard, I'll be going live and playing Five Tables, and you guys can jump in and comment as well. If I don't see any comments throughout the week, which I know you guys in the pinball community sometimes are reticent to join in on community functions to determine these kind of things. I'll wind up picking some tables myself, but otherwise... I reckon you should pick a random set of rules out of a hat. Just have the hat ready to go, and just randomize it. Just randomize it? Yeah, I reckon. That would be pretty cool. All right. So, you know, if you don't want to pick the tables for me, maybe write some rules that you think I can throw into a random hat. anyway that's gonna make them really horrible for christmas please like make them horrible like you know have to just swap flippers around and stuff like that that'd be great how am i gonna swap flippers around if you just hold your control like that oh upside down yeah you use your pin controller man like use that thing sit behind you yeah that doesn't know that one i can't use it for streams because of how my cameras are set up and everything it's oh i've tried it's really difficult to it's really difficult yeah that just seems like a convenient excuse to me but anyway and then i will post the actual 10 minute clips i mean they're going to be a little bit longer but that's going to be the idea of each individual table that'll be you know many episodes all throughout the week so if you don't want to if you're not there for the live all of them in a row stream that's going to be the only time that you're going to be able to see that because as soon as i'm done recording that i'm taking that offline and chopping it up so that'll be the only square yeah so if you want to be part of the the full live long play experience that'll be the only way that you'll be able to do that otherwise you're just going to have to watch a bunch of the uh smaller bids which works in our favor is what we're doing yeah well that's right it's it's Definitely good. Yeah, so on the whole idea of the smaller bids thing, Chris, my lightning talk from Right the Docs 2020 is now up. So I decided, like, people coerced me into doing a lightning talk, which is like a five-minute talk, no preparation, just jump in and talk about something. Okay. And what I chose to talk about is exactly what you're doing with the videos and what we're, like, the show's experimenting with length and stuff like that because it really has resulted in much better viewing than longer episodes. The data proves it. Yeah, because basically, a little inside baseball for those that are just purely YouTube viewers and not content people, when it comes to viewership of any video, I mean, this is for pretty much anybody out there, you're happy if 30% to 40% of your video actually gets viewed. a more standard number is about 20 to 25% of your video actually getting viewed. It really is surprisingly low. Yeah, and what I found is with our mini episodes that we're probably getting close to 50% of the video. Which is massive. Yeah. The other interesting aspect is all of you, those subscribers, tend to watch our full-length episode, and like literally 60% of the viewers are subscribers when it comes to our full-length videos. And then you flip the coin over to our mini episodes and it's maybe 20% are subscribers and everybody else is non-subscribers. So getting there organically based on what YouTube is throwing them up. Yeah, so I mean there's all sorts of kind of wacky things at play but obviously there's an audience for all of it and that's what we're trying to appeal to is, you know, I myself personally have found that every day when I'm eating lunch or I don't know, if I'm just sitting, if I got a few minutes to kill in front of the TV or whatever, I'll throw on YouTube and try and find something. And I do find myself trending towards the shorter videos. So I get it. It's true. Like they're lunch break friendly and that's what people want these days. They don't want to sit through an hour. Like, even with the other podcasts I do, the Write the Docs podcast, we've had on numerous occasions people going, oh, geez, an hour is so long. But this is only an audio format podcast. It just pause it and come back to it Right Like video a bit different I get that And we started out as audio only and then we shifted into video and you adapt or whatever. But anyway, that's kind of the impetus and like Jared said, the data proves. Yeah, the data don't lie when it comes to that sort of thing. Alright, so some of you may have noticed that you're not going to have as merry a Christmas as you hoped for because your arcade one-up pinball cabinet will not be, in fact, showing up under the tree. In fact, you got a notice saying it ain't showing up until February, which is a right bummer. It's a massive turd under the Christmas tree, isn't it, really? It is, and there turns out to be a very good reason for that, and I'll just bring up this official post from Arcade1Up. Oops, that's the cargo ship that was delivering a lot of their product, and as you can see, it's tossed this way and that. It's got a few problems. I think someone didn't quite stack things right there. Well, it is a rather major storm. Here's another more dramatic picture. Domino's went toppling. I think they said they lost or damaged almost 2,000 containers. It's a chaos on that boat. You can see how much the containers are actually listing over to the left, how much cargo they lost. That back row, it's pretty much half of the back row is just over the side for it to topple like that. So if you were wondering why the delay, there's a pretty good reason. Yeah, it's not COVID. it's not accessibility to pass no it's literally the containers are now claimed by davy jones and he's really enjoying all those pinball machines that you ordered so that though means i don't know for a fact but it doesn't seem like the legends pinball is shipping before christmas no i don't think that i get the feeling again we don't know because no one talks to us but the Legends pinball was in a pre-order lottery phase. So that doesn't necessarily... I think they go into the lottery and then they allocate units. No one that I've heard in the AtGames community has yet received any shipping confirmation. So they're still in that, yeah, we're probably still building them phase, would be my guess. Please do correct us if someone else has other information available because we don't. Which means that of the four pinball cabs that were coming out this year, the two that everybody was most looking forward to aren't coming out in 2020. And we're not even 100% sure Wellplay is supposed to now come out December 15th, I believe is when we're shipping. But it's already been delayed one time. So we'll see if that happens. otherwise the one that has been actually shipping is the toy shock 12 and 1 that was the same one that was from last year that's right and you can go and order those now i believe i don't think you can actually pick them up in retail stores um like walmart or walmart but you can go and order them um and they will yeah and i just i just checked they're saying it was shipped by december 19th if you ordered it today on december 12th so so there you go if you are absolutely gagging for a digital pinball machine and you don't care, then you can go order a toy shock. I just really find it funny, though, that the two that were on everybody's least list aren't going to be the only ones available. Well, they're probably still on people's least list, but at least you can buy them. Right. So if you want something to tide you over until February or whenever, go out and get some Gottlieb action. I mean, you know, for the person who wants to buy a toy shock or a well-played, they're certainly the right price. Like, you can get a pinball experience for not many clams, but at the same time, they're not going to hold up well when these other cabinets come in. You're saying you might have buyer's remorse? Oh, just a little bit. Although, if you're a kid, you probably won't because you'll love it. And if, you know, we know that Toy Shock is aimed at the younger generation, so not us old people pinheads. So, you know, if you're a kid and you see that underneath the tree, and you, you know, I reckon you'd be pretty happy. Sure. Because you're not going to be getting a PS5 or Xbox S or whatever. Those are unobtainium. Those are still unobtainium. So you may as well get a pinball machine and have some fun. At least it's a video game. Right. Right. So anyway, just wanted to highlight and update everybody on that, what the situation was. Because I wanted to confirm, I didn't even, like when I first saw the post and somebody posted a picture of the ship, I was like, okay, is that just an excuse or is that really the deal? And then one of them actually posted it to their official website and went, okay, it's the real deal then. I saw it pretty early on in all of the channels, all the social media rooms. I went, okay, it could be the case. But yeah, you can't deny it now when it's officially announced. So then me and Jared were like, well, what the hell are we going to talk about? Because that's all just a bit depressing. And to be fair, this entire year has been. So we're done with this year. Right? We've had enough of it. It's time to say sayonara to 2020 and say, please don't let the door hit your butt on the way out. And why not make some crazy predictions about 2021? Sure. That sounds like a good idea. This is the lifeblood of blockade after all. So we should absolutely end the year potentially, officially on this note. It makes so much sense. Yes. So that's what we're going to do. Me and Jared are going to make our predictions for 2021 about pinball in general, digital pinball in general. We haven't discussed this with each other, what we're going to predict. We know two of the things. Yeah, just because we figured it was going to be close, we might overlap, and we didn't want to overlap necessarily. The other three, they're all off record. We're going to be surprising each other, I think. Yes. So that's what we're going to be doing. We're going to be making our pinball predictions for the year 2021. The first category is that which we are most confident about, that we're saying you can take this to the bank. And I'm going to go ahead and go first. And that is you can take this to the bank, folks. in 2021, I believe Zen will announce at least two licensed William tables coming out in 2021. I'm not saying two licensed packs, I'm just saying at least two licensed tables. Fully licensed DMD tables. That is my bold blockade guaranteed stamp. Ta-da! There you go. Lock it in, right? What do you think, Jared? Does that sound, I mean, a fair oh yeah i think i reckon you could absolutely take that to the bank there's going to be two licensed belly williams tables like you got to remember that like when when we say licensed like i had a like when i was going through this process i had to be really careful about what i picked um because so many of them are licensed so it's getting to the point with the belly williams tables that there's only a couple left that aren't actually license heavy um so they're gonna have to like switch into license mode this year for sure and with their recent acquisition um they're gonna have the money to do it yep so you know that i think your prediction is very sound and it will absolutely happen okay so jared what is your prediction that we can take to the bank okay i think in 2021 zen will release at least two zen original dlc packages based on pop culture franchises are you saying beyond mandalorian that has already been announced um yes yeah i mean yeah okay yeah i think so we know there's gonna be mandalorian but we don't know if there's gonna be others i'm predicting there will be others based on that and there's also going to be one more. Okay. Yeah. So there you go. There we go. All right. Sounds reasonable enough. Jared, we're going to let you take the next one to start off, too. These are probably going to happen in 2021, but don't hold us to it. It's just we have a hunch this kind of thing might happen. So, Jared, why don't you take it away on that one? Okay. So my number two relates to cabinets, And I think in 2021, iCade 1UP will offer an upgrade PCB for the first wave customers to upgrade their cabinets they're receiving in February to Wi-Fi supported. Okay. It will probably be next Christmas, but I think they will. Okay. So this is the bold prediction Jared made a little while ago. Well, no, your bold prediction was that there was also going to be a second screen. Yeah, that was a real bold prediction. That was a real bold prediction. But this is your more realistic, probably happening prediction. I think it's plausible, given that we know that they're already considering Wave 2. And I think that things will move faster than we were originally predicting. Interestingly enough, mine is somewhat similar, but we diverge. So we're going to see, potentially, who is right on this. because I am predicting that 1UP and Zen, they're going to put out a Jurassic Park slash Universal Pinball, Universal Studio cabinet. So it'll be three Jurassic Park tables, plus Back to the Future, Jaws, and E.T. Oh, yeah. That'll be a pretty... And some fillers. And probably some fillers, but it'll be, I believe, a Jurassic Park-themed cab. however i do not believe that there is going to be any change to the hardware specs from what the three that have been announced are going to be and the only change that will actually happen if at all will be that with the star wars and marvel cabs that you'll be able to purchase and load onto the table the remaining titles that are out for those two franchises, and that's it. If you have the Attack from Mars one, nope, it's just going to be those ten. And I think that by 2021 holiday you're going to have those four cabs, they're all going to be essentially wave one, no Wi-Fi, no upgrades whatsoever. That's my prediction. And then based on what they released this year then you're going to have wave two with potentially like other stuff on it like maybe the backbox maybe like wi-fi right that i'm just saying that's not going to be in 2021 that's my prediction i think that's probably given how disruptive 2021 has been you mean 2020 uh your 2020 has been i think that's probably fair to say i think they'll want to really test the market with the ones they've got out, and experiment with the hardware and see what they can actually work out, and then plan out, yeah, 2022's line of cabinets based on that. Because as a, not an addendum, an addition to this prediction, I don't think AtGames is going to be changing a thing about their Legends Pinball in 2021. I don't think so either. So I literally think that everything you're seeing released now is going to be the exact same thing through all of 2021. You're not going to see any differences. And I believe that even goes to Well Played and Toy Shock. I don't think we're seeing that Wave 2 from Toy Shock. Oh, no. I think they unfortunately did in the water with Wave 2. So there is an extra prediction, but that's just wild speculation. Moving on to number three. I'll take this one first. Number three for our predictions of 2021. one uh these would fall into the hey that'd be nice but come on it's not really you know it's we're kind of stepping out on a limb here and then jared has no idea what my prediction here is and this is it yeah i predict that zen licenses from planetary pinball the williams approved updated code that they are coming out with for junkyard creature and roadshow that's my it would be really nice but i doubt that's going to happen yeah so you're saying that they would actually put that new code into their current builds for those tables correct as an option uh it would be in a it would be you would have two two choices of of play basically do you want to play with the new code or do you want to play with the classic code i'm trying to think like with the planetary pinball ones. I'm trying to remember if they're going to be radically different rule sets to the originals, or whether there's going to be more bug fix and minor improvements. I believe it's bug fixes. I know, like, with Junkyard, it literally makes it so that the shoot the dog, if you chase the dog or shoot the dog, it only happens, like, once per game. Oh, good. That's actually an improvement right there. Right. because it's just a terrible mode. So, I mean, I think it's changes of that nature, things that would probably make the tables a little more fun competitively. So I don't think it's radical rule changes at all. And these are approved by Williams. So it's not just some scattershot fringe code. This has actually gotten the thumbs up. Yeah, you can actually, down here in Australia, there's already a retailer selling the ROMs. So you can buy fresh ROMs, straight into your machine, your job's done. Yes. But, and again, would Zen do it? I don't know. They've been made aware. I think they're already kind of going, yeah, that would be nice themselves. So anyway, that's where I come down. Jared, what is your number? What is your would be nice, but come on. Well, look, would be nice, but, you know, come on. Zen Studios will announce in 2021 that they have partnered with Jersey Jack to reproduce their earlier, earlier out-of-production titles in a new standalone pinball platform. I say earlier because Wizard of Oz and what's the other one? Wizard of Oz. Dialed in Hobbit. That era is, I think, possible to do. I think something to the order of Guns N' Roses is 100% off your rocker crazy to do at this stage but I think that it would be nice but come on it's probably not going to happen but wouldn't it be nice the only reason why I I really potentially think that that's going to be difficult is you need the second monitor and there's not enough real estate on a single monitor to have the whole pinball table and then that whole back glass playing at the same time that is definitely a technical concern like they're like they would have to radically rethink how that monitor worked yeah um because it is so integral to the game you have so much stuff up on that second monitor they really have utilized it to maximum effect um so yeah that's that's my yeah probably not Alrighty Well while you at it we going to move on to our fourth prediction for what going to happen in 2021 That fourth prediction is under the category of well that just silly talk I've got one for you. It falls under that category. Yes. So please, Jared, inform me. What's just plain silly talk? Arcade went up the side that given importing product to regions outside the US costs so much, they produce an all-in-one arcade and pinball controller accessory, quite similar to the one that's behind you there, Chris. then they partner with software partners like zen and someone else to produce the arcade one-up vr games room with virtual creations of all their arcade caps and pinball caps wow that's and this is all going to happen in 2021 no they're going to announce this in 2020 oh the announcement will be 2020 yeah they're going to be able to do this in 2021 it takes a lot of a lot of engineering but you know they're going to start promoting this probably about i don't know midway like quarter two quarter three um in 2021 and it's gonna think of it you know like in animal crossing people setting up their virtual arcades well think of it a little bit like animal crossing but for arcade one-up games you're gonna have like a a virtual room that you can walk through walk up to a game and then given that quest 2 has hands mode you can actually see your hands in front of you and interacting your hands will actually be on the controller you'll be able to see yourself pushing the buttons and stuff like that so it's going to be less less of a jarring thing where you don't see your hands in the in in context of where you are in the game so it will mean that you know i think i predict in this silly talk prediction that each cabinet that you buy in the game will be a premium cost like 25 bucks and probably 50 bucks for pinball but by doing this if you have a small house you can amass a huge collection of games for about the cost of one cabinet's rrp yeah that's just silly talk that's a silly joke right it's great it's fantastic but it's silly talk all right let's see how you uh how you what do you think of mine uh my that's just silly talk prediction for 2021 magic pixel makers of zachary pinball magic pixel buys the license for the entire got lead catalog as well as spooky pinballs catalog with the help of at games basically helping to finance them so that AtGames has all these. And in the process, they just toss Farsight aside like yesterday's trash, AtGames does, and fully throws their support behind Magic Pixel. Ooh, that's... I don't know if that's silly talk or not, Chris. But who would they get to develop? Who would they get to develop the Spooky Pimple games? That would be Magic Pixel. Magic Pixel takes over all that. Magic Pixel does their own version of Gottlieb and would also have Spooky Pinball as they would be doing the exact same thing, translating all their tables digitally. That would be silly talk, but also excellent. I know because we've talked many a time about how we think that Magic Pixel would be perfect for the Gottlieb license. Yeah. That they would do it justice. They would absolutely wring every single last cent out of that license like they've done with Zachariah, and that would result in some pretty cool stuff. And there are hundreds of Gottlieb machines. Yeah, EMs that they could actually go and completely, take the profile layouts and the stuff on them and rethink them. It would just be... It would make Gottlieb's relevant again in this market if they did it. But it's silly talk. It's silly talk. It's silly talk. Unless, of course, AdGames helps finance it for Magic Pixel. Magic Pixel are now essentially... They would become, as part of the silly talk discussion, the principal pinball developer for their platform. Correct. Correct. It actually makes more sense than silly, but I think that would be a good outcome. All right. Now then, we come to our final prediction here. This is our you're just playing off your freaking rocker predictions. Jared, do you want me to go first or do you want to take this? Yeah, look, I'll go first in this one. Okay. So you've got to be off your freaking rocker if you think Stern Pinball realises they need to go all in on virtual pinball and repurpose their pin range and their pin range format as a digital pinball offering on a network connected 40 inch cabinet with a live backbox. They announced Farsight as a content partner who co-announced a brand new pinball engine based on hybrid visual pinball X technology. There you go. How about that? How about that? Okay, break that down for me a little bit, Jared. Sure. Yeah, let's do that, shall we? Okay. So, first off, you're saying Stern would take their $2,000 home pin thing that they've got, right? And they're going to convert that to digital. Is that what I'm hearing? Basically, yeah. So they're going to convert all of the different variant tables that they released on the pin range. That's like Transformers, Spider-Man, Star Wars. And they're going to make each one of those tables available as a digital pinball offering. Okay. So that's part one. Yeah, that's part one. Part two is they would partner with Farsight to make this a reality. Yeah. Because, you know, Farsight's pedigree with Stern Pinball. Right. which is silly and what is this other what's this platform that you're talking about so Farsight basically throw out their current pinball engine which they should have done 10 years ago and co-announced that their brand new pinball engine to support the Stern the pin range digital the pin range is based on a hybrid visual pinball X technology so So they're going to basically buy Visual Pinball X to license on these cabinets and make some tweaks to it so it's super unique just for Stern and use their physics model to basically play the pinball on these cabinets. There you go. Alrighty. You said you wanted to be off the freaking rocket. I'd deliver it. Okay. What about you, Chris? interestingly enough I'm kind of thinking well not necessarily thinking the same direction but just watch this I'm saying that Stern signs a deal with Zen to bring all of their spike two tables into the digital realm but they will be exclusively for arcade one up cabs and the price for each of these will only have one title on the cab and it'll be 800 bucks oh that's very interesting so all of those tables that use the video screen now that uh stern has been doing so it's that larger screen that would be up on your your backbox that's all the spike 2 stuff um but it would be the current then stern items rather than going terribly older. And yeah, but you'd only get that one title. So it's kind of like what you're saying with the pin. Yeah. That's that idea, but now at a price point that's a little more reasonable. Yeah. So that's kind of funny that our Off Your Freaking Rockers are relatively in the same realm. That's because we're both quite crazy. And this proves it. I think yours is very interesting to explore, though, because, you know, if you... Like, looking at the current price point of the RK1 at Pinball and looking at, you know, what you would expect the premium to be from Stern to go into this, you know, it makes quite a bit of sense to actually do that and have one title per cabinet, which fits in with the arcade one-up model of only a few select titles per cabinet. And then... So what would that go back to? Like, from a catalog perspective? Batman 66? Is there anything before Batman 66 that used that monitor? I don't think so. I think it might be Batman 66, and that was the first... Yeah, they wouldn't do Batman 66. That carried a colossal license. And that wasn't even officially a Spike 2. I think since then they've converted or whatever they're building has been converted into a Spike 2 system. But that's kind of – I don't know. What are you – WrestleMania. WrestleMania was actually Spike 1. So Spike 2 brought in – so back then there was still – in fact, even – Well, one of the first, the pin models, was actually a predecessor of Spike because they were testing the market. I guess what I'm trying to come at this with is, do we have a term yet for what to call the Stern tables, the post-DMD era Stern? What are we calling those? I don't know. So that's why I'm kind of leaning towards calling it Spike 2 as a catch-all. well then you've got the other manufacturers who are also doing it as well like spooky does it and and jersey jack does it as well so you can't really link it to a particular um um main pinball processing unit but calling it post dmd sounds a little flippant right yeah um i'd say like backbox screen pinball. That rolled off the tongue. Yeah, exactly. It was so fluid that everyone would use it, pick it up immediately. Yeah, it's got to be like a three-letter acronym, like Video backbox Pinball, VVP, or something like that. I don't know. It's a hard one to say. Or it will probably actually take the form of PC pinball, because that's essentially what's powering these things. They're actually proper PCs. Because that's why I'm also figuring with that price point because you're going to have to have two monitors. You're going to have to have a beefier main board to run that back monitor as well. Yeah, this isn't running off of Android. It's going to have to run off of something more. And that's why I'm also saying it's one table per cabinet because that's going to cover your licensing cost. That'll cover the hardware cost and that'll make Stern happy. I think... Honestly, when I say 800, I think that's the low point. If you hit it between 800 and 1,000, that you'd have people that would bite. I think that if you... Yeah, because if the pin is 2,000 RRP, then if you made these 1,000, then and they weren't just all the pin titles I think you could probably actually ask 2000 for an actual proper pinball table like something directly after like Aerosmith for example as one of the tables if you had an Aerosmith pinball cabinet with just that table on with the back glass art but 3 quarter size I think you could probably ask $2,000 for that table digitally because you've got to think about it. Like the RIP on a brand new Pro is like $6,000. Yeah, but then you figure that now you're in at that price point, you can pretty handily go out and find a real pinball machine. I'm not saying a Stern, but I'm saying an actual real pinball machine. You're now within the realm of quite a lot of those available on the market that you can get for that price point. That's why at $1,000, it's much more. We're talking U.S. dollars here, Jared. At $1,000 U.S., you're hard-pressed to find any real pins at that price point. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, okay. But, hey, you know what? This is all just off your freaking rocker talk. This is crazy. This is off your rocker talk. Don't even count on this. But, you know, feel free to totally steal this idea free of charge from us. Yes. Do it anyhow. Like, you know, that would be sweet. Absolutely. So something else that then we thought about prediction-wise. This is less prediction because it's not prediction at all. This falls into the category of what we would like to see. Yep. And this is going to be pretty much exclusively with Zen because, like we say, currently Magic Pixel is just doing their deluxe tables. And Farsight's not really doing anything until we see these Taito tables that they're putting out for ad games. But now you've got to have an ad games product to even be able to play it. So mass market consumability, it pretty much falls on Zen's hands. So what we wanted to throw out there was, what do we want to see come out table-wise from Zen in terms of DMD table, licensed DMD tables, unless, well, there's three that aren't licensed. I went no license. I went no license. because we have a category for licensed. Oh. See, Jared might not have understood my thing. But that's okay. We're fine. So anyway, DMD, an alphanumeric that we both want to see, and then an original licensed Zen pin that we would like to see. An original licensed Zen pin as one of their own creations? Yes. Okay, yeah. But it can be a licensed property. Oh, right, okay. But one that's not currently out there. Correct. Okay, I'm going to have to think of one on the fly because that's not what I got out of the end of my life. We had this conversation over text, and things can, you know, fast and furious over that way. So I'll start. I'll go ahead and start. Oh, caveat. Yes, we all know that we want Indiana Jones. That couldn't have been a choice. Everybody wants it. caveat for me, if you've been listening at all you know I desperately want NBA Fast Break and I desperately want roller games, so no I don't get to, because that'll just be my answer and there's no fun in that, so it's got to be a different answer for me for those so here it goes, for my DMT table that I would like to see in 2021 created by Zen I gotta go with Adam's family I love Adam's family and I love Pat Lawler tables and And I would really enjoy seeing an enhanced version of that. So seeing Fester in the chair reacting when it goes off, seeing down at the apron maybe Cousin It roaming around. I don't want them to touch his hand. I don't want them to touch his hand. That's just too powerful. Oh, no, no. So you reckon that that mechanical element of the table stays as is? It needs to stay as is. but maybe having King or something like that around. Sure, I wouldn't mind the hand zipping about here and there. When the power starts lightning or something coming from the playfield bottom, I just think there's a lot of cool things that could be done with it. On top of that, it's just an exceedingly fun table, and I know we've already had it. It's the best table with sort of stackable modes in it as well. For its time, it was great, and I do agree with you. Zen will be able to do an amazing job with the visual extras. Yeah, and even though we already have been able to play it in Pinball Arcade visually it not phenomenal they didn do a lot of contrast with uh with everything so with proper lighting better graphics on it uh obviously way better physics um do i care if they do the anniversary edition hey if you want to do it throw it in that'd be lovely but i'm i'm fine with the plain jane regular admins family so that's what i want DMD-wise in 2021 from Zen. Jared, you go. Okay, so I went if we're going to go with DMD that is not licensed. You only got three choices there. That's right. So I'm going with Jackpot. For the DMD. I know that there's gambling references in it, etc. But I think it's the it's the better of the um uh the pinbot uh argument pinbot versus jackpot obviously you take the dmd yes um and it's it doesn't have any licenses attached so therefore you could do some pretty cool things with it um and it would be affordable just to pump out as as a title that's not licensed so um that was my pick for dmd um i don't know whether i should go if off the top of your head you know that one pops up that's licensed dmd that you would like to say i'll allow it okay licensed dmd i can't not say twilight zone um twilight zone it all like the amount of visual extras they could do in that table be pretty easy they just do all the mods they're in a community at the moment um because there's thousands of them that you can put on that table um but you know with it suffered so terribly from railroad physics in yes it was just horrible um it would really benefit from some good zen um uh belly williams because it's supposed to be a redonkulously hard table it is to get to wizard mode on and in tpa you could get to wizard mode twice easily yep you just close your eyes and you get it so you know i'd expect that you know that would be the level of accessibility you get on regular... The Zen physics. Yeah, Zen physics. But when you switch on arcade or tournament physics, yeah, get prepared for a drain fest because that's how the game plays. And it would do it with the Zen physics. And, you know, they could have so... Where would we begin with the amount of visual extras they could do on that table? There's so much. There's so many things in that table they could bring to life. It would just be... It would be almost the pinnacle of the releases, I think. And of course, I would not be sad in the least because guess who made that table again? Pat Lawler. Pat Lawler. It's the winning formula. So yeah, that would be my pick. So what would be your pick then for an alphanumeric that you hope appears in 2021? Again, because this was a season one table in Farsight, Bride of Pinbot. Sherrod's got the Pinbot fever going on. Jack Bot and Bride of Pinbot. that trilogy. We can take a dual trilogy with Pinbot and Brider Pinbot because they're sort of like the same thing. But you know, this is another one that has just the most ridiculous vacuum ramp I've ever seen in a pinball machine on the Fireside version. It goes up there so fast that you'd think there was an accelerated magnet on that ramp. It's not designed to be like that. You should really have to fight to get that thing to go up the ramp. To be fair, too, when we first saw Brita Pinball in Pinball Arcade, and that was the first or second DLC pack, I think, that they did? Yes. The visuals, we were all blown away. We were like, oh my god, that looks phenomenal. Especially if you'd previously looked at it in their Williams Hall of Fame collection. Yeah. um but i think zen could knock out the chrome look on that table and it needs it so badly and you know it needs the like the the chase lights in the helmet and nice nice good environmental flashlights and stuff like that like it it really does need a lot of love that table and again they could do some really neat things with the bride on that table like she could be playing a key role in that table and really, really nicely integrated. Same goes on jackpot as well. The bride could actually feature quite nicely on that as well, and it would look really, really great. So, you know, two solid pinbot tables to choose from there, I think. What about your alpha, Chris? Well, my alpha is, so I'm torn, and since I let you pick two MDMDs, I'm going to pick two alphas. Okay. Yeah, go do it. My first one is just kind of a go-to. It's my first love, Whirlwind. Oh, yeah. Whirlwind. Yes. We've talked about with Whirlwind. Again, another Pat Lawler. What can I say? I'm sorry. But we've talked about the visuals enhancements on Whirlwind that when you've got the three discs spinning, I want to see little tornadoes appear and debris and cows flying. That'd be awesome. The lightning strikes, just whatever. There's all sorts of elementals that could be put into that design. And that was a first season Pimble Arcade table that desperately needs a visual enhancement. There's clipping. There is art that are not art, but pieces that are missing that are hidden behind something else. But you can sometimes catch it glitching through and whatever. and the vacuum ramps on that are absolutely just insane strong. Yeah. Like you can plunge the ball on that table and get it all the way around the upper loop. Right. That just does not ever happen in the game. So, yeah, it is in desperate need of some zen love, that one. And then where I was torn, though, I really want Centaur also because, again, I just think Zen would kill it on the look. Just the high-res graphics. Yeah, the contrast in the table is the most important thing with that game. You need to have almost like an HDR contrast between the whites and the blacks, don't you? And it's such a pure pinball experience. No ramps, lots of drop targets, just multiball. but it's got the vertical lineup for drop targets. It may have come out in 1981 but it is still an exceedingly fresh table. The interesting thing about what I've noticed in some of the later Belly Williams tables from Zen is when you put it into an enhanced mode, they've added in subtle stereo effects into the table. I don't know if you pick it up but you can hear that they've added in like for the extra visuals and stuff like that they put an overlay over the original mono soundtrack and it changes the game so much and you could do that with Centaur really easily and still have almost like that underlying tone that the core soundtrack but put a whole lot of different sound effects and special effects over the top just bring the table to life it would be amazing if they did that that would be a great title to include for sure I would love it and then we'll reach our final category which is have you had time to think or do you need me to go first on this one Jared to give you an idea I have to think very very fast so this would be one other license could Zen get a hold of to do Zen Originals with in the past they've done Walking Dead they did Portal they've done the Balls of Fury with those Fox animated titles. That's kind of the impetus of what I'm thinking of. Obviously, they're doing Mandalorian. I would like to see one more from them, and I think the timing is perfect for this, especially since, and again, I've mentioned this before, Netflix show coming out soon. Based on it, I want Cowboy Bebop, and I know that music is expensive, and that would be an issue because music makes up half the show on that. If they could just license the one theme song at ball launch to hear, okay, three, two, one, let's jam. And then the ball launches and it goes, ah, that'd be beautiful. That would be pretty good. I just think that that would be a phenomenal title to license. And again, since Netflix has got their live action show coming out in 2021, the timing would be perfect to do that with. That would be a pretty nice fit for the Asian market as well, wouldn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Quite nicely. Absolutely. So that would be a logical fit. I think my one that I just came up with off the top of my head may not fit the Asian market, but it has so much social capital that I think it would be a pretty good home run to hit, particularly given that there's a movie coming out in 2021 for it, and that is Top Gun. Hmm. We've never had an official Top Gun table. That's right. We've had an F-14 Tomcat, which is basically Top Gun. Right, and then there was that hideous godly premiere. Oh, no, it was... What was it? Goldwing or something like that? There's Goldwing. There's also Operation Thunderbolt as well, which was kind of the same. It was definitely a fighter jet themed game. And then the one you mentioned was the Capcom. Yeah, Airborne. Capcom Airborne, which was quite similar. It was more like an air show themed game, but still very much fighter jet. So Top Gun is an interesting one, don't you think? Because they could do a movie tie-in with it. they wouldn't necessarily have to like make a Top Gun movie table they can make a Top Gun inspired table using the brand and you could have all the tropes that you love in Top Gun with a bit of Danger Zone and all those really good tracks in it bit of Hans Zimmerman solid soundtrack work to be done in there which wouldn't be easy to get but you know whatever they got cash coming out of their ears at the moment, right? So Top Gun. Like, ramps could be incredible. You could have fighter jets flying around the play field. You could have dogfight modes. You could have a video mode where you're playing volleyball. Oh. With your shirt off. That's exactly right. You know, there are so many different things you could do with that license. And, you know, to this day, Top Gun is still a movie I enjoy watching because it's just so well shot. and the actual dogfight scenes in it are incredible and I think it would translate really well to pinball, particularly Zen. Zen's brand of digital pinball and its visual effects. So sign me up for a Top Gun pin next year. All right. Well, let's see if Zen is listening and already has that in the works or not. You never know. I know that I've been harping about Cowboy Bebop long enough that it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. That's right. Or think of the other themes that would be popular for a new Asian audience. There's so many titles in anime that you could choose, like Akira. I mean, you could do Last Airbender. You could do... Oh, yeah. Legend of Korra. Yeah. Yeah, there's lots of different really solid themes out there that you could use. Um, so yeah, like I think, you know, you're scratching the surface with your prediction there. I think, you know, we will probably expect a lot of those crossover Western European or like Western, um, uh, titles that are also, you know, got their origins and got their strength in the Asian market. Yeah. You know, that sort of stuff. I firmly believe that, that they will be doing an anime based table. I don't know what, I don't know based on what property, but i think that they absolutely will be doing that you can almost i'd say you know to add on to 2021 i reckon you could probably count on that as as a 2021 theme um maybe later on in the year but i i reckon we're going to see an anime table that or zen is going to make a pachinko table a pachinko table oh yeah gambling there's there's no way of getting around like pachinko is not being a gambling table um but yeah that'd be fun though yeah can you imagine just the madness of like a thousand hundred balls right running around the table at once oh your poor video card oh it'd be screaming it would absolutely be screaming i mean that makes me wonder has anybody done what was it uh hyper what's called hyper pin hyper ball has anybody done that on visual pinball oh i'm not aware um i i don't think so although i don't know so either so but yeah so that's a really interesting picks there chris like i reckon there's a lot of possibility in those peaks i think so and i think they'd be they'd all be great like i don't think none of us disagree that they'd be all great additions to the platform. I certainly wouldn't be like, ew, really? That's what you picked? You wanted My Little Pony Table? Why? Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, cool. I think their focus is what you can look forward to in 2021. A bunch of nonsense predictions from us and some wishes from us. Yeah, that's right. that you know hopefully that'll happen i mean because it can't be any worse than 2020 right no really can't no like they could release literally anything and it'll be great compared to 2020 yes all right well that wraps up our show for today uh again if you have ideas for tables that you want me to uh play live um and any specific rules that you think that i should a bye-bye while doing those. I will be doing that next week on Saturday at our... Well, since we don't go live, it's not our typical recording time. It's our typical recording time that we record, but not typical for when you would view. So anyway, it'd be 2 p.m. on Saturday the 18th. It's when we used to go live. It is when we used to go live. And if I can get the technical glitches all worked out, maybe we'll go live again soon. Until I get those worked out that we're not suffering with them live on air with you guys making it look like the true dog and pony show that we don't want it to be. Yeah. We just keep the dogs and the ponies off air now. It's still the same. That'll be next week. After that, we'll probably be seeing you guys after Christmas with a show. And hopefully there'll be some new news regarding shipments and such. That would be good. That would be good. To get some dates associated with these things, right? Yes. But until then, we just want to give a big old thank you for sticking with us, for watching this program. Please continue posting comments on YouTube. I try and answer every single comment that gets posted because we do value engaging with our audience and want to continue doing with that. Or you can always seek us out on Twitter and drop comments there because we're active on that front too. Yeah. But until next time after Christmas, which we don't know what we're going to talk about except for we know for sure we will always talk about Jared's favorite things. Stuff and things. Until then, folks. Buh-bye. Buh-bye.