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If you don't have anything nice to say...

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·49m 32s·held·Jan 22, 2017
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

BlahCade finds silver linings in Gottlieb Premiers and announces Arcuda partnership.

Summary

Chris and Jared host a casual BlahCade Podcast episode covering US political events, California weather, and a lengthy segment where they accept a community challenge to find one or two nice things to say about each Gottlieb Premier machine available in The Pinball Arcade (TPA). They also announce an official partnership with Arcuda, a cabinet manufacturer integrating Farsight digital pinball games, though NDAs restrict details. The episode ends with discussion of potential pin golf cross-machine linking via networked modern pinball systems.

Key Claims

  • Arcuda has partnered with BlahCade to provide early access to news about their digital pinball cabinet platform that will officially play Farsight games

    high confidence · Chris and Jared confirmed they have an official relationship with Arcuda and will receive information ahead of public release, though specifics are NDA-restricted

  • Modern pinball systems like Jersey Jack and Spike 2 platforms have WiFi connectivity or expansion capability that could enable linked multi-machine pin golf courses

    medium confidence · Jared stated Jersey Jack tables are Wi-Fi connected and Spike 2 systems have Wi-Fi modules or expansion capability, though this was presented as observed industry knowledge rather than confirmed specification

  • Gottlieb Premier machines in TPA include: Bone Busters, Class of 1812, Q-Pinball Wizard, Big Hurt, Gladiators, Goin' Nuts, Lights Lights...Camera...Action!, Rescue 911, TX-Sector, Tee'd Off, and Victory

    high confidence · Chris and Jared systematically reviewed each game alphabetically from TPA's Gottlieb Premier collection

  • Gottlieb Premier machines feature unusually small alphanumeric displays (gas plasma) that resemble pocket calculator displays more than standard pinball DMDs

    high confidence · Chris and Jared observed that Victory, TX-Sector, and Lights Lights...Camera...Action! all have tiny LED/LCD displays even smaller than Bally/Williams equivalents, making them feel like Texas Instruments scientific calculators

  • Farsight's implementation of Mercedes in TPA accurately captures ball physics and feel compared to the real machine

    medium confidence · Chris played Mercedes both in real life and TPA and stated the ball behavior and bouncing felt very similar, though TPA allowed higher scores

Notable Quotes

  • “So what you telling me is we have info but we can tell anybody about it? Yeah, kind of. The NDA is rather specific about what we can and can't talk about.”

    Chris and Jared @ ~mid-episode — Reveals heavy NDA restrictions on Arcuda partnership details, emphasizing industry secrecy around unreleased digital platforms

  • “If you are a fan of songs featuring chickens, Class of 1812 is the table for you.”

    Jared @ ~during Gottlieb Premier review — Humorous acknowledgment of Class of 1812's distinctive chicken-themed audio, showing hosts finding positives even in unpopular games

  • “I think the moving crane arm if you will or Habitrail... has visual appeal to me, and I can't help but want to shoot the ball and watch the ball go down it.”

    Jared @ ~Gladiators discussion — Identifies moving ball path toys as universal draw for pinball machines across eras

  • “It's a table that I don't like, but I somehow like it while playing it... once I start playing it, I can't stop playing it.”

    Chris @ ~Victory discussion — Captures the addictive 'just one more game' loop design despite personal aesthetic reservations

  • “What if you built into, you know, say all the modern sterns, each table has one hole of pin golf, and then you can link all the tables together... make a course out of it.”

    Jared @ ~end of episode — Proposes creative multi-machine linking concept leveraging modern networked pinball architecture

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonThe Pinball Arcade (TPA)productArcudacompanyFarsight StudioscompanyGottlieb PremierproductGeorges32personBone BustersgameClass of 1812game

Signals

  • ?

    content_signal: Community member issued challenge to hosts to find positive attributes of Gottlieb Premier machines, demonstrating active audience participation in podcast content direction

    high · Georges32 posted challenge in podcast thread; hosts accepted and dedicated substantial segment to responding

  • ?

    technology_signal: Arcuda cabinet platform achieving official partnership with Farsight Studios for digital pinball game licensing, expanding digital pinball market distribution beyond traditional PC/mobile

    high · BlahCade announced official relationship with Arcuda to officially license and play Farsight games on dedicated cabinet hardware

  • ?

    industry_signal: Heavy NDA restrictions preventing discussion of unannounced Arcuda platform features and partner integrations, indicating significant unannounced capabilities or licensee partnerships in pipeline

    high · Chris and Jared repeatedly unable to discuss specific features, functions, game companies, or technical capabilities due to NDA constraints

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Hosts identify moving mechanical elements (cranes, Habitrails, cue balls) as consistent draw for player attention and engagement across different eras and manufacturers

    medium · Multiple references to moving toys (Q-Ball, Gladiators crane, World Cup Soccer goalie) being visually compelling and mechanically interesting across Gottlieb Premier and other machines

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Victory demonstrates 'just one more game' addictive loop through clear progression mechanics and satisfying scoring balance, despite aesthetic limitations

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.149

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You, in a world where you have many podcasts to listen to, are listening to The Blockaded Podcast. I am your host, Shut Your Trap, a.k.a. Chris Frevis. Joining me, as always, halfway across the world, Jared Morgan. Hey, Chris. How are things? Things are thingy. After presentpocalypse.
0:52
Is America still existing? I don't know. Yes, we are currently still existing. For how long, we do not know. I can tell you that the mood on set yesterday was very dour and sad, and basically everybody was hurling insults, so it was lovely.
1:18
Yeah. Well, that's a great time. Pretty much sums up what America's thinking at the moment, I think. we saw pictures of the volume of people at the Obama inauguration compared to the Trump inauguration I've got to say, watching it on TV here, it looked like a funeral position Oh, completely I went, ah, this is really somber, it's like someone's died And then you compare that to today where there's been women's marches on various cities and they have like three to four times the amount of people flooding cities. I also saw just before I joined I saw that apparently the president removed his first ever tweet on the POTUS account because he misspelled something.
2:08
It's like God, mate. Someone should be a ghostwriter for him. On the top of a Twitter account you can put a banner image and the image he posted was from inauguration with a whole bunch of people except for Obama's yeah I love that you know what else I saw he actually the cake that they use at the inauguration ceremony was the same cake that they use for Obama as well but the person who actually made the cake said yeah I made the one for Obama I didn't make this one it was a direct copy too and no recognition of the prior artist or anything so I totally copied the cake designer without any credit to the cake designer. Just welcome to how it's going to be for the next four years, guys. Have fun with that. I always say after you get past the first couple of days of this kind of thing,
Cue Ball Wizard
game
Big Hurtgame
Gladiatorsgame
Goin' Nutsgame
Lights Camera Actiongame
Rescue 911game
TX-Sectorgame
Teed Off (TDOF)game
Victorygame
Mercedesgame
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Spike 2product
Williamscompany

medium · Chris noted Victory's difficulty-to-resistance ratio: initially avoiding it but finding it impossible to stop playing once engaged due to sequential shot flow design

  • ?

    product_concern: Gottlieb Premier machines feature undersized gas plasma alphanumeric displays that sacrifice readability and visual prominence compared to contemporary Bally/Williams DMD standards

    high · Chris and Jared consistently noted tiny displays on Victory, TX Sector, and Lights Camera Action resemble pocket calculator displays; even TPA's scaled-up version retains 'tiny' perception

  • ?

    design_innovation: Gottlieb designers created innovative solutions to mechanical challenges, such as half-skirt pop bumpers (Bone Busters) and banked drop target geometry (Q-Ball), showing thoughtful engineering

    medium · Chris praised Bone Busters' half-skirt modification allowing ball pass-through without bumper trigger; Q-Ball Wizard's drop targets arrangeable for single clean shot

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Speculation about implementing pin golf as networked multi-machine course across modern pinball systems, leveraging WiFi connectivity of Jersey Jack and Spike 2 platforms

    low · Jared proposed concept of linking tables together for sequential pin golf holes; noted technical feasibility through existing WiFi modules but presented as creative speculation rather than planned feature

  • $

    market_signal: Golf-themed pinball machines remain rare across industry history; Gottlieb's Teed Off and Williams' No Good Gophers represent limited example set, suggesting niche demand or design difficulty

    medium · Hosts noted scarcity of golf-themed tables and praised Gottlieb's first-attempt execution at theme despite its shortcomings compared to Williams' later No Good Gophers

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade secured early-access agreement with Arcuda allowing pre-public announcement coverage, positioning podcast as industry news outlet with exclusive embargoed information

    high · Chris and Jared stated Arcuda will give them early information releases as platform approaches release, guaranteeing audience reach through BlahCade before general announcement

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Victory demonstrates appeal of games with accessible, clearly defined shot progression that rewards mastery without requiring complex ruleset memorization

    medium · Chris praised Victory's easily learned shots that can be executed repeatedly; Jared noted satisfying scoring balance and flow through 1-7 checkpoints

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Gottlieb's choice of smaller, cheaper gas plasma displays for Premier machines represents cost-reduction design decision that compromised readability versus contemporary competitors

    medium · Hosts speculated smaller display size was likely cheaper manufacturing choice; consistent undersizing suggests deliberate product positioning or budget constraint

    • 3:05
    by and large, we kind of forget who's president, you might say, except for when some major activity happens. Life goes back to day after day. Now, part of that is because, hi, I'm a white male.
    3:18
    No problems. You're right. who I have been. He's a comedian. He has a particular brand of snark. I can get everybody through this. The best one was yesterday. One of the guys that the head guy that runs one of these alt-right white power websites or whatever was on the news. And he was talking, doing a live interview. And some guy came in and cold cocked him across the face. and so people were sitting there going and Patton Oswalt was really going yeah that was awesome and people were like oh how dare you you're condoning violence he goes I don't know I don't normally condone violence unless it's punching a Nazi in the face and so then for the next 24 hours oh that's where that tweet originated from so then for the next 24 hours people have been posting oh I was watching this and he's like oh what a great way to spend the day unless you can punch a Nazi I highly recommend following Patton Oswalt his humor will get you through many of these situations and also kind of make the blood boil too but anyway that sounds good yeah what else is going on well I will say this We had a California had an unusually heavy amount of rain yesterday. Oh, and my wife said that our street completely flooded up over the sidewalks. That's how much water was coming down the street. It's a lot of water. And then my neighbor posted a video. He was it was trash day yesterday. So trash cans were floating down the river.
    5:31
    And yeah. And so they were out in their Toyota FJ gathering trash cans before they went into the major street. So just going up and down the streets of the neighborhood because the one of the streets that connects to me, if my street is a raging river, then it is an ocean. This other street, because basically three streets combine into this like we're all the water floods. It's just insane. And so basically it's a drainage culvert. Yeah. And so he had video of him, and he was just taking video while he was driving of just showing how much water there was. And as he was doing that, a tree fell on the video right in front of another car that was in front of him, and that car almost got squashed by the tree.
    6:15
    One of those things where it's just like, wow, how did you capture that? It's a disaster movie. Yeah, it was great. It's a disaster movie. And that footage wound up making the local news.
    6:24
    So it should have. That's pretty cool. So meanwhile, up in Mammoth Mountain, which is in northern California, it's about four and a half, five miles or five miles, five hours from me. I've never been there personally myself, but it's the massive ski resort in California. They have the largest snowpack throughout the nation. there was a picture of somebody standing up on top of a sign that under normal circumstances is 18 feet tall.
    6:58
    Wow. Yeah, the snowpack is literally, I think, after this storm, 20 feet deep. So we were talking about that last week, I think, on the podcast, and that would pretty much mean that you could just walk and just hold on to the ski lifts and pretty much walk up the mountain being dragged by a ski lift. Yeah, they were saying that they were having to dig out the ski lifts.
    7:24
    That's pretty great. Well, that's really good because then that will result in water when it melts. Well, somebody was telling me that it's very familiar with the mountain that they said it'll probably wind up having snow all year round until the next snowfall. Not that it's skiable, but the top of the mountain will probably keep its snow the entire year. Whereas this year it didn't do that, right? It was dry on the top. Yeah. Anyway. Well, that's good news for you guys. That's really good news. Apocalyptic weather and apocalyptic politics. Yeah.
    7:58
    Yeah. Sounds like the script of 2012. Yeah. So now that we've alienated half our audience. I did the bad half.
    8:12
    I should go the rest of the way and talk to you about the Leah Ramini show about Scientology. is quite fascinating.
    8:19
    Backroom, that one for sure. I mentioned last week that I was playing a table that had the exact same layout as Eldorado. Yeah. And so I wanted to find out what the actual name of that was. The table I was playing was Solar City, and I guess the difference between it and Eldorado is Solar City is a two-player, or can have two players playing it. oh okay yeah um so i get yeah back in the day that was a feature where it was like oh now you can have two players play at the same time and oh look out four players so i remember the the four player ems are insanely complex in the back box because they have to have about two extra subsystems that track player yeah um um status and it's yeah it's it's crazy to see what those look like in the back box um and underneath as well so yeah that's a it's non-trivial to say back then it's like to now it's like well four players is nothing we actually had six players on the sea games right but yeah back then it was like a really quite a big deal to have that many players in the machine the other school though yeah the the other thing i uh after thinking about having played uh with mercedes frankenstein for real finally um i played a little bit of it in tpa just to see what the feel was. And I got to say, I'm impressed with how Farsight managed that table. It very much felt like what I was playing in real life. Now, as is typical, I was able to score much higher in TPA.
    9:59
    But in terms of the ball feel and where the ball was bouncing and kind of going, no, I think they did a really good job on that. But that's kind of the problem with reviewing anything that Farsight does is if you've never touched the table or it's been a long time since you've touched the table, it's hard to give an accurate portrayal of what they've done. So I'm always curious when I get a hold of machines that are either long since passed in my memory or I didn't really have a chance to play at all to see where they fall. I haven't played Mary Schelling's thingy ever since it was in the arcades so that was a long time ago yeah it's still hideously ugly but yeah it has annoying call outs but you know it's alright it's a CEO it's alright Arcade News not live but mostly current that we have some news to announce, Jared. Yes, we do. Can I go ahead and announce it?
    11:05
    I'll stop you if we're getting off what we can and can't announce. Okay, okay. So here's the deal, gang. You've heard us mention Arcuda, which is they're making a cabinet that will be able to play Farsight games now, officially.
    11:22
    Yes. Well, we have been in talks with Arcuda, and we have now gotten in a, how shall we call it, an official relationship with them. Yes. And with that official relationship, we are giving access and certain knowledge,
    11:42
    such as with their cabinet, you cannot believe. That sounds nice, but I don't know if we can talk about that just yet.
    11:52
    Oh, I can't talk about it. Okay, fine. What about some of the game companies that are going to be attached to this? So, for starters... No, I'm going to just stop you there. I can't really talk about that either at this stage.
    12:06
    Okay. Well, some of the functions that are within this machine that I think a lot of people are going to be excited about because... Well, okay.
    12:17
    For instance what you going to be able to do with it is you going to be able to take off Hang on a second I don know if we can talk about that either So what you telling me is we have info but we can tell anybody about it Yeah, kind of. The NDA is rather specific about what we can and can't talk about, and it's quite a lot at this stage. Let's talk about the NDA. so in the NBA it specifically says that we can't talk about much at the moment which is fine but there is some good news I think that we can and that is that as time progresses and the platform gets closer to release Arcuda will be using us as a way to communicate those releases earlier than normal so that will be something to keep an ear out for if you're interested in digital pinball and arcade happenings.
    13:18
    And I'll tell you what, some of the stuff that me and Jared have already been exposed to, it got us incredibly stoked and excited and we were like, I want to talk about it, but we can't talk about it. So anyway. We just can't. And trust us that when the time is right, Arcuda will give us the information that we can release for you guys. and it will be really cool. So, yeah, keep an ear out. All right, let's move on to something that we can talk about.
    13:48
    There was a posting in the thread for our last podcast, user by the name of, I want to say it's gorgeous or georges32? Georges32, I think it is, yeah. Okay.
    14:04
    Anyway, he issued us a challenge, and that was because of my known hate and jared to a large extent also has a similar hate of all things got laid premiere the challenge was how about saying one or two nice things about each got laid premiere yeah this is a challenge that i am happy to accept i'm not sure that i'm happy to but i'll do my best i think um i think for me you should be able to smell my brain trying to tick over about the things I like to say about Gottlieb Premier, but look, he did only say one or two things, so I think we can probably manage that. For example, you know, these machines have balls in them, and that makes them pitbull machines. There are balls and flippers. Hooray! That's right.
    15:00
    Okay, well, shall we take down the Winston? They didn't cost more than a quarter. Hooray! Hooray. They were good. Yeah. Now, I think his question is about the machines that are in TPA. I don't think he actually means that how they're implemented in TPA. It's just what machines are in the game and, generally speaking, both in real life and in the game, some positive things about them. So we can probably find one or two things about them that are positive. Let's start off. We're just going to go down the list alphabetically. So let's start off with Bone Busters. what's something nice that we can say about bone busters do you want me to start yes please okay so i think is it do we have to actually before we go on do we have to actually make it one nice thing each or can we just agree on the nice thing oh if we can agree we'll agree but if we both have something nice to say then go for it okay so i'm going to talk from a mechanical perspective here on bone busters right so on bone busters on the left hand side there is a pop bumper that's sort of sitting out nowhere right well they have to allow the balls to pass behind that pop bumper without triggering they've modified it so the skirt is pretty much a half skirt and that is i don't think i've seen another pop bumper like that in any other game so that is a nice thing about bone busters.
    16:33
    A nice thing about bone busters. If you were missing pink in your tables, bone busters has pink. Excellent. That's a great start. I think we're doing well. Okay, what's the next one? That's enough of that, by the way. What will be enough for bone busters?
    16:53
    Class of 1812. Here, I'll start with this one. Okay, you go, you go, you go, yep. If you are a fan of songs featuring chickens, Class of 1812 is the table for you.
    17:07
    That's a fair call. There is quite a bit of chicken action in this. So, yes, that's a valid thing for Class of 1812. So, for me, I think it captures a moment in time. Not 1812, but about 1980, with the specific voice acting and rapping that is going on with the game. Well, I think we can go a little bit deeper than 80. Maybe 83? 84? Somewhere around there? Let's call it mid-80s. Mid-80s. And it shows, at the time, the understanding that godly premier executives had of the rap industry. like it existed? Yes, exactly. So they wanted to capture that market by including awesome rap in the game, and therefore they wanted to make it so these stiffs and spooks would actually rap. So look, there's rap tracks in this game. If you are really gagging for a game with some 1985 pinball rap in it, then 1812 is yours. You've got to go for it. It's the best of that year.
    18:30
    Let's go to QBallWizard. Okay. Do you want to go or should I go? I think it's your turn to go first. Okay, I'll go first. So with this one, I actually quite like the way they have integrated the big QBall into multi-ball and how to score jackpots. normally you would just you know shoot a ramp or whatever this one you have to not only hit the little hit the cue ball with a little steel ball and do it in such a way that it hits the right targets um and then wait for the cue ball to actually shoot the ball up into the target so there is a fair bit of strategy there um but it's you know it's a big draw card to the game when you're looking at it because there i don't think again gotley premier sometimes the innovators and there's no other game that I know of with a big cue ball in the middle of it like that. The only thing that comes close is Circus Voltaire with its ringmaster or its ring ball captive.
    19:30
    Yes, I will certainly agree that when walking by one in an arcade and you saw that, it made you go oh, let me take a better look. So visually had a nice draw card for it. I will say if you are a fan of drop targets, there's a lot of drop targets on the table. Yes.
    19:55
    Yes, there are many drop targets and they're arranged in such a way that you can actually bank them all in one go, which is kind of pretty cool. I've never done it, but you can do a clean shot, which is cool. They've obviously thought of the geometry of those targets so you can do that, which shows they put a bit of care into that game.
    20:14
    Okay. let's have a crack at Big Hurt it's your turn it is my turn Big Hurt I will say that I think the moving mitt is a fun idea just as the moving goalie on World Cup Soccer is a fun idea and And it's something that's been used on many tables.
    20:46
    But I like that they used it not only as a block feature, but also sometimes you actually want to hit it. So they integrated two different ideas into one and implemented that nicely. Yeah, I agree. The glove was one of my highlights of this game too. And if you are playing on a machine that's very well maintained and it has strong flippers and it's set at the right pitch, that glove really does interact well with the ball when it like shoots it back down at the flippers it actually makes the game a little bit um tricky so that's a good feature the other thing i like about that game is the fact that in that same area you get the grand slam ramp just popping out of nowhere which if you've seen it for the first time it's a pretty cool feature and you go oh i've got to shoot this extra ramp that's popped out so that's that's pretty good actually quite likely hurt out of all the guttley premieres in the game yeah i will say it's not it's not terrible. No, it's actually quite good.
    21:42
    Let's go with the most recent Godlike Premiere that's been put onto TPA, and that is Gladiators. There's two things I like about this game. Oh, good. I don't have to come up with any. No, you have to think of one. I like the fact that from a historical perspective, this game has one of the most chicken parts I think I've seen in any pinball machine as far as actually... It started off as one theme then they had to can that theme go to another one uh and then it's now gladiators so godly premier's ability to roll the punches on this one is certainly demonstrated i think um the other thing that is quite good on this game although not really shown very well in tpa is this thing has one of the most violent shaker motors on any pinball machine that i've played it's so violent that if there are coins in the cash box it makes this such a terrible terrible racket that you cannot help but notice it in the arcade like it's going what is jackhammering in the corner in the pinball corner oh okay it's this game so that's a draw card for gladiators in the arcade okay I will say that the moving crane arm if you will or Habitrail.
    23:06
    Any kind of thing, any kind of table that does that, where there's a moving piece that the ball travels on, again, has visual appeal to me, and I can't help but want to shoot the ball and watch the ball go down it. So, hooray! Yeah, that's good. Moving on.
    23:26
    Oh, God. To going nuts. So, this was your turn to go first Chris, unfortunately. Okay. Okay, something nice.
    23:44
    Okay, here we go. Here we go. Good on them for trying something different which is not having an out lane for draining. That it's just merely you and your flippers trying to keep the balls in play.
    24:02
    Yeah, that's a fair call. And for me, I think the, let's call it, unique layout of the play field and the way that there are actually quite a few drop targets positioned on this table. And there is a challenge to actually hitting those drop targets in this game. It's not as easy as perhaps other games because of the way they're spread out and the geometry of the table. So that adds a challenge. If you want to have a drop target challenge, then going nuts is a good one to go for there. Not to mention the fact that, you know, it multi all the time in it as well And it timed which is you know definitely a different take on pinball I holding my mouth Okay
    24:53
    Let's go forward. Oh, good. It's your turn. Lights, camera, action. Again, a lovely homage to the 80s in this particular game. I think the thing there's a few well I'll go with one thing because I want to save one for you just in case and if you don't mention it I'll mention it afterwards but I think in real life I think the shot from the upper left flipper into the millions loop would be incredibly satisfying in a game in a real life game like if you really got in there and spun that ball around that loop lots and lots of times. It would be really cool.
    25:38
    That doesn't really translate so well on Android, the implementation that Fastlight done. There seems to be some sort of weird collision issue inside that loop, and I'm flat out getting one loop around it most times. So it makes it a little bit less satisfying to play in TPA. But in real life, I'd imagine I'd be doing that shuttle all the time. um i'm struggling here but i am i'm gonna succeed i know i'm gonna succeed let's see um on the real table uh on top of the back box there are flashing lights so are you talking about the red and blue spotlights that actually change the color of the play field yes yeah right okay but the other thing cool story bro uh so so the other thing that's a little bit unique about the lights camera action is the way that the eject um the vertical up kick is just throw the ball back onto the play field without going down a ramp or sort of following an existing path they just go oh i'm just gonna chuck it out okay yeah and yeah that's an interesting sort of thing because you go well where's this ball going to go and then it just goes rocketing towards your flippers so that sort of keeps showing your toes a bit let's go on to rescue 911 is it your turn to go first if you return is it okay I think wait I took the fall for lights okay rescue 911 presumably based on the TV show of the same name. So the positive I have is that there is no William Shatner call-outs.
    27:34
    That's quite true. I actually didn't realize that William Shatner did the voice for Rescue 911. Yes, he was the host of Rescue 911 and would narrate the various stories that they told each episode. Right, okay. Yeah, okay. That probably is a plus, actually. because otherwise you'd have to hear that you have earned an extra ball wait that's that would be hard to take there are people in dire need of your help now go yeah that's true actually that would actually make that game amazingly good I think if he did the voice in that way I would love to play that game with him narrating like that, all the visions. I would totally be into it. Plunge!
    28:28
    Bubble! Someone needs to put in a sound, like one of those sound boards into it. Right. And totally do get someone to do that. That would be fantastic. Such a good mod. Anyhow, for me, in real life, this game has a feature, like the live saved feature. and it's kind of cool to walk up to one in real life and see how many virtual pinball lives you've saved on that particular machine. Of course, until it's factory reset when everyone dies and it goes back to zero. But while it's... You murderer! That's right. How would William Shatner say that? You murderer! Gone!
    29:16
    So, yeah, that's Rescue 9-11. Life saved. Okay, that means this is you. TX sector. TX, TX, TX, TX, TX. I think the thing I think makes this table unique is the warping balls feature.
    29:43
    Over to you, Chris. am I mistaken in that this had a mirrored back glass kind of an infinity I think it did have an infinity glass alright infinity glasses or back glasses are always cool yep they are ok moving on teed off this is me teed off ok I don't think TDOF is... TDOF is another one that's not terrible. I think it suffers in comparison to No Good Gophers. But TDOF did come out before No Good Gophers. Yes. And I will say that I appreciate Gottlieb's attempt at making a cartoon table, if you will.
    30:45
    Capturing the spirit of a cartoon. Yeah. Sound effects, call-outs, that kind of thing. Yeah, that's a fair observation. I think from a features perspective, do you have a feature in particular that you like on the game?
    31:05
    You know, the thing that attracts you is the spinning roulette wheel underneath. But once you play it, you realize that it's nothing but a gimmick that proves annoying.
    31:18
    So from a feature perspective, okay, the upper left flipper that you shoot the volcano, I believe, with, or not the volcano, the hole-in-one. It's a jump ramp. Jump ramp, yeah. that's actually kind of fun when you're able to hit it and definitely feel satisfying it's an odd angle for a flipper to be at so yeah that's true and if the ball comes through that lane with a running start it's quite a tricky shot to get right there's also I think some big scoring targets around that area that also are quite difficult to hit on a running shot so yeah you get a bit of challenge in that area of that game so for me I think I actually don't mind the wheel in this game I think it's okay doesn't really the physics in TPA don't really let it be variable enough but in real life you can actually get the double mode pretty easily and to trigger the wheel just shooting the center vertical up kicker behind the drop targets is pretty easy to do so that's a good little exploit in the game the other thing I like about this is it's kind of trying to be a Caddyshack pinball without really trying to be a Caddyshack pinball in a way. Well, no, you're absolutely correct in that it's the exact same thing that No Good Gophers went for also. Yeah. Just to a better end. They captured better in No Good Gophers. I think
    33:02
    Gottlieb did a okay job for the first cab of the rank um with that theme so there you go for a first attempt at a at a golf theme pinball which i really don't think there's a lot of at all um out there um they they were first off the bat and they did an okay job at it that brings up something that we'll bring up uh after we talk about this last table because i think uh there's an interesting question to be asked so uh let's let's let's spin back around to that and after We talk about our last table of, uh, got laid premieres that are in the pinball arcade. And that is victory.
    33:38
    Victory. Yeah. Okay. I will go first on this one. The thing I like about victory is once you learn the shots, you can just do them over and over again. And the goal is very clearly defined in the game. You've got to win the race by shooting the shots. And that's kind of refreshing in a pinball machine. Um, if you just want to go, I just want to focus on my shots and flip some balls around. It's good.
    34:03
    I will say Victory has that just one more game aspect to it. It's a table that I don't like, but I somehow like it while playing it, if you will. It's like once I start playing it, I can't stop playing it. and it is because it takes me a few go rounds to go like oh yeah that's where that particular goal is you know it's 1 through 7 or the goals or the checkpoints I should say yeah and once you figure out the 1 through 7 it becomes this thing of well how quickly can I run through 1 through 7 and am I able to do it without pausing you know and catching the ball or because the way it's designed you actually can go rat-a-tat-tat through them in a flow manner. So that's what I appreciate about it, that it has that just one more time aspect to it. Yeah, it does have that. Yeah, I agree. I find it quite fun. If I actually sit down in front of it and play it, it's good. And the scores are satisfying as well. I think the scoring is well balanced in the game.
    35:21
    If you get 20 million in that game, you really feel like you've got a good run at the game. You know what's funny?
    35:30
    George is 32. You bastard. Yeah. But challenge accepted. Challenge complete. Challenge completed. Where's the goal for that?
    35:43
    Bing! Yeah. You know what's funny is, so Victory and TX Sector and Life's Camera Action, they all have that alphanumeric display and when you see it in real life it's tiny I mean like obnoxiously tiny it's even smaller than the Billy Williams ones and not only that but the coloring on it always made me feel like I was playing on a pocket calculator yes absolutely like an old Texas instrument pocket scientific calculator that had the LED or LCD display, I should say.
    36:27
    And even when playing in TPA, where the size of the alphanumeric is the same size as you would find on a Bally Williams table. Because they scaled it up. I can't get it out of my head. And I always just... Even in TPA, I'm like, ah, stupid small display.
    36:47
    Yeah, true. They are really small. I don't know why they went with that particular topic of gas plasma display. I laughed. Probably, it was probably cheaper because it was smaller. It really is It one of those weird quirks though that I just like I said if you ever run across one in real life you immediately understand what I talking about You be like why is it so tiny
    37:16
    It's almost like you need to put it in the play field itself or on the apron so you can actually see it. Exactly.
    37:24
    Okay, so you brought up, you said, there's not that many golf-themed pinball tables. And yet there's a thing called pin golf. That's right. So wouldn't it be interesting to actually design a table specifically around the idea of having it be pin golf?
    37:44
    Yeah. Have lots of, like, the ability to sort of, like, go for quite clear defined goals and progressions in the game. That would actually be a pretty cool thing to do. Yeah. Or even if you have with the modern tables, what if you built into, you know, say all the modern sterns, each table has one hole of pin golf, and then you can link all the tables together. and you would rotate from table to table to table or maybe make it a mode where it's not necessarily a specific hole per table, but you program in, hey, I own six stern tables, link them to pin golf, and then it does have you. You do one hole and then you move to the next table, do another hole, and then eventually you come back around to that table and do a different style of play on that. But make a course out of it. I think that would be kind of interesting. Essentially make it a course. That would be kind of cool, wouldn't it? It will be achievable because all these games are networked now. Exactly. Especially all the Jersey Jack tables are Wi-Fi connected.
    38:55
    I think all the Spike 2 systems actually have a Wi-Fi module. They have the ability for expansion to Wi-Fi if it's already on the game. So putting on a network module and disconnecting it to the arcade's Wi-Fi, it wouldn't be bad at all. The interesting thing with that system, though, and I heard this, that, like, those games, those driving games, like, what are they, Maximum Tune and all those sort of games in the arcade that have a linked leaderboard system, or global leaderboard, they actually require the operator to agree to a takings from the cash box each month. So they will take a certain amount of revenue per month from the operator to do it. And I think in some of the franchises, I think Maximum Tune is one of them, that if you don't opt in to the leaderboarding system, you don't get to operate the game. So you must, if you're getting this game, you must connect it to our leaderboards and you must give us a rake. So not only would you be, if you the operator didn't own the machine yourself, but you were getting them from a distributor that has games on the route, not only would you be forking over a share to the router,
    40:16
    but you'd also be forking over a share to the leaderboard. No, you would actually, if it was a profit share scenario and you were getting the games off the operator, the operator would have to accommodate that cost in their commission scheme. So the money that they took from the cash box,
    40:34
    the percentage that they get, they'd have to divvy it up to whoever it is, Namco, or whoever does Maximum Tune. Because I was going to say, that would suck if you're the arcade owner, that you're basically twice paying out.
    40:51
    Yeah, that would really suck. So I actually really do like the idea of having a leaderboard system, but it would be under the proviso that it doesn't gouge operators more than they're currently getting gouged out there. because it's not easy to be a family entertainment centre operator anymore. Yeah. So speaking of family entertainment places, well, this one's not so family. Next month, our pinball tournament will be moving to a brand new venue. Yes. And that venue is a place called Netherworld Arcade in a suburb just outside the city called Fortitude Valley, and they've got 15 pinball machines there. so obviously I'm a little bit excited about our league moving to there also Fortitude Valley is about two suburbs away from where I work at the moment so it's a lot easier than Greenslopes which was about a 20 minute drive or 15 minute drive away so very happy about that, that's going to be so good pregnant pause yeah I was trying to think of if I had anything to add to that and I didn't nothing further your honour oh I know what I was thinking about last week you and I both said that we were taking the kids to a movie did you happen to go see Sing? I did go and see Sing and did you like it? it was okay, I think it started too slowly at the beginning but last third when things really started to kick it along, it was okay. It was quite good. I was rolling my eyes at the very premise in terms of it being a singing competition and they show the audition process and the premise folks, because I know you care so much, is that this guy is trying to save his theater and have a successful show. In order to do that, he decides to host a singing competition figuring somehow that this is going to fill the theater over and over again except for the fact that unlike something like American Idol or America's Got Talent or Britain's Got Talent or whatever talent show you have near you it seemed like it was a one-off show that he was going to be putting on because he only winds up selecting like six acts, like eliminating hundreds and hundreds of people right off the bat. The entire city basically.
    43:28
    Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so I was kind of like, okay, I get it that this is for the kids, and it's an hour and a half movie. They don't have time to go through various competition cycles and everything. But at a certain point, the competition gets called off, and instead they just have the people singing. And so once it hit that moment, I went, okay, that's better, because now I don't have to root for anybody. I can just enjoy them doing their song at the end. Yeah. Which up until that point, we never heard their entire song. We only heard little snippets. That's right. And they had really, really good singers in there who could belt out the tunes, and that was great to actually hear that.
    44:12
    And, yeah, I think definitely the end was the highlight of the movie, which I guess in movies it should be. but I did actually decide to watch The Shallows last night on your recommendation Chris so full of holes yeah you're full of it totally full of it was so full of holes so more holes in a leaky boat that thing I love the fact that basically the plot's pretty easy a girl tries to escape from a shark that's trying to kill her that's pretty much the plot and I love the fact that you know during there's some scenes where you know she's on this island and there's like in the tent scenes that the swell just suddenly goes up to like 2.0 meters high and then all the other scenes it's like a pond I'm just going that's the typical piece of shooting on water yeah but I'm just looking at it going yeah okay and you know the shark the way they did the shark in the movie i think that was that was okay it did really like to eat metal though didn't it yes it didn't have a fondness for metal um love and it must have the strong i reckon it must be like you know titanium teeth to be able to like do what it did to metal in that movie um so it was uh it was an interesting choice uh But, you know, I got it really cheap, so whatever.
    45:50
    I got it for like, I think, 50% off. So I ended up paying like $1.99 for it. It was worth that. Yes, that's what I paid when I rented it for, you know, yeah, two bucks rental. I think the next time we do these things, you should actually record how much you paid for the movie. I think that would actually give a little bit more perspective.
    46:10
    Because I don't know if I'd like to pay seven bucks for that movie. I won't be spoiling anything in terms of saying that the shark gets disposed of. And I happen to like the way that the shark was disposed of. I thought that was a creative death for a shark.
    46:25
    Yeah, it was, definitely. I will agree with that. I was going, oh, that's an interesting way to do it. Because let's face it, there's only so many ways you can kill a shark. And Jaws pretty much did all of them. Yeah, pretty much. And this one does definitely give a different way of doing that as well. And I also appreciate that the shark was much more shark-like than, say, something of the nature of Deep Blue Sea, where the sharks were genetically enhanced and smart sharks and jumped out of the water and ate Samuel L. Jackson. Yeah.
    46:59
    Because he's delicious. That's why. That's right. So why wouldn't you want to eat Samuel L. Jackson? So that was the sharknado. No, it wasn't quite sharknado, but it was still... It was all right, I guess.
    47:18
    Get it when it's cheap. Put it that way. Jared and I's movie taste, if we got right down to it, is not the same. No, probably not the same. Probably not the same.
    47:30
    All right, hey, folks, no backroom for you this time because I shot my wad the last few weeks. so lucky you and we're going to call it a podcast right now hey we do thank you so much for listening to us why don't you go ahead and check out the show on Twitter that is at blockade you can also follow us individually I am at shut your traps he is at Jared Morgz why don't you drop us an email blah blah blockade at gmail.com you can put in requests for topics to be on the shows. You can do the same thing by commenting on the show thread in Pinball Arcade Fans.
    48:15
    That's where we got today's topic from. You can also visit our website which is blockadepinball.com. There you will find all of our past shows as well as show notes, timings for certain features as well as if there's any web addresses that we have mentioned, Jared a lot of times posts those, so you can do quick and easy links to that. Just like last week with the Binju's Drinking Gronk song.
    48:47
    I should have put up a referral link on that to see how many times people clicked it. There you go. All right. So until next time, thanks for listening.
    48:56
    Bye-bye. WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter modes. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. Wizardamusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
    49:12
    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, play something bold.