this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade podcast excuse me the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i am your host chris freemus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan Ah yes, I'm here You're here So folks, we were about to have a show before the show Yes And then we realized, maybe we should put the record button on first We should probably start recording Because, yeah It's going to be an interesting show, this one Yeah, so we kind of went from having a very slow week in Pinball to then getting Farsight's newsletter Their newsletter whenever they put out a new table, and that newsletter will now pretty much consume us for the entire show. Yes. So, yeah, let's begin. Let's begin. Okay, let's start off with the obvious, and that is that Banzai Run has been put out, and I played a little bit of it just to compare to what I played early in the beta, and it didn't get easier. No, definitely did not get easier. It looks very nice, but no, definitely not easy. That upper play field is still ridiculous. Which I got to say, it is ridiculous in exactly the ways that the real table is. Yes, exactly. It is absolutely just that frustrating, especially once you get it up to the upper flipper and you try and make the jump, if you will. It is this exceedingly narrow window of what works, and everything else just sends the ball creaming in places you don't want it to cream. So I think the upper play field, they absolutely got correct. The lower play field, wow, does it feel like my flippers are a mile wide because everything goes down the middle. Yeah, it's hungry, that thing. Far out. Yeah, you've really got to work that tilt to make sure your ball stays in play. Like, it's got to be tilting, otherwise you are dead very quickly. And it's got some really bizarre features once I started thinking about it, in terms of your left out lane also has a kickback. But then right next to it, well, you've got your in lane, and then if you go a lane in from that, you've got another kicker. Like a slingshot kicker. It's built in behind the slingshot. It's weird. I don't know why it's there. it's very bizarre and then also on the left hand side um you've got this really short lane uh dead end that's basically where the ramp uh dumps off the ball but it's kind of like wait am i supposed to be shooting that it's really an odd thing it's a very short look it's where the also would be on Terminator 2 essentially but much closer. It's just like this target there. It's like a lap target I think they have there. But it's like very short and you could have just put a solid wall there and had a target there and it would be okay. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of odd. Well, I've got to remember it was the first table that Steve Ritchie designed so he was learning the ropes a bit. Lawler. Lawler. Lawler designed. Yeah. So he would have been going, oh, let's have a go. What are we going to do here? So yeah, maybe some of those things were just early iterations of his future designs. In terms of playing it digitally, that checkerboard playfield is havoc. Oh, really? Well, the speed of the ball, it kind of winds up blending in, I feel. You're on DX11. You're on mobile. And you know what? You may be onto something there because in the beta there was no DX11, and now I'm playing it in DX11, and I'm like, my God, that ball just disappears whenever it goes into the checkerboard. Reflections just basically camouflage it. Yeah. So, I mean, this is an instance where I think, hello, glow balls. Yeah, for sure. Because the only thing that won't be reflected is the shadow. The drop shadow will be always there. So you'll at least be able to track it like that. Yeah. Wow. And there is some exceedingly quick ball movement that happens, too. And the drop from the upper play field is rapid, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Is that fast in real life? You know, when I've watched the videos of it being played, it doesn't seem like it's quite that fast. So I don't know. I don't know. I hate wanting them to put in any artificial brakes on it. but there was a couple of moments where just the speed at which it comes rocketing off not necessarily off the ramp but off of playfield items on that lower playfield and you're just like wow that thing is just rapid it's been so long since I've played an actual Banzai run in real life that it's hard for me to judge I can only judge off of watching a YouTube video so I mean the only thing that I vividly do remember is that upper play field being just as nasty as what Farsight has given us. Yeah. It's kind of on the one hand, while I'm sitting there going, oh man, it's such a pain in the butt, I'm also just kind of like going, it's about damn time. Yeah, time to be punished. If this is, well, we'll talk about this. But, you know, this is a good way to finish things, I guess. Yeah. And well, for the other side of it as well, right? So we learned something else in that, um, that newsletter where this will be the last DLC. Oh, no, not the last DLC, the last monthly deal. Monthly DLC. Yeah. Yes. So, uh, the newsletter officially announced that that is the case. We're no longer going to be having monthly releases, uh, which there had been a rumor that that was a distinct possibility. I don't know it does make sense and it's one of those things where for all of you that have been begging for this to happen well I hope it comes through in the good way you have to long your bid now because presumably with it not having monthly releases the idea and it was said in the newsletter to this effect too that it'll give them more time to perfect the tables to have them be less buggy. My only thing with that is there goes your excuse and you're going to be directly held in comparison to what Zen does. Yes. Well, in a number of ways. What ways do you think that they will be held to account? Well, you're going to be held into account in terms of right off the bat how buggy the table actually is. Zen tables come out and I don't notice any bugs. Now, maybe I don't notice them because they're entirely Zen creations and so you don't know if it's a bug or if it's done on purpose. But by and large, I've never had issues with any of the Zen tables crashing on me or having walls go through walls or lights going off in improper sequence. I don't know, anything of that nature. That's true. I haven't experienced that either. I think they do release in their release notes on mobile they do say oh yes there are some minor bug fixes in here but they they don't tell you unless they're the only bug fixes they seem to call out are the visual ones that um there was a problem with one of the games where um the ball had like a square around the shadow so um i think it was to do with the new carnivals and legends tables and how they actually interact with the play field um so i have a feeling that square was like how they actually draw in all the digital effects on the ball and they usually hide it as a layer but they they forgot to so they just fixed that um so that sort of thing but you're right it's yeah zen the way they do things is pretty pretty slick so yes you're right that is one way that farsight will be measured like that's one way another way they're going to be measured is are the consoles still going to put up with having such a delay between table releases? Or will Firesight finally be able to crack that nut and drop the tables day and date across the board like Xen does? Well, yeah, that's an interesting point. I know that the reason why they didn't do that in the past is because it cost $20,000 to release an update on the platform. So I think I heard rumor that some developers or that that restriction is actually being removed from publishers so they can actually keep the platforms up to date better because it was a clear issue for small studios. So I think they might have removed that. I need to feel free to send us links if you can find information on that, but I'm pretty sure that was a thing. So that might help them in that respect. But you would expect that if all they're doing is focusing on bug fixing and improving the platform, that that's a reasonable thing to expect, providing that there isn't an onerous cost involved. Another factor is goodbye to seasons. Yeah, no seasons anymore. It sounds like individual table packs only. Individual table packs, which opens the door for if, as we mentioned previously, hey, look at these mysterious balls that have suddenly opened up in table packs that are previously only Stern Pinball Arcade tables. Well, we all know that Stern Pinball Arcade was charging more money for per table. Yes, for the brand new Sterns, yes. For the brand new Sterns. So without having a season pass, if those same tables all of a sudden came to TPA, there would be no, hey, it's now so much cheaper. They could just go ahead and charge exactly the same price that they had been. interesting argument, really, isn't it? Yeah. So, I don't know. It's one of those things where I'm kind of like, hey, this is good, because now the flip side to all this, that before we go all, oh my god, doom and gloom, clearly Farsight has come to a point where they are financially assured that they can back off of monthly table releases and that's a good thing to know um that's only yeah because they wouldn't they would not do that because in the past they said yeah we need to do it monthly so we can keep the lights on right so clearly that that's no longer a pressing concern for them anymore another aspect of this and uh we've we've brought it up before but maybe we can highlight it again and that is there are other companies that have hired farsight if you will stern hired farsight for yes stern pinball arcade. Arcuda has hired Stern to write software for their cabinet pinball machines. Farsight to write software for it. Custom software exclusively for their machines. So, while Farsight has been putting out the game, which is for themselves, they're the producer on record of it, these others are hiring them. And so it's this fine balance of, hey, how do we satisfy our client? But at the same time, how do we satisfy our customers? Well, this will allow them to give a bit more focus to their clients, which I'm sure, you know, in the future, obviously, Pimple Arcade is going to come to an end. But you want to have business partners that you can still generate revenue from. so it's one of these things where it is a good idea to spread your client or you know to to get clients and do a good job with those clients so that you can get more clients that's well that's yes generally good business practice you're always going to be thinking next what's next you can't be living in the moment when you're in business you've always got to have a backup plan so yeah So having, yes, having the next thing in line is a good thing. And, you know, we've seen that Stern has sort of the Stern product offering has taken a bit of a backseat over the last year. It really has been a secondary product. So perhaps part of the decision to step away from monthly DLC was, you know, to, as you say, start really doubling down on the Stern stuff because we've identified in past episodes the potential of what they could do with that platform. Yeah. Providing the vendor is providing the customer is on board with the idea. And, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if putting the Stern tables inside the TPA brand is necessarily a good thing to do, particularly because I saw how hard it was to get Ghostbusters working on mobile because of the different emulation framework or the fact that they're not emulating it. They're running it by code, real-time version of the code. So, you know, the limitations of the 12-year-old engine that they're using is starting to show. And we also covered that a couple of episodes ago as well, didn't we? Which, again, I go back to when Zen was working on Pinball FX3. there wasn't that much of an output of tables. It seemed to have slowed back and we didn't know why and obviously very good reason why. So who knows? Maybe Farsight has that in mind too that maybe a year from now we finally get a new Pinball Arcade app that has new engine. I don't know. It's a lot to think about where they potentially go. I mean, the fact that it really is five years old on mobile, and just the limitations that they can't do on mobile compared to other pinball offerings. A new engine and a new graphics framework would change the way that game is perceived. And would totally give new life to new customers, if you will. Yes. I still stand by the idea of what Zen has been doing, which is treat your base customers, your current customers right. And don't hose them in the process because they are the very people that will help you promote the new one. Yeah, champion it. Yeah. So I would hope that things don't get cavalier with that. But, you know, like I said, it opens up a lot of questions. Which leads us into the next bit of business that was in the newsletter And that is our good friend Norman Stepanski who has come on many a time and spoken with us And if you've ever listened to him, you know, his passion for pinball is deep. Norman has retired. They just had his retirement party on Friday. All right. Yeah, I know it's sad news, but you know, the Norman's been around with the platform for 12 years, hasn't he? Yes. That's a long time to be with one company. And, you know, He's also not exactly a spring chicken, so this might be a true – I don't think this is a I'm retiring from the company thing. I think this might be a legitimate retirement. Yeah. It's funny. You took the words right out of my mouth with not so much a spring chicken anymore. I was about to say exactly the same thing. Yeah. So, yeah, look, I think he was definitely instrumental in sourcing tables, and that's the thing. He was their purchaser, and he had a big influence over what tables would get brought into the platform itself. So in that front, it's kind of one of those things where, ah, getting Banzai run in, that's a good fare-thee-well from him. Because obviously that was a challenging table for a person to accomplish. Very. so the question becomes though who takes over Norman's responsibilities because Norman was also the sound engineer and he had already he'd stopped working on the table he used to be the person that would strip the tables and then they'd bring the photographer and then he'd build the tables back up he'd stopped doing that a year or two ago he trained other people I'm just kind of assuming that he's trained other people how to make the purchases. However, it also might be a case of they just start going to the Museum of Pinball in Banning and just using those tables there. Honestly, it makes commercial sense to me to do that. If they have an arrangement with the museum and they can get access to the pinball and they are okay with them dismantling it, taking photos and putting it back together again, well, I don't know. It seems pretty good business to mean, really. Well, especially when you've got tables stacked up on their heads in your storage facility. It's not like they're all built and rocking. You've purchased a table. It is an investment, and hey, it's an investment that is actually growing in value. So... If they liquidate all those tables now, that would be a huge catch-all. Imagine the people who will be clamoring for those top 10 tables they have. Yeah. Yeah. They, they, they're, they'd be okay if they had to liquidate those. Um, but, uh, I, I, I hope Norman, I don't know. It's one of those things where it's like, oh man, it's going to be a shame if he's not at the, uh, the shows anymore. I mean, for instance, this coming weekend is, uh, the arcade expo for in at the museum of pinball that I'm sure that Farsight will be there, uh, with their booth. And it's like, well, is it just going to be Mike? is Norman not going to be there anymore? Obviously, why would he be? We're going to have to have Norman back on. See if we can get him back on. If we know how to contact him. Oh, I know how to contact him. Oh, really? You have his old man AOL email address. I got Norman's phone number. I'm all good. Alright. We're going to have to have him on and bid him a fond farewell, obviously. and maybe he'll just want to come on and talk pinball just generally. Because I'm sure he's under heavy NDA to not discuss Farsight business. It's not like he's going to spill the beans there. So we're going to have to find somebody new at Farsight that's willing to speak with us and spill the guts. Yeah. I know that one of the other guys there I think has come on before, which is Flippy Floppy. you might see Flippy Floppy in the forum I think he has dropped in once but yeah he again, he was a bit freaked out because he was afraid that we would ask him nasty questions but we were very nice to him so we were very nice and Mike has obviously come on and talked to us also once upon a time Bobby used to talk to us but you know he's a busy guy that's what we're pretending is the case he's like I don't want to deal with these yahoos anymore. Yeah, that's right. This game's been around long enough that I don't have to speak for it anymore. That's right. Exactly. Bunch of you. I don't know. I'm going to – when Arcuda, we mentioned they're getting close to finally coming out with their cabinet and at least putting it on tour, if you will, for people to actually see what they built. and of course the one that's being sent to America it's being sent to Farsight because Farsight, that way they can finalize software issues that they have with the physical machine there essentially what you would call Whitewood in a digital format at the moment that they're working with they can do a lot of stuff there but there's some other stuff that Arcuda hasn't yet announced which they probably need the hardware for a lot of proprietary stuff is going on inside that cabinet that you'll see in the coming months. So anyway, when that gets up there, I'm going to go up and be able to play with the cabinet. So at that time, I'll be in Farsight Studios, and I'm sure I'll hunt down some of these people we haven't talked to in a long time and be like, hey, remember me? What do you got to say? That's right. Give me the goods. So anyway, yeah. So, again, with the non-monthly release coming out, the timing is one of those things where it's like, well, whoever takes over Norman's position has obviously got some ground to make up. And so this might be the soft entry that allows them to kind of pick up the mantle. I mean, I'm sure Norman didn't take – I'm sure he didn't take all of his toys and go home. I'm sure that many of those toys are developed, you know, you develop them for Farsight and therefore Farsight owns them for how he's getting the music out and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, that was, well, I think that the system that you're alluding to was made by Steve Elenoff. So the extraction equipment, yeah, it's a cool piece of tech. Yeah. But yeah, I think that's actually definitely something that Farsight would own the rights to. So, yes. All right. So now that we've got all of the normal business out, this newsletter also announced, and this is something that I've been playing with for a little over a month, they announced a new product that they're coming out with. And it's this new app. Well, I don't know if it's what you would call a new app, but it's Skills, S-K-I-L-L-Z. and what this is is a way for you to play pinball competitively for money like not virtual tokens, cash money cash money and as the website points out, this is not gambling because these are games of skill and so it's more amusement only so it's one of those things where you're like correct, it's a game of skill, I am gambling on whether or not I am better than the other person. That's true. So, the funny thing is, Norman had been exceedingly excited about the prospect of this. He was really on board with this. So, you can currently go ahead and download this game right now if you get the newsletter, and I'll make sure Jared has the proper link for downloading in the show notes by if you go to blockadepinball.com slash episodes, You'll land on our site, and when you click on this particular episode, it'll be there in the notes. But anyway, you download, and you're able to... Currently, their monetary function is not going to be in there, according to the newsletter. It's just going to be strictly for these virtual tickets, which is the other currency that this program uses. But obviously, this is the non-cash-out kind of currency. It's just what allows you to rank yourself and play more games and still have fun in the competitive aspect without putting cash on the line. Right. Then later, you'll be able to actually hook up your credit card or your PayPal account and sink real money in, and you'll be able to play with it. So what they did for us with the beta was they gave us – they load us up with $50. and so we could play both the tickets version or the cash version and see how that works. And the way the cash version works is you wind up having different amounts that you can go ahead and bet with, if you will. First one being $1. So let's say you select a $1 game. you select the one dollar game you play the table you post your score now if there is nobody else that has been paired with you in terms of skill level because they have an algorithm working to try and make sure that everybody is playing at an equal competitive level that's weird doesn't seem fair that you're going against a top 10 far side tournament players No. Obviously, you're going to have to play a few rounds before it can learn what your skill level is. And that might be maybe you have to play X amount of ticket rounds. I don't know yet what the final process is going to be, but maybe you have to play X amount of that. That'll establish your baseline of how good you are. That's fair. Essentially, you're teaching the AI what your level is. I think that you almost would need to do that, really. Right. So then it'll try and see if there's anybody in your skill level that has already posted a score. If there is, then you're immediately playing against that score. As soon as you finish the game, you'll find out if you won or not. If they don't have anybody that matches up with you, then you go ahead and you play just the same. You post your score. Yours is now going to be the one that's sitting there waiting for another player to come and try and play against. That particular game that you play will exist for seven days. If nobody is at your skill level or if nobody has bothered playing in that time, then you get the money back that you plunked in. The way it works, though, is you play you put a dollar in to play that game. The winner obviously gets their dollar back, but they also get, I believe it's 60 cents. So, presumably a 40 cent clip. It's what? It's like a 40 cent clip, basically. Right, that's probably going to Skills, I imagine. Yep. Because why else would they be hosting? Absolutely no reason. They're not going to give it away for free. So they take the 60-40 profit share for the loser. Yeah. Now, there's another level above that, which is a $5 level, of which you get $3 of the winning. And then there is a $10 level, of which you get $6. So it's still 40%, 60-40 profit. Yeah, right. Now, the interesting thing about this was, while we were playing this in the beta, I was like, all right, let's go. this is basically fake money. Free money, let's do it. Yeah, come on, let's test this thing out. So I posted a whole bunch of $5 games, and I immediately was like, yeah, let's do some $5 games. Let's do some $10 games. People weren't playing them. I'm like, it's not your money. You're not going to be able to cash this out. It's purely for the day. Come on. Let's have some action. Now, I don't know if that was maybe people were playing, but my skill level didn't was too late anybody i don't i don't know um so that was kind of weird and i've actually emailed skills now let's make this clear this is not farsight company this is another company that does esports yep um so approach again they approach farsight to provide the platform and they're plugging their framework into it essentially or far side plugging their framework into this platform, which is more, more what I would presume to be the case. Um, so, uh, but it's one of those things where I, I contacted skills and, and you know, they were asking for, Hey, what did you think of the app? Um, and I was like, well, my main thing was if I have scores posted, then unless I post five scores, and I've got nobody competing against me. Well, why would I want to continue to plunk money in when I'm not even getting any feedback whatsoever on how well I'm doing? And then the thing was I would check the app, say, two days later, and it would be like, oh, okay, you won this one, you lost this one. I was like, well, how come I haven't got any notification? Yeah, it's a push notification. Yeah, and yet I had pushed. I had allowed it to give me the push notification, but I wasn't getting one. So that was kind of odd. The flip side would be if it knows that I am in a particular skill level, I should get notification saying, hey, there's a couple of people that have played that are at your level. Why don't you come in and challenge? Yeah, and come in and compete against them. It needs to encourage people because otherwise what happens was I just completely forgot about that app and wasn't playing it. It is just classic. You've got to give people a reason to come back. and even the fact that you allowed push notifications and said yes give me the pushes I want to know and they're not leveraging that yet that's a bit of a flop start really but that might again be because of it being in the beta because this is what they call they have skills called sandbox mode so that could be the reason that very could well be the reason are they using test flight to do it? Yes. Yeah, I think that could be the reason why you may not be getting Push. I think Push relies actually on an Apple service. Oh, okay. Well, Apple Push service that you need to plug into. So yeah, maybe that's not available when you're actually doing beta. We'll excuse them for that for now. Well, we'll excuse them. But I hope that I mean, I certainly, that's what I messaged them about. And I was like, hopefully that's one of them being in there. The other aspect, and this was the aspect that Norman was had been asking me prior to the beta actually starting. And that was, how do you get... Are there going to be enough players? Yeah. You're asking a lot out of people to commit money to these things. And there's a certain type of person that's willing to do this. It's online poker. You've got plenty of people that are more than content to play with the 3,000 tokens they get as soon as they log on and then you've got the serious players. That's right. And then with those serious players, there a possibility of you just playing so good that you don have anybody to compete against Yeah that a real danger And for those people in the top tiers and let's be frank, there's probably going to be a fair few people within the subset culture of competitive pinball that if they were in a match, say, in a normal tournament, like in a pub or a venue, it would be different. But because they're online and they're a good player, the percentage of people who would want to actually go against them, I really think it's going to be small. Yeah. This is a big experiment. A very big experiment. Yeah, for sure. It's one of those things where it's like, well, how do you properly gauge what the response is going to be? You have to do it. You have to do it. So what they've done is they have one table out, and I don't know if they're going to do more or what. I would guess that at some point they're going to have to do more. But right now it's one table. So everybody's playing the same table. And what this is, what they did was they essentially re-skinned Fireball. Now, I know what everybody's gut reaction is. Oh, God, a re-skin. Is it as bad as Ghostbusters being a re-skin of Hornet House? And the answer is no, it's not. I personally believe they did a fairly good job with this. It's all new sounds, all new voice work, and they completely redid the look of the table, including some of the things they eliminated from the table are those finer detail things that would get lost on your phone. So with Fireball, around the spinner, you have all the buttons, the rollover buttons. Oh, yeah. Those are gone. They're not there. Insert lights that tell you the value of the sinkholes or the saucers for locking your points when you lock the ball. Insert lights are gone, and instead they have a digital version of it just rotating with the point value over the top. So visually... That's cool. Yeah, visually it's very easy to follow along with what is happening on your phone. You're not having to strain and figure it out. It reads quickly. You understand what it is. When you finish... Oh, these are all timed, by the way. I believe it's a minute... 160 seconds. Wow. That's all you get? That's all you get. So it is quick, quick, quick. So, again, playing Fireball and EM, pretty good. That's about the whole game time for Fireball, isn't it, really? You know, so... And the flip side of that is with Fireball, there's also an easy way of exploiting that table and just racking up points in a very safe manner. But it's a very slow process of doing that. So this kind of takes away how you would game the table in certain situations. So you're dealing with the clock. You're dealing with an EM. and what happens is you can earn bonuses off of the fact of well how many balls did you go through oh so it's like a pin golf sort of thing where the less balls you use the more points you get yes interesting so there's a lot of that aspect that I think that they did a pretty good job of capturing yes it's still a of Fireball, but hey, if you want to go play Fireball, fire up the app. If you want to compete against people, you want something that is visually quick and easy to understand so that you can concentrate on competing and not worrying about well, I wasn't able to read that insert correctly. And you're also dealing with a table that's got some pretty basic rules. Which is a good one to start with, really. I think it sounds like what they've done is they want to, Skills want to experiment with esports and pinball. So they said, they gave Farsight the brief of, right, give us a table that is easy for people to understand. And, of course, the early solid states and EMs are good candidates for that. Yeah. And then they would have probably had taken a look at the table and they'd gone, ah, yeah, we need to make this more exciting because it's a bit dull. And let's be serious. Fireball is a lovely table for an EM perspective but it is a bit dull with the way it plays so let's lighten it up a bit and doing the a new skin is one thing but I think doing the heads up display, I've seen the screenshot that they had in the newsletter and it's yeah okay that gives it a little bit of more relevance to a modern audience who wouldn't have any sort of affinity with the EM style but still want to be able to play pinball and do this. Well, and clearly they had to change up the look anyway because they don't have permission from Bally to turn their table into a... No. Again, not a gambling game, but still, it's a... It's a gambling game. Essentially what they're doing is, Skills are doing dollar games. That's what they're doing. Basically, it is Skills dollar game alley. so fine really i mean people do dollar games all the times right off the record so this is just allowing them to do it online um look i'm i'm very interested to see how they go with it i'm very interested to see i note that it's only on ios at the moment and i just wonder if google play have very strong restrictions on gambling apps um in that you cannot put them on the play store except for some jurisdictions like the UK, which is relaxed the rules. So, for example, Labrokes, the company I work for, we are not allowed to put our Labrokes app into the Google Play Store in Australia because they just flat out ban them. So I just wonder if this might be for the short to long term until Google Play release the restriction, well, relax the restriction, whether this may actually be iOS only. for a long time unless they somehow allow Android customers to download it from a website, which is the way we do it at the moment. Now, again, I don't want to – I don't believe this is a new company, Jared, because I'm looking here at the app right now, and it says players have won $32,865,000. So they've clearly been doing something prior to Farsight. I don't know what. um oh yeah the yeah skills i've heard the name before and they are around i think they do a lot of good like casino styles right that's what i would that's what i would think now let me ask you this jared did you ever get um zen pinballs esports oh there we go that's what i knew i'd seen it before. Xen is on Skills. Yes, that's where I heard it from. Yeah, right. They've got their eSports edition also. Don't they have the Skyrim pack, or Skyrim and Doom? That's their eSports version, I think. Let me see here. I was trying to get me to sign in and all this jazz. I used to have it up. I don't know why it's suddenly going through this. I don't know. They only had a limited selection of tables. the 400 number. Which again, with this kind of thing, you need a limited amount because you want to have all your players grouped together and playing. You don't want one player sitting on one of 100 machines. Because that's never going to happen. You've got to focus them down. Essentially, I would think no more than six tables at any one time available. It might be that they could turn some tables on and off, and offer different ones each month, which would be really cool. But having them all there at once is just too much choice and not enough narrow. So I'm going to have to see, now that it's asking me to sign in again, I'm going to have to see if it links to the account that I created for Farsight's version, and see if the two wind up linking together or not. And, you know, so that I can have it all as the same data, if you will. But I encourage everybody to give it a download. Like I said, right now you can play it without having to deal with money. just dealing with the tickets. Because it's only going to be fun if we have a big user base. If we don't have a big user base, then there's not going to be any fun to be had. So pick it up, play the free version at least, and who knows, if you're dominating in the free version, maybe that gives you enough courage to plunk some of your own money down. Have a dollar game. Yeah, have a dollar game or two. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think we exhausted the newsletter. I think we might have squeezed it dry for everything we can get out of it for now. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. Any other pinball? Ah, I did get my shipment from Big Daddy. From Big Daddy? Big Daddy Enterprises. That's all my connectors. so I have little baggies of connectors to crimp, if you will. But I also have to clean my garage so I can actually get to my pinball machine. Right. Yes. So I've been dealing with that before I dive in. Trying to make it a cleaner environment to deal with. Oh, that's interesting. I decided to sign up finally to Instagram this week. no and it wasn't because i was just bored it was because there's this app it's called social soup which is a uh a whisper marketing company and they if you are going to be selected for projects to try out new products they like you to have instagram um it helps you get in on projects so i thought oh well that's a low barrier to entry i'll just go and do it and whatever i might end up using it so i've been hunting around on instagram just do the hashtag search for pinball and I've found a lot of really interesting stuff on there, including this one company that offers certain playfields as a massive Mylar overlay. So I don't know if you've heard of this company, but it's like essentially what they've got is this really strong polycarbonate product that they can digitally print onto. Oh, yeah. And you can then just basically sand your playfield down to bare wood, put this over the top and it looks amazing you know the i saw these junk playfields that these people got um and like they would cactus these playfields there's no way you'd even attempt they're basket cases there's no way you would attempt to restore on it but all they did is they sanded it down got all the artwork off the inserts and laid down this this essentially um two-pack sheet which is what it is digitally printed two-pack sheet and it just looks phenomenal um so unfortunately there's not one for star race i did check right so because i would have been uh shut up and take my money because right how much are they charging for it i believe it's like it's about 400 wow 400 for essentially the the overlay um but i think it depends 200 to 400 i think um and they've got a limited range but um like the the gosh the one of the instagram pics was of a top play field from uh i think or no it was the uh the sub play field from black hole and this thing was an absolute chock up mess and like after i thought uh he did it like a before And after I went, how did you do that with that play field? That would have taken you months to do. And then he said, oh, yeah, yeah, I put this overlay over it. I went, wow, that's a very interesting product. So if you wanted to, you could go on the hunt for these tables, these absolute junker tables, get these, like, get these decals, essentially it's not decals, get this overlay and restore playfields just very easily and turn them around very quickly if you want to expend the money on them. Yeah. It's certainly easier than trying to track down a CPR playfield if they have one available to you and if you can track one down and how much people are charging for after they already bought theirs. Yes, because essentially they are a commodity now. People trade them. Yeah. Yeah, they were well and truly an investment. I'm sure people are just out there at the moment just waiting on the wait list, even if they don't have a game because they buy the playfield and they can sell it two years later for its expense. Well, when I was on the forum for 8-Ball Deluxe, there was a couple of people over there like, well, if anybody needs a CPR playfield, I've got four of them. Four? Yeah. Now, what they said was because CPR grades their playfields as gold, silver, and this. Gold, silver, and this. and so I have a feeling that some people maybe bought with the intention of well I'm going to pick the best of what they give me I don't know but you do kind of go oh man aren't you predatory you know you scooped in and swooped in and bought these purposely with the intent of then turning around and selling them for more than what you paid for I don't know a little bit skeezy on such a niche market to do that too, in my opinion. It's one thing if it's a mass market that you know that it'll be easily that if you didn't swoop in and buy them, that's okay. They were just going to be swooped in and bought anyway. But the fact that you're swooping in and buying them with the intent of, and now I just wait. Yeah. I don't know. It's a little skeezy to me. I don't know. It's just business. I know. It doesn't help that I've been watching a documentary series on Netflix called Dirty Money, and it's basically skeezy people earning money in very bad ways that are not... They may follow the rules, but they're ethically just horrible. Corrupted beyond reprieve. Alrighty. Well, folks, with that, we're going to wrap it up. Hey, again, make sure you visit our website, blockadepinball.com slash episodes. Obviously to get the past episodes that we've done, show notes, as well as all these movie reviews I keep on dropping, of which I'm going to be posting at least two more in the next couple days. And why don't you go ahead and follow us on Twitter? I know it's difficult, but you can do it, can't you? Yep. at blockade that is the show if you want to follow myself i am at shut your trap and jared is at jared morgues then you can also just drop us an email that is blah blah blockade at gmail.com give us uh your feedback uh if there any show talks you would like us to touch upon any of that stuff we can go ahead and do And if you a true curmudgeon you can go to the pinball arcade fans and look at the threads that I created for episodes 128 onwards, where I'll just be posting single links. So there you have, you don't have to digest or subscribe to anything other than that forum post. Let me be your RSS reader. All righty. Well, until next time, who knows what, what we'll be talking about next week, because we certainly didn't know what was going to be happening this week. Yeah. It's week to week at this stage. Week to week. Alright, folks. Hey, go enjoy Banzai Run. Go enjoy the Jurassic Park table that Zem has. And if you can find a real table, go enjoy that too. Alright. Until next time, bye-bye. See you later. WizardAmusement.com. The site to visit for custom pinball shooter modes. Easy to install. Totally unique. mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order with remusement.com sales restoration customization don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some in ball i gotta i gotta recommend there's a documentary also that i just watched called Icarus. It's a documentary and it's on Netflix. It initially starts out about a guy who a cyclist, not a professional cyclist, just an amateur cyclist, but a very good one at that, deciding because of all the doping scandals that were going on, wanting to see if he could, how easy it is to game a system because he couldn't figure out how these guys were getting away with it for so long and not being caught. And then when they were caught, it's like, oh yeah, I've been doing it for years. It's like, well, where was the breakdown? So he decides that he's going to, this is what his documentary is going to be about. Um, so he's got doctors on board and, you know, he's going to keep it a secret, obviously from the governing agencies of, of the sport. But I think it was with the intention of after he, he did one race clean and then he was going to do that same race the next year, doped and, you know, come back with his findings and give all this evidence over to the governing bodies and say, Hey, look, this is what I did. This was the amount of increase, my jump, so that perhaps you could see these other athletes when one year they do terrible and the next year they're in a completely different league. Maybe that's giant red flags and not humanly possible or whatever. But in the process of him finding laboratories to help him alter his samples, if you will, he winds up coming across this Russian who runs the World Anti-Doping Lab in Moscow, who's willing to help him. And just as he's in contact with this guy, the scandal breaks out that Russia's been doping their athletes, and the movie just goes completely 180 from what you were watching initially into this fascinating, almost like a spy thriller of a movie. I mean, literally to the point of the guy fleeing Russia and fearing for his life and somebody else all of a sudden that was a high-ranking official that has the same knowledge as him dying suddenly of a massive heart attack, even though the guy was in perfect health. I'm telling you, it's one of these documentaries you just go, whoa, this was not what I thought I was watching initially, and it's really fascinating. So I highly recommend Palmigoni. So it took a massive twist at the end. Oh, yeah. And I was watching video of the guy afterwards, you know, interviews that he's conducted where the interviewers were asking about it. And he goes, oh, it was just like finding the Holy Grail, you know, stumbling upon it. You're doing one thing else. And it's like, hey, look what I'm in the middle of. Cool. You know, and I've got all this footage beforehand. So I'm. I've got a story to tell here. I've got quite the story. Yeah. So anyway, I recommend checking that out. I have a bunch of movies that I'm going to be watching this week. I've already knocked off two of the four that I need to be seeing. But yesterday I went and saw A Wrinkle in Time, and because it's a PG-rated movie, that meant I had to watch PG-rated trailers, which meant I was once again subjected to the abomination that is Nomi and Juliet. It's the sequel to that god-awful thing, which I didn't see. Sherlock Gnomes. And I want to... I paid special attention to why this movie is so offensive to me, and why I will not be going to it. So, for starters, there's this... They are in the backyard, or whatever. There's this puddle. One of the gnomes falls into the puddle. He sinks head deep. All of a sudden, bubbles start popping, because of course he's farting. It's like, why would... Of course you've got to have the fart joke. And so the other gnome is watching, and he's just going, ugh, are you finished yet? And the guy's mumbling underwater, no, not yet. and all of a sudden, he's like, I made a jacuzzi. I'm like, okay, I made that joke myself when I was seven. This isn't a new joke at all. Then there was another moment where somebody gets the top of their head lopped off accidentally. What the fence post? It's this long, drawn out and I'm just like, really? For a kids movie? You're just, I know you're pandering to the adults that have to take the kids to it, but it's also kind of mildly offensive that you're doing that. And then where they really went with that direction was all of a sudden Sherlock Gnomes is like, we've got to find a ship. And one of the gnomes comes running up and he goes, no ship, Sherlock. Yeah. it's like I remember all these moments when I was going to see I forget which kids movie we saw recently and I'd seen all these trailer moments and I just went oh the kids were pissing themselves laughing this is what you're showing me in the trailer as this is the best you've got this is the highlights of it oh dear lordy strap yourself in it's going to be a rough ride Chris No, it's not going to be because I don't have to go. I'm not going. Sorry. Yes, you do. You've got a movie pass. You have to go and see all the movies that are available. Nope. As one of our other people that gave a response, let's put it to you that way, said, they were like, well, you left us on the cliffhanger last week about this, so you've got to go see it now. Absolutely. You can go see that. I'll go see Hurricane Heist, which looks equally terrible, and we'll call it even. Well, as long as you pay for the person going, yes, that'll be fine. No. Because you don't have to actually pay. But if you have to pay, as in you've already got the movie card, so you can go to any movie you want to see for free. But everyone like me who has to actually pay money as well to go and see this. Well, this is where you start introducing your child to the concept of quality and saying that is not quality. We will not be wasting our money on that movie, even though they're begging to go see it, which I doubt they are. Otherwise, it's called taking one for the team, which my wife and I have... Stunned on numerous occasions. Yes, and it never gets easier. Because you can just tell. You can tell with these kids' movies whether they're just going to be complete an utter pandering crap that you just want to take your own life during. So like the Paw Patrol movie. Oh my God. Oh, the Paw Patrol. Like I had a friend on Twitter who was saying, Oh, I'm with the boys in Paw Patrol. Why didn't I have the foresight to smuggle in some hard liquor? Yeah, that's right. Have one of those slurpees in the movie. Have a vodka slurpee. Oh man. Yeah. The brutality of it. The struggle is real. I'm very curious, though. Next week, Tomb Raider opens, and I'm very curious to see if it breaks the curse of the video game movie. It looks... I've seen trailers of this just recently, showing over here, and I'm looking at it, I'm going, I like where they're going with this. I like the fact that it's not all about Angelina Jolie's boobs, which the other movie was, really. Let's be serious. I think they actually had to... Part of her costume was this extra padding in that area. Yes, it was. So ridiculously outlandish. Well, they still weren't ridiculously compared to what the actual video game was rendered as. Yes. So I like the fact that it's more about... It seems to be more about the action. And I'll be honest, I have not caught up with a franchise of Tomb Raider since probably the PS1. so I think they've changed they've changed it quite a lot with the times which is good there's moments in it and the very fact that she has the ice pick that's straight out of Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider her look is exactly what those two games are so this is clearly what they're basing it off of the villain is Trinity which is also the villain in these games so yes to me it's action first and you better get that correct um i just i don't know it's it you do get nervous about these things as to whether they're gonna you know because i'm sorry i i did watch assassin's creed and it was terrible oh really okay terrible um wasn't the premise of that you don't need to go into it too much but it seemed like the they were putting people back in time and almost like an avatar style sort of virtual reality type of thing? That's the game. Oh, right. That's actually the concept of the game, that they find your descendants of somebody, and because of the DNA, they're able to and saying that memory is carried, passed along in your DNA, certain strands, that you would be able to then go into this, what they call the Animus which is a computer program and you would be able to learn things that would help them then discover maybe things and I don't know I played halfway through one of the games and was like eh okay clearly I'm missing a lot of the backstory because I don't play the games but the movie was even it was just a confused mess that was a absolute CG fest of sets. And the really sad part is one of the hallmarks of the game was that you would go up on any tall tower and to get off the tower you just dive off into a cart full of hay. That'll break your fall. And it's thrilling to do in the video game. So of course you have to have that in the movie. And so they did it in the movie and they actually did a real high fall with a stuntman. But they did it on just a plain scaffolding in the middle of a desert or whatever. And then when they put it in the movie, they rendered everything else around him. So all the high? No, not all the high. I'm talking about all the buildings, all the sky, everything. Everything was rendered other than his actual fall. I'm like, what was the point of the high fall? there's so much CG around this that I'm not buying for a minute that it's actually legitimately real the only reason why I knew it was real was because I saw a YouTube video on it but that's the kind of miscalculation that they make where it's like you can't surround stunt work with all this CG and expect us to believe the stunt itself was real our brains don't work that way okay interesting one thing that does look interesting is Replay 1 I'm really on the fence on that one oh are you? I haven't read the book I haven't read the book either but it's going to be a complete CG fest while they're in the Oasis which is that virtual environment so I don't know on the one hand you go well it's Spielberg he knows what he's doing but on the other hand he did do Crystal Kingdom and the Indiana Jones and the Crystal Kingdom, the last one, which was... Oh, Crystal Skull. Crystal Skull, yeah. And then on the other hand, it also reminds me terribly a lot of iRobot, which, again, CG Fest, it just, I don't know, it takes me out of it. Did you feel the same about Minority Report as well? Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. See, I didn't have a problem with Minority Report. I knew that it was totally digital because it was a futuristic city and I just let it wash over me. But there's a way of doing it. Again, just look at Blade Runner 2049. There's a lot of digital in that, but they built a lot of sets. And when you have that much reality existing, you start buying the CG a lot more because your brain is thinking, well, look, we just watched an entire scene in a real building and the rendering is so good that I'm not quite sure what's digital set extension, what is real set. So essentially what they're doing is they're taking real sets and they're putting a bit of digital salt and pepper over the top. Or extending them taller or something of that nature, as opposed to just having it be green screens and green blocks that people are sitting on and all that is rendered after the fact. Yeah, right. Because it plays in a person's performance. You can see it. If they're in a real environment, they believe it. if they're in a nothing but a green screen now they're having to pretend and imagine it and it looks it makes it hard yeah yeah it takes away from well it takes away from some actors abilities to be able to convincingly portray the character because they got they've got to not only portray the character but they're also going to think about the environment as well right so yeah that's that's tough yeah i wouldn't like to be in that position as an actor but And a lot of them don't I mean So it's Yeah I'm not I don't know It looks interesting the concept looks interesting The concept definitely looks interesting So I was even interested in reading the book And then I just never bothered buying the book So I'm sure that the book sales will go through the roof Probably Yeah who knows With the movie they usually do I think people sort of go, Oh, I've seen the movie. Oh, there's a book on this. I guess I should probably read it. Well, some people do. I was going to say other people just go book. I don't even want to read the comic book. Why would I want to read a book? Yeah. True. True. This is, this is true. And unfortunately this is a little bit me actually. Like I, I know there's lots of movies out there based on books, but I never picked them up. Cause yeah, I just don't read. Well, I'm a bad person. Yeah.