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Zen brings Apple to a Pinball Party

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 18m·analyzed·Aug 23, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Zen announces Apple Arcade exclusive Pinball Party with 12 kid-themed tables; hosts discuss DreamWorks licensing and pinball market price inflation.

Summary

BlahCade A A A Pinball Podcast hosts Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discuss Zen's new Apple Arcade exclusive platform, Zen Pinball Party, featuring 12 kid-friendly pinball tables with DreamWorks licensing. The episode covers three revealed titles—How to Train Your Dragon (designed by Zoltan Vary), Kung Fu Panda (designed by Peter Pewitt Kovacs), and Trolls World Tour (designer TBD)—alongside broader market news including the Museum of Pinball liquidation sale in Banning, California, Arcade 1UP price increases to $850, and vintage pinball price inflation post-COVID.

Key Claims

  • Zen Pinball Party is an Apple Arcade exclusive with 12 pinball tables playable on phones, Apple TV, and Macs

    high confidence · Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discussing Zen's official announcement of the new platform

  • The Museum of Pinball in Banning, California housed approximately 600 pinball machines and over 1,100 arcade games total before closure and liquidation sale

    high confidence · Jared Morgan detailed firsthand account of visiting the location and describing its collection

  • The Museum of Pinball faced zoning restrictions limiting it to four openings per year, preventing year-round operation

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing the regulatory issues that led to the collection's eventual liquidation

  • Arcade 1UP pinball machines increased in price from $600 to $850

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing price inflation in the Arcade 1UP pinball line

  • Arcade 1UP Williams machines still lack Zen's patch and have broken games including Whitewater

    high confidence · Chris Friebus explicitly stating the patch hasn't been implemented despite being ready

  • Zen Pinball Party is targeting a younger audience with new IP themes, expanding beyond their traditional 35-55 year-old market

    high confidence · Chris and Jared analyzing the strategic intent and theming choices for the new platform

  • DreamWorks has expressed interest in providing additional IP licensing to Zen beyond the three titles announced

    medium confidence · Chris noting that Zen interviewed the DreamWorks representative who 'seemed pretty hot on the idea of more IPs coming'

  • Peter Pewitt Kovacs designed Kung Fu Panda table and was recently promoted to table designer role

    high confidence · Chris and Jared identifying the designer and noting this is his first table design

Notable Quotes

  • “It was literally six aisles of pinball you know facing each other... one aisle was nothing but williams from front to back... nothing but bally on the other side”

    Jared Morgan — Vivid description of the scale and organization of the Museum of Pinball collection before liquidation

  • “Just think what this is going to do to the pinball market over there in the U.S., having this glut of machines hit the market.”

    Chris Friebus — Recognition of the significant market impact the Museum of Pinball liquidation will have on pricing and availability

  • “Now you legitimately have to sit there and go well do I want a 30 35 40 year old machine with aged parts and electronics or do I want to spend the same amount and get a brand new machine that has full part support and warranty.”

    Jared Morgan — Illustrates the paradox created by vintage pinball price inflation now matching new machine costs

  • “They were never other than in pre-order... and it's one thing to say it's a pre-order at a discount price if you wait then it's going to the price is going to go up... but the fact that there was never any kind of announcement of that sort”

    Jared Morgan — Criticism of Arcade 1UP's lack of transparency regarding price increases for their pinball machines

  • “This is going to be like, basically think of Williams on Android as their testbed for this product.”

    Chris Friebus — Analysis of Zen's strategic approach using the Williams app as a template for Zen Pinball Party's features

  • “his code is usually complicated... but if they're trying to keep it kid friendly maybe that tampers Zoltan's basic instincts”

    Chris Friebus — Assessment of designer Zoltan Vary's reputation for complex coding and how kid-friendly constraints might balance that

  • “These are all going to be using Zen physics not Williams arcade physics... it's easier”

    Jared Morgan — Observation about the technical choice to use Zen's proprietary physics engine rather than arcade-standard physics

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen StudioscompanyApple ArcadeproductMuseum of PinballvenueArcade 1UPcompanyZoltan VarypersonPeter Pewitt KovacspersonHow to Train Your DragongameKung Fu Pandagame

Signals

  • ?

    announcement: Zen Studios officially announced Zen Pinball Party, a new digital pinball platform exclusive to Apple Arcade with 12 kid-friendly tables

    high · Chris and Jared discussing Zen's official announcement of the platform during their summer break period

  • ?

    design_innovation: Zen Pinball Party tables feature simplified layouts with more ramp-to-flipper feeding and less ball wildness, emphasizing accessibility for younger audiences

    high · Multiple design observations noting 'ramp feeds directly to the flipper' and emphasis on ball control over complexity across How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda, and Trolls World Tour

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Zen secured three DreamWorks IP licenses for Zen Pinball Party; DreamWorks executive expressed interest in expanding partnership with additional IPs

    high · Chris noting Zen interviewed DreamWorks IP representative who 'seemed pretty hot on the idea of more IPs coming' and three of three announced titles are DreamWorks properties

  • $

    market_signal: Vintage pinball machines have experienced significant post-COVID price inflation; machines that were $900-1200 now fetch $2500+; Australian prices show 90s era top-20 pins selling for $12,000 AUD

    high · Jared discussing Vector machine price jump and Australian market examples of vintage machines selling at inflated prices

  • $

    market_signal: New Stern and Jersey Jack machines ($8,000) are now price-competitive with vintage machines ($8,000+), making new machines more attractive due to warranty and parts support

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.235

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world it's jared morgan hello everyone hello uh you from the blue room i am in the blue room i'm in my new place now so folks it's it's yeah it's it's been a spell since our last uh podcast here and there's a valid reasons for that one of them being that jared's in a new location yeah that's right i've moved yeah i've got my own place now so and it's got a a room that's now dedicated as my studio and my office so it's not a bedroom anymore you can't see any bedroom around me no it's actually a room room so is this me we're gonna see like you know eventually egg crate behind you and you know twinkle lights and oh yeah i need to get my key lighting a lot better than this at the moment i think i do think though that uh you know the the blue broom behind me here is gonna be perfect for chroma key yeah but then i'm gonna have to chroma key yeah that's right i'm not set up for that no that's right you need to give you one of those portable screens you can just set up you know right yeah the the quick and easy uh chroma key yeah yeah that's right um okay so let's see so jared moved um in case any of you are wondering yes my face is a wreck uh this is what happens when you don't use sunscreen kids because then then you get to put on the cream to uh adjust for all that and it's lovely it's like having a sunburn for three weeks straight yeah that's right And what else was going on? We had some just, you know, I kept on working on weekends, so that was pushing our podcast out. Yeah. And then Jared is only available every other weekend, so it was then all of a sudden like, okay, I'm available. Jared wasn't. Yeah. It was very hard to get us in the right scheduling environment. But look, here we are. Yes. We're here. And there's been stuff happening in the month that we weren't broadcasting. There has been stuff. We've got stuff to talk about. It's okay. Yeah, and we're happy to do just that. Let's talk about, just briefly, there were some real-world pinball announcements. I know Spooky is coming out or announced their Halloween-themed table. And when I say Halloween, I mean Halloween the movie, not pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns kind of thing. Yeah. For which they're also doing a second skin version, I guess? Is that what you'd call it? Yeah, yeah. A re-theme. Same layout, same everything. Different rules, different theme. What was that theme, though? It was Ultraman. It was like Kaiju battle. I can't quite remember the name, but it's definitely an Ultraman theme table, which I know that the folks at Spooky would have been absolutely jazzed to get because they love that sort of stuff. Well, especially after them not getting the Godzilla. Yeah. Gee, it's almost like they're thinking the same way Zen is with, hey, let's go after that Asian market.

“the first hit is free”

Chris Friebus — Reference to the accessibility hook for drawing in new, younger players to pinball

Trolls World Tour
game
DreamWorks Animationcompany
Zen Pinball Partyproduct
Williamsproduct
TNT Amusementscompany
Todd Tuckyperson
This Week in Pinballmedia
Melperson

high · Chris and Jared discussing the paradox where new and vintage machines cost the same but new offers better long-term value

  • ?

    product_concern: Arcade 1UP increased pinball cabinet prices from $600 to $850 without prior announcement of the change or explanation of timing

    high · Jared criticizing lack of transparency: 'the fact that there was never any kind of announcement of that sort... for the price to just jump up that much'

  • ?

    product_concern: Arcade 1UP's Williams Pinball app has not implemented Zen's available patch, leaving games like Whitewater with confirmed issues

    high · Chris stating 'Arcade 1-Up still has not implemented Zen's patch. No, they haven't, which is pretty crap' and describing broken games

  • ?

    venue_signal: Museum of Pinball in Banning, CA (600 pinball + 1,100+ arcade games) closing and liquidating entire collection; expected to flood US market with inventory affecting prices

    high · Jared's detailed firsthand account of the collection and discussion of liquidation sale impact on secondary market

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Museum of Pinball restricted to four annual openings due to zoning classification; attempt to relocate to Palm Springs failed due to facility requirements

    high · Chris and Jared discussing how zoning prevented weekend-year-round operation despite museum status, leading to closure

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Peter Pewitt Kovacs promoted to table designer role at Zen Studios; Kung Fu Panda is his first table design

    high · Chris stating 'peter has been with the team for years but just got promoted to table designer... this is his first go at the table'

  • $

    market_signal: Zen pivoting to target younger demographic (kids) with Zen Pinball Party after establishing stronghold in 35-55 year-old market

    high · Chris and Jared analyzing strategic intent: 'Zen is thinking, hmm, what markets don't we have a really good stronghold on... oh yeah kids'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Zen Pinball Party tables all use Zen's proprietary physics engine rather than Williams-standard arcade physics, described as 'easier'

    high · Jared observing 'These are all going to be using Zen physics not Williams arcade physics... it's easier'

    • 3:24
    Yeah, funny that. Interesting. What else did we miss during this time period? Was there any other... I'm trying to think if there was any other real one. I think Mando. Mando was announced.
    3:38
    No, no. No, that's been, we already talked about that. Yeah. We did. Yeah, we did. It's been that long. It's a blur.
    3:45
    So I think it's really just spooky doing their two tables. And that's probably the extent of it. There's been a couple other small things. Like if you, you know, if you're like us, you'll be reading This Week in Pinball. Yeah. And get all your news and goodness from there. But yeah, there's been, it's been relatively busy for the what's going on still around the world at the moment. So that's pretty good. It's good for pinball. Yeah, not bad at all. Of course, there's that massive, massive liquidation sale happening for, yeah. It's so sad. Yes, Museum of Pinball in Bannon.
    4:23
    It's such a bummer because you would think here in Southern California, we'd actually have a location that has a large amount of pinball tables. I mean, pinball was a huge feature on the beach around here. but we don't. It seems like all the pinball tables are in people's home collections.
    4:42
    There's one or two I shouldn't say one or two, there's probably a handful of locations that are more barcade style.
    4:50
    But maximum topping out at maybe between 20 and 30 tables the location in Banning had over 500, 600 tables? I think that whole collection is about a thousand isn't it? Well, that's including arcade games. What they were advertised was basically that they had 1100 arcade and pinball games. There was two rooms. One room was nothing but arcade games. The other room was nothing but pinball. The pinball side of things I believe was close to 600 machines. That is a colossal amount of equipment. Literally when I would walk into the location you don't even know where to look. It's like so many options it's it was literally like six aisles of pinball you know facing each other and i mean like one aisle was nothing but williams from front of back to the building nothing but williams on one side and bally on the other that was it nothing but bally and then the row after that was virtually every single stern modern stern machine and then they had Stern Electronics and then they had Data East and Sega. Data East was on another row. They had their own row? Data East had its own row that only went about halfway and then it became Salt State Valley and started to dip into EMs. Then they had the row of rarities.
    6:28
    So there's where a lot of the spooky pinball a lot of the Houdini and what was the other one? All the American small manufacturers. That's where I got to play the Aliens table on Highway.
    6:46
    Yeah, they had that. They had a little tiny nook of a room that had maybe five tables in it that was the adults only tables. It was basically Sopranos with full cursing and ZB. No, they didn't have But Big Bang Bar was in there. It was kind of... It also was kind of the blacklight room. Right, okay. Which was appropriate. But no, it was just an astounding amount of pinball. And then they also were hosting It Never Drains in Southern California, which is a big tournament. That's right. And so they had that set up with the monitors above the machines and everything. And that was in the... They set that up in the arcade room when they would do that. just incredible right the problem was they were only open four times a year yeah because things they got screwed on zoning issue yeah it's a zoning issue yeah yeah they thought that because they were a museum that that was going to allow them to have this you know open to the public visitation on weekends and they where this was positioned it was right near an RV camp. So they were like, sweet, RVs are going to be able to come, park, spend the weekend, you know, be a nice tourist thing. And it wasn't until after they had purchased the location and were loaded in that they found out, no, just because you claim your museum doesn't matter. It's still a zoning issue. You can be open four times a year. Oh, that is just... Which was actually... That was fine up until COVID.
    8:22
    Right, okay. I mean, so they were probably operating on very thin margins. This is all a private collection, folks.
    8:30
    Which is staggering. Yeah. It was owned by, I believe, the Weeks family, I think is who it was. They had previously all just been in warehouse storage, and they were like, well, why are we having it here? Why not let people enjoy this? And so that's why they'd set this up. So, I mean, it was an incredible collection. And then they were going to move to Palm Springs, which was maybe about a half an hour from where Banning is. Okay. And they thought that they were going to move there and be able to then be open, I don't know if it would be daily, but definitely weekends all year round. And I guess that location needed way more work than they thought initially. So that fell through and it became, well, we're going to auction the entire collection.
    9:15
    And just think what this is going to do to the pinball market over there in the U.S., having this glut of machines hit the market. There's going to be people probably having a very serious chat to their bank managers going, so how much can I borrow?
    9:33
    Yeah, because I imagine that some people are going to go there looking to buy a large portion of this. Oh, yeah. Just think about Todd Tucky and TNT Amusements. That's basically going to be their inventory for the next five years. Yeah. they're going to have, like, they'd be stupid not to go and just say, oh, yeah, we'll commit to buying 100 titles. Even if they bought 100 titles, there's still plenty left over for everyone else, right? I mean, there are some titles that it's like I would love to own that aren't necessarily, like, they have Vector. Vector is a fantastic pinball machine. It's not nobody's list of greatest pinball machines ever, but it is a fun machine and something that prior to covid i would think would maybe be a you know it'd be one of those 900 to 1200 machines yeah post covid it's now probably easily you know a 2500 machine yeah down here in australia i can tell you that a like a got lead system 80 like I've got would easily fetch five and a half thousand Australian dollars down here now due to COVID and there are some people selling 90s era top 20 pins for $12,000 Australian dollars and people are buying them that's the scarier thing people are going oh yeah that seems fine and they're buying these pinball machines at that price it boggles my mind I think the price is starting to settle a little bit now in fact I think this week in pinball did an article about pinflation um recently which i haven't had a chance to read yet but i definitely want to read and it will be covering this very phenomenal phenomenon about um uh you know all the the rise in prices um across pinball well you know what's crazy so these prices are on these vintage machines are all skyrocketing right meanwhile you can buy a brand new stern or jersey jack for you know eight grand which it used to be oh my god look at how expensive that is but now it's like now it's like reasonable which is that is ridiculous in itself because i mean now you legitimately have to sit there and go well do i want a 30 35 40 year old machine with aged parts and electronics or do i want to spend the same amount and get a brand new machine that has full part support. And warranty. Yeah. That's fine.
    12:09
    It's so strange. People's nostalgia really, like, it's bank for these people who have pinball machines. Also in the price inflation news, so Arcade 1UP's pinball machines, yeah, they're now $850. Yeah.
    12:28
    Huh? Sorry, that's redonkulous. That's too much. Now you're legitimately charging the same price as ad games.
    12:39
    But you're not giving the same sort of product. There's no disputing that. You can't sugarcoat it. Especially now that everybody's figured out exactly how to get FX3 on there and whatever else on the machine. There's a very clearly defined path of how to get everything you want onto that game's pinball machine and basically turn it into what's a pretty decent V-Pin by doing a few mods to it. And insult to injury, specifically with the Williams pinball,
    13:17
    Arcade 1-Up still has not implemented Zen's patch. No, they haven't, which is pretty crap. Really. That's staggering to me. It's ready to go. you know you have broken games at least i know whitewater for sure some people are saying hurricane also has issues like i'm not sure but point being uh put the dang patch in yeah fix it especially when you're going to charge 850 bucks which is just again that's that's too much it's too much like 650 was oh yeah well yeah we could probably like look at getting one of those at that particular point in time when they were... Well, it was 600.
    13:58
    It was 600. Yeah, so the price jacked up by 250 bucks. Yeah. Do you know what? And you know what this is all about. It's about cost materials, of course. But, you know, I encountered that myself the other day. So I went and bought... I've been buying furniture from Ikea like a mad person, right? Yeah. And putting it all together. And I thought, oh, I'll go. And I've got this table frame from Ikea that my desk is sitting on. and it's one of those ones that you can choose a 120 centimeter or 160 centimeter frame i thought i'll just go get a 160 centimeter tabletop from ikea and upgrade the space so i don't have to buy a new frame or everything so i went and bought what i thought was the right sort of tabletop for it um and when i got it home of course i got a surprise and that is that it wasn't quite right and i thought oh that's okay the other tabletop's solid wood i'll just drill into it and put new holes in yeah when i started drilling into it i found a whole lot of voids on the table and and what i think ikea has had to do is they have to rethink how they design these tabletops so they don't have to have a solid piece of wood and they only put structural elements in the table where they need where they know they need the screw holes to be they're basically going like 3D printing does. Well, yeah. And essentially the rest of the table, like if I go, if I knock around there, it's solid bits, it's hollow bits. So I have no idea, if I want to drill holes to put cables through the table, like I did on the other table, I've got no idea what I'm going to find underneath. And that's not really great. So that's how they've solved the problem with material costs to actually keep the price at the right level. But with something like a pinball machine, you can't do that because everything is kind of structural. The thing that bugs me with the pinball machine is I don't feel,
    15:50
    with regards to this pricing, I don't feel that people had a fair chance at buying these. At the old price. Stock was so, so under- And so when anybody says, ah, well, snooze, you lose. Well, no, I'm sorry. These things were never other than in pre-order, and everybody said the pre-orders got snatched up right quick. and it's one thing to say it's a pre-order at a discount price if you wait then it's going to the price is going to go up yeah but the fact that there was never any kind of announcement of that sort um obviously because they didn't know what was going to happen with materials uh but then for the price to just jump up that much that's it's and it's not just the pinball cabinets it's happening to all of their arcade cabinets that arcade one up is doing but they're all going up price. You know what's really funny? I saw on an Australian arcade one-up site that they actually, Costco Australia actually have stock of the pinball machines down here now.
    16:52
    They're charging Australian $1,099 for them which surprises me. I didn't think it would be that low. You have to order them directly from Costco. They're not floor stock so you have to go through the online store and actually get them through that way.
    17:09
    But for $1,099, it's definitely cheaper than the $1,350 that I thought there would be. But I'm still not going to jump on board and get one because I know the problems with them. And I was just going to say, now I've waited this long, and now you add in a price jump, which makes it even less appealing to me. Makes me very much more like, you know what, I can wait for the next generation. then too oh yeah you would absolutely there's no reason at all to jump on generation one stock now like no that that ship has sailed like the hype has gone for it yep and and it's just no point they may as well just take them off the market and hold all their hardware over to the point where they're ready to do iteration two yeah yeah all right well enough of the price inflation talk enough of market news pinball market news right we need like a little trend line right right let's move on to obviously uh zen took a month off also from doing the summer break right yeah for us sort of work for us sort of uh in an unintended manner um but they went ahead and basically they teased and we all went what are talking about that they were having a new platform and it was like wait a second but didn't mel say we don't like having all these platforms yeah that's right he did say that and yet platforms so okay sure the the new platform that was announced is called the zen pinball party and it is going to be exclusive to the apple arcade for those that don't know what the Apple Arcade is. It's basically you pay $4.99 a month to Apple, and you have access to over 150 games.
    19:08
    Yeah, it's a pretty sweet deal if you go to the Apple device. Yeah, and if you're into having basically, call it a Netflix of video games,
    19:19
    then yeah, $4.99 a month. Because I already heard from people saying, oh sweet, I already pay for Apple Arcade. this is essentially free to me. It not even a by decision I already made that decision and now this is going to be included in the package Flip side of that is you have people that are crying bloody murder over yet another exclusive from Zen We'll touch upon that later. We'll get there. I'm affected by that. I'm not an Apple customer. Sure.
    19:50
    So what is Zen Pinball Party? Zen Pinball Party is going to be a collection of 12 pinball tables, and we'll talk about the titles in a moment.
    20:01
    And you're going to be able to do hot seat play on your phone or on your Apple TV, whatever. So that's nice. You'll be able to actually do that back and forth.
    20:13
    There's a lot that they haven't announced in terms of, are there going to be tournaments? Is there going to be special events? They did say that there's going to be special events. I imagine it's probably going to be similar to what the Williams app was in terms of there being timed events for whatever purposes. Again, we don't know what details are within the game, if there's going to be collections or unlockables, anything of that nature.
    20:40
    I reckon there will be. I mean, it makes sense. I think this is going to be like, basically think of Williams Pinball on Android as their testbed for this product.
    20:51
    And what you see in that app, I would pretty much guarantee you're going to see elements of that in Pinball Party. Especially since, from what we've seen, Zen Pinball Party is definitely aiming for a younger audience. This is going to be an all-ages game, and when we tell you the titles that are new, completely new IPs, you'll see exactly what we mean. Yeah, exactly. How good is that, though, right? On that subject, Zen is thinking, hmm, what markets don't we have a really good stronghold on at the moment? oh yeah kids let's go and do something for them yeah they've pretty much already hooked uh us uh you know the the 35 to 55 market uh oh yeah they've got us sewn up right yeah um and to that effect a lot of our kids are going what are you playing i'm not interested in whatever theming you have there so bring in theming that they might actually be more interested in or familiar with and voila magic yeah so let's go into the title yes let's go into the titles and i'm going to present these one by one to you via picture oh hey look at that pictures picture first one shiny how to train your dragons oh yeah dreamworks license uh and i'll just spoil uh spoil alert right here uh three dreamworks licensed ips are coming at you um yeah nice get by the way DreamWorks seems to be a reasonable licensor to get engaged with. Yes.
    22:21
    Definitely kid friendly and definitely a lot of IP beyond what we're seeing already. And in Zen's pinball show, they had an interview with the DreamWorks IP guy and he seemed pretty hot on the idea of more IPs coming. Why wouldn't he feel Yes. Hot, more hot on more IPs coming. Let's be serious. Exactly. Especially when you realize what IPs are missing. So, here we go. How to Train Your Dragons. At first glance, I went, ooh, it's Castle Storm.
    22:56
    Yeah, a little bit, but it's that upper play field is the interesting thing. You know what that reminds me of immediately? It immediately reminds me of Time Machine by Zachariah. Look at it. It looks like one of those. And this whole thing. This whole thing spins, obviously rotates, changing the pathways for where the ball is going to go. It's something that Zen loves doing. Obviously, we've got a scoop down here. We've got the two ramps. This ramp looks like it has a diverter.
    23:26
    Yes. It looks like we've got an orbit on the outside here. I guarantee that a pinball can be loaded onto this catapult and launched. Oh, yeah.
    23:35
    You'll notice right off the bat here, let's see, I count one, two, three, four. I see four multi-ball Oh, there's five I think there's a total of six on this Those two are captive balls Oh, those might be captive Oh, you're right, those are probably captives Alright, but still, three ball It looks like we have various modes that you're going to be getting here Nicely labeled inserts Yeah, with actual art on them Look, the actual Look, this is design right here. This is what we've been saying. Yes. I mean, even these inserts down here, they look jeweled possibly. They do look a bit jeweled. For faceted, however you want to say it.
    24:20
    So despite it being a kid's theme, I'm actually thinking that this might have some depth to it. It could. Now, who is the... Are we going to cover designers here? Yes, who the designer is, this one is designed by Zoltan Vary. Who's... he's not my favorite designer folks and there's a reason why he's not my favorite designer because his code is usually complicated yes that's right but if they're trying to keep it kid friendly maybe that tampers Zoltan's basic instincts right and maybe we have something that's quite flippable here look the layout looks like a nice fan it looks pretty open it looks like shots to make there a couple of different images here we've got this uh dragon signal out there right fire breathing dragon going out there looks like you can hear you can see the pop bumpers uh yep going on there uh animated characters of course these are going to be animation heavy obviously they are they're going to capture the i reckon you can almost guarantee they're going to use actual voice call outs from the show as well the voice voice sound the likes absolutely they're going to be giving them good access to you know right uh there we have hiccup flying uh i forget what his dragon's name is toothless thank you um so obviously i don't know this because the kids watch the show and there you go that's precisely it it's gonna be dad what do you play is that dragons yes it is would you would you like a turn son or dear daughter please the first hit is free i was just gonna say that the first hit is free um and it looks like it has potential for some interesting lighting effects uh here too yeah it does i mean especially when you think i'll go back to this image here just with the dragon spitting some fire out here i mean this is this is a mobile game or a apple tv game and yeah you know you have to bear that in mind so what they're doing here with with the lighting seems quite interesting. There's shadow on the play field.
    26:26
    There's some stuff here that it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out when you actually start playing this.
    26:32
    And we say that, I mean, we're saying mobile because obviously phones are going to be your biggest players of Apple Arcade. Yes, if you have Apple TV on your television, you can use a controller and play it like a console. I don't think that that's the majority of the market that they're aiming at. But I imagine, too, that Apple IK will work on your Mac as well. I would imagine so, which is a big plus for Mac users because up until now... Well, I've got a Mac, so I can probably test this out. Right, but it's been not even FX3, right? It's still FX2, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, that's right. So that's a nice upgrade, at least on that front for those people. Okay, so there's title number one. Let's move on to title number two, which would be Kung Fu Panda. Okay, this definitely looks aimed at a younger audience. It does. Is it just me, or does this seem like a squished playfield?
    27:35
    Like, look at how much of the upper playfield is not playable. There's, they've, hmm. This looks like all of these ramps and lanes are halfway across, right? Which means the ball going wild and anything up here is not really a factor. I mean, this whole middle is blocked off.
    28:00
    This almost has a Steve Ritchie, no fear feel to me, where it's ramps and lanes, except for the fact that there's actual targets right here. It's very fan. It's an incredibly fan layout. But it's not long shots. That's what I'm saying. It's like the Mushroom World. It always feels like a three-quarter scale Mushroom World pinball. Right? It does. And what they've done is it feels like the criticism that a lot of people said with arcade one-ups, Marvel and Star Wars pins where they say the bottom third is all just arch. Yeah. It's air. It's unplayable. Well, they reversed this. It's like the top half is all air. So I worry about that.
    28:50
    It's one of those things where I'm kind of like, eh, I don't know how well that's going to work. We'll have to wait and see what the flow of the table is and where it is fun. You'll notice, though, that, okay, so you've got this ramp here, right? Ramp, boom, dumps down to the flipper. This ramp comes around here. This is the only ramp that might be dangerous coming down, but if it does the you know you got this meat play field diverter that goes straight to the you know feeds to your flippers a lot of these table designs you'll notice there's a lot of feeding to the flippers less ball wild more feeding it more control yeah oh by the way these are all going to be using zen physics not Williams arcade physics wonder why they chose to do that again it's easier it's true but hey look at that four multi balls uh yeah four balls on the table that's going to be interesting to play bad um moving oh uh designer we have a new designer folks uh this is designed by peter pewitt kovacs and peter has been with the team for years but just got promoted to table designer hey good on you mate so this is his this will be his first this is his first go at the table that's pretty exciting yes because it looks quite nice it looks playable yeah looks playable another shot here obviously animated characters going on here with was it Poe is that his name Poe yeah I don't know Master Who okay I'm pretty sure yeah alright but obviously again Diverter Ramp here setting it up to what looks like this waterfall I like these pop bumpers with ramen noodles. I think that's pretty funny. I would hope they splashed, but I doubt that's going to happen. It would be good if they splashed. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely... In the intro, they've taken all the tropes from the Kung Fu Panda series intro, like the TV series, because this will be, looks like what it's based on. Yeah, I doubt they got Jack Black doing the voice. No, but the sound of life that they got to do Poe in the DreamWorks animated series is actually pretty good. He captures the essence, so they'll probably just use him. What I found interesting is this waterfall in the back because we go to this next picture. Oh, look. The ball goes boink, boink, boink, and then drops down. I kind of like that. Oh, that's cool. It's kind of interesting. I don't know if it can go down either path or if it's always going to drop down the same path. I wonder if you control the wood and actually guide the ball. Possibly.
    31:26
    And I'm trying to see because it looks like there's obviously a target back here. Yeah, there's some targets behind that. There's got to be another target behind the waterfall, I imagine.
    31:36
    But anyway, so there's that one. Moving on to our third title, which will be my least favorite. Trolls World Tour. Whoa. That is very visually busy. It's exceedingly visually busy.
    31:57
    But, you know, the kid's going to love it. Yeah. oh wow hug hour oh dear there's yeah I'm not this one is going to be hard for me to win me over um we cannot tell you who the designer is because Zen wouldn't tell us um they said that they're well they said that they're saving it as a reveal it's a new designer also a new designer um so they're saving that for I guess they're going to do maybe I don't know some I don't know why this one gets the special designer reveal or if it's a matter of when we zoomed in really close to try and see the names on the table. This is the only one that I couldn't read because the sparkles on the table were blocking out who the designer was. Whereas the other three tables I was able to read it.
    32:44
    But, yeah, I don't know. This one just... That's... I'm not necessarily... That's got a lot going on. I really don't care for the theme.
    32:55
    I've never seen the movie and the movie doesn't want to make me watch it in the least. so no no i think you better sort of like have some sort of resonance with the theme of these tables it's like you know if you walk up to something like sopranos and you've never seen the show you can play the pinball table but you go well i have no idea what the tropes are so therefore i'm not really getting this game um you know which which happened to me just yesterday because i played sopranos yeah and that's like uh okay sure i'm sure these all mean something i have no idea what it means. But again, if you look here, ramp feeds directly to the flipper. Ramp feeds directly to the flipper.
    33:34
    That's how dude is basically a ball lock where he chops the ball. Obviously, we've got a scoop here. We've got a scoop here.
    33:45
    Pop pump is other things in the middle. There's some ramp thing back here that drops down. I don't know how you would shoot that necessarily, but that's obviously a drop target down. I'm guessing these are stand-ups? I don't know. I can't tell if they're drop targets or not. Yeah, I'm not sure.
    34:06
    But I'll say this. At least it's colorful. It's definitely a vibrant-looking play field. I mean, the thing is that while it may not be appealing to us, they have actually, because I know this universe a little bit because I have seen the movie, the first one, so they've definitely nailed the brief on it it's got everything you would expect from this movie in it I wonder if they're going to get Anna Kendrick to voice the pink troll because that's who does it that'd be probably a I'm guessing sound-alikes yeah probably sound-alikes on that I'm guessing sound-alikes unless they can just lift sound from the movies yeah right which they might have the option to do And I keep on saying this, or thinking about this too when I'm looking at these. I'm not the market. I'm not who they're trying to appeal to. No. So I'm not going to be hypercritical of it because I'm not their target audience. I can tell you that Sienna would lose her mind over this. Okay. She would love this. This is like a girl's theme. A little close-up action. There's the cloud who apparently is the star of the show. Everybody loves the cloud, I guess. Okay, cool. It looks like he's had a tough day. There's a reason why he's in a cloud. You know, it's 420 somewhere.
    35:32
    The funny thing is I see these neon green habit trails. I see the troll popping up, and I just go, well, can we just get Roller Coaster Tycoon instead? Yeah, yes. When they put that stupid troll toy on that, that was the cheapest lamest toy ever they were phoning that in really you went and paid a dollar 99 and plunked that on the table because you needed something bang up john great work and then one more uh shot here oh look sparkles little fireworks looks like there's lots of it looks like the the if you go back a screen yeah um and i'm looking at that upper playfield area and then go back another screen there's definitely a change in coloration of the play field if you have a look so if you go forward two screens look at that which where am i looking at the upper the changing yeah so where the entries to all the ramps and lanes are yeah then go to the next frame see how everything goes silver yeah yeah so it looks like the play field art is going to dynamically change on this table which is going to be interesting so again let's So, you know, maybe that Unreal Engine is getting put to good use. Is that because it's a different art? Like, they've got the evil troll showing up in the play field there. See how the art's changed? So, think of this like, well, the one down lower middle. This here? No, the gray one with the red hair. Yeah, that. Oh, that. So, if you flick back a couple now, you'll see that art changes.
    37:07
    No? Oh, no, it doesn't. It's still there. Same to me. Okay. No, it's just the actual rainbows change. so this is almost like upside down mode in a stranger things when it goes uv this this is what it looks like to me it looks like some sort of uv light trick but in zen style so that's gonna be interesting to see how it plays out yeah right now our audience is going really you guys are spending this much time analyzing trolls oh wait wait until you see the next table is my little pony that's right folks it's a pastel puke of color all over a pinball it's a pastel paradise rhapsody and here's the thing while I normally would have immediately dismissed this table and gone oh hell no unfortunately the designer of this one is Thomas Crofts, who's one of my favorite designers. He knows where it's at. Oh, look, there's a jump ramp. Can you see it? Jump ramp. The No Fear Flip jump ramp there on the right-hand side. On the right-hand side. Yeah, see the big chocolate flipper? Yeah. The big ramp that goes up. Oh, you're right. That does launch, doesn't it? Uh-huh. Hmm. There's an interesting... So let's see where these ramps go. So we've got this ramp here. It comes around, feeds that habit trail. we've got this back here. Which thing goes up and feeds the chocolate flipper?
    38:43
    You think that feeds? Oh, no. No, I'm thinking this feeds the chocolate flipper. That pops it up and no, I don't know. You might be right. I don't know. I think it's too tight an angle for it to feed the chocolate flipper, that one. That's a hole, that one that you were looking at before. Right. So what feeds? Oh, this rainbow one feeds this here Yeah That a big center ramp This ramp underneath here comes across here and feeds this flipper So again it doesn look like anything is going to send the ball back at your flipper other than unless this is a scoop that fires back. That's a scoop. Yeah, that's definitely a scoop. Yeah.
    39:23
    Also, I was just going to say, look, these are all, like, totally colored balls going on here. However, when we go to the next screen. I reckon it'll be Choose Your Pony. Now we got Silver Ball.
    39:36
    Oh, okay. So I'm thinking it's for, like, multi-ball that it changes. I would love it if it's more of a case of you lock the ball, and when it pops back out, it's now changed. I like that kind of thing. Yeah, that would be cool. Not just having the ball, you know, magically change. I like it that you have to, like, pretend it's the ceramic ball in Twilight Zone. That's what I prefer. A bit like Avengers, how they had all the different ball, like, changing ball types, when you could select your character and have the ball thing. Looks like we have... These are going to be rollovers of sorts, I imagine. Yeah. The interesting thing about this table is it is hands down the most cartoony of them all. Yeah. It doesn't appear to be trying to be a real machine with real parts. You know what I mean? No, no. It's definitely got a lot of creative license here, doesn't it? Well, it's just because there's no chrome, I guess is what I'm saying. You know, everything is, even the rubber, everything just has that cel-shading look, I guess. Yeah, it just has a soft look to it. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Plants vs. Zombies.
    40:53
    I never got to play that, so I don't have a reference. But I would imagine, yes. Just in terms of the color scheme and the realism.
    41:03
    Because Plants vs. Zombies didn't remotely try to look real. Like a real machine. No, it shouldn't. Right. So there you have it, folks. Those are the four new tables that we have going on here.
    41:24
    Interesting. It is interesting. And again, you can definitely tell these are very much aimed at kids.
    41:32
    Oh, yeah. But it's going to be a lot dependent upon the parents, I think, playing a pinball game. Because I can't tell you how many kids that just during the past year when I've substituted teaching, and I would mention I was into pinball, and how many of them were like, what the heck is pinball? What is the single pinball? No clue. Yeah. so that's why if you can't hook them on what the style of the game is then you've got to hook them on the theme you've got to get them on the theme yeah I think that's pretty smart of Zen let's briefly go into then the exclusivity nature and Apple Arcade right what's that? Apple Arcade at the current moment Zen cannot say if any of these tables will appear anywhere else. Right. Now, if you put your thinking cap on, yeah, they're going to appear elsewhere. They're going to be in FX at some point. There's going to be Apple Arcadia exclusivity, just like there's Oculus exclusivity. Because, again, I'm sure Apple, part of this partnership, I don't know how it works, is Apple paying Zen, or I would think if Apple is licensing anything for an exclusive time period, then there's money involved here. Oh, for sure. You can count your chickens on that for sure. Yeah. So yeah, they've just done an Oculus deal on this, which is a fair cop. And this is coming from a person who's not an Apple fanboy. I've got Android everything. The only Apple device I have is a hand-me-down iPad and my work MacBook Pro. Yeah. So those are the only things I have. not by choice just because I have to use these things. So, you know, me not being able to play, well, potentially not being able to play these tables unless I go and subscribe for $4.99, which would be probably around $7 a month here in Australia, if it is even available here in Australia, which I think it is.
    43:37
    You know, that's $7 a month that, like, I would only be spending just to play these tables. and I may actually just subscribe to the free month trial and give it a go. I mean, that's not going to cost me anything. Here's the other thing. This is where it kind of boggles my mind, people's attitudes.
    43:56
    You know those Zachariah Taito tables that are on exclusive to AtGamesMachine? How come all the Zachariah fans out there aren't screaming bloody murder over that? Yeah, exactly. Well, it's the same deal, isn't it? It's the same deal. It's the same deal with, am I supposed to get mad at Bungie for having an exclusive deal with Microsoft and Halo that I don't get to play Halo because I don't own an Xbox?
    44:24
    I don't know. You know, there is exclusivity things all throughout your life, folks. Look around. You make these choices all the time. They come, you know, do you own every single streaming service? I was going to say, streaming platforms. Yeah, there's your exclusivity right there. right daily yeah so you have a choice make peace with not having it or go out pay the man pay the man but don't get angry at the studio for diversifying and trying new licensing models right because i guess what bugs me about it is is that people have this like entitled thing of well i'm a long-standing uh supporter of zen and they're flipping the bird at me by doing this yeah what's like how i mean they don't owe you anything you paid them money for the product that they gave you now they're coming out with a new product you know and this isn't your right to choose to buy or not that's really what it comes down to and this isn't a new stance that me and jared have we have been saying this for years about and not just for zen no that's what i'm saying i don't i don't get it um and then the funny thing is just hearing you know older men complaining that they're not going to get to play my little pony is hilarious to me or troll you you can't discount you cannot discount the brony market for this like that is a thing and it's a big thing yeah uh so some of this uh hatred you're seeing out there could just be because they don't want to openly admit exactly what's going on there i guess i don't know um it's comical so anyway you're you're not going to get a sympathy from us about the exclusivity things um i will say this because i don't i the only apple device i have is my phone so that's obviously if I'm going to play these I'm going to play them there yes you can get a 30 day free trial from Apple those of you in the states if you go to the Target website and sign up for Target Circle you get 6 months of Apple Arcade for free so Target Circle is like what is that for people who aren't in the US it's an app for Target shopping centers that I believe can offer discounts and coupons and stuff like that. Oh, okay. So it's a loyalty-based system sort of thing, right? And it's free. That's pretty good. The app itself, the Target Circle, is free. But by signing up for that, you can get it. That's the deal? Yeah. So that's probably what I'm going to do. As soon as I hear that this comes out, I'm going to go sign up for Target Circle, and then I'll have six months of this and be able to move around. I'm going to do the same. Like, when it comes time to... Because Apple's constantly nagging me, hey, would you like to try Apple? Arcade? Yeah, well, no, not at the moment.
    47:25
    And the thing is that Android is doing the same thing, right? They have their own version of Apple Arcade. Right. And I don't have Android at all, so there's where I would be out of luck when it comes to this stuff. You would be out of luck, yeah. So, I just wonder if, first off, Zen will be targeting Apple, and then they might approach Google and put this out on their, you know, essentially, it's not stream to play. I think you would still install this as an app on your device. Yes. And then the licensing entitlements are managed through Apple Arcade. Yeah. So that's the other thing, too, that this is not a streaming platform. This is like you get access to the actual installable app. Right. And it goes onto your device. Like, it's not a stream. Yeah, it's not a browser-based thing. No, no, this is legit apps that you can get access to. And it's not just Apple Arcade. I think it's... Is it just games, or is it also apps? I don't know the answer to that. Let's just say it's just games. I think it's just games. From what I understand, though, if I do a really quick internet search here now for it, we're not talking about third-tier games here. like this is like no there's some big names yeah there's these are tier one games that are offered on this um so there's like um like there's all these like puzzle games and like i'm zooming out you know there's a new frogger game that came out um that somebody was pointing out you know no it's not crap games and and for australian audiences it is um eight dollars a month okay which is what I expected it to be. I will also applaud Zen on this aspect because me and Jared have, throughout our podcast, shown various mobile games that are aimed at kids that were pinball games, and they were utter junk. Oh, hot trash. Yes, like... Hot trash. Did these people ever even look at what a pinball game is, or did they just get told, well, there's these flippers and a ball and some things to bounce off of? You know, that's it. Now, these are legit. they look like legit tables we'll have to see what the playability is and and what level of difficulty zen applied to him but um so that's something to be applauded for sure you can also get this through apple one as well so if you decide to bundle up arcade we're doing this ad for apple here seems now chris um we'll see if you where's my kickback yeah where's where's my affiliate code um so it looks like you can like do this apple one thing so if you have apple one you've got this along with Apple TV and all these other services as well so that seems pretty decent so we mentioned that there's 12 tables going to be available at the start just so you know what they are here we have Dragons, Trolls, Panda, Little Pony also then we have Adventureland which is a phenomenal table, Son of Zeus also a phenomenal table then we have Castle Storm which is again one of the Zen originals that I play all the time as is Wild West Rampage so in terms of Zen originals yeah these are some really good ones and then they're including for the Williams Attack from Mars, Getaway Medieval Madness and there's a question mark as to what the 12th table is I saw Pinball Whiz 45B seems to think it's Theater of Magic which would make sense that's a fairly beginner friendly table yeah it's a good one to put in that or attack for mars yeah which is already which is yeah so so it's probably it's gonna be tom those will be your first 12 i imagine and then i yeah i absolutely have no doubt that it's going to be a rotation of tables oh they're going to swap them in and out yeah expect the content to change in here this is this is essentially it almost sounds like the strategy they were using for their dave and buster's machines where they were going to swap titles in and out based on what people are playing and what the sets are telling them. If you think about it again, here we have DreamWorks as representing three of the IPs here. What's DreamWorks' biggest IP? Shrek. You can almost guarantee there's going to be a Shrek table at some point.
    52:06
    Also, the guy mentioned, hey, would we bring something like Megamind into this. Who knows? I mean, there's quite a few DreamWorks titles that could be... Heaps of DreamWorks titles. Aliens versus... Monsters versus Aliens, I think would be an easy fit. Shoot. You could do that and replace Biolab.
    52:26
    Yes, please. With that, you know? Yeah. So, DreamWorks, obviously, a lot of IP going on there. Hasbro, that's who's my little pony. Well, who else does Hasbro have? Transformers. uh yep now would you do movies no too violent i think they're going for kid more kid friendly so you're dealing with the animated shows um would they do gi joe i kind of doubt it but gi joe is a hasbro property so that's a possibility um yep there's a lot of toy lines that hasbro has that could easily be uh have pinball machines made of um oh yeah in the pinball show they were hinting at other ip that they have and i don't know though if that was going to be for this or for general for the general so let's let's put on our thinking caps here jared right when we talked to he said before the end of the year there's going to be 11 tables he said playable I believe did he say playable? or just announced? I'm kind of sketchy on that I'm not super sure let's just say 11 tables so let's think about it we have these four tables right here for Zen Pinball Party then we have the two from Star Wars which is Mando that's his sixth Mando and Collectibles yeah all right then we have the three new originals so that being noir uh which we have an update and we're going to show that in just a tiny moment so we have noir we have the uh steampunk pirate whatever that's going to be called name pending based on the competition right and then mystery third table that's been announced yep so we're at seven nine tables right there. Okay.
    54:28
    Which leaves... Wait, am I doing my math right? 6, 9, yeah. She leaves two more. Alright. I might say that me and Jared have a clue as to what those are.
    54:44
    We're not going to tell what they are. We're not even going to hint what they are or where they possibly could go. And don't ask us. You ain't going to get an answer. The answer will be no. Right. Just no.
    54:59
    But it seems like, yeah, we know the roadmap. I've seen what these 11 is, and they're all original. They're not.
    55:09
    They're all original IP, which is, again, what Mel was saying. These are ground-up, built from the ground-up tables. Yep. Stuff you've never seen before. so interesting stuff going leading into the end of the year which hopefully fingers crossed we'll actually get pinball effects again now it seems like we're looking at December yeah because we said like earlier in the year we thought that we might be starting to see some builds floating around maybe September I think was our call wasn't it? And so far it's been very quiet on the Western front. So perhaps this is going to be a December launch. I think the Apple Arcade offering is going to be next month would be my call on it.
    56:08
    So yeah, make sure you hunt down the best Apple Arcade deals folks and get your six months if you can. I think that's a great plan. that's an amazing deal if you can get six months free on it that's just, sign me up should we take a look at the Noir update? You haven't seen this at all have you? No because I've been so deep in house stuff I haven't seen I have not watched the latest the pinball show, sorry so yeah this will be reaction video for me okay I'm going to, odds are without sound obviously because I can't well I muted it anyway because I don't know if there's any content that we're not allowed to have copyright availability to. But I just queued up to where it was in the pinball show, and hopefully this will work. Hey, look. Oh, I knew that was going to happen.
    56:58
    It loves to jump the spot in the video. Let's see. There we go. There's our start. All right. Well, here, I'm just going to leave it on a freeze frame right there. Okay. Because right off the bat, you can see, hey, look, 3D models of things. Yes, we've got 3D models. The cup is 3D model. The phone is now 3D model. The car is now 3D model. The gun here is 3D model. We've got our, apparently this is the finalized version of our character. Private Eye, yes. Private Eye. You'll notice the back ramp area here has been adjusted.
    57:32
    It still looks pretty long. Yes. Right now it is a whole mess of yellow light, which I have my thoughts about. This reminds me so much of the Munsters' Ellie. And I did not like the design choice in that game. It's just very boring to look at. There needs to be some pizzazz in this. So let me play the video here, and you can see it in motion.
    58:00
    Get a little better shot of what's going on here. There's that thing in the middle, whatever that is. So there, let's pause on this here. Some flip-flops. Right? So this is going to be through a little spinner action? No, I've seen those. I haven't seen those since Brider Pinbot. Those are the things that divert the ball into the eyes. It's like basically a left-right flip-flop diverter. Okay. Yeah. That's what that is. Okay. It looks like it. I'll continue the video here. Uh-huh.
    58:31
    Oh, there went the ball. Cool. Evidence. There's our phone. There's our modeled car. There our ramp Well let pause on that Yeah pausing Okay So That still got way too Way too many bends in it for my liking At least there weights on it now But have a look at those signs. They're magnets on those signs. That's what it looks like, right? That's a ball lock. That's what I was thinking. So, this would make it have sense then for having such a long thing. That is 100% a ball lock. Which means one, two, three, four, five, six. Are we thinking six ball, multi-ball? and we did suggest early on when we saw the prototype shots of this that that's what that thing was going to be like a 13 ball multi-ball thing because why else would you use that much ramp yeah that's right and that's again a little bit like Flight 2000 with its ball chamber locking mechanism you can imagine that if they orchestrate this well the balls are going to basically go and they're going to roll down in unison I'm going to want to see but it looks like we're actually shooting Which way is the ball shooting? Because doesn't this dump into the car?
    59:41
    Where does this ramp dump into? That's your entry. Oh, no, it goes underneath the car. Yeah, so there's probably a flipper down here, right? I think so. Just go see if we can... All right, hold on. We're going to get another play. We're going to see.
    59:54
    Do you see these wisps of smoke? Yeah. There's some particle effects going on there. Oh, look, it's the roto target. Yeah, hold on. I'm going to back up before we talk about rows. Yeah, Rose. Okay, so here, let me look here.
    60:10
    Yes, there's a flipper, upper flipper. Can you see? Ah, yes, there it is, right there. So that's how you get to the locks. Okay, cool. That's how you get there. Okay.
    60:19
    So that came around. Yeah, we're just going to let this play out rather than me trying to... Freeze frame it. Yeah.
    60:27
    Okay. Come on, show us the ball lock assembly. That would be really cool if they did. Okay. That's what we want. So this thing with Rose, I like this. This is an interesting toy. doing a little zeotrope action. Yeah, definitely a... So she's our femme fatale, obviously. We didn't know she was actually going to be in the table, but she certainly is. Okay, watch this. I think there's some rotation going on. Maybe, no, no. There it is. Look at that toy.
    60:51
    Hey, that's cool. That's pretty cool, right? Yep. It's an interesting mechanism for your spiraling here. There's our finished good guy.
    61:02
    Yeah, right. And I'm not sure if there's anything else after this. Just more angles of him animated. That's just... Hanging out on the phone. I'm just looking at the... Yeah, that's just rolling gameplay. Yeah. So, again, smoke going off the T, particle effect going on.
    61:20
    Okay, I'm going to leave it at this angle right here. My only suggestion here, it's an extremely muted table.
    61:29
    And I would love it if the inserts had more color. and I want the inserts to be bright like really have a flash and the light show has to be on point really you've got to step up the light game on this you do if you count how many lights are actually going to be on the table we're sub 100 that's not a lot and all the modern tables that are coming out now are pushing past 200 easily, going into the 350 territory, you know, it's the area that I want Zen to work on most. And I think with a black and white table like this, you could take a lot of cues from something like Centaur. So rather than have everything be yellow, let's spruce them up with some blue.
    62:24
    You know, you got a couple of your reds, yellows, some blue. I think that would just give it some more pop here and there. Yeah, have the main play field like black and white, but there needs to be more vibrancy. From what I've seen here, it's just red and yellow.
    62:44
    It seems, look, I don't know. Maybe the nemesism of the lighting is going to make this a non-issue, like when you actually see it really getting into gameplay. Because they said in this that the lighting pass is still not complete. okay yeah um the yes these are final renders on the car and the gun and and our character here so i know those are final renders but there's still other graphics that they're they're still adjusting working on i would love love love love love love if this is supposed to be san francisco or whatever have fog roll in oh can you imagine if fog obscured the playfield or like if fog acted as a blind, obscured person. And then think about it. When the ball breaks through the fog, there'd be that swirl. Oh, jeez. Now that's what I'm talking about. Or, how about this? You have fog, then you have rain.
    63:44
    And as the ball rolls through the rain, that's the ball trail. The rain splashing at the wall and kicking off the ball. You don't have to actually have an effect to the ball, how it moves on the table.
    63:56
    Visually, if you've got the ability to do particle effects. Let's do some particle effects. Right? Now, see, that is a sort of... See, those effects, that's the sort of thing that would fit super well into this theme. Yeah. Like, those subtle thematic effects rather than big, in-your-face lighting effects. Okay, I just saw, we have a... Oh, I can't stop it in time. There. There is a blue there. I guess I need something more down here.
    64:24
    Yeah. I wonder if they're going to be color-changing. You know what? Even having the posts be a color.
    64:32
    Like red. Yeah, enough of the red. Blue. Make the posts blue. Okay. You know? I mean, that would be... or make them clear. I don't care. Just not this whatever this is. Smoke. And then... It's a color. Yeah. It looks like there needs to be art on top of those slingshots as well. Probably. Yeah. yeah yeah yeah um i mean even and here's another thing the rubber will make the rubber look like actual rubber right now it's a stylized painted to match the theme of everything but no the rubber make it if it's black make it black you know yeah i want my parts your your art that you've painted yes can be all these grays and stuff but i want my actual parts on the table to represent real parts. So these are obviously metal posts and the screws. Those need to be chromed or nickel-plated, whatever. This is a clear piece of plastic. Make it a clear piece of plastic, not this stylized, frosted gray.
    65:35
    I don't need my habitrails to be chromed. If you want to make them look like they've been powder-coated, I'm fine with that. But I would prefer it to be chrome, because anything that would catch light and give some bling it needs that bling factor and right now it does not have that no i would actually say that i would predict that if there if this isn't the final test pass over this then you can expect a lot of chrome in this table because have a look at the the lock system at the back that's got rails all throughout it yeah that's going to be chrome city up there it needs to be it's it is for sure like they they wouldn't keep it this this flat yeah there's no way that would because if you think like you're dead right if this had a whole lot of chrome texture on it it's actually going to look pretty good because it's not again it's not that it needs all this color but it needs something that catches whatever light is there it needs to pop there needs to be elements that actually have more visual weight in the play field and that is all the things like ramps like the ramp surfaces. I mean, you can't really do much with that ripe ramp, which is essentially emulating bitumen or tarmac. Right. But you can maybe look at the walls. Yeah, you can make the walls, you know, silver. Yeah, that's right. Or mirrored. Oh, would you imagine mirrored? Oh, yeah.
    66:59
    Yeah, there's lots of possibilities here. So the thing that I like about this is they're showing us the iterations they're doing on this particular table in the wild as they're doing it. Well, to an extent. I don't know. I'm of the firm opinion that Xen is much farther on this table than they're letting on.
    67:20
    Potentially. I think that they're obviously, as you get closer to the release of things, you've compressed how long it all took into monthly bits of, hey, let me show you something. But I wouldn't be surprised if this is much farther along than whatever. Here's some actual action. See, even the balls right now aren't nice and... Nope, that was it.
    67:44
    Yeah. That's all you get. Three seconds. They're not even nice and silver. They're not even textured yet. There's definitely a textured pass to be done over this table, which is exciting because the bones of this are starting to look better. A lot of the concerns I had when I saw the first render are sort of out the window now. It's good. So this one will be an interesting one to flip. So I wanted to swing back around to our designers, because there's some other news with the designers. One, Peter Deep Graffle, he is now head of the department.
    68:21
    HOD, nice work. Yes. So he got that promotion. Actually, he's probably been that for a little while, but it's now official. And then they also added another new designer who apparently is not who did Trolls, but also came up through the ranks the same way that Peter Kovacs did. His name is Daniel Dolby-Vai, B-I-G-H. So he's also one of the new designers. So it looks like we have three new designers and three of the old school still. And that seems to correspond with Zen's plans for expansion for the people division. Like, you know, they're starting to get the headcount in. And what's really good here is they're promoting from within. Yeah. So they're actually taking the talent from within rather than going out and getting some pinball designers. Although, if you think about that, how good would it be to actually have veteran pinball designers on the Zen pinball team doing play field layouts? Oh, right. Oh, imagine if they could get even some of the new and upcoming designers that we've seen, like, do layouts for all these American Pinball and all these other ones that have come out, you know? Get those on staff. I told them that you guys need to tell us who the designers of these tables are, because that gets us excited about it also.
    69:41
    Just as we would be excited if there's a top designer that we love out there. Well, speaking of which, Steve Ritchie is now working for Jersey Jack Payball, back partnering with Pat Lawler.
    69:57
    Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be interesting. That's going to be interesting indeed. Because, you know, we had Dulled In, which was classic Pat.
    70:09
    And, you know, I was just playing that the other day, actually. It's like, once you get past some of the weirdness of it, it's a fun game to flip, that thing.
    70:17
    So if we're getting these two designers to play together again, that could be some pretty interesting stuff coming out of Jess Jack. It would also be nice if Richie could be shaken up a little bit and made to strive for something new. I think he was kind of coasting at Stern.
    70:39
    Yeah, definitely. Jersey Jack will push him there, because they've got a much more advanced platform that he can do stuff with there. Right. So, I mean, just look at Guns N' Roses. That thing is incredible. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, so hopefully Zen will make a bigger deal about who the designers of these tables are because we do want to keep track of... Like I said, I would have written off My Little Pony completely if it wasn't that I heard that Thomas was the designer on it. Now I'm interested in it. So it's amazing how that works.
    71:09
    Yeah, and they should actually start doing featurettes on them. They should actually give them some exposure out there in the pinball community because designers make or break a table. People will buy titles based on the designer alone. They'll say, oh, no, is it Richie? Well, then sign me up for that. Now, the only other thing that came out of the pinball show regarding Apple Pin Party, or Apple Pin Party, Zen Pinball Party, Apple Pin Party, let's call it that,
    71:46
    was when they were interviewing Mel, he said something to the effect that this is a different team than the pinball effects team right so which makes sense yeah because i believe their mobile division is different so i'm curious to know what the division is though is it that the pinball side is all designed by you know the pinball division but then all of the and again think about the williams app with all the the the add-ons and the the pay system and all that stuff that's clearly mobile division you know doing their thing so i'm wondering if that's where the divide basically is uh yeah it could be it's hard to say though isn't it um probably a question to um put down as one that we should ask mel oh absolutely because i'm sure we'll get him on the show again within the next couple of months there's going to be something for him to come onto our show about right probably yeah i'd say so yeah um but that was one of those that was one of those things i just couldn't quite is he saying what he's saying i'm not sure what he's saying then unfortunately our hosts didn't dig deeper well which is what happens because that's not the format of the pinball show it's a marketing marketing platform I will also – it was pretty funny watching Bobby read the teleprompter. Oh, really? It was – there was some pretty spectacular teleprompter reading going on there. Like the darting eyes?
    73:24
    No, like looking away from your guest and reading it. And, oh, I stumbled on the word. Let me read that again.
    73:31
    Oh, okay. Okay. okay yeah you know it is mel says like one of the mel got onto one of our episodes where we're sort of criticizing this a bit more because yeah you can't fluff your way through some of these licenses you're going to be on script yep so if that's the look if that's what what um bobby and rose have to work to then you know that's what they have to work to you know yep they can't help that if they have to literally word for word that script then it's either a lot of preparation beforehand so it looks seamless or just do what you can when you're on when you're on i'm just sensing there might be a drinking game coming out of this or do tell i do like i've got a lot of gin to get through so uh uh yeah tell me this drinking game well no it would just be a question of every time you realize that somebody's reading off a prompter or doesn't use the prompter. I mean, it's only a 15-minute show, so you've got to get hammered quick, right? Well, you would.
    74:37
    Keep up the good work, guys. Right, yeah. So, anyway, that's all the info that you need to know in case you didn't bother watching it yourself, in case you would rather watch us, which we would appreciate. We do, indeed, appreciate. you watching us, it's always good to see. It's so good even for me to come in after the fact, after Chris has done the premiere, and actually see the interaction in the premieres. I love to see what people are thinking about what our commentary is saying. It's really good to see if we're on track or whether you think we're completely smoking it or not. So thanks for coming in and actually being live and actually giving us a bit of feedback about it. It's really cool.
    75:24
    Okay. Next episode, hopefully, will be on schedule, which means two weeks from now. I think we might be back into the swing of things. We'll find out. I think so. Yeah. And I think, too, potentially this reset break, we've essentially had an unofficial summer break, just like Zen have. Yeah. So perhaps what this will mean is that we're more in sync with the drops for the pinball show now. We won't have to be a week late. we might be able to do it after the show goes live. That or they'll change the schedule again too.
    75:58
    There is that. But that is all that we prepared for today. I mean, that's enough. Jeez, we've gone well over an hour here. Right, yeah. We've given the proper time due necessary for our massive absence. But we always do encourage, Hey, folks, if you have ideas for topics that you want us to cover,
    76:23
    we do cover pinball that is of the now, not pinball that you played 10 years ago. No. We're essentially a news format show. So episodes, this is why I didn't really do a lot of migration when I merged the site over. Like a lot of the stuff six or seven months ago is kind of irrelevant now. Like we are, we're kind of a news format. So, yeah. But yeah, so if there's anything though that you want us to take a look at, if there's any game that's out there that we, that, you know, it's popped up that's not on our radar and you want us to take a look at, if there's a particular gripe that you have that you want to see what our take on it is, please let us know. Hit us up on Twitter. Yeah. Mine's right there. Jared's is right there. But more importantly, the show's is right there. So, yeah. hit us up there let us have an idea or if you want to go old school and drop us an email it's blah blah blockade at gmail dot com and we'll take it under advisement and see if we can't work it into a future episode yeah that's right something that we have an actual take on because there's some things that we just don't no because we don't have access to things don't ask us about vpx I'm just saying don't ask us about it because that's somebody else's podcast that needs to happen. That's all I'm saying about that. Honestly, there could actually be a thing there for someone if they wanted to start a podcast about PC-based virtual pinball.
    77:57
    Like, you know, it's a thing. Get your thinking cats on, folks. Yep. But, until then, we'll think about what we're going to talk about next time, but according to Jared, it's probably going to be... Stuff and Things. Alright, until next time folks Thanks again for watching Bye bye