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Zen Studios Easter Mic Drop

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·50m 36s·held·Apr 4, 2016
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Zen Studios announces Alien vs. Predator pinball tables with VR platform demo exciting community.

Summary

BlahCade Podcast hosts Mason Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss Zen Studios' Easter announcements, focusing on an upcoming Alien vs. Predator pinball table and Zen's VR pinball platform. They explore potential table mechanics, licensing implications relative to Heighway Pinball existing Alien license, and review a Tested.com video demonstrating VR pinball gameplay with a custom controller. The hosts also digress into broader topics including video game history, animation, and Tesla's Model 3 announcement.

Key Claims

  • Zen has licensed both Alien and Aliens from 20th Century Fox, allowing a single game table with selectable movie modes.

    high confidence · Mason and Jared discuss licensing details, mentioning the table will let players 'select which movie you play and the modes and everything.'

  • Zen's Alien vs. Predator table will release on or around Alien Day (late April) based on typical Zen announcement-to-release cadence of about one month.

    medium confidence · Jared: 'So I can almost guarantee you that this table is going to drop on that day. Usually the Zen announce and release cadence is about a month at max.'

  • Three Alien-themed tables are being released by Zen Studios.

    medium confidence · Mason states 'They said they're dropping three different tables' but the identity of all three tables is speculative by the hosts.

  • Zen Studios has obtained Fox Interactive digital assets as part of the licensing deal, which expands their design possibilities beyond standard asset packs.

    medium confidence · Mason: 'this has the full license of this isn't just uh them getting the 20th century fox license it also carries the additional license of fox interactive so that's also extremely cool because that means that they they were probably really on it with them and, and giving them lots of assets.'

  • A custom VR pinball controller can be built for approximately $100 in materials (foam core, pinball table weights, custom hardware).

    high confidence · Jared referencing Jerware's Tested.com video: 'he basically used $100 worth of parts, built it out of foam core, used real pinball table weights to get to the right height.'

  • VR pinball with proper head tracking and 3D perspective changes represents a significant advancement over static video pinball cabinet displays.

    high confidence · Discussion of Tested video demonstrating how VR allows players to track ball movement with head position, unlike LCD cabinet conversions.

Notable Quotes

  • “alien versus pinball... It's got a pinball that the reflection in there is of the alien egg, and then it's got part of an alien tail wrapping around the pinball and a predator claw coming over the top of it, and I'm like, oh, heaven.”

    Mason Freebus @ ~8:30 mark — First description of the Alien vs. Predator teaser announcement that sparked the episode's main topic.

  • “I so badly want there to be a moment when you're playing the table and out of the center of the play field, a chest burter just, bam, cracks out. That's what I want.”

    Mason Freebus @ ~25:00 mark — Demonstrates fan speculation about potential table mechanics and themes, showing community excitement around the announcement.

  • “if they exploit surround sound like 5.1 surround imagine hearing aliens coming from behind you while you're playing this game it would be like amazing”

    Jared Morgan @ ~30:45 mark — Highlights immersion potential through audio design, informed by personal Atari Jaguar gaming experience.

  • “This is not just a simple port. This is a lot more going into it... if you're going to fork out two grand for an Oculus Rift, you can fork out an extra, what, 30 bucks?”

    Jared Morgan @ ~65:00 mark — Defends Zen's separate VR pricing model based on technical complexity and value proposition.

  • “with pinball, a big part of playing it is you tracking the ball with your head when you're playing the real thing. And whenever we play video pinball, it's always this static image.”

    Jared Morgan (referencing Tested video) @ ~58:00 mark — Core insight about why VR pinball solves a fundamental disconnect between digital and physical play experience.

Entities

Zen StudioscompanyMason FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonHeighway PinballcompanyAlien vs. Predatorproduct20th Century FoxcompanyFox InteractivecompanyJerwarepersonTestedcompanyOculus RiftproductFarSight Studioscompany

Signals

  • ?

    announcement: Zen Studios announces Alien vs. Predator pinball table via Twitter with cryptic teaser imagery (alien egg, tail, predator claw around pinball).

    high · Mason: 'I see an announcement that says alien pinball... alien versus pinball. It's got a pinball that the reflection in there is of the alien egg.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Zen Studios secured dual-mode licensing for both Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) films in single table, plus Fox Interactive digital assets.

    high · Discussion of selectable movie modes and Fox Interactive licensing enabling expanded design possibilities beyond typical asset packs.

  • ?

    design_innovation: Zen VR pinball platform enables dynamic 3D perspective tracking with head movement, solving core disconnect between digital and physical pinball play.

    high · Tested.com video demo showing player head tracking changing table perspective in real-time, creating positional parallax effect absent in static LCD conversions.

  • ?

    technology_signal: VR pinball adoption constrained by hardware cost (~$2000 for Oculus Rift + PC) but custom controller solutions achievable at ~$100.

    medium · Jerware custom controller built from $100 in foam core and pinball weights; Jared discusses waiting for tech ubiquity and price decline.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen Studios charging separately for VR app due to substantial technical development beyond simple port, justified by hosts as appropriate.

    high · Jared: 'This is not just a simple port. This is a lot more going into it... if you're going to fork out two grand for an Oculus Rift, you can fork out an extra, what, 30 bucks?'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.152

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com, sales, restoration, customization. you are listening to the blockade podcast i am your host mason freebus aka trash walk joining me as always is my co-host jared morgan g'day mates how you going mate i i'm doing good yeah yeah that's what's been happening so so i've been on spring break and and so for easter my mom and dad got me a ps4 so yeah we got a ps4 yeah we already have a game for it which is a game that i've been wanting for a very long time what's it called plant versus zombies garden warfare 2 oh man i have seen that game i haven't played it but man it looks good what's your favorite part about that game okay i just it's just really fun i i i like that it has split screen like like the last game was didn't even have like split screen and it has more like character classes in this game and it has it even has a story which is really good that's good i missed the story mode stuff from the first plants versus zombies when pop cap were running the show and then they sort of sold out to ea and i think it kind of really ruined it when they did that um but yeah the story mode's cool i love crazy dave he's awesome is he still in it yeah huh He's kind of like... Yeah, yeah. He's still crazy, but he's animated kind of now.
2:20
Mm. Yeah. So he doesn't just sort of go there like... He still does that. Yeah. Anyways, I have someone joining me right now. Oh, have we got a guest? His name is Sharkbite. Yeah, right. My name is Sharkbite.
2:42
Yeah, don't laugh at the shark bite. Now tell me about the shark bite. Okay, shark bite. For those who don't blab, we've got this pool. Yeah, this thing. And I've been using him in my stop motion animation things. Yeah. So he's pretty much been eating stuff. Yeah, that's right. What's his favorite food? What does he like to eat most, Shark Bite? What's his favorite tucker? Let me let him talk. My favorite is everything.
[name withheld pending review]product
Adam Savageperson
Tesla Model 3product
PerpsaHDperson
  • ?

    product_launch: Alien vs. Predator table expected to launch around Alien Day (late April) based on Zen's historical ~1 month announcement-to-release cadence.

    medium · Jared: 'Usually the Zen announce and release cadence is about a month at max... So I can almost guarantee you that this table is going to drop on that day.'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Community speculation about potential Alien table mechanics: chest-burster animations, egg bumpers, motion tracker modes, heat vision segments.

    low · Hosts speculate on design possibilities including 'chest burter just bam cracks out,' egg-themed bumpers, extended alien tongue ramp, predator heat vision mode.

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Highway Pinball's existing Alien license may create boundary conditions for Zen's table design scope and available film properties.

    medium · Mason speculates whether Highway's license prevents Zen from standalone Alien table, questioning licensing agreement boundaries.

  • $

    market_signal: VR pinball adoption timing dependent on hardware cost decline and technical maturity, with early adopters bearing premium pricing.

    medium · Discussion of 3D TV analogy, VR market representing fraction of 1% of game market, waiting for tech ubiquity before mainstream adoption.

  • ?

    product_concern: Static LCD pinball cabinet conversions lack dynamic perspective tracking of real tables, creating play experience disconnect that VR addresses.

    high · Tested video analysis showing VR's head-tracking superiority over static video cabinet displays in replicating real pinball ball-tracking behavior.

  • ?

    content_signal: Tested.com (Adam Savage media platform) provides early VR pinball platform coverage with custom hardware demonstration, legitimizing niche technology.

    high · Jerware's Tested.com video featured custom controller build and live VR gameplay footage with dual-camera perspective view.

  • ?

    machine_intel: Zen Studios planning release of three Alien-franchise tables; Alien vs. Predator confirmed, identities of other two tables speculative (possibly Colonial Marines, standalone Aliens, or other spin-off).

    medium · Mason: 'They said they're dropping three different tables.' Hosts speculate remaining two as Colonial Marines and standalone Aliens or unknown title.

    • 3:17
    Yeah. His favorite. See, that makes sense. That totally makes sense. He even has two rows of teeth. Hold on. Wait, where's the camera? Where's the camera? Okay, there we go. See, he is kind of. Oh, yeah, he does too. Yeah, he has two rows of teeth. Extra noming and much non-nomming. Yeah, yeah.
    3:38
    That's wicked. Yeah, I hope to have in the future have a YouTube channel. Oh, yeah. Are you going to do stop motion YouTube on that? Well, kind of, yeah. I would put my stop motion in there. Also, I would do some gaming.
    3:53
    Ah, yeah. I've got a mate in Australia here. His name is PerpsaHD, and he is a friend of one of my ex-colleagues, and he does YouTube streaming. I think he actually managed to get some local sponsors as well. Someone put up a bit of money so he could get the equipment and stuff.
    4:13
    He's a prolific YouTuber. He does heaps of live streams. I think it's the new world. This is starting to become a thing that you can do. Give it a go. Just try it out.
    4:27
    That's awesome. I look forward to seeing some Plant vs. Zombies stuff coming up. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I probably will play as a chomper most because he eats zombies. Ah! Rarr!
    4:47
    Rarr! Chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp. Oh, yeah, did I mention that this is the April Fool's slash Easter special?
    5:00
    Oh, really? I thought this was just normal. No. It's Easter slash April Fool's special. Also, I hope all the viewers missed us from being away last week, you know, for Easter Sunday.
    5:17
    I don't know, Mason. I think they might have. I don't know. Yeah. Do you reckon they would have missed hearing your dad on the airwaves, do you reckon?
    5:27
    Well, since they might have missed him, here he is. You have no idea how long my son's been bugging me to do that.
    5:38
    He did pretty well, I have to say. He's pretty good. It was all right. He's had his podcasting finished now. I think we might have unleashed a monster, though. He's now going to become a YouTube star. Oh, this has been a career goal of his for probably about six months now.
    5:55
    That's what I was telling him. It's a thing. Yeah, it's a thing. I've got a mate here. I've just got a mate here who his son is a YouTube gamer and he actually managed to get sponsorship and everything so he could afford the gear and stuff like that he needs to figure out himself how to upload and do all that jazz and if he can figure that out then hey more power to him I don't want to be responsible for okay here's how we do the upload and here's how we do this and here's how we edit this. It's like, because I remember what it was like when I was, well, maybe not his age, but, you know, certainly 12 to 14, where you would have no problem sinking all your focus into one thing for like four hours straight, you know? Yeah. So.
    6:47
    That worries. Yeah, we'll see. But considering the lack of patience he has for doing stop motion. It's hard. It is hard. one of the hardest parts of animation you can do like geez you know i used to the amount of actually it probably started when i was his age because i was in fourth grade also uh one of my friends came into school with you know pad of paper that had the uh glue on the back so you could actually make yeah flip cartoons so we started doing flip cartoon animation and the first ones that i did were horrible i mean like terribly bad um it was all dependent upon how fast you flicked and it was like literally you'd be like flick flick flick that's about how fast you could flick because i didn't understand the concept of animation but then over the course of the next two years i started uh learning tricks understanding what was going on and then i was also watching the cartoons that i was watching on saturday morning and trying to figure out how they were doing certain things and by the time i was in eighth grade maybe even freshman sophomore in high school i had made probably seven or eight books and they were continually getting more detailed and it got to the point where i started learning how to cut angles um all by doing the flip yeah yeah so again that's the deep hole that you dive into when you're that age what else you gotta do right yeah i'm gonna make flip cartoons because yo i got the time right i can do it that's awesome so hey while we were away there's all sorts of some stuff there's some stuff and it was all pretty much zen if i don't mind saying hey you know what we're gonna just like release all the things and uh and it's gonna be pretty cool because the stuff we're releasing is well pretty cool yeah so the the first announcement that came by was you know i'm scrolling through my uh twitter feed and lo and behold i see an announcement that says alien pinball and i thought it was for highway pinball and then i noticed no that's got a zen logo next to it i'm like whoa i know right it's like um what exactly yeah so i'm like click click click let's look at this and and it's so tantalizingly little information about it all it says is alien versus pinball. It's got a pinball that the reflection in there is of the alien egg, and then it's got part of an alien tail wrapping around the pinball and a predator claw coming over the top of it, and I'm like, oh, heaven. So... Do you reckon it's going to be based on the game?
    9:30
    I don't know what it's going to be based on, to be honest. It's too early to speculate, but we can speculate because that's what we do.
    9:37
    Well, actually, it's not entirely too early because this thing is coming quick. Alien, National Alien Day or Worldwide Alien Day or whatever. Anyway, celebrating the movies. It's a day? Yes, apparently it's a day. I just read this and it's at the end of April. So I can almost guarantee you that this table is going to drop on that day.
    10:00
    Usually the Zen announce and release cadence is about a month at max. Right. Man, those guys are busy, right? Yeah. How the hell? I would say VR, and they're doing this. Jared, you're jumping the gun.
    10:17
    Oh, but it's so... I think, yeah, well, we'll get to it. We'll get to that. Yeah, so I would say probably within a week, we'll be seeing video footage of the table and get a really good idea of what's going on. They said they're dropping three different tables. now it specifically said aliens versus predator or excuse me versus pinball so that led me to believe that it was probably going to be based on aliens and not on alien and that i had thought that that was because highway had uh the license to alien but then somebody else said that they had a license to both of them both alien and aliens oh that's true what they've done is they've They've essentially put two games in one. Okay. So you can select which movie you play and the modes and everything, because everything is displayed on that screen, change based on what movie you're playing. So it's pretty cool. Okay. So that's where I'm wondering, what is the licensing agreement and what can Zen do that doesn't infract on what Highway is doing? So if that's the case, maybe there won't be a standalone movie table of Alien. I think we're almost guaranteed an Alien vs. Predator table.
    11:35
    I would guess that, how about a Colonial Marines table? Oh, yeah. As they like to do, you know, like they've done a Stormtrooper table. Right, spin-off. Yeah, and what was the one they did with the recent Star Wars movie? The Mind of the Alliance, or whatever it's called. The First Order. The one with the Stormtrooper focus? Yeah, First Order. Mind of the First Order. And they've done Starfighters and stuff. Yeah, so I'm kind of thinking maybe they can get away with that. And then what the third table is, I have no idea what it would be.
    12:07
    No. Because my initial guess was going to be it's aliens where it would follow the movie just like they do with the Star Wars tables, play out scenes and stuff. And then they would do, like I said, Colonial Marines and then an alien versus predator table. But I don't know. I'm excited. It's going to be interesting to see how they keep the pace up in the tables. Because if you're a fan of the movie, you'll know that most of it happens in the last 30 minutes or so of the movie. Everything leading up to that is all sort of like the suspenseful stuff Well maybe that it Maybe it all about the suspense Maybe the last ball is where it all happens Right You know you building up for the multi and you're building up all the modes, and then all of a sudden just everything hits. And you're just like, oh, my gosh. That would be interesting, wouldn't it? Yeah. Imagine, like, the whole idea of the game is to stack everything, and then only when you've stacked everything, you can actually play the full modes of the table. It'd be kind of cool, but frustrating. I so badly want there to be a moment when you're playing the table and out of the center of the play field, a chest burter just, bam, cracks out.
    13:16
    That's what I want. I would love it if they could do... I can guarantee there'll be a chest burster somewhere in there. They're better.
    13:23
    And there'll be eggs. I reckon the pot bumpers will be eggs. That's such an obvious... Yeah, I would think so.
    13:30
    The extending mouth from the alien, that's a ramp. or that could actually be a lock mechanism well that's what highway grabs the ball oh yeah yeah so that mechanism on the highway pinball does that actually extend and grab the ball does it no uh i haven't seen video but from what i understand uh because i think i've seen drawings um from what i understand though the tongue does extend out and i think that's what has the balls if i'm not mistaken i don't know i could be completely making things up in my head because you gotta understand that really does sound cool this is this is gonna be very interesting see i am not super invested in the alien universe but i'm equally excited for this because i don't know i think if they theme it right that highway has gone very green on their table which is probably the right move. I think there's been a lot of controversy about how they've toned the colors, but really it is the alien universe. It's not supposed to be clown vomit vibrant. It's deep space and horrible acid dripping creatures. I mean, if there's any table that I am fully willing to invest in the zen fantasy aspects of pinball is this it's science fiction tables right i mean it's a no-brainer well i mean there's so many things that i yeah i want to see slime dripping i want to see like i said just popping out the thing i want to see uh uh if there is alien versus predator i want to see predator mode where all of a sudden the whole table goes black we go into heat vision mode and it's oh yeah right i mean wouldn't that be sweet and they could totally do it i know because there's in they could absolutely go nuts um so you pretty much guarantee they will like these guys zen are really their designers are super passionate about pinball so imagine if they got a license like alien they'd be going what can we do with this and they're just going to go to town i hope so i hope so i am curious again if they wind up doing the aliens table the quotes are going to be so neutered because all the good quotes are from Hudson.
    15:56
    They're pretty profanity-laced. As long as they just bleep them out, it'll be okay. I think as long as the quotes are there, but they're censored in some way, I think it's going to be okay because you'll know if you're a fan exactly what he's saying. So you'll go, oh, yeah, that's relevant to the thing that's happening at the table at the moment. But I mean, I even think about, well, they've done it in a couple of tables, but if you think of what they did with Plants vs. Zombies, where, oh, you don't have that table, but the zombie, there's a mode where the zombies are getting closer and closer to your flippers, and you're having to whack the ball to knock them to get away. Same thing with Moon Knight. There was a mist, I think, that was coming closer, or a black tentacle, something that was coming closer and closer to the filter, or the flippers. Yeah. Well, an alien. Come on. make it motion tracker the whole thing play field goes to a motion tracker and it's going oh yeah and you gotta flip the pinball because you think about what the motion tracker should look like it's that arc right and you're at the center it's pretty much the arc of a play field exactly yeah so if if you're just hearing the pings of where the alien supposedly is and your table is completely black and all you're playing off is of what technically is the motion tracker and flipping your ball up to the little blips and then if you miss it at the last minute all since you know it's like those internet videos that you watch where the sound's really low and you're supposed to lean in close alls and does the jumpscare go bah when you go bah that'd be like i said amazing it got my imagination fired and i was very excited that entire day you can guarantee that if you're thinking these things you're pretty much guaranteed that the designers would have been probably going down the same path as well if they're fans of the of the franchise which we could pretty much guarantee these guys probably are or at least someone there is yeah and this has the full license of this isn't just uh them getting the 20th century fox license it also carries the additional license of fox interactive so that's also extremely cool because that means that they were probably really on it with them and, and giving them lots of assets. It made me think with the movie licenses, I know that highway is being quite constrained in what they've been able to do. They've been given the asset pack and it's just the usual sort of general stuff that they've been given. But if they've been given the digital assets to a lot of the, like the, the video game stuff, well, that really does open up a huge amount of stuff they can do yeah i mean so long as the sound you know the sound package probably is going to be outstanding i mean get what from what they've done with the star wars uh tables i'm sure this sound package will be really good too um i think this is a this is a a table set that would almost be mandatory to play with headphones or really good surround sound system because if they exploit if they exploit surround sound like 5.1 surround imagine hearing aliens coming from behind you while you're playing this game it would be like amazing okay because i like to tangent uh so back in the day talking atari jaguar days oh wow right that's the throwback okay so imagine this my friend he's got his Sony 32-inch XBR TV, completely flat. It weighed only about 300 pounds. A lot of glass.
    19:31
    He's got his Atari Jaguar hooked up, and he actually has a surround sound system, which at that point, we're talking 93, I'm thinking? Probably 93, 94, somewhere in that vicinity.
    19:46
    Not a lot of people... Dolby Pro Logic. Yeah, we're talking... Dolby Pro Logic. Dolby Pro Logic and not a lot of people had surround sound going on. He had it. So he gets the Alien vs. Predator game. Now, if anybody's ever played it on the Jaguar, it was fantastic. Really good. Really freaky.
    20:05
    And it was first-person shooter going around. Now, I wasn't much of a player. He was always the game player. So I was the guy. And again, think about doing this back in the day. There wasn't a button that you pushed and a map came up. so i was sitting there with the graph paper actually mapping it mapping out the levels so that we knew where the heck we were going um and and so we're playing this game and as it as we're doing it the alien noises are just freaking us out and uh yeah and everything we hadn't come across a predator yet and all of a sudden out of the out of the one of the rear speakers i hear that the clacking noise right and we're like did you hear that because i yeah i'm like turn around turn around he turns around don't see anything i'm like okay so we keep on walking around a little bit more and and uh and like i said the game is very eerily silent and everything and all of a sudden we hear this anytime and we're like what we're like jumping out of our seat we are so about to get killed and we don't even know where it's coming from other than it's behind us you know coming up right and sure enough we we turn around a corner and there's an alien in front of us like i run the other way so we run the other way and also materialized in front of us there's a predator in the room what are we doing we're like we literally threw down the controllers and just walked out the room we're like we need a breather because like this is too much well i mean up until that point you know we've been playing Mortal Kombat and, you know, the fluffy Sonic games. We hadn't played any survival horror at this point, so yeah, it was... Because that genre was pretty new in, like, the early 90s. Like, that was a... That didn't really come into play until sort of mid to late 90s as a really solid genre. Right, and this is... I think it was Doom, which was kind of survival horror. Yeah.
    22:08
    Doom had come out. I don't know if Quake had come out yet. I almost want to say it was probably right around that same time.
    22:17
    Yeah. We definitely played Wolfenstein. Yeah. But yeah, that first-person shooter thing was very new at that time. But yeah, I remember being freaked out about that, and it was wonderful. Quake, for the record, was released on June 22, 1996. Okay.
    22:36
    So we were talking about... It's right in that same ballpark of where we're talking. But yeah, so swinging back to, I want a pinball game to scare the crap out of me.
    22:51
    This will have the, yeah, this has a potential to do that if they get the sound right. It does make me wonder with them having a close relationship then with Fox Interactive, if there was any other Fox movie properties that might lend itself to the pinball arena And my first thought went to Die Hard.
    23:11
    Oh, because you do realize the, you know, sort of a, I don't know. This isn't, when I think of Die Hard, for some reason, I immediately jumped to Arnold Schwarzenegger style films. I don't know why it is, but. That was because that was the antithesis of Schwarzenegger films. It was the everyman hero getting his butt absolutely whooped until the last possible minute, which was not what an Arnold movie was about at all. Yeah, I don't know why I jumped to it, but I was like, oh, because, yeah. I was going, well, I was sort of going, well, it's a little bit like Last Action Hero, which basically seems to be the next table coming out for Pimple Up Dade.
    23:52
    And, you know, I was going, it's going to be interesting to see if they do get digital rights to that type of thing, like having an action movie style. because what have they done recently in zen that's sort of like action movie style they haven't really done anything like that well i mean the star wars movies are action yeah okay i guess they're action movies but they're like and any of the marvel tables yeah they're more comic fantasy though like i don't really okay well you know i think like not real life sort of well i guess again you could say star wars is action movie uh real life because the walking Dead they based it off of Telltale Games version, not off of the TV show. There's something in the same vein of Die Hard, you know, that gritty sort of action movie style thing. There's not really that much in the collection that would lend itself to that sort of genre. So it would be interesting to see how they would attack that. Yeah, so anyway, like I said, it makes me curious to know what Zen has got up their sleeve because this alien one completely popped me upside the face. Aliens. And I went, hey. So then, like, two days later, I think, I see in the Twitter feed there is a his handle is at Jerware And he did a review for Adam Savage The guys from Mythbusters, they have a site called Tested.
    25:29
    And he posted a video of, A, him playing with the Oculus Rift, the Zen VR, but also bringing in his own controller, which, dude, how much? I want the controller. I mean, he basically used $100 worth of parts, built it out of foam core, used real pinball table weights to get to the right height. Which, quote-unquote, he just had lying around.
    25:51
    Because you just do have pinball legs lying around. Yeah, you know. And he jerry-rigged this. I mean, it looked pretty simple the way he had assembled it. Obviously, I don't have a clue how he did what he did. But when they showed the underside of the rig... He used a particular piece of hardware that will emulate controllers on PC. But the technical problem he had or that he discovered was that the Oculus requires an Xbox controller to work. So he had to then, on his PC, find software that would emulate an Xbox controller and still work with this other controller hardware.
    26:34
    But he did. He managed to do it. and it plays really nicely. He's even got an accelerometer in there. Yeah, and so we got to actually see what the table looks like in action with somebody actually having the headset on and looking around. So, of course, they had the two windows, you know, what's being seen on screen, then a camera that was actually on the guy playing. And it was fascinating because you could see the guy, you know, actively looking over the top of the table and tracking the ball. And what this guy made the point of is with pinball, a big part of playing it is you tracking the ball with your head when you're playing the real thing. And whenever we play video pinball, it's always this static image. And so there's kind of a – that's kind of the break in the reality, kind of one of those disconnects that we have from it being real versus not. Because the guy that was working at a facility at Tested, he mentioned, oh, well, people have the video cabinets. and he went no no this is still different because even the video cabinet your perspective doesn't change as you move you know over it obviously and this actual 3d elements of the table move in unison with your headset's position whereas if you're just looking into like a pin main cabinet with the lcd dropped into a cabinet it doesn't change like you can still track the ball with your eyes but yeah you can lean over anything and it just looks weird um if you're trying yeah so yeah with this so it got me really it got me really excited about what what zen had done within this i was like you know what i wasn't really sold on the idea of vr pinball um before this video and then i saw what this you know this in combination with having that kind of controller and went oh my god this is that they're really in the video they really did bring up some valid points and that you know if they get this right particularly um if farsight does decide to go down this and um this path and actually do full oculus vr it's going to be interesting to see how it actually affects like real table sales because if you get this right you build a controller similar of the one on the tested video i tell you what uh that's a pretty cheap like maybe two two and a half thousand dollar for a really really good pc that will drive oculus and this and this controller which you can make very very uh economically you've pretty much got yourself a pinball machine times 60 if you look at um you know the the pimple okay collection and just think what this will do when they bring out the stern offerings which you can pretty much guarantee is the reason why fast site is focusing on vr um and is also currently doing a lot of improvements to their app um and things like that because they're laying the groundwork basically for when the zen app releases they're actually testing the tech now i think um so that will be very interesting to see exactly what happens there. It's going to be pretty interesting. I think VR will be a shake-up for the industry.
    29:52
    And I can definitely say by seeing that VR video, Xen is absolutely correct in charging separately. This is a brand new game.
    30:03
    There's a lot more to it than just a simple port. This is a lot more going into it. I don't feel right being consecrated to this. I don't fault them at all for charging. This is very different. This is, yeah. It's a new app. Don't be tight. Gives in a bit of money for this because, yeah, put it this way. If you're going to fork out two grand for an Oculus Rift, you can fork out an extra, what, 30 bucks? I don't even know how much the DLC is, but, you know. Right. Just don't be a tightwad and pay a bit of extra money.
    30:42
    It's very interesting that the whole VR argument is an interesting argument because I was listening to a podcast that is from this indie dev studio called Butterscotch Shenanigans. And they were talking about people going, oh, you should, like, they've got a couple of games out on mobile, Steam, and, like, cross-platform games. And they said, you should make this Oculus Rift compatible. And they were saying, yeah, that's all well and good to say that. But at the moment, the Oculus Rift and other VR solutions form you know they were talking about activating controller support for their games right and they said well if we were to activate controller support for the games that's quite literally one percent of the market on mobile and pc so using that analogy if we're going to activate vr support in our game that is a fraction of the one percent of the game market so right For a lot of game devs, this whole idea of activating VR posthumously in games is just too expensive for them to even consider. Yeah.
    31:53
    So it's going to be interesting to see the adoption rates of VR and how game dev studios can actually schedule this in, I guess, and cater for the market. because it is going to be i mean like i said that price point is ridiculous like anything think about how expensive tvs were like 3d tvs were when they came out right it's all about uh technical ubiquity and as soon as it becomes mainstream then those are going to drop significantly um and you just got to wait it out as a as a non-early adopter um you've got wait it out and wait until number one, the tech is perfected. And number two, yeah, it's affordable.
    32:44
    So speaking of early adoption, there was all sorts of things that blew my mind this week. But the other thing that blew my mind this week, Tesla just announced their Tesla 3 electric car. they within 16 hours had 120 000 reserves that's incredible for which people put down a thousand dollars and then they would get to be able to reserve the car within 24 hours they were at 180 000 reserves and as of this weekend they're somewhere in the vicinity of 240 000 reserves so and the the amazing part is the car doesn't even get like it won't even be in showrooms at the earliest until the very end of 2017 the if you just ordered the car now and you know you're at the you know number 231 000 you probably won't see this thing until 2020 it's yeah it's amazing but you look at this thing and it's just a sweet piece of tech and if if i knew that i could afford the car when it actually come out i would want to put a reserve down too i actually know a couple of guys that did put a reserve down um it's just a beautiful beautiful looking looking thing and especially when you compare that to what uh Chevrolet has their all-electric vehicle called the Bolt coming out. Almost the same price. It's literally as if you took an iPhone and compared it to the old Nokia phone and said, well, they both make phone calls.
    34:30
    And we're going to charge you the same. You've got a thing that looks like a sports car and a thing that looks like a box. And just even when you look at the interior, you've got something that looks like a luxury vehicle on the inside and then the other thing looks like you know a ford fiesta um it's you know it's all plastic and just premium except for the price it's gonna be really interesting how tesla link in this solution with their solar panel and battery storage solution as well um that's going to be very interesting to see how they pair those two together because obviously if you're buying a tesla you'll want some way to recharge it economically so you know having the whole well they have the supercharger stations all over the place which is free to recharge and it only takes uh they're saying 20 minutes i believe so stop off someplace to go lunch park your car charge that bad boy 20 minutes later come back full charge is it actually a direct cable in or is it inductive yeah i couldn't tell you i don't think it's inductive i think it's an actual because they were developing this snake arm that all you had to do was pull up it looks and i think everyone said oh yeah that looks freaky as yeah yeah yeah that's right that was pretty cool and uh yeah and then of course the other new thing that as my son mentioned we did get a ps4 and uh it's primarily for him to be playing plants versus zombies but also because I now get to play the Uncharted 4 when it comes out. So I'm very excited about that.
    36:12
    But I did immediately download Zen. And it did the, hey, let's check what you already have. And boom, all of a sudden, and it wasn't every single table. They selected 20 tables from the PS3 that they would port over for free. I guess that was something in their license agreement. But anyway, all of a sudden, I had a handful of tables. that I'd already paid for pop up. Have I downloaded Pinball Arcade yet? No. Because, yeah. What's the point? Yeah. There's no cross-play, and I've already got all the tables on the PC.
    36:50
    So, and I've, I mean, I stopped buying, I only bought the first two seasons on PS3, but it's like, I'm not going to rebuy any of those, you know, and especially when this other company gave them to me for free. So it does fall back into that category of, like I said, I understand charging when you completely redo everything and build this thing like Zen did with the VR. But when you're just porting a table over to a new system, I definitely fall into that camp. And there's been arguments of why it should be in charge of why I should. Discussion on the forums. But the reality is I get this thing. I immediately downloaded one company's app. I didn't even bother with the others. So, you know, the other thing that I was very... I actually ordered it before I knew that we were getting the PS4. But I ordered a PS4 controller to play on my PC with because I was doing some reading and they were saying that it hooks up really nicely with your PC I was I been getting really frustrated with the it not the lag on my Logitech controller It's just that the connection would suddenly cut out. So obviously you're playing pinball and I flip the flipper and the flipper doesn't go. And then all of a sudden it goes because it regained the connection. So you can imagine whenever I'm playing the tournament of the month and that happens.
    38:22
    rage right it's time to get a wired controller it's all i'm saying right so i decided to get a wired controller so i ordered up uh from amazon i was looking at all the reviews or whatever and i ordered one that looked the most like a playstation controller that had rumble that the key layout was uh wasn't triangles and squares and circles though but it was the um abxy why and uh so i got this controller plugged it in computer immediately recognized it as an xbox 360 controller and i couldn't get it to work for me for the life of me on uh pinball arcade at all and at all and it was driving me i could get it to work immediately on every other game i had could not get it to work on pinball arcade so i'm bashing my head around on this trying to figure this out and it now this entire time i still had my logitech controller the the wireless dongle or the usb thing still like in my computer well it turns out that pinball arcade only recognizes one controller and it's whatever the first controller is that's plugged in that's controller one it will not recognize any other controller i guess it's um which sucks yes and no because i mean you're sort of going well if i'm going to play the game it's either past controller as a you know a way of like having multiplayer games or you know i don't really think you'd need more than one well here's the here's the deal for me is like in this case because i had a wireless controller i just want to leave it plugged into my computer right if i choose not to use that controller and i want to plug in an xbox 360 controller then i want to be able to plug in and play with that any of these other games that i was playing on steam allowed me to do just that is whatever controller i pick up and i push the button on that's the controller that's now in control right all the i mean i tested a bunch of games in my steam account and all of them worked it seems like unplugged no you know i could go back to the other one plugged in yep that's the one that's gonna do right pimble arcade no sir not a bit so finally it was like okay i have to actually disconnect the logic controller and then plug in this other wired controller so i did and i'm playing it and the rumble on it was so minuscule it was just like i'm like isn't even working? Is it even on? It was like barely. Now, on my logic controller, it's not that strong either. On the Xbox controller, it's really nice and robust.
    41:12
    So that was also, it was like, I don't want this controller either. So, I'd made my complaint on the forum, and somebody mentioned that, oh, well, with the PS4 controller, you can, and you use this download called DS for Windows, you can actually set the vibration strength and you can set all the all these parameters i was like okay fine so i found it i picked up the controller for like 33 bucks because it's on discount um so i was like sweet that's you know fine i'd pay 20 for this i'll pay an extra 13 for a much better controller and then of course it turns out great because then we get the ps4 so now we have that's all good that's all happy um that's all good so i plugged it in last night to try it out and it took a little work to there were some things to download and everything to, to get to work and function.
    42:02
    But startup pinball arcade and the rumble is really nice and strong. The buttons are nice and reactive. So I'm really happy on that. The only thing that I had to do was that with pinball arcade, it so badly wants the xbox controller that now obviously the d-pad and the analog stick on the left are you know swapped uh for xbox versus playstation so when you go to nudge in pinball arcade you're back to having to nudge with the d-pad instead of the analog stick fortunately with the DS for Windows, you can set up another profile on your controller. And so I set it up and swapped the two, reversed them so that my nudging is back on the stick.
    42:56
    Yeah, on the left. Because then whenever I go and play Zen, well, it does it exactly like my PS4 controller with nudging being on the analog stick. But one thing I did do that I thought, hey, this is kind of interesting. I'm not using it, but it actually worked really good while playing this end table was you can also set up the six axis of the controller. And so I set that up for nudging. I, I said, Oh, well, if I, you know, shift, right, that's my nudge, right. If I shift left, that's up and down. And so I was playing it and sure enough, I could just shake the controller and it would nudge in the direction that I could. I went, Ooh, that'll work really good. If you then wound up doing, you know, building your own controller box, You just put one of those in the box and it will just do it for you. You use the accelerometer on the thing. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
    43:52
    Yeah. So it's pretty groovy. So I'm happy with the PS4 controller. The Logitech controller is permanently disconnected, and who knows when that will be used again. There's an app. For those who want to use controllers on Android, there's an app called Sixaxis. and as the name suggests, it's for PS4 controls and probably by far it is the best app for control support on Android if you don't have a tablet that automatically accepts a controller like the Shield tablet. The thing I really miss on the Shield tablet is that its controller doesn't have any rumble functionally at all.
    44:30
    So it's just like a really passive experience and it doesn't have any sensors in the controller so you can't use it as an accelerometer-aware controller. So it's almost like if I ever ditch the Shield tablet, I will need to go back to the 6-axis app. And I think it'd be one of those things where I buy a PS4 controller, which it has support for now. And yeah, I'm pretty sure it actually has like a pass-through mode. So if an app supports it, it will actually allow you to get vibrations. So that would mean Zen would vibrate for me because it has haptic feedback.
    45:16
    See, that's a key component for me with playing pinball. It's why I don't really care for playing either, well, especially on a phone, but even on my wife's iPad. I want that sensation. I want the rumble. I want to feel the pop bombers popping. it's so a part of actual pinball the feeling of the mechanics um yeah that's i mean that's why i was going through hell and high water trying to find a controller that would uh i'd be happy a good lesson here for everyone is like if you want the best experience pay the money because generally speaking the knockoff ones you get from china uh the controllers they aren't up to scratch at all and in most cases they cheap out in the circuitry so any controllers i've got from overseas what they often do is they overload certain um uh paths on the ic so one path will like on an analog stick they'll they'll like try and like fudge up one of the axis um on both of the sticks so it uses one path okay and that completely screws you if you're trying to configure any analog stuff on the controllers so yeah buy a reputable brand and um if whatever the most commonly available controller is that's good um uh you gotta yeah use the good stuff and you'll have a good time yeah hey speaking of good stuff have you visited our t-shirt website you should go to represent.com forward slash blockade dash t-shirt and order yours show your support for our podcast make your friends jealous and send traffic our way there you go yeah there we go hey also don't forget to uh visit our actual website we do have a website now blockade.com blockade pinball.com uh you can blockade pinball excuse me yeah blockade pinball um all of our uh podcasts are there. So you can check them out and download from there.
    47:26
    Also, hey, if you want to play Plants vs. Zombies Against My Son, his Sony username is Trash Dash Boah. B-W-A-H.
    47:42
    Yeah, he used to be into these little toys called Trashies, and he also likes the Raving Rabbit toys go, Boah! so there's where his username came from anyway um because currently he has two friends one of them being me um and and i can't well well now that we have split screen i can't play at the same time was him but um yeah uh what other bits of business oh thank you yes table of the week uh table of the week as selected by pinball was 45b will be jackpot yes jackpot because you didn't play pinbot enough you get to play jackpot although i do enjoy jackpot a whole hell of a lot more Yeah, it's good fun.
    48:40
    Good, good fun indeed. All right. Well, we shall be out of here. I was supposed to go to my league tournament today.
    48:51
    Unfortunately, I've had car issues and could not drive to league today. Yeah, whoops. And unfortunately, it's the start of the new season too, so I'm missing out on the very first. Yeah, opener. That sucks. which means when I go play next month I'm going to be the fourth player on every single table I play because I'll have a point that sucks yep it sucks but we move on alright hey we will be back again next week who knows what we'll talk about then because who knows what new pinball treats might drop considering how many dropped in this one week who knows what's going to happen That's right. The world of pinball is indeed variable.
    49:35
    Well, he has been Jared Morgan. I have been Shut Your Trap, a.k.a. Chris Frevis. We shall see you all again in the Blockade next week. See you later. Take care.
    49:47
    WizardAmusement.com. The West Coast leader in classic pinball. Makers of custom pinball shooter rods and buyer specifications. Swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table. installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools even if you don't own a table looks great as a pimple memento to admire prices start at 39 but mention blockhead podcast receipt 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to you. We can't prove unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and place it in board.