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Swords, Monsters, and Cab Mode

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 7m·held·May 29, 2022
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Swords of Fury of Fury of Fury, Monster vs. Pinball, and Cabinet Mode announcement analyzed with gameplay deep-dive.

Summary

BlahCade hosts Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discuss three major Zen Pinball announcements: Swords of Fury (a System 11 Williams remake with subtle visual enhancements), Monster vs. Pinball (briefly mentioned), and the introduction of Cabinet Mode for dynamic backglass displays. The hosts analyze Swords of Fury's gameplay mechanics, compare it to Farsight's Pinball Arcade version, and discuss implications for future System 11 releases like Space Station. They also preview an upcoming Gravatar Recharged review collaboration.

Key Claims

  • Swords of Fury was in the final season of Pinball Arcade but got overshadowed by Farsight losing the Williams license

    high confidence · Chris Friebus discussing TPA's final season; confirmed by Jared's agreement that the loss of Williams license dominated that period

  • Zen's version of Swords of Fury is graphically and gameplay-wise better than Farsight's TPA version

    high confidence · Jared Morgan: 'it's better overall'; multiple specific technical comparisons (drop target physics, ramp difficulty, ball behavior)

  • Swords of Fury was designed by Steve Kirk and Tony Kraemer, with art by Doug Watson and music by Brian Schmidt

    high confidence · Jared Morgan performed a search and confirmed during the podcast discussion

  • Swords of Fury was released June 24, 1988

    high confidence · Jared Morgan stated the specific release date during discussion of designer timeline

  • Zen's visual enhancements on Swords of Fury are intentionally subtle (potions, art blades, ball rug, Balrog animation) and represent a good balance of restraint

    high confidence · Chris Friebus: 'I think this is a good example of restraint in how enhancements are actually managed' and detailed list of additions

  • Cabinet Mode has been officially released by Zen Pinball

    high confidence · Chris Friebus: 'Cabinet mode. It has been released. Officially, too. It's not cabinet support, it's cab[inet mode]'

  • Zen is directly emulating System 11 boards rather than downsampling/orchestrating audio like Farsight did, causing differences in audio rendering

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan technical analysis of audio chip differences; explanation of why WPC and System 11 era games sound different despite similar Yamaha chips

  • The lower flipper on Swords of Fury in Zen's version shoots the black ramp with too much strength compared to real machines

    medium confidence · Chris and Jared discussing flipper coil tuning: 'they feel almost like they've got the wrong coil values' and comparing to actual machine difficulty

Notable Quotes

  • “it's a very different game to what farsight did... graphically and gameplay wise it's better... i think it's better overall”

    Jared Morgan @ early in Swords of Fury discussion — Direct comparison establishing Zen's superiority over Farsight's TPA version

  • “I think this is a good example of restraint in how enhancements are actually managed in games and how they could probably be applied in the future.”

    Chris Friebus @ during visual enhancements analysis — Establishes design philosophy for Zen's approach to digital remakes—less is more

  • “there's not a lot going on visually enhanced in here, except when you get to multiball and you get sparkles on the balls”

    Jared Morgan @ Swords of Fury visual analysis — Documents the minimal visual changes Zen made to the base game

  • “I really want Zen, as they're going through these tables and learning about emulating what Williams and Bally did with their light shows, I want them to incorporate that into their originals more.”

    Chris Friebus @ light show discussion — Critique of Zen originals compared to licensed remakes and Jersey Jack's design standards

  • “the flippers feel really strong in this like they feel almost like they've got the wrong coil values in them”

    Chris Friebus @ gameplay mechanics discussion — Specific concern about flipper tuning in Zen's implementation vs. real hardware

  • “it's a very subtle addition there... They didn't add a whole bunch more.”

    Chris Friebus @ wrap-up of Swords of Fury visual enhancements — Summarizes Zen's restraint strategy on this particular remake

  • “And this paves the way, basically, what we're seeing here, this paves the way for Space Station to come in soon because they've got the display tech worked out for it”

    Jared Morgan @ display technology discussion — Prediction about upcoming Space Station release based on System 11 display tech implementation

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen PinballcompanyFarsight StudioscompanySwords of FurygameMonster vs. PinballgameCabinet ModeproductSteve KirkpersonTony Kraemerperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Zen Pinball released Swords of Fury with enhanced graphics, Cabinet Mode support, and improved emulation vs. Farsight's TPA version

    high · Discussion of gameplay improvements, visual enhancements (potions, art blades), and direct comparison showing Zen version as superior

  • ?

    technology_signal: Zen using direct board emulation (Yamaha FM chip direct emulation) vs. Farsight's downsampling/orchestration approach, creating different audio/gameplay results across chip architectures

    medium · Jared's technical analysis of audio differences between WPC and System 11 era games and why similar chips produce different results

  • ?

    product_concern: Swords of Fury flipper strength appears overtuned in Zen version—lower flipper shoots black ramp too easily compared to real machines

    medium · Chris and Jared discussing flipper coil values feeling wrong and comparing to actual machine difficulty; ball shoots ramp with too much strength

  • ?

    design_innovation: Zen's approach to Swords of Fury enhancements exemplifies restraint—subtle additions (potions, art blades, ball rug) that enhance gameplay without overdoing visuals

    high · Chris's explicit praise: 'this is a good example of restraint in how enhancements are actually managed' and detailed documentation of minimal additions

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Cabinet Mode requires consolidating multiple System 11 backglass displays (4 separate gas plasma displays scattered across backglass) into single DMD; hosts want future dynamic backglasses to replicate original multi-display layout

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.204

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 hey everyone how's it going uh it's going somewhat well.
0:29
Somewhat well, okay. Let's be a little mad. Yes. Folks, if it sounds like Jared's speaking into a tin can,
0:37
so I did a thing. That's what I am. Yeah, exactly. I went ahead and used up a good old gift card that I had been saving for purposes unknown and finally decided, you know what? I need to get an SSD hard drive because I haven't had one of those before. and I need to bump my RAM up to 16 gigs just in an effort to make pinball effects run better, maybe.
1:06
Yeah. And in the process of doing that, because I had asked my buddy who's my computer guru, hey, what do I need to do ahead of time with the SSD? Do I need to, you know, what do I need to do? He goes, no, as long as all your files are on your hard drive and everything, you're fine. He goes, you're going to have to reinstall programs, but, you know, whatever. He goes, it's good to start, you know, clean and fresh now and then. I mean, I think you would agree with that. This is OBS. Yes.
1:35
So I was like, okay, great. So I did just that. And then I loaded up OBS and realized, oh, crap, I didn't save any of the settings that we have that we use. And you guys know our history with OBS. it's not pretty it's a chicken pass is what it is it constantly is like not working for us the way that is intended so i had to rebuild the thing from scratch and in the process i for some reason now have jared with kind of tinny audio and i don't know why yeah i don't know either oh well it is what it is yeah that's right in case you're wondering about the Star Wars t-shirt I think you know it's a Star Wars celebration going on this weekend oh right okay so I thought I would decorate and I even have I rescued a friend from we call it property control over there at Disney it's basically an employees only Have you found? No, it's an employees-only shop. Oh, okay. So it's for merchandise that's either been discontinued or is slightly damaged, things they just can't sell to the public, basically. Okay, all right. And so Mr. Porgfriend, he came from there because he doesn't have a base to sit on your shoulder. Oh. And also he doesn't make any noise, this one. But then I also happened to find a Rastar. Oh, cool. And when I got him, all of these little bumps were just brown because it had all rubbed off. Oh, okay. I took the paint pens that I was intending to use for Firepower, except for the colors never looked good enough for me to continue coloring that in, and applied them to this guy, and so now he's all... Now he has the color. Now he's got the color and looks kind of cool. Does he do anything, or does he just sit there and look? No, if I push a button, there we go. He goes, rah. He goes, hold on. Let's fire up, buddy.
Doug Watson
person
Brian Schmidtperson
Williamscompany
Space Stationgame
Star Trek: The Next Generationgame
Gravatar Rechargedgame
BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization

high · Detailed discussion of display consolidation challenge and Chris/Jared's requests for future implementation with speakers and separate display zones

  • ?

    product_launch: Cabinet Mode officially released by Zen Pinball (not just cabinet support, but full mode)

    high · Chris Freebus: 'Cabinet mode. It has been released. Officially, too. It's not cabinet support, it's cab[inet mode]'

  • ?

    machine_intel: Space Station (System 11B Williams table) expected to arrive at Zen Pinball soon, enabled by display tech now working on Swords of Fury

    medium · Jared Morgan: 'this paves the way for Space Station to come in soon because they've got the display tech worked out for it'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Zen Pinball now holding Williams license previously held by Farsight; bringing System 11 and WPC era games to digital with improved emulation and features

    high · Discussion of Farsight losing Williams license and Zen bringing Swords of Fury with superior technical implementation

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Zen's Swords of Fury shows improved ball physics and drop target mechanics vs. TPA—drop targets pop back up correctly until all five are hit; backhand shot on far-right target now possible

    high · Chris and Jared's detailed comparison of drop target behavior and ramp shot repeatability between versions

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade planning joint review of Gravatar Recharged (Steam release June 2); expanding coverage beyond traditional pinball into adjacent gaming

    high · Chris Freebus: 'I got contacted to ask if I wanted to take a look at a brand new game that's coming out June 2nd' and plan to do 'joint review of it'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Zen's alphanumeric and segment display rendering using fluid animation rather than janky segment animation; displays look like real LCD/gas plasma with proper fades and glows

    high · Jared: 'The display glasses look really nice. They don't look like they're being segment animated...really fluid' vs. TPA being 'janky as heck'

    • 3:47
    Ah, he vibrates. Oh, okay. Turn off. There we go. There you go. There we go. Oh, the fun. Yeah, oh, the fun. Yeah, I can imagine. There you go. Put that thing on the ground and watch it go around the floor. Yeah, it just pretty much bounces around in one place. And now you know why all the spots were dropped off. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
    4:15
    Yeah. That's funny. Oh, you are the rescuer of toys. Yeah, yeah. I'm hoping that at some point I'll be able to rescue maybe a lightsaber that's for sale cheap there. Because I know somebody that just did. It literally had a label on it that said, does not work. And all it needed was batteries.
    4:36
    Okay. So they picked up a $200 hilt for $45. Wow. Okay. That's quite an expensive battery that goes into there. Right?
    4:50
    No. That's a good deal. Well, I wish you luck getting a glow stick from there. Yes. What are we going to do? What are we talking about today, Jared? I wonder.
    5:04
    There's a little bit of extra content. added to a certain pinball game. Oh, yeah, that. Yeah, we could talk about that. I guess we maybe should.
    5:16
    I am going to mention, and I sent Jared a message. I didn't read if he saw the message. Yes, I did, and no, I haven't got contacted about this thing. Gotcha. Okay, so I got contacted to ask if I wanted to take a look at a brand new game that's coming out June 2nd, which is Gravatar Reimagined or Recharged, something like that. It's the old Atari Gravatar game, which is a pain-in-the-butt game, using the same kind of mechanics that Asteroids used to use. Turn left, right, and thrust. And a fire button. Oh, yep. Except for you have to also navigate a maze.
    6:05
    Basically, that's what you're navigating through. Wow. With inertia. That would be so hard. But this is all updated graphics and new, but same mechanics kind of thing. So they want me to take a look at it and maybe talk about it. So I think if I can get Jared in on this, then... We can do a joint review of it. Do a joint review of it. Something to look forward to next time. It's a little bit different than what we normally cover on the show. Yes, but I think if you went on Steam right now, you could see probably a preview video of it. Like I said, it's releasing on June 2nd. Yeah, that'd be on the Steam wishlist system now. Yeah.
    6:44
    Okay, yeah. So today, obviously, a new pinball show just debuted. Some new info dropped, if you can tell by the title of the episode here. Swords of Fury,
    7:00
    Monster vs. Pinball, and Cab Mode. Where do you want to start, Jared? Let's start with Swords of Fury. Let's start. Okay, well, we'll dive right into the meat and potatoes. You got it. Yep, let's do it, because I haven't yet had a chance to catch up with the pinball show. So I have seen on Discord chatter about the other tables, but I'm coming in really fresh to this, so we can talk about it from that perspective too, which might be a little bit unique. Okay. Yeah, so Swords of Fury Some of you might remember This actually was released also in the Pinball Arcade But it was in the final season Of Pinball Arcade And so That final season of Pinball Arcade Most people kind of Like Everybody's kind of like, what came out in that season?
    7:50
    Then there's a reason for that Because not a lot of good stuff did It was mostly got leaves It was not only just not a lot of good stuff, but it also got dwarfed by the fact that Farsight was losing TPA, or losing all the Williams license.
    8:04
    It's the same thing that Banzai Run was in that release. It's hard that anybody talks about it because just a lot of people didn't get it, and it didn't have time to have people play it and hype and talk about it because everybody was talking about the loss and then Owen's getting Williams. So it just kind of went... That whole last season just kind of dithered away.
    8:33
    So it's good that Zen is hopping on board with this. it's also good because zen has improved it oh quite markedly it's uh it's a very different game to what farsight did yeah yeah graphically and gameplay wise it's it's better it's different as well um but i think it's better overall wow jared whatever that was in that drink of water it cleared up your tinny sound hey it's magic water that's that's that's pretty impressive there.
    9:08
    So I thought what we would do first here is why don't we take a look at Zen's trailer for Swords of Fury and we can discuss from there. Yeah, sounds good. I have this all ready here on the YouTubes and let's just give it a go.
    9:29
    Unleash the fury of this 1988 solid state classic. All in a world of sword and sorcery. Oh, shit. He's definitely got a lot of spit happening there. That's a lot of spit. So, things to note. This is a System 11 Williams table. It is. We all love the System 11. System 11, bravo, to be precise. Okay. Don't want to be nerdy about it, which we do. Not designed by one of the big hitter names that we typically talk about, to the fact that I honestly forget who is the designer of that one. Yeah, me too, actually. quickly google quickly do the search yeah do it jared i've got too many other things on my uh desktop all right i will do it stand by standing by talk about other things but uh one of the things that stands out to me is this is probably one of the in terms of the zen enhancements that get put on this one's very subtle i mean very subtle there's not much that zen added to this other than obviously the Balrog.
    11:05
    Yeah, I was going to say that there's not a lot going on visually enhanced in here, except when you get to multi-ball and you get sparkles on the balls. The balls are sparkly. They have sparkly trails. No, stop.
    11:20
    What? Yeah, start the video again. Oh, no. Yeah. Oops. Lol. But I found out who it's designed by. Yeah, you're right. It's not really by anyone that's really, like, not really well known. It was actually Steve Kirk and Tony Kramer.
    11:34
    Arts by Doug Watson and music is by Brian Schmidt. So, yeah, it's sort of like the, I'd like to say the B team, probably, of the time.
    11:47
    So, although I think Steve Ritchie didn't really come in until sort of later after this table. So, you know, that sort of era. was already in with Black Knight.
    12:03
    Oh, 1988. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Because this one was released June 24, 1988. So maybe it was around the same time. Yeah, I think this is when we started to get the, you know, the designers of the era coming through. Well, because I know in 88 Lawler released Earthshaker, which is what I kind of consider his first very like very Lawler table you know that one screamed Lawler it was 1989 for Earthshaker so one year after Swords of Fury yeah other interesting thing there ain't no pop bumpers on this table no it's not It's another one like... There's not too many tables that don't have pop bumpers on them. The only one I can think of is Judge Dredd. He's the other one that doesn't have pop bumpers.
    13:03
    Well, I mean, what is it? Grand Lizard doesn't... Does Big Guns have pop bumpers? I don't think that one does.
    13:15
    I think it might. I don't know. But there are a few out there that they just went, you know what, no, we're putting money into the bill of materials in other areas. I just wonder, probably on this game, it just would have been the layout that would have prevented them having any pop-up, because there's just no real feed area. Yeah. It was all covered by the upper playfield. And, of course, on Black Knight and stuff like that, they took care of that by putting the pop-up on the top playfield, which gives them access to it. Yeah. But, yeah, there would have been nowhere really to put it on this game. unless I made it a wide body which was not really well it was a thing in that era but not on games like this it's interesting it has two horseshoe loops one right there close to the bottom lower play field and one all the way up the top in a lot of ways it's layout reminds me of those bizarre bally tables that were coming out at the same time when I say bizarre they're kind of the ballets that you never hear about they all had just they were like trying new things but none of them ever caught on as opposed to you know what is that other ballet they weren't known as System 11 they were known as like B System 9 No, they weren't even known as a system. That's what I'm saying. It was like a number system that went with it.
    15:00
    Strange Science falls under that category. That's probably the most famous of that bizarre, bally kind of thing. Anyway. So other games that don't have pop-upers include Fire. Oh, yeah. And in the modern era, No Fear as well doesn't have them.
    15:19
    there's also apparently a game called Lightning as well. And Junkyard obviously doesn't have them. So Champion Pub's another one. Judge Dread.
    15:31
    And Shadow doesn't have it either. So there's a few out there without pop bumpers floating around. Blackwater 100 is another one that doesn't have pop bumpers. It's all about ramps and craziness in that game. But you're right, Jungle Lord and Grand Lizard, I think, are both ones that don't have them.
    15:52
    It's basically anything with a lot of ramps, because they don't have any room for pop-pumpers without ramps on some of these games. Seems to be a trend, certainly on the layouts they were trying out in the sort of 80s, where they had that sort of raised or upper playfield area, you know?
    16:08
    Right. Now, I want to say it's... Hold on, let me see if this is correct. what I'm looking at here. You're right. Big Guns doesn't have it either. So, yeah. I thought I came across what the prompt was for the Bally tables that I was thinking of, but no, it was a capacitor label.
    16:29
    Oh, really? Oh. I'll figure this out eventually. Yeah. So, the audio on Swords of Fury is definitely one of those, It's got that kind of rockin' soundtrack that just earworms itself into your head. It's got that classic Yamaha sound of the era. Like that Yamaha FM chip that was pushing it to its limits And it probably the first thing that you notice in terms of differences between this and the TVA version because it's a much cleaner sound that Zen was able to pull from this. Because they're directly emulating it. They're not extracting the sounds, downsampling them, and then orchestrating them like Farsight did. And I think I was talking about this with folks on Discord about the differences, and that's why I think we're hearing differences with things like WPC era games like Whitewater and System 11 games. They both use a similar chip, but the architecture of those two boards is very different. And I think because we're seeing direct emulation from Xen, that's why they're having troubles between eras that are using similar chips like the Yamaha chip. because the board architecture is different. The emulation framework will be different. And even though it's the same Yamaha chip, it's going to be a different way that everything's wired together digitally. So I think that's why they're having race conditions and weirdness with audio, I guess.
    18:05
    Interesting. Visuals. Very crisp. Very crisp, yeah. Again, this is something that Zen has just been knocking out of the park in terms of no matter where you look on the table, they're high-res images. Everything is high-res. Yeah, there's no shortcuts being pulled here.
    18:30
    But, and this new pass that Zen just did with darkening the tables, thank you, Zen. It helps. It's really good. You still got to work on the ball because the ball still maintains the exact same brightness no matter where it is on the play field. I really want it to be affected by the shadows of the table so that your eye loses the ball now and then. It's part of pinball. And definitely, and we'll touch on this later because it's part of the other tables, but with Circus Ball's hair and it's neon, there is a good light throw on it, but it doesn't nearly have the same effect as it does in real life. Correct. It's closer. It's definitely closer. Yeah. but there's still work to be done there. Because for sure the light show is now more prominent because of the darker past. That's, I mean... Yeah. And that is what I most wanted to see, yeah. Because the light shows are amazing. That's, it's... They are. You want to see it.
    19:30
    And I wish that... I really want Zen, as they're going through these tables and learning about emulating what Williams and Bally did with their light shows, I want them to incorporate that into their originals more.
    19:47
    Take some cues from the designers of the past and really get those light shows vibrant and something that would draw you over to the room if you saw them going off in a dark room. I mean, I'm sorry, shoot, just look at anything the Jersey Jack has put out, and it's, like, insane. That's probably a little bit... It's taking it probably a degree too far in some cases. It is, but it is the goal to strive towards. You know what I mean? Yeah, it is definitely eye-catching. You can't dispute that. And I know that we mentioned it with just the difference between Stern's Mandalorian and Zen's Mandalorian. The light shows are night and day. Yeah, that's right. And unfortunately, Stern wins in this case. By a long mile. By a long mile, yeah.
    20:31
    But again, looking at the enhancements of what Zen did, they basically put some potions up at the upper play field. They put the ball rug on there. they put the art blades and I do actually like the potions because it is kind of difficult in some cases to work out what targets are down over what column they're in and having those potions just like you know give you a little bit of visual pop and visual clue up the top there that's actually probably a good like a good use of visual enhancements in this case I think so yeah I like that in fact I don't think I've really seen a Swords of Fury that has had all of those drop target lights working properly so having like number one seeing them all working I go oh there's actually lights up there right okay that's good and two having those potions going off and giving you a much better visual indication when you hit them is welcome. And I actually, this is a sort of, from a visual enhancements perspective, people are probably thinking, well, you know, there's not really that much going on in this table, but I actually think this is the fine balance of visual enhancements that actually does what it says on the box, enhances the gameplay.
    22:00
    I don't think you need to do a lot in some cases on tables to actually make the enhancements shine through. And this is, I think, a good example of restraint in how enhancements are actually managed in games and how they could probably be applied in the future. So I brought this up just so that we can... Talk through it. ...what we're talking about here. Yeah.
    22:25
    So if you look up to the upper left, that's where the play field is that we're discussing, those little drop targets. I wonder why I'm not being able to see my cursor on the screen it's so nice when I usually can point yeah let's see if I can fix that real quickly here no it's doing what it should do Nick minute OBS starts completely going down we can't do the broadcast anymore yeah just throw a mouse cursor right I'm like I wasn't asking much was I while you're trying to work out the finer points of mouse control in OBS Yes, what I can say is what surprised me, and I actually thought it was a bug initially because I forgot it was there, is on the right-hand side, top right-hand side of the playfield, you see that there's actually a loop shot that just dumps the ball back to the lower flipper. And I actually thought there was a collision mesh issue going on in that upper corner because the ball was just flying out randomly. Yeah. And I was going, what's going on there? And then I actually had to have a closer look at the playfield. So you're talking about, it's this loop that goes around like that, right? No, not that one. It's the black ramp. So the black ramp goes... You shoot the ball up the black ramp from that... Oh, this black ramp, yes. Yeah, and it goes up and then goes through both of those bypass gates and blops out of that bottom bit. Yeah, it just freaked me out the first time. I forgot that that was actually there. And the ball feels like it's really going out of there. One thing I will say is I think... This could just be... a case of this is them's copy of the table they have but the flippers feel really strong in this like they feel almost like they've got the wrong coil values in them because the shooting that ramp with that much strength that it actually feels like it's almost wildly out of control feels probably a little bit overtuned well it's interesting because shooting and so you know folks the the the image that i have up right now this is of an actual sword to fury not the zenz version not this is not zenz yeah um because i just went with the first thing i found uh shooting this black ramp up here obviously it's possible with this lower flipper but should it be so easy to hit no it should really it should be more about hitting it with this upper flipper yes yeah that's exactly right in fact you should like the other thing i found that from left flipper shooting up the avenger ramp which is that one at the right that goes underneath or that assembly on the right-hand side. Yeah, that one there. That one, the ball flies up there really fast, and that's not how it behaves on any of the Swords of Fury that I've played. It's a bit of a struggle to get it up that ramp. You shouldn't be able to just shoot up there and the ball goes up there every time to the upper playfield. It should be quite a challenge to actually get up to the upper playfield, and I'm finding myself up there way too much. So what happens is this Avengers ramp, and it basically merges with the launch lane. It shoots the ball, which loops up. I don't know. Is it a kicker, or is it just a loop? No, it's a natural flow. Natural flow. It's just a loop. Sends it up to this upper where there's a diverter, so you'll either go across this bridge here, drop into the upper play field, or it'll come across to this habit trail right here, which will dump you off.
    25:58
    Into the palace lock. Here, it dumps you off straight down here, which then goes to this upper flipper. Oh, wait, wait, wait. No, I take it back. It dumps it off into this little lane right here, which is basically... Which is the lock line. Yeah, basically, if it has a ball in it, that ball will immediately kick out here and then come to your upper flipper. Yes.
    26:23
    Like I said, it's a funky design. and there's like the way the balls are handled in that lock area is is a product of the fact that like other lock areas they don't have a ball release to the kicker it's basically a direct kick it reminds me of what eventually was used in star trek next generation uh for that you know because that one it had a long subway system for the ball yeah it had a stage ball right so it always just had it when stored there so it wasn't a long wait it was just like almost instantaneous yes this feels like the precursor to that i think it does in a way i think also it it's um it's there because of the way the ball system works so when obviously people who played this game were really in fx this won't be news to them but when you shoot it up that left lane it actually hits a saucer at the top of that lane, which is hidden under the play field. And then that saucer ejects the ball into that. This lane right here. Yeah. What they call the power lock or the powers lane where you go found power one and stores it in there. But if there's a ball in there already and it goes over that second rail, as you were saying, Chris, it does instantly eject it out because there's no way of it separating the balls and ejecting one at a time. it'll either eject none or all of them at the same time. So it's got to manage that staging. The only difference, obviously, with that particular lock mechanism compared to TNG is that TNG will actively stage a ball between games, whereas this one you have to do it initially yourself.
    27:59
    Yeah. Hey, try and clear something up for me, because I haven't bothered looking at the rules. Where the heck do you collect the extra ball?
    28:08
    I've had this extra ball lit, and I have this indicator lit, and I have no clue where the extra ball is. I don't quite know, actually. All right, I'm going to have to look it up in the room. I'm scouring the play field now trying to look for it. I have a feeling it might be in the lock ball lane, potentially. That seems like where it would be. I think that's where you shoot it. In fact, I think that's where I've shot it in the past, and that's where you get it. I think one of those lights up. Okay. Yeah, I forget which one it is, but I'm pretty sure that's where it is. It's not at the top, I don't believe. I'm sure someone in the YouTube comments when we broadcast this will be able to help us out there. So I'll just point out, since this is up, things, again, that Zen added. So art blades on the sides of the tables. Yep. Potions above each of the drop targets. Yep. They replaced the shield, although I don't think it's really any better than the original plastic, truth be told. I didn't even notice that. Yeah, it's there. Honestly.
    29:14
    I don't know. That one doesn't do anything for me. And then they have the Balrog dancing around, spitting slime all over the place over here. And that's really – It's spitting everywhere. Yeah, and that's pretty much it. They didn't add a whole bunch more. So, like I said, it's a very subtle addition there. Now, so I had a go at TPA because I wanted to compare. And one of the things I noticed, and I don't know if you'd noticed this before, but so when you hit a drop target, it drops and then pops right back up until you have hit all five of these targets. Yes, and then they stay down. Then they stay down. In TPA, it seemed like you hit them and they just stayed down. and then you immediately would drop a ball behind and then it immediately kicks the ball right back to the flipper and so that was like the first thing that I noticed that was oh I don't think the guys at Farsight got that one correct I don't think so I think well I'll have to double check if that was you know if my memory's playing tricks on me there maybe they did have it functioning properly and I just didn't notice until I had tapped them all? Yeah, I do remember the ball, the drop targets remaining down, but it wasn't for a long period of time. And I have a feeling that's actually a difficulty setting that you can adjust for the upper play field. So they may have been working with different difficulty settings. The other thing I did notice for sure is this far right drop target in TPA is completely random if you can hit it. You cannot backhand it. Yeah, you can't. Whereas here, you can very easily backhand it, as you should yeah it's it's a repeatable shot and yes you need to be able to backhand from there it's a part of the strategy of that upper play field and what i do like is the action that they have from when the ball i think when the ball comes off the avengers loop and goes straight in feed straight into the um the upper play field area yeah the the the way the ball contacts the rubbers on the far left of the play field there and then bounces back here and then bounces right about there on your flipper. Yeah. So you can actually get the ball. Whereas in the, in the far side version, it was, you had to actually like nudge the table to get contact on the ball, um, from memory. So this is, or you had to flip it as soon as it dropped. You had to flip immediately. You had to do it on, on the, on the fly. You're right. so the way that they've done that is is better it's more accurate yeah yeah i don't know why i zoomed in but that's okay i think we're done looking at that for the most part i think so yeah so give me my control back uh so anyway yeah swords of fury it's definitely a different style of table um yeah it's actually hybrid alphanumeric too there's actually one alphanumeric display on the top and then just numerical on the bottom. So... Very similar to... Wait, no, that's not very similar to what Funhaus says. No, you're right. That was a different... Space Station is like that. So Space Station has a similar display and it's because I think Space Station is also an 11B as well. So this paves the way, basically, what we're seeing here, this paves the way for Space Station to come in soon because they've got the display tech worked out for it And it's really robust. The thing I really like is the display glasses. They look really nice. They don't look like they're being segment animated. They actually look really fluid. And they respond in the correct way, unlike Farsights, which they were janky as heck. Really bad. yeah like like it was like it was a simulation of what liquid crystal displays should look like as opposed to looking like it's an actual liquid crystal display with the fades with the glow with the segments that you can actually see lit up at the correct times like it's it really it's a really good um representation of what those displays look like in real life and i'd I'd just like to make note of that because that's, you know, in cabinet mode, which we might be talking about a little bit Well I was going to say I think we should dip into that right now before we talk about the other tables that are going to be available simply because there is something to note with tables like this. Yeah. That is, so basically I'm going to be speaking about the back glasses. and that is that although where the score is displayed is kind of where a uh a dmd would be yeah let me see if i can uh bring up an image here the way these games had their um score glasses like their actual um gas plasma displays laid out unfortunately it's really bad for cabinet designs because they're all over the place yeah it's very hard to actually marquee out a section okay there we go so it still is essentially four displays okay the way Zen has had to approach it is by putting it all into one DMD basically and what I don't care for about that is because once we get true back glass, animated back glasses put in and everything, I really hope Zen incorporates all this down here. Why am I not again seeing? Oh, because I'm then... There we go. There is my cursor. So, four displays. I want them to include the speakers. I'm sorry. I really do. I want that as an option. And I want four separate things, because the reason I say that is on a game like Space Station, it's for displays scattered about the back glass. And if we eventually get dynamic back glasses, I want that to be displayed appropriately. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. You'll notice that on this back glass, there is some information up and down here that lights accordingly.
    36:08
    That's the other reason why we need dynamic back glasses, because System 11 puts information on the back glass that is helpful to you, the player.
    36:19
    Yeah, it's quite important. Every single System 11 has some sort of jackpot bonus count on the back glass.
    36:29
    So, yeah. Cabinet mode. It has been released. Officially, too. It's not cabinet support, it's cabinet mode. Which Mel pointed out last when we spoke to him. In fact, that indicates it's now actually a supported thing. It's not an afterthought. Right. Which is good. But it's very much a placeholder, folks. This is basically to give cabinet folks a chance to play without having to go to weird methods of getting it in cabinet mode.
    37:05
    But it's bare bones. There is no UI for cabinet mode. You have to, as I discovered today as I was trying to get into it, you have to go into quite a few submenus, into Epic, into FX3, into systems folder to where there is a little tab that has some numbers on it and then you've got to enter in your numbers in order to place your second screen and in order to place your DMD. Right. So it's heavily config driven. So I literally had to look up my settings from FX3 and type those in. Whereas in FX3, it's all part of the UI. You can type them in, see immediately it taking place to help you know where to go, where you're navigating.
    38:00
    So yeah, bare bones in that approach. The other thing that's kind of disappointing, and again, I get it. They're just getting it out there. but for right now to rotate the screen yeah you gotta do that in windows it's not right rotate which is annoying and it was in fx3 wasn't fx3 yeah well basically i would think that anything you see in fx3 they're working up to that baseline yes exactly i i 100 agree so for right now again they're just going to they're trying to get something out there for the cab people who always are going to have their monitor rotated.
    38:41
    The reason why it bothers me is because I play cab mode on my desktop and my whole monitor can rotate.
    38:48
    So the fact that I have to take that extra step of going into Windows, rotating, and then being able to play,
    38:59
    yeah, I don't like that. I had to do that with TPA and didn't like that doing that there either. It just you know, it's a quality of your life thing.
    39:11
    Yeah, and they'll get there. Oh, they're absolutely going to get there. What I find interesting... Go ahead. Ah, Jinx.
    39:19
    As Mel was saying, though, this is all they're doing for cab mode right now. They're switching all their resources over to getting the consoles ready.
    39:31
    So we're not going to see any more development on cab mode until consoles are out. So basically, Start firing up your wish list now. Let Zen know all the things that you expect cab mode to do. But now is not the time to be like, you guys, you got this wrong, you got this wrong, you got... They literally are just getting it out there so that you have a functioning... Here's a bare minimum way, with some degree of difficulty, that you can actually get your cabinets functioning again with FX. to a level that allows you to play them.
    40:09
    The other thing that I'd like to point out here, which might have actually been overlooked by some people or perhaps perceived differently, is the way that they're doing the pricing of cabinet mode. So in the past it was, hey, send us pictures of your cabinet and we'll give you a license key and you're on your way. but now it's actually an in-app purchase essentially well not now it will be it will be but the thing that i found interesting is the invitation of a pay what you want scheme for this so a lot of people will probably think cool i'll pay one ticket thanks yeah you know for that because you can pay whatever you like but i might ask you if you're really passionate about cabinet mode to reconsider that as an idea because if i was a developer if everyone was paying 10 cents for cabinet mode then i would give it 10 cents of priority as far as a development priority in my list of my long list of things i need to fix or work on for pimple effects whereas if we're looking at you know maybe more than one ticket perhaps to a value up to $5, something like that, like the cost of a... Like a 50-ticket? Yeah, like a 50-ticket bundle. As a developer, that would make me go, right, people actually, A, want to use this feature, and B, value it enough to spend more than one ticket on it. So therefore, as a developer, or a software house, I'm going to invest more developer time into making the cabinet mode better. I wonder if Zen... Okay, here's my thought about that.
    42:01
    If I were just wanting to try out cabinet mode, then paying my one ticket to try it out to see if I even like it, if it's something that's useful,
    42:13
    would it at least give me access? With what you're saying, I get it, and I like the spirit behind it, but it would be interesting if zen allowed you to at a later date go you know what hey i'm gonna throw you more tickets because i liked what you did with cabinet mode yeah it's almost like they need to like when they roll this out i think a better approach would be try before you buy right here's a 30 day a 30 day trial on cabinet mode to see if it's right for you because if you're going to set up cabinet mode chances are you've actually got a cabinet downstairs or upstairs in your second room and you're going to be doing this anyhow. But it's always good to offer that, hey, or even a seven-day trial or something like that because get it in there, get it on your cabinet, like use the updated interface when that time comes to configure what's the experience like for you, how much do you think it's worth. And then at that point, say, right, your trial's up, how much do you think this is worth to you to pay? And then when you're doing that, list the reasons why, it's up to you what you pay but if you consider these reasons for giving a little bit more or a little bit less that might help you understand what your contribution will actually directly benefit for example I can already hear people going they're developers they should just do it I can already hear that what he was saying though specifically too was this was to satisfy the licensors.
    43:56
    Yeah. They need to pay something. Yeah, and I don't know exactly what that agreement... what that does for the licensors. Maybe it just makes it so that they feel that there's a legit paper trail to... That's what I think it is. I actually think it's an accountability thing. It's like, so how many cabinets are out there? And it's also, and as we know, Xen likes this, it's data. They know how many people are using cabinet mode, what are they using it on,
    44:30
    and all other telemetry that they'd be collecting as well as part of this sort of feature. So it's data and being able to track that.
    44:39
    Which is only good for the platform. It means that they can understand how people are using their products and where to focus their time on.
    44:47
    It's necessary. Alright. Right. Let's move on from cabinet mode. Let's move on to the other tables, other Williams tables that dropped with this release. Okay, let's see how it goes. I don't have the list in front of me, so I'm going to go off the top of my head. Okay. No good gophers. Yep. Which I will say, thankfully, is not like the mobile version in terms of, yes, you can actually shoot that middle ramp from the mid-flipper. Yeah. That annoyed the crap out of me with the mobile app that you couldn't make the shot. It was impossible.
    45:26
    Tales of the Arabian Nights, which I will say right now has an issue. I'm sure many of you... Hey, everybody, let's flood Zen with bug reports on this one.
    45:37
    The captured balls do not register. Makes it impossible for you to increase your multiplier and makes it impossible for you to complete the Tale of the Cyclops. Yay! Yeah, I've reported it. I've reported it twice already. Yeah, it's an easy fix, and I'm sure they'll patch it. That being said, Jared pointed this out to me. Holy crap, the fireballs in enhanced mode? Wow, they look incredible. Probably one of the best visual enhancements yet in the game. They're bright. If you thought the little arc on Monsters of Rock was bright... Monsters of Rock. Monster Bash. wow yeah the fireball this thing looks like a lava ball coming at you it's incredible yeah and the particle effects on this thing are just crazy they're awesome yeah it looks really good love it uh visual enhancements on always for this table okay so that's two uh whitewater uh what was an interesting one i'll let you go into this one i'm not Talk audio, Jared. So we got access to a press release version of the game. And in that version, the sound was really a lot better in whitewater. Would you say it was still needing improvement? I mean, it was better. It was. But it was still needing improvement. Still room to grow. There was, like, the main complaint of the tinny, ticky hi-hat was removed. Okay. And that actually pitched it down, and it was actually sounding like it should in the game. But there was another problem that was introduced in that the bass line became out of sync with the rest of the orchestration. So it was fixing one issue, but introducing another one. But for my money, it was less annoying. Okay. than the other one. But now when they released the tables officially to the public version, it reverted.
    47:44
    Either they decided not to take the changes over or there was a regression and the audio is back to actually worse than it was in FX3. So we've got the Tiki cymbal back and the bass orchestration out of alignment with the rest of the music. So it's worse. Which is patchable and fixable, but frustrating at the same time. Because people were really hanging out for this fix, for this table, and it kind of didn't quite get across the line, which is a little frustrating. Anyhow. The rest of the table is great. That's three. Circus Voltaire.
    48:25
    Circus. And, while we're in the circus theme, Hurricane. Oh, yes. Hurricane. Yeah. Forgettable, but it's there. Yeah. Just back to Circus Voltaire for a moment there.
    48:39
    It looks really great. It looks nice. The lighting effects, again, the darker lighting helps immensely. I didn't notice any issue with the, I can't remember if it's the acrobat or the juggler loop being the problem that I know existed in FX3. because I think on the third time around, I believe it was the Acrobats, the ball behaved kind of funky, almost went to a straight down the middle kind of thing.
    49:10
    No, it seems to be pretty good in this. But, of course, just like Attack from Mars where I was looking for multi-ball, here I was looking for a neon multi-ball, and as I keep on pointing out, the ball stays the same intensity of brightness no matter where it is on the table it's not affected by the gi lights you will see it glow a little bit brighter near certain lights like the color is being added to it but the intensity of the ball never darkens uh when it goes to a shadow or anything like that and on neon multiball that's again the whole point the ball should only being be lit by the neon on the right-hand side of the ramp or on the table yeah exactly right and it's it needs to happen eventually it will i'm sure yeah i mean if again if you want the mode to play the way the mode the designers intended it was a design yeah yeah yeah exactly right but otherwise it's looking great and i'm really enjoying playing circus voltaire actually it's Circus Voltaire is probably one of my more favorite tables in this collection of games. And Roadshow is the other one that I quite like as well. There's our last one. Roadshow. Yeah. Roadshow, upon release, everything feels a bit grainy still. Like all the animations and visual effects have this graininess to them.
    50:45
    They just feel almost I don know how to describe it Like they got motion blur for me okay like when you see like the the you know when the the air horns fire and they go me and they vibrate there's a for me there's a bit of a blurriness maybe it's my graphic settings i don't know well i was just gonna say have you tried turning off motion blur you know that's a sad motion blur in the game yeah no i haven't no Didn't even realize that was a setting. It's in the, I believe, advanced graphic setting. The advanced tab when you go to graphic or the video. Ah, I didn't see that at all. There is a motion blur tab that I didn't, I was thinking it was only applying to the ball, but maybe it applies to all the animation too, I don't know. Maybe. Well, if that's the case, I'll need to fiddle around with that, and I'll update it when I'm on the next show. The thing I noticed with Roadshow that I immediately wanted to test it about was the left upper ramp.
    51:49
    There was a big issue with that shot not being able to be made with the ball on the run. Yeah. And I was able to make it with the ball on the run. Yeah, it's way more consistent now. As it was intended to. Because in the past, it was almost like there was too much friction on the ramp up there, and the ball would go halfway up and then roll right back down. It would never make it. Yeah, it was really frustrating. Yeah, and the only way to do it seemed to be from a captured standpoint, which is like counterintuitive.
    52:19
    A rolling ball should be able to fire faster than a captured ball, but it seemed like the captured ball was the only way to, or a trapped ball on the flipper was the only way to get it up into there.
    52:28
    So that seemed like they had made the improvement. That was the only thing that I was really keeping an eye out for on that one. yeah it's it's uh that one is definitely improved i think just overall the the on because roadshow is a weird layout yes like it's got a lot of odd ball parts on it well i would say it's it's a lot of odd angles yeah there are a lot of odd angles like you have to be really late on the flipper and to get a lot of the shots it's a very it's it feels like the risk is higher on that table to actually do well um but the thing about it though is it's it's a very rewarding table once you get into it yeah um if i had to buy two tables out of this collection like if i had the money to buy these two tables it would be circus voltaire and roadshow they just really they got really long legs in them um i mean uh tales of the arabian nights is is nice but this doesn't have the depth. It doesn't have the modes. The thing I love about Stegos Voltaire is how you stack the multiballs. You can stack Juggler and Regmaster together if you time them right. It just feels so good when you just get all these multiballs going at the same time. The whole thing just goes nuts. It actually actively rewards you for doing it. It's amazing. There's really good code in that game. Yeah, Tails is one of those tables that I would consider a beginner's table. That's a really good one to cut your teeth on as a beginner.
    54:09
    It's challenging without being abusive. And it's fairly obvious. It does a really good job of telling you what to shoot at, where to shoot at. And it gets you, as a beginner player or a person new to a table, there are certain things that I always want to do immediately. I want to hit ramps, I want to get multi-ball going. And tails, hitting ramps is easy, getting multi-ball is easy. And the funny thing is, it feels like you're wizarding the table a lot quicker than you are on a lot of other tables. Oh, yeah, because you can collect gems. You collect the jewels from the Make-A-Wish, and you advance so much faster than a wizard mode. It's like a shortcut to wizard mode on it. So it makes feeling like you've got a win with Wizard Mode way, way more accessible for the newer player. Yeah. It's a really good one. It's a really good one to do that on. So with that in mind, the other thing that happened, Zen has almost implemented all of their updates to ticketing that they wanted to do.
    55:20
    This one, they added the ability to now bundle, make your own bundles with tables, with table packs. the thing they still have not implemented is uh what they were talking about with if you have spare tickets um them being able to offer you some kind of uh hey we'll take your remaining 10 tickets for this table you know kind of like a mop-up discount yeah yeah um but i think that's literally the last thing that they need to implement uh for a complete ticketing system beyond the absolute, absolute final step, which is allowing your purchases on one system to be accessed on any system. Yeah, cross-buy installments. Which I don't think, obviously there's no need to get that going until they get the consoles up and running. Consoles. Yeah. That's right.
    56:12
    So, for those playing in early access right now, and I saw this, and then I was like, yeah, you guys got a good point. If you've already bought all the tables and you're wanting to keep up with it and get the very next table that comes out, well, you're not going to get, you'll get the 33% discount that they offered for the first week, but that's not necessarily how you're going to get the absolute best discount on the table because if you do, according to this thing, if you do pack your bundles correctly, you can get up to 46% off. Yeah.
    56:52
    And here's what was really interesting that I thought. If they're running a sale, let's say, on Star Wars tables, and then you throw Star Wars tables in with a couple of other tables, and max, you can actually, just like multiball, stack your discounts.
    57:11
    So I'd be curious to see how much percentage off you could actually get with that proper stacking. I don't think we'll really see where that can go until you talk to somebody that hasn't bought in a single table and waits for one of these packs to go on sale and then tries doing that bundle and see really how much off you can get it. I think there's where Zen's starting to finally realize, or not them realizing, materializing what the potential of them handling the in-game purchasing is.
    57:52
    I agree. It's going to be really interesting and to an extent a little bit mathematical, probably. Or a little bit of trial and error to try and work out the best way to package your tables. Yeah. But it's going to kind of be, it's going to kind of get to where it was like when you were doing Steam sales, where it was like, well, do I wait for the autumn sale or do I just buy now when they're doing a table pack, you know, for sale? You know, kind of thing. It may actually work out to be about the same, which I think is the nice thing about it. Yeah. Like you don't necessarily have to just go, oh, I have to miss out on playing them. Yeah. I can actually just buy them now with a relatively safe understanding that I'm going to get around the same discount level. Yeah. As I would if I was waiting for a summer sale or a... So, I mean, I hate to say it, but the early access people are... Well, this happens to early adopters all the time, are kind of getting the shaft a little bit for being the first adopters. As opposed to those of you that are waiting for this to come onto Steam, waiting for this to come onto console. You guys are going to get the full benefit of all this. And I think... Yeah.
    59:00
    Again. I don't know. You're way up there. the cost versus enjoyment factor. You know, and there's plenty of ways of justifying it. Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately Zen's approach,
    59:14
    they have to go after the broad audience. And so they're going to get there. Us hardcore players, you know, you're going to wind up suffering a little bit in the process, taking one for the team, if you will. but I do think we're not talking about a gross shafting here just a minor shafting again for as much as I hated the tickets when they first got released each time they do one of these updates it's softening the blow and I'm getting the sense of why they're doing and how they're doing and what they're implementing and I'm like okay it's not that bad anymore I get it I kind of realized what they were doing from the start and think yeah I'm fine with this but Yeah. It's good to see it. All right. Last bit of business to talk about, because this was kind of like a, hey, wow, where'd that come from? Left field completely.
    60:12
    Zen, partnering up with Toho Studios and doing a MonsterVerse, some MonsterVerse tables. Godzilla, Kong, who knows what else. I think they said three tables that they're going to be working on.
    60:26
    They said releasing 2022, 2023. So that's kind of interesting because once again we're going to be able to do a direct comparison between a Stern table Godzilla and Zen Godzilla And this time they're not being developed in parallel No There's already, like Godzilla's out there at the moment So Zen, it's time to level up and deliver something that makes Stern blush with what you can do in a digital table I just hope in the era of, hey, you can only do this digitally, that Godzilla breathes some fire on a ball.
    61:13
    Yeah, or something. Something of that number. Or even better yet, oh, this would be amazing. What if Godzilla stomps around and actually destructs part of the play field? Oh, yeah. Like, as your story progresses, certain areas are stomped on that now reroutes the ball to other areas. Once you complete it, it all resets back to the beginning. So similar in terms of what Stern was doing with their bridge that breaks or whatever. But let's have some elements on the play field itself that just crumble and go, I don't know, just thrown down. Yeah, like a ramp that maybe goes this way, gets re-diverted that way, and throws the ball into another area of the playfield or something.
    61:58
    That would be really rad. There's some interesting potential here. Are we going to get Mothra flying around the table?
    62:05
    I think we're going to get a whole lot of Godzilla enemies appearing in these tables for sure. It's going to be a big plastic monster fest. That's what it's going to be. so that was a really nice surprise to just get that oh by the way so we'll have to keep our eyes open see where that develops and goes from there I'm trying to think is there anything else that we're missing here Jared I don't think so I think we covered all the main points in the latest pinball show it's going to be interesting to see what comes next certainly will they are releasing it's going to be more legacy Williams tables going out I'm just going to say the hint for the next Williams table Akos is the one that hinted there's a turn of phrase that he uses in it that makes the next one pretty obvious I'll let you guys figure it out What is the turn of... I haven't been keeping up with the news. Oh, yeah, you didn't watch it yet. I will have to watch it. I believe the turn of phrase was that... I want to say it's a table reborn.
    63:26
    Table reborn. I believe. It's something of that nature. I could be wrong, but anyway, if you can put two and two together, regardless of if I got that quote right or whatever, it's kind of obvious what's coming next. I'll have to watch I'll have to catch up yeah I'm sure I'll get it yeah you'll get it I think I don't think people really got the clues about Swords of Fury I'm sorry those clues were not about Swords of Fury those clues were about Congo they those clues match up with the first chapter of Congo like to a T yeah right they had nothing to do with Swords of Fury there is no there's no jungle in Swords of Fury there's no machete in swords of fury there's no low growling rumble from the brush in swords of fury it's congo yeah so i don't know what i don't know the that that whole where they were giving the hints was on facebook folks yeah um i don't know that that didn't line up with swords of fury in the least so no i think It started to at the end, but that was probably it.
    64:44
    Well, and I guess in Discord, Mel mentioned that the Congo license is very convoluted, surprisingly. Which tells me they're looking into it. Yes. They're trying. They're investigating. And it doesn't surprise me in the least because Congo. Is Congo paramount? Yeah, I was going to say, yeah. Yeah. so I think you know we can expect it in the future I would think but it's not going to be in a hurry I don't think I think there's a lot of things to work out with it but you know add it to your list I think it will be coming out at some point based on what we've seen publicly so far alright well that's about all we have then for today like I said next time I'm going to try and put together something about Gravatar or whatever the heck it is.
    65:39
    Yeah, we'll have a little break from pinball and go and fly around a maze in a gravity-driven spacecraft. Yeah, exactly. That'd be rad. Sounds rad. And we'll see if any other news pops up. I mean, like I said, we never set out to become just the Stern, or the Stern, the Zen Update channel, but pretty much the only game in town um it's kind of a bit difficult yeah i mean i think some people in the past have suggested that we go down the path of you know visual pinball and doing that but i don't know i like staying with within the license world um yeah uh the the vision i always refer to it as it's like saying hey i'm a fan of animation and then somebody going oh you should check out anime and then you see how many hundreds of thousands of videos there are and you go i don't even know where to begin yep um visual pinball 10 or x however you want to say it there is so much there and it's a whole world unto itself and if you really want to talk vp10 i suggest you start your own youtube channel yeah you'll have lots of content to talk about that's for sure i'll watch yeah yeah exactly i will add you and ring the bell as well um all right well until then i guess uh we're going to say adios and uh well we told you what we'll do next time but then jared always likes to say stuff and things because that's what we do that's what we love all right folks bye-bye see you later
    67:49
    you