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Arcooda Cabinet Hands-on

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 9m·analyzed·Jun 25, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Chris tests Arcooda Kinect cabinet at Farsight; head-tracking shines on layered/sunken tables but reveals lag and tuning issues.

Summary

Chris Freebus visited Farsight Studios in Big Bear to hands-on test the Arcooda cabinet with Kinect head-tracking technology. He found the Kinect feature compelling for games with layered playfields (Whirlwind, Black Hole, Haunted House) and sunken playfields, though experiencing minor input lag on older code. The prototype cabinet felt solidly built, but several features (partial nudge, shaker motors, coil feedback) were either disabled or absent during testing.

Key Claims

  • The Arcooda prototype cabinet at Farsight is an 'alpha-alpha version' that has been in development for two years

    high confidence · Chris states he learned the cabinet was a prototype of prototypes and they've had it for about two years, differing significantly from current production cabinet designs

  • The Kinect head-tracking is not true 3D but allows perspective shifts across multiple pre-defined camera views

    high confidence · Chris explains that closing one eye while playing real pinball is the best analogy—it's 2D with head-tracking enabling different viewing angles, not stereoscopic 3D

  • Input lag experienced on Addams Family was not present on Fireball, suggesting code optimization rather than hardware issues

    high confidence · Chris and Jared conclude lag varies by table; Addams Family is older code with more processing demands, while Fireball showed no lag

  • Production Arcooda cabinets will use the same parts as HomePin's Thunderbirds table

    high confidence · Chris explicitly states Farsight informed him production models will use identical parts to HomePin Thunderbirds

  • The Kinect feature works best on tables with multiple layered playfields (ramps, transparent elements) like Whirlwind, Black Hole, and Haunted House

    high confidence · Chris describes jaw-dropping results on Black Hole and Haunted House, contrasting with subtler improvements on Attack from Mars

  • The plunger on the prototype cabinet is overly sensitive and jumps from 0 to 50-100 without smooth progression

    high confidence · Chris describes discovering partial plunger pulls are being registered as full launches; suspects three-year-old hardware combined with software tuning issue

  • The prototype cabinet lacks shaker motors and coil feedback systems that production models may include

    high confidence · Chris notes the cabinet did not have boards for shaker motors or coils, only speaker-based feedback

  • Animations are being disabled in most Farsight backglasses to avoid performance hits on Arcooda cabinets

Notable Quotes

  • “It is still a 2D-looking display. However, since you can move your head, you can get different angles than you've ever seen before on the table.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~13:00 — Core explanation of the Kinect feature's actual capability vs. community expectations

  • “Close one eye and play a real Attack from Mars. It'd be like that.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~14:30 — Clearest analogy for understanding Kinect head-tracking as pseudo-3D perspective shift

  • “I load up Black Hole and my jaw dropped... it looks so convincing.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~35:00 — Strong endorsement of Kinect's effectiveness for sunken playfield games

  • “You guys need to do a video of that. Because that, to me, sold the Kinect. It is a deal breaker.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~38:00 — Critical feedback to Farsight/Arcooda on marketing the feature effectively

  • “The cabinet felt like an old Gottlieb cabinet and not a Data East cabinet. Heavy as hell and no creaking.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~41:00 — Positive assessment of build quality and durability despite being a prototype

  • “It's one thing saying it in text. It's another thing when I can go, look, right here, right there, that's what I'm talking about. Fix that.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~32:00 — Demonstrates in-person feedback advantage for tuning and refinement

  • “They need to get a GoPro, put it on their head... the player perspective... that's what they should do.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~37:00 — Practical suggestion for marketing Kinect feature via first-person video

  • “By the time I got onto my second or third table, I'd adapted to it.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~18:00 — Indicates lag issue is correctable and not a deal-breaker in practice

Entities

ArcoodacompanyFarsight StudioscompanyChris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonMike ReitenhauerpersonMike LindsaypersonRob (Flippy Floppy)personSteve (Arcadia)personThe Pinball ArcadeproductKinectproductArcooda Cabinetproduct

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Chris provides in-person feedback to Farsight team on lighting, plunger sensitivity, and feature priorities. Recommends first-person camera (GoPro) marketing video of Kinect in action

    high · Chris collaborates with Rob (lighting) and Mike R. during visit; states video with player perspective is essential for selling Kinect feature

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Farsight backglass display scaling issues on Arcooda 16x9 screen; square backglasses (Xenon) experience letterboxing and clipped elements; animations disabled to manage performance

    high · Chris observes Xenon backglass is cut off; lights missing; animations removed for performance. Recommends zooming in to preserve important visual elements

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Kinect head-tracking feature works exceptionally well on tables with layered playfields and transparent elements (Whirlwind, Black Hole) but subtle on flat playfields (Attack from Mars)

    high · Chris demonstrates dramatic difference in Kinect effectiveness: jaw-dropping on Black Hole vs. subtle on Attack from Mars due to playfield architecture

  • $

    market_signal: Current Arcooda/Farsight marketing videos shot from third-party camera perspective do not effectively convey Kinect head-tracking experience to consumers

    high · Chris criticizes existing videos; Jared agrees first-person perspective is necessary; Chris promises to recommend GoPro approach to Farsight

  • ?

    product_strategy: Arcooda Ultra model includes Kinect housing; Pro and Standard models require separate mounting on top of backbox

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.209

0:00
this is a blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jerry morgan hey chris how's it going Yeah, I know, huh?
0:29
Yeah. I had some occasion to have some private chats going on for various reasons. But not only that, I've already just released the podcast as of Friday. Managed to upload it late Friday night, my time. So it feels like, you know, it sort of feels like we've already just started finishing the other episode. Right, because you just were listening through it. Yeah, exactly. So it's very strange. Very strange indeed. Yes, it is. So this whole episode, we're just going to jump right in. This whole episode on just two days ago, I went and took the trip up the mountain, up to Big Bear to visit Farsight. and the specific reason that I was going there was I really wanted to get my hands on the Arcuda software and on the cabinet that Farsight has and really uber uber specifically I wanted to see the Kinect in action and experience experience that's the killer feature man like that's the thing and it sort of translates okay in videos but I bet you're going to tell us what It's like in real life. And that's just it. It was like there's only so much you can get from the video. And I think the video also kind of led me to believe I was going to experience certain things that maybe I don't. Okay. Well. Yeah, no.
1:56
Yeah, so up the hill I went. The last two times I've been up there, it was always winter. So it was nice to not have to worry about snow anywhere. Snow chains, yeah. Exactly.
2:09
Do they normally keep the road pretty clear going up there? Or was it really you got to put the chains on and deal with it?

high confidence · Chris was told animations like the Infinity loop in Xenon are currently turned off due to performance concerns

HomePin Thunderbirds
product
Addams Familygame
Whirlwindgame
Black Holegame
Haunted Housegame
Fireballgame
T2 (Terminator 2)game
Star Trek: The Next Generationgame
8-Ball Deluxegame
Attack from Marsgame
Xenongame
Flipping Out Pinball Podcastorganization

high · Chris confirms Ultra has built-in housing; Pro/Standard will have external top-mount setup

  • ?

    product_strategy: Production models may include shaker motors and coil feedback; prototype lacked these but demonstrates potential impact when paired with Kinect head-tracking

    medium · Chris notes prototype has no coil/shaker boards; mentions coil feedback would enhance immersion, especially with 3D perspective

  • ?

    product_strategy: Arcooda/Farsight working on Kinect single-player tracking to prevent camera jitter when bystanders walk behind player

    high · Chris describes camera dancing when others walk behind him; both hosts agree Farsight/Arcadia are aware and working on it

  • ?

    product_concern: Input lag detected on Arcooda prototype; absent on Fireball, present on Addams Family. Attributed to older code with heavier processing demands rather than hardware

    high · Chris experiences lag on Addams Family (older, more complex code) but not Fireball; both hosts agree code optimization is the issue

  • ?

    product_strategy: Production Arcooda cabinets will use HomePin Thunderbirds cabinet construction for durability and quality assurance

    high · Chris explicitly states Farsight informed him production models will replicate HomePin Thunderbirds parts and construction

  • ?

    product_concern: Prototype cabinet plunger overly sensitive; jumps from 0 to 50-100 without smooth progression. May be hardware age (3-year-old digital plunger) or software tuning issue

    high · Chris observes plunger behavior differs from real machines; suspects combination of hardware age and software calibration

  • ?

    technology_signal: Kinect head-tracking causes perspective distortion on vertical cabinet displays; ball appears egg-shaped near top of playfield, especially noticeable on Vertigo cabinets

    high · Chris points out egg-shaped ball issue; notes it's more severe on vertical cabinets due to perspective angle; similar behavior reported on Time Shock

  • ?

    technology_signal: Backglass animations disabled on Arcooda cabinet to manage performance; Xenon Infinity loop and similar animations missing

    high · Chris told animations are currently off due to performance hits; Farsight trying to optimize

    • 2:16
    No, when it's... The problem with Southern California, you got to realize, is that snow melts a lot during the day. And then the roads just become ice. So that's why it's constant chains when going up the mountain. Once you're actually on top of the hill, I think you could probably get away with not wearing chains as much. But even then, it's windy. everywhere oh yeah so um i mean yeah it's mountain driving yeah see mountain driving up here in queensland is nice you just get on it and you drive around you know it's the the thing the only thing you have to worry about i remember when i was on the bike was pretty much riding around on in the forest areas you have to watch for wet leaves on the ground because they basically turn like glass.
    3:10
    The best way to describe it, have you ever seen those car commercials where they do an aerial shot and it's just this snake of switchbacks?
    3:18
    Basically Big Bear Road. The main one is Big Bear Road, actually. There you go. Not hard to guess on that. Someone used that logic on that one for sure. Yeah.
    3:34
    Anyway, went in there and trackdown Mike and Rob. Rob, you all know on the forum, as Flippy Floppy. And Mike, it's Mike Lindsay, who, if you watch the Twitch broadcast, that's who always hosts the Twitch broadcast. And he's Gnar Mike on Twitter, I think, too. Correct. So, those guys, I found those guys real quickly, and then we went into Mike Reitenhauer's, I think it's Reitenhauer. Rottenmeier. Rottenmeier? I don't know. Anyway, Mike R. Mike R's office. Who's the lead programmer. We went to his office where they had the Arcuda cabinet set up. Mike's the one that's pretty much running the strobe on Steam, eh? Yes. Yeah. So, right away, things that I realized with the cabinet that they have, I knew that they'd had it for a while. I didn't realize that it's like the prototype of prototypes. Oh, like the alpha-alpha version of the cabinet. Yeah.
    4:40
    So they've had the machine for two years, I believe. Right. And so compared to the pictures that we've seen online of what the Arcuda cabinet looks like now, quite a bit different. Right, okay. Just in terms of the style of sticks that are on it. there's no graphics on it. The, uh, the head, the, the back box and everything is a little bit different looking, uh, all that. So it was like, okay, whatever. But so long as it works and functions, that's good enough for me. They add, uh, they have the connect, uh, sitting on top of the back box. Okay. And so I think in the production cabinets, they've actually got like a little housing for it. Well, it turns out that the Ultra model has the housing for it, but the Pro and Standard, no, it's just going to be, you're going to just have to set it on top. Okay.
    5:39
    And, yeah, so then it was just a matter of just jumping in. So, first thing that you'll notice is the touchscreen.
    5:49
    And it took me a little bit to wrap my head around it because I'm so used to using a controller. Yeah. And so I wanted to use, you know, there's a, on theirs, they had a dual joystick and a full button array on the apron. Oh, yes. And so I thought, oh, do I use the joystick to navigate? Do I use the, you know, the flipper buttons to navigate? And Mike just reached over and goes, tap. Tap.
    6:14
    Oh, yeah, that. Okay. If you're at all familiar with the mobile app, that's essentially what you're doing. That's how you navigate through this entire thing. Okay. it looks like the menu system is identical to Android like it really does yeah now what they did was they made sure that all the button pushes are on the lower half of the screen so where the apron is essentially the lockdown apron what I mean is of the vertical screen of the 43 inch screen you're only using the bottom half pretty much... You're not having to reach all the way up to the top of the screen. That would make sense because that would be pretty hard for some short people. Yeah. So that was one of the big things that Arcuda had Farsight do with the software right off the bat was to make it so that it's usable there.
    7:13
    So I selected Adam's Family first off just because I figured that's kind of the... The best show pony to use, yeah. It's kind of the premier table to use and whatever.
    7:23
    Boom, right off the bat, you move your head side to side and you can notice the electric chair. You're seeing it shift and everything. It leaned forward and everything rotated so you can get a little bit better view of things. I was like, okay, that's rather interesting.
    7:40
    Plunge, start flipping away. It played like Adam's Family and looked like Adam's Family and sounded like Adam's Family. So it wasn't the duck.
    7:54
    It wasn't the duck. Quite. No. But my first immediate reactions were, and I don't, I guess I kept on thinking with the Kinect that it was going to look 3D.
    8:09
    And I'm going to state now, you're not going to be fooled into thinking you're seeing a 3D service. Okay. It is still a 2D-looking display. However, since you can move your head, you can get different angles than you've ever seen before on the table.
    8:32
    And that is nice because it's those little subtle movements. You know, like when you get a – if you're playing, say, Medieval Madness or anything with inlanes at the top of the playfield that are slightly obscured by something, and you wanted to see the light or which light is lit, well, now if you lean, it's that natural tendency of you to want to lean and see, well, now you'll be able to see it. And so it does respond exactly how you would with actual three-dimensional features, but you're not going to be fooled into thinking that it's a legitimately 3D sunken table. That's just not going to happen. so is it more like when I've seen the videos it looks more like just layers so in the case of Attack from Mars when it was in the demo video that Arcuda released it looked like the habit rails were sort of floating above the street level playfield and sort of when they move around it looks like the perspective sort of moves up and down. I'm doing this with my hands, which won't translate into the podcast, which is why you should be joining us here. Yes. No, it's not because what you're describing is what I like to think of when you watch a documentary these days, right? And all they have is photos to deal with. A lot of times separate elements out of the photo. Oh, yeah. Or layer them. Layer them. It's not that. It's not flat layers. So legitimately, when you look at the habit trail, if you come down low on the table, you're going to get a lower perspective. So your head is reacting in 3D space. What I'm just saying is it would be... Okay, how about this? If you closed one eye and played a real attack from Mars, it'd be like that. oh okay right okay so it's a 2d with three dimensions though that you're able to see in yeah okay so yeah i guess that'd be the best example close one eye that makes sense yeah i get that with that that way uh really it's it's about the the the different it's essentially a head tracking camera is what it is so rather than a 3d mode it's a head tracking camera which allows you to have a more natural view experience when you're playing the table and for those that they're curious the three camera modes or excuse me there's four camera views in the software uh for those that aren't playing on an arcuda cabinet you have the completely top down view yeah you know called the ipad view and then you have the other three views well essentially that's what the connect is shifting views between it's oh okay it's kind of merging and and and extrapolating but that is how those three views were derived. Basically, Arcuda, they got their hands on being able to pick what the camera heights were and what you'd be able to see, fed that information to Farsight. Farsight then wrote it in, and this is what they've come up with. So I guess what it is, between those three views, there's like a ceiling and a floor between those three views. So if you are looking sort of getting down too low, it'll switch into the next view. But at the ceiling of view two, instead of the floor, it's completely seamless. But yes, I think you're absolutely correct. Ah, I see. Right. That's really interesting. Yeah. So that was the first thing I noticed. And the second thing I noticed was that I was experiencing a little bit of lag between me pushing the button for the flipper and the flipper actually flipping. Now, when I say that there was a little bit of lag, I equate it to when I was playing on my PS3 years ago and dealing with the lag on my TV. It was never so bad that it made the pinball unplayable. like say if I try and hook up if I try and play on my TV currently I don't have enough refresh I don't know what the millisecond refresh is but anyway I can't I can legitimately not play on my TV whereas on my old TV my brain quickly adapted to it and I was able to play with no problem Okay. So, and we had a discussion with Steve from Arcuda yesterday, and he told us that on their machines, which are the more modern update, you know, what's closer to what's going to be released. The ones that you're seeing on the videos that they're producing now, basically. Exactly. That they're not experiencing basically what I experienced. Yeah. So he says there's inherently going to be a little tiny bit of lag between, you know, from the components talking to each other. But so and I'll also state that by the time I got onto my playing my second or third table, I'd adapted to it. Right. OK. I'm just coming from playing on my PC at home where I have zero lag. Yeah, right. So you have to expect some lag because of the way that the interface boards are working. And it's probable as well because, I mean, if Steve was saying yesterday that they're not seeing any of that lag, it's most likely because they have very outdated IO boards on that cabinet. Right. And then also Farsight is still continuing to work on latency issues and tuning. Yeah. It sounds like a combination between old alpha equipment that they're running it on, plus old interface boards, plus also probably an older model computer in there as well. There's a lot of old going into the factory. Plus whatever code is currently running. That's right. It's one of those things that it wouldn't discourage me at this point that it's being – that I think it's correctable. Let's put it to you that way. Right. And as it is right now, it's not a deal breaker by any way, shape, or form. I mean, I played on the thing for over an hour. So you didn't basically walk away going, oh, this is crap because of the lag. Right. You went, this is great because I'm playing pinball in a big cabinet. So what was interesting was, but then I threw in, I opened up Fireball. Oh, yeah. And I didn't experience lag at all. Oh, okay. So, again, I think it's code more than anything. It could be on those, because Adam's Family is, in comparison to Fireball, a pretty old table in the Fastlight universe. Yes, but there's also a lot more going on that packs the processor in Adam's family as it can be compared to Fireball. So that's why I'm saying I think it's more code-based than anything. It sounds like it. So anything in code can be optimized. Right. Yeah. The other thing that I tested out immediately was I wanted to see Backglass and what was going on with that. and so I threw on Xenon and there was no Infinity going around and it was at that point that I was told that currently a lot of the unless the animation is essential to the backlash most of the animations have been turned off currently because they were getting a performance hit and Fartsight's trying to figure that out and optimize for it but also with the case of like Xenon, you're talking about back glasses that are more or less square, and they're going on to a 16x9 ratio TV. So, certain things are going to get cut off.
    17:06
    Right. And lights, unfortunately, are probably one of those things. Especially if it's giving you a performance hit, so might as well just zoom in and not worry about it. But as they point out, at least they've got the girl's butt in there.
    17:20
    Priorities Priorities so that was that So then I decided okay I kind of run through my checklist of things I wanted to kind of see. Now I need to run through the things that I wanted to see with the Arcuda or with the connect camera. So the first thing I did was I loaded up T2. Okay. Cause everybody's been asking, can you do the lean and get a better angle on the cannon? Yeah. And I can a hundred percent tell you, yes, you can. That is pretty cool.
    17:51
    Because I did exactly the kind of lean that you would normally do on a real machine, and it presented itself exactly how we expected.
    18:03
    Same thing with the Star Trek Next Generation and those cannons. Cannon leans, yeah. You can totally just lean in and see it. So that made me think, oh, well, let me check this out. So I loaded in 8-Ball Deluxe. so 8-Ball Deluxe has the vertical inline targets well not the inline targets, no just the regular drop targets that are on the right hand side of the table the horseshoes but you couldn't tell that they're horseshoes when playing the game because you never see that angle the only time you'll ever see that is when the camera's doing the flyby on regular if you're playing on Steam and you went as soon as you load up the table the camera does that little flyby thing That's the only time you're ever going to see, oh, hey, look, there's horseshoes on the drop targets. When you're in game, it's just a flat white, you're seeing the tops, basically, and that's it, right? Yeah, true. And because the horseshoes are actually stamped on the drop targets. It's stamped on, right. So it's not like a decal or a picture. It's actually just very fine lines. So it won't be lost on the angle. Exactly. So, again, shift your angle, and you can see them. There they are. There they are, clear as day. So it's really cool to be able to look at more of the detail that's on the table in ways that you've never been able to see it before, other than watching that camera fly by.
    19:23
    And it works. You leaning way far over the table, everything, the perspective shifts accordingly. Very cool. Now, you can lean too far. Oh, really? What happens then? Oh, the whole table goes, like, it's weird, it's stretched, it's bizarre.
    19:41
    And something that they're currently working on is if some, because this happened a few times, if somebody walks behind you, then the camera tries tracking them too. And also the camera angle starts dancing back and forth. Just imagine if that was in the arcade and that was happening when people watching you, the whole, it would just be jubbly around everywhere. Yeah. So that's something that, uh, Farsight and, uh, Akuta, they're aware of and they're going to be trying to make it so that it'll track one individual and not be distracted by other individuals. It's almost like they need to have a, I reckon if I was, if I would put my, how would I do this hat on? I would actually have like a sort of like a virtual sort of box or frame. Like when you, when you first start that it goes, are you the player? Yes. Push the button and then that's pretty much. Yeah. Correct. Yeah, and sort of like have it like an initial setup phase sort of thing where you go, hey, you're new to this. We don't recognize your face. I'd say that the Kinect can actually do face mapping as well. It absolutely can. So you could probably do really like rough, not that anyone, you know. I don't think I could is going to be collecting facial masks of people in there.
    21:04
    I don't think you need to identify it that way. I think it's simply, if you're standing there, right, and as soon as the game gets ready to start up, a little red box goes around anybody that it sees, if you will. Yeah. It can show silhouettes for all I care, you know, on the back. And just, who's playing? And you go, boom, that's me. And then that's who it locks onto, and it never veers off of you, so anybody else that's walking behind you, it would just ignore. But again, that's coding. That's totally true. I honestly think that that might fall into our Cuda's lap for, for doing connect coding, but I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent on that. Yeah. And I, the only reason why I say that is because it's not part of far sites, far sites game. Right. This is an add some add on. So, but well, yeah, it might be an IO board thing that I had to configure for connect. It could actually be proprietary. Yeah. It could be right. Regardless, so long as nobody's walking behind you, it works pretty well. but yeah you're right about the ceiling and everything because you can dip too low yeah it won't it won't track anymore either uh it'll look all really bizarre you know like you just dropped acid or something acid mode like the acid queen and pinball wizard yeah and tommy um so if you go really low and you screw up the view and then you stand up again does it all correct automatically correct to where should be yeah okay that's excellent yeah um so then i threw in whirlwind and that was my first kind of experience when i went oh i know i see the problem i see the potential i see the possibilities now because whirlwind had a really great backlash it had the six boxes that you can light for oh yes seller value is which is something that's i'm sorely missing the regular tpa version because it only shows one box at a time. Yeah, it does. And so the back lacks looked great. The alphanumeric, because I didn't have DMD, but the alphanumerics got placed into the DMD and it looked perfect, looked great. Cool. And then the table itself, and this is where the Kinect really shined, looked wonderful. And I realized why it looks wonderful is it has lots of ramps and clear objects to look through. Plenty of layers. And so there was plenty of things shifting ever so with your subtle shifting, something I didn't notice as much in Attack from Mars and Adam's family. No, because all the ramps and stuff, all the habit rails, they're aside in the playfield shields on Attack from Mars. So you don't really get, and they're all right at the back of the playfield, But that massive plastic ramp in Whirlwind is huge. And I remember when on mobile they were doing the conversion over from low level of detail to high level of detail. And we tried to test out the Whirlwind table. We found that that whole ramp is one huge alpha pane. So it is just a massive alpha pane with all the flasher tech built into it. So it's a huge overlay in that table. So it would have looked amazing, I would have imagined. Yeah, that one really captured, and I'm very familiar with Whirlwind because it's what I basically got addicted to pinball on.
    24:37
    Oh, I just had a thought. I just had a thought of something. Now, when your perspective shifts and you've got a light show going on, you know how the way they do the flash attack and people like Kate, they use alpha panes around all the flasher glows to sort of put that sort of flare in that, that flash of flare. If you're moving your head around, do those alpha panes actually shift or are they static to where the, the flasher is? Do you know what I mean? I know. No, it all looked corrected. I didn't see it all of a sudden being shifted, you know, like out of perspective. Like, I didn't know that. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. That would, that would break the illusion, right? That would completely break the illusion.
    25:21
    That's awesome that they managed to get that right. Now, at this point, also, I discovered that they hadn't adjusted any of the lighting or bulb brightness or room ambience. All right. You did that. I real quickly did that, knocked it down, and had a nice discussion about this is what I expect my tables to look like. So you basically – oh, is it Mike? Mike R. Mike. He does that. No, no, no. No, Flippy Floppy, Rob, is the one that deals with lighting currently. Oh, does he? Yes. So you said, Rob, let me give you a live demo of how I tune these tables. Pretty much.
    26:00
    Throughout the day, I kind of got in a lot of my comments to them and was able to show them actual examples.
    26:08
    It's one thing saying it in text. It's another thing when I can go, look, right here, right there, that's what I'm talking about. Fix that. This thing triggers me. This thing right here that I'm pointing at on the screen, fix that. Right.
    26:21
    But so anyway, after Whirlwind and playing with the lighting, I went, you know what I really need to see? I need to see Black Hole.
    26:29
    Because in 2D, I've always had a problem with the sunken playfield. It just doesn't, I don't know, my eye has a real hard time going to it and it just doesn't make much sense to me. I load up Black Hole and my jaw dropped. Oh, yeah? Because that sunken playfield looks amazing. you do the slightest of head shifts and you're seeing into that thing just like you would on the real table wow and suddenly there was no issue in my mind of knowing that's a window and there's a sunken play field quite a few inches below it you know i was no longer fooled by hey what are these weird flippers at the top that you know and the ball is just rolling right over the top of them i don't you know i don't get this it looks so convincing it looks so convincing and again talk about you know when you go to the side of the cabinet and look down in and yeah you're seeing you're seeing those angles and it looks really cool so then i was like well i hate haunted house i really love that table let's let's pop let's have a go i pop that in and again that window pane looked amazing, and the upper playfield looked really good too.
    27:45
    Suddenly it... Whereas before I was saying that things didn't quite look 3D, that's the most 3D I've seen Haunted House look. It just visually made sense.
    27:58
    I was actually, God forbid, having fun on it. Shut the door. That was... I immediately, once I was home and kind of giving my notes to Arcuda on what I had seen, I was like, you guys need to do a video of that. Because that to me sold the Kinect. It is a deal breaker. And I didn't try but a fraction of the tables. Because, I mean, you could spend all day just going through the tables. I had other things I wanted to see there. they should do they should get a gopro put it on their head and have that almost like the yeah that's what they should do it would be good i tell them that actually get them to get a gopro because really that's the problem right like all the videos i've seen uh of the player being to the like you know the camera being off to the left or off to the right yeah and like i that doesn't sell it, you need to have that player perspective, right? Yes.
    29:06
    Something else, people have been complaining about the egg-shaped ball. So because of what's happening with this whole 3D perspective thing of cabinet mode, things are kind of getting stretched near the top of the playfield.
    29:22
    Now, if you're playing on say, VDCabs as a Vertigo table, where it's a vertical playfield, it's probably going to be way more noticeable than if you're playing on a true pin cab. Right. And the reason for this is, is that perspective shift. If you think about when you're driving and you come up, you know, across the, the word stop written on the road, it looks prospectively. No, it doesn't look stretched until you go to the side or you go directly over the top of it. But in your car, it looks right. Looks proper. Yes, exactly. So. as I was playing, I wasn't noticing the egg shape so much. When I was observing, I noticed it a lot more. So again, it has to do with how you're standing, how you're lined up with the table, and whether that's going to be more severe to you or not. So I imagine all those with the Vertigo cabinet that have been playing this, they're the ones that are noticing this the most because it's right there at eye level. Yeah, that's true. So, but I made sure that I pointed it out at least to Farsight.
    30:39
    Again, they've read the reports on the forum. I just wanted to make sure that they actually were able to see it.
    30:46
    As somebody pointed out also in the forum, that the exact same thing happens to Time Shock. Oh, really? Okay. So it's – I'm not sure if there's necessarily a fix for that or not. It could actually be an inherent problem with running virtual pinball on a vertical cabinet. It could just be that perspective is just too long at the back. Yeah, I don't know.
    31:12
    Hard to say. I'm no expert. It is hard to say. the nudge wasn't set up other than it being side to side nudge and it was full nudge there was no they told me they were working on partial nudge they also didn't have the bumping the table straight up nudge activated which is the one I use most of the time oh that's the one totally you'd use most of the time so I wasn't able to really mess with that and their plunger strength as it was set up currently was way too sensitive. It was like a launch button. Exactly. At first I thought that's exactly what it was, and it wasn't until I was playing Fireball that suddenly I made a skill shot, and I went, well, that's impossible if I'm doing full plunge all the time. But what I realized I was doing was I was barely pulling back on the plunger.
    32:08
    And so then I made sure I looked to see as I pulled back on the plunger, and I was doing a jump. It was going from zero to like 50 to 100. So it wasn't a true natural. So that was something else that I pointed out to the guys there. And we're like, that's, you know.
    32:26
    I wonder if that's actually hardware or software, because that would be a three-year-old plunger, digital plunger on that machine. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure. I think it's both.
    32:37
    And we've seen this before on Farsight Tables, where they had the plungers way, way too sensitive on certain tables that were finessing to get the skill shots, and there was absolutely no way. I mean, we're talking about it would be a single pixel difference between being able to make a skill shot and not. Yeah, I remember Taxi was terrible for that. Exactly. And I think Bridal Pinbot's also another one. There's just a sweet spot that you've got to get every time. And then when you think about it, every single Twilight Zone I've ever played, there's barely any spring on the plunger. And you can pull back quite a ways and let go, and it's not knocking the ball very hard. So it's a table-by-table basis, and that's a tuning issue right there. but beyond that I gotta say that the cabinet felt as I described it felt like an old Gottlieb cabinet and not a Data East cabinet heavy as hell and no creaking no flimsy plastic feel, it felt like a tank, but again this is just the prototype, not a production model, however we were informed that the production models are going to be using the same parts that are being used in HomePin's Thunderbirds table. Ah, interesting. Yeah. Ah. They seem like pretty good cabinets, so. Right. You know, this isn't going to be some shoddy. Sort of backyard CNC job. Right. You know. Right. Held together with, you know, yeah, this glue. so yeah eventually I had my fill of you know I'd seen enough of the connect camera and oh I should also note this cabinet didn't have it didn't have the boards that could do any of the shaker motors any of the coils the sound was kind of it was kind of cool because you could feel the sound in your hands so even so the flipper sounds were making you actually somewhat feel like that sensation of the flipper So I can only imagine what, you know, how many coils in would do, especially when you pop bumpers and stuff. That'd be amazing. Um, it would actually, with that, with that in the 3d, you would lull yourself into thinking it was real. Yeah. It would settle you in and stuff. Um, so, I mean, my takeaway is my takeaway from this was, yeah, I want a pinball cab and I definitely want that connect camera hooked up to it.
    35:22
    Yeah, for sure. You know? So, um, so after that kind of tour route and toured around the offices, looked and see what, uh, what was, what, what was set up, uh, and basically it's caught up with all the dudes and doodits. Well, I did. I mean, I kind of, it's, it's the weirdest place because it's so silent.
    35:47
    You don't hear. I know. They all have headphones on and nobody's talking. And so here I am, you know, just listen to this podcast and you know, I'm probably echoing throughout the entire place.
    36:01
    Yeah. And nobody really wants to be bothered. Everyone's just meerkatting over their cubicles going, who is this noisy person entering our studio? Right?
    36:12
    so I then went and talked to Ben and Ben is the one responsible for the pinball tournaments app. Oh, okay. And I was like, Ben, I got some things to talk to you about. Got so many questions. And we got some things clarified, which was good. And I got thrown a couple of suggestions, which was good too. So first things first, what Farsight does with that app, They're responsible for the table itself and making sure the table runs. Skills is the one that sets up the tournaments themselves. They're the ones that set up the matchmaking. They're the ones that determine what the prices are.
    36:57
    Basically, because Farsight had never done this kind of game before, Skills was like, why don't you let us handle this?
    37:05
    So I imagine if Farsight really wanted to, they could start sticking their nose in and setting up things, but right now they're not interested in doing that. So it's kind of on skill's plate. So that right there answers 75% of my questions because I was having game crash issues, which Ben is aware of, and he's going to be getting to that as his next task after. And I'll say this, most of the studio that works on the pinball side of things, they are all getting everything ready for this license loss and how the game looks afterwards and how it functions with some people not being able to see at all any of the Williams tables. And then there's those of us that own them being able to see them and how that all works. And it's a monumental task they're having to cram and get in. So really it's just the Pimble Tournament's app and probably Arcuda and just the license work that they're doing at the moment, right? Yeah. That's literally it. Literally. Which would explain the reason why they're being so quiet. Yeah.
    38:23
    And so like matchmaking questions, it was like, oh, I'm going to have to talk to Arcuda about that. The crashing, that's fine, but I said, oh, I've crashed while playing a cash game.
    38:35
    And I then discovered that when I got home that you can contact skills through the app and say, hey, I had a game crash. And then I said, can I please have my entry fee refunded? And I had seven instances of that. They refunded every single one of them. Oh, nice. Okay. So is it hard to find it? Is it hard to find the menu in the app? No, it's in the upper right corner where you do menu, and down at the bottom it just says support, I believe. You click on that, and then you'll be able to go from there. Oh, nice. Okay.
    39:11
    Ben was then asking what percentage of the time I hit score goals, what did I think of the time limit that was there. So I gave him feedback on that stuff. but then I hit him with we need another table and I think centaur should be the next one you guys do now could maybe work we'll see yeah sensible would be a pretty good one to use but then I also hit him with and this was kind of because I jokingly said you know because your head to head is so wonderful and everybody just kind of rolls their eyes but look at least they're not trying to have any aspersions about how terrible it is Right. So what I said was what they need to put into TPA is exactly what they're doing with the skills app. Pick a table, one table, run a two day tournament on it.
    40:05
    And it's you log in. Plays basically, and then people can challenge those plays. So you're not you're not having to be connected with anybody. You're not relying on anybody else being online. It's play at your own leisure. and if there's a score that's already posted then that's the score you're going to challenge against. If there isn't any scores posted, then you're the one posting the score and waiting for somebody to challenge it.
    40:33
    And that would be an excellent way of making, not making people, but getting people to want to load up the app daily and kind of work up a leaderboard that's just going to be cleared real quickly afterwards. and it's a timed game so you're not having to work you know the skills app is three minutes so it's not like you're going to be grinding or or doing anything of that nature and then i also said and i'll get into this just a little bit but the stern pinball app they're going to start going into this token based gold you know collect collecting things mobile offerings yeah it might also be on the steam offering i'm not sure i think it will be on the steam offering um but you and i inherently have this as you call them smurf berries smurf berries man they taste like shit right we just have this revulsion of oh god the energy bar or anything like that and they were like no no but we're actually really generous with it's really easy to have these tokens and it's not an issue to to be playing and so i said well there's where you implement it. Put it in now, get people warmed up to the idea, so that then when the Stern app relaunches itself into this new version,
    41:50
    people will know what to expect. Yeah, good point. And they were kind of intrigued by that idea. We'll see if it, you know, obviously all this would have to be kicked up to management, and we'll see if management actually goes, yeah, let's do that, or if they go with so many other ideas that I kind of bounced and got replies to.
    42:10
    No. That's a no. Yes, we would love that. Yes, that'd be wonderful. But there are certain time factors, money factors, development factors, and they're just not going to happen. Yeah.
    42:28
    But after doing that discussion with Ben, I got let into Rob's office. And Rob is actually working on the Eastern Pinball app, but not in the way that you think.
    42:40
    He's working on the VR Oh right because I had the Gear VR implementation right This was with Oculus Rift oh right And He's like have you seen this yet No I didn't even know you were working on it And he goes oh okay and so up on his monitor He's got the you know the screen Of what you'd be seeing And so they've got a whole new Basically this Think of it as some overly wealthy dude's living room that could afford to have a giant neon sign that says Star Trek.
    43:21
    And a stern neon sign. And off in one corner is a video game cabinet. And you look over to the side and there's these nice bookshelves and this lovely couch behind you. And I'm looking around in the headset and full 360 really looked look nice.
    43:41
    You select the table, and this kind of robotic thing comes down and kind of assembles the table in front of you. I guess that was an Oculus call.
    43:52
    It assembles the table. It actually builds it. Yeah. That's pretty cool. The body comes down, the legs get snapped on, the head gets attached, and boom. Then all the little things retract up into the ceiling. Like I said, it's kind of futuristic and everything. It's pretty interesting looking um but as i'm looking at the monitor once the you know the game starts playing i'm like oh well that just you know looks like star trek you know just like i've seen in in stern pimple lap yeah i put the headset on oh wow really oh my god i was floored um it takes a little bit of finagling to basically you, you can constantly either you push one of the buttons on the controller and it's, uh, the camera that's looking at you then tries to figure out what height you are, but it also determined it's dependent on where you're looking, uh, with the headset on. And so it takes a little tiny, you know, a couple of button pushes of you, you know, either crouching or standing on your tippy toes or looking up with the headset a little bit higher or whatever because I was able to make it look like I was seven feet tall playing the table. I was able to make it look like my chin was resting on the apron.
    45:11
    Yeah, there was very... And then it also determined, was dependent upon how close to the camera you were standing determined how far over the table you could lean. So I took a couple steps back to give me more of a chance to be able to lean. But I'm telling you, looking at this thing, it felt every bit like I was standing in front of the real table. Really?
    45:34
    Wow. I mean, it looked phenomenal. Like texturally, it looked the same. It's just all the details and how everything's sitting in the cabinet. It just, the best example I can tell you of this was I was playing a little bit and I went to put the controller down and I tried putting it down on top of the cabinet machine that didn't exist. All right.
    46:01
    That's how immersive it is. My only complaint, there was a bit of the screen door effect because what we're talking about here is it's a 1080 image basically being split into two. Yeah. It's basically 720 each side. Yeah. So there's a bit of a screen door and so it made like the inserts at the bottom uh i couldn't quite read them okay now that also might be that i had to take off my glasses in order to fit into the thing okay and there is a slider that uh you can move the the lens forward and back yeah and i couldn't i mean i think i found my sweet spot but i still wasn't able to see it crystal clear i then finagled the the headset over my glasses, but my glasses aren't set up for close viewing anyway. My glasses are set up for distance. So then we'd switch it over to like ACDC, and I was looking, and I was looking at the back where the jukebox is, and it lists the song titles. Yep. And I'm looking, and I'm like, yeah, see, I can't even read any of those. And Rob goes, well, yeah, neither can we, because the game doesn't have that high resolution to begin with. So you're dealing with what is available with the build itself. And that's something that they're going to work on. But the game runs at 90 frames instead of 60. And it's required a whole new set of tuning. But I'm telling you, man, it was crazy responsive. And I just told him, I said, all you really need is to have an actual physical box there. lean on and it would be fantastic. It'd be fantastic. So that's something to look forward to. I don't know when that's even going to be dropping, but you'll know at first because it's going to be first coming to Oculus before it comes to anything else. It'll be Oculus only because they're really the only ones that... I mean, the other one is Vive, but you know, I think Oculus will have this for a long time. No, I mean before it hits.
    48:22
    Not the VR aspect, but this new revamped version of the Stern app. I think it's going to hit Oculus first and then eventually we'll filter it to the other mobile and to Steam.
    48:34
    But yeah, for you VR people, you're in for a treat. It was really pretty cool. We've got two VR's, Oculus Rifts, at where I work, because they're a bunch of geeks. And I should perhaps duck and Flippy Floppy's daughter said, mate, do you need an extra set of eyes on this? Yeah. Because it sounds like it's bloody amazing. Yeah, and I'll say this too. I'm a stickler for resolution.
    49:05
    I mean, that's part of my job. And so if I see even the slightest of something blurry or fuzzy when I know it should be crystal clear, that throws me off. And I'm kind of a nuisance at this one movie theater because of issues that I've had there with double projection not lining up correctly and therefore causing color separation. It just, you know, nobody else is going to notice it. But to me, it's a red flag. You're like the comic book guy from Simpsons going out and going, I'd like to make a complaint. Worst projection ever.
    49:44
    Yeah. So, yeah, so he showed me that. But then I got to see a behind-the-scenes thing, because this is also what Rob does, how they tune the machines. Oh, okay. So I was just kind of talking to him, and I said, I go, you know the one table that you guys have that I've never had it play this way out in the wild, and it's Creature from the Black Lagoon. and I said, when you do a full plunge and that ball comes all the way around from the top all the way down to the flipper and you hold the flipper up in the left flipper in pinball arcade, it hits the left flipper and bounces pretty much straight up and then lands right back down on the left flipper. In that way, that happens in real life. It does not happen in real life. Every single time it bounces over to the right, sometimes doing a center drain, sometimes doing an outlaying drain, sometimes going right into a slingshot, which sends it to the left outlaying drain. but typically it's not a good idea to do. No. Really risky. Right, and so I told him, I go, now I don't know if this is, if the way that you guys have it set up is the way it was designed and that it's simply a matter of playing on all these machines that are 30 plus years old and causing the ball to do different behavior than what was designed or if you guys just plain have it wrong. I don't know, but I do know what I've played out in the wild and not a single one of them has ever done that. So I don't know what they're the creature that they have at Farsight, what that does.
    51:22
    But so he kind of went, well, let me see. So he started playing with the with the flipper angle and how the ball comes off of it. And he was actually able to make it start bouncing to the left. All right. And it was like pretty quickly that he was able to do that. So that was where I got the, where I was able to see him, how he does tuning and stuff. He was currently working on Monster Bash and taking out the railroads that are when you hit the ramps. Oh, good. So he was working on those. Those railroads. Railroads anywhere. Spoiler. Yeah. I know they're necessary, but. He was also working on, he showed me how lighting, how the lighting works. Oh. And that was kind of different. A good example of that was on No Good Gophers You know on the back where where you have the clear plexi for the golf cart You can just have a light shining down the bottom and making it through all those layers of plexi, because as far as the computer's concerned, that's a solid thing. And the light's going to stop at that. So you have to add the effect for each layer.
    52:37
    There's like a virtual light between each sandwich layer of that. Right. He was also able to, because he can look at the table from any direction and basically get down to ball level with the camera.
    52:56
    He was able to kind of go through that and it's one of those things where it's folks you don't want to see what we were seeing. so what did you see what did you see things that are misaligned and uh as as he termed it it was shortcuts that people took back in those first two seasons that they don't take anymore but drive him absolutely bonkers yeah it would be way too expensive to take out now well because you'd have to have all the art assets redone redone yeah and they're not going to do that so you have to make do with what you have. Just get triggered every single time you see it. Right. But as I pointed out, I go, it's funny because you're the only one that's going to get triggered because you're the only one that's ever going to be able to view these from these angles. You know, the angles that we're allowed to view it from. It looks great.
    53:50
    But it was interesting seeing how you could see how there's placeholders, basically, and then there's things that are stacked on top that make it look active. in terms of lighting and everything. So it was kind of cool to see how the sausage is made, if you will. Yes.
    54:12
    And then after that, I joined Mike for the Twitch broadcast, which you can view even now if you go to Twitch and go to Farsight's channel. It's their most recent Twitch broadcast. I'll have to link it. Yes, you will have to link it. Except for, unfortunately, I didn't do too well. Oh, whoops. Well, I blame multiple things. I blame, first off, playing with a 360 controller. I'm not used to that. I blame that his computer had a little bit of lag, and I had to get used to that. So that was the weird thing of the day. It was like, why is everything lagging today?
    54:52
    And then it was a factor of playing tables I just haven't played in a while. But it was still fun. It was fun. We only played three different tables, I think, total. Okay. A lot of time. The hour with that went very quick.
    55:11
    So did anyone ask you any questions? Oh, yeah. There was lots of questions. Well, the first question was, who's that guy with the glasses?
    55:20
    So and then I started kind of dropping a lot of Arcuda information into it also. Oh, yeah. It's really kind of talking up what my experience was with that and what the timeframe is of people being able to get on board on all that. But yeah, it was pretty cool just seeing some things. And then in terms of news that I can share, they are almost done completely with Woe Nelly. they're still working on big buck hunter but those indeed are the next tables that will be coming out um but like i said because of the license loss thing it's kind of pushed all the other projects timelines back yeah yeah basically do everything to get the license stuff sorted exactly and then I did see what one of the new IPs is that they're working on but I can't talk about it. And I heard what the second IP was but I can't talk about it.
    56:35
    And those are in the early stages also so it's not like they're... The good news is there are other IPs being developed which is one of the questions we had. And one of them of the two, one of them has nothing to do with a ball of any sort. So... There you go. How interesting. Yes. But it was a good visit. It was a really good visit and good to see the guys and they're... I don't know if it's just, you know, they're hurting for visitors or whatever but they seem to enjoy my presence there too.
    57:11
    So, you know, I don't know if I was just a distraction for the day or whatever. Well, that's good. It sounds like you had a really good time. Yeah.
    57:24
    Which kind of leads me into what we're going to talk about next week, though. Oh, okay. We can go ahead and preview next week.
    57:31
    Preview next week. We are going to be talking to Greg, who has a YouTube channel called Spacey's Arcade. And he just did an hour-long video about his experience with the software for cabinet mode. on his cabinet. I don't know what brand or if it's a homebrew or whatever. We can find that out.
    57:53
    But as I was watching it, there was plenty of things that I realized. These are common questions or misunderstandings that people have, and we would kind of like to clarify a lot of that, get off the proper information rather than misinformation.
    58:11
    So, yeah, we're going to get into that. But obviously that podcast, by the time that hits, it's going to be past the 30th.
    58:21
    So let's just kind of push right now the whole software package if you're interested in getting it. What we do know about, though, with the Aracuda cabinet is that it's being designed as total plug-and-play.
    58:39
    So it should be simple of simple in terms of its functions. So anyone that knows how to plug in a VCR should be able to make this work. Precisely.
    58:54
    That's just how the boards are that they're designing are going to work. It's going to be a case where you have a console, boom, you plug it in, it works on the screen. If you want to play Candy Crush Giant, you plug your phone into the cabinet, and all of a sudden that touchscreen becomes a giant mobile device and you can play any of your mobile games on there just as you would on your phone because it's all touchscreen. Yeah, right. So think about when you go to, like, if you've gone to a Dave & Buster's or one of these arcades with giant machines and you've played Giant Fruit Ninja, there you go. You'll be able to do the same thing. That's pretty cool. So that's it's they're kind of pushing this idea that the target audience for this is it's open for any style of play you can think of. You know, there's going to be light gun attachments eventually. There's going to be fully licensed arcade games playable on this. Not main emulation.
    60:04
    So that's kind of the positive spin on getting this big $7,000 or $8,000 US bit of furniture for your lounge. Right. It's not just for pinball. Exactly. Yeah. Think bigger. It may look like a pinball machine, but it's going to be for something a little bit more. It has a pinball form factor, but it's a multi-use entertainment platform. Exactly. that being said the cabinets themselves aren't going to be ready for a little while so don't think that if you order it today that you're going to get it two weeks from now that ain't going to happen I think Cuda is the type of company that we've been speaking with them that doesn't rush things out so you know good enough is not good enough they want it to be spectacular yeah like basically arcade quality. Exactly. So with that, you have to do a lot of ruggedization on design and also componentry. So this is a reason why the cabinets are taking longer because quality is really the first priority for these guys. Yeah.
    61:25
    So with that, I know there was a few people that wanted to listen to this podcast specifically because they were on the fence about whether they were going to be buying your Cuda cabinet or not. And my takeaway from everything I've talked to them about, from me just playing the prototype machine, was that if you're going to be spending the money for a pinball cabinet anyway,
    61:45
    why not spend it on one that could handle the rigors of being out en route? Yeah. It's funny, you know, because I had someone contact me last week as well to ask. They had a customer that was interested in a digital pinball cabinet, and what would they recommend they do. And in Australia, there are a couple of other people who will make shells for you, and you're dropping your own gear. And I said, look, you could do that, but seriously, just wait for this thing. It's a beast, and you won't be disappointed, I don't think.
    62:25
    We never wanted to actually give a recommendation for the cabinet until we'd actually touched it. that was why I wanted to make sure I rushed up and put my hands on this thing even if it was only an alpha version of the cabinet right, I didn't want to feel like some pinball machine you would have gotten at Toys R Us and I wanted to make sure that it was at a certain level of play now if your gripes or anything have to do with the software aspect of Farsight, look, it's not going to suddenly become photorealistic. It's going to always look like Farsight's design. So for those of you that are thinking, oh, but I'm getting it sight unseen, the only thing you're really getting sight unseen is, yes, what it truly looks like in cabinet, but you can kind of gather that from the videos that have been posted by people.
    63:22
    It's late in the game, but that's our push. If you had that money and you were getting ready to spend it on something and you could buy one of these other cabinets that are going to be of about the equal price,
    63:34
    I think the thing that, again, pushes it all over the edge is all the other things it's going to be able to be capable of. Yeah. And most of those things they haven't even really been able to announce yet. So... Yeah. There's plenty of stuff you could do with this thing.
    63:50
    It's not just a pinball cabinet. It's much bigger than that. Okay. I've talked way too much. I found out something this week as well. I had a whole lot of stuff wish list on Steam and I got a hold of emails the other day from Steam saying, hey, things are on sale because it's summer sales time. It is summer sales time. Oh, perfect opportunity for me to get some of all the Zen table packs that I've been missing.
    64:20
    The way they've got the, if you're purchasing for the first time on Steam, all the Zen table packs, the older ones, they've got them really nicely bundled now so you can get like the Marvel Cinematic Pack and all these different sort of versions of the packs and I just went in there and just spent about 60 or 70 bucks but that wasn't all on Zen I actually bought Black Flaggers as well because it was it has dropped from $19.99 when I first looked at it to $9.99 and then they took an extra 20% off that so I said oh shut up it's out of money oh that's like yeah i was like just just give it to me and um i i loved it like it's such a good table they've done a wonderful job on that thing and even you know my the surface book uh two is pretty capable of running it and i think i can get some things up to wicked mode um but a few other things i've had to scale back but i still don't care because it looks great yeah i've got Full ultra mode. Yeah. Which makes your eyes bleed. Yeah.
    65:26
    Because it looks pretty good with the levels I've got. I'm pretty impressed with it. Yeah. And I also got, what else did I buy?
    65:36
    There was a whole lot of the Zen tables, which were fine. But I got some other non-pinball titles. And one of those was like a board held shooter up that I had my eyes on for a very long time. Ikaruga.
    65:51
    And that thing was incredible. This thing, this shoot-em-up game looks amazing as a shoot-em-up. Very different to what you would see on mobile.
    66:04
    And yeah, I'm hooked as. I love it. I'm terrible at it, but I love it. The only highlight with the Steam Sale for Zen, there is a large collection of tables that are 60% off. virtually everything else is 50% off the only thing that aren't 50% off is their last two table packs which is Last Jedi and Jurassic Park those are 30% off so you can still get everything on sale it's huge like mega so just get in there I mean most people probably have all those in tables but if you're new like me to Steam geez now is the time to fork over the cache and just get on it because the in-game Steam experience for Xen is really good. Now you'll be able to join in all of my tournaments. Most of them. I've still got some packs that are outstanding, and I'll need to get my hands on those, but I might just go ahead and buy them. I was trying to get unlock codes for them, but with those prices, I probably should just go and get them because they're pretty good, and I don't really mind so much. so yeah very good so yes get on it alright folks well with that I think we're going to wrap things up make sure you go visit our website it is blockadepinball.com slash episodes I was just alerted today that I had the wrong address in Twitter this entire time I had the old address so that's been fixed thanks I thought I'd gotten all those but now and then things slip through the cracks why don't you go ahead and follow us on Twitter it is at blockade or you can follow myself I am at shut your traps and he is at Jared Morgs I think I'm just singular at you shut your trap now that I think about it I always want to correct that too yeah go shut your trap on Twitter that's it yeah and then you can also drop us an email at blahblahblockade at gmail.com if you have any comments, questions things you don't feel like being in a public forum although you can always send us a private message via Twitter also that does work so yeah we have a plan for next week which is unusual and well it should be equally interesting like I said it'll be coming from the perspective of somebody that has the general questions and not all the answers that we've gathered and collected for ourselves.
    68:46
    It should be good. Alrighty. Well, until next time, if you got seven grand, have fun spending it. Do it. Alright, until next time. Bye-bye. See you later. wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter routes easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 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 we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some pinball you