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Forum Questions Part 2

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 8m·analyzed·Sep 1, 2015
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

BlahCade tournament results and Bobby (Farsight) on TPA physics fixes and art improvements.

Summary

BlahCade Pinball Podcast Part 2 covers the inaugural season results of their pinball tournament, with Janos Kiss winning overall (222 points) and July finals. The episode features an extended interview with Bobby from Farsight Pinball on TPA physics improvements, flipper tuning fixes across multiple classic tables, art/texture upgrades, and community modding considerations. Notable topics include flipper physics 3.0 rollout, fixes to impossible shots on Theater of Magic, Attack from Mars, and other tables, and discussion of prototype element restoration.

Key Claims

  • Janos Kiss won the inaugural 6-month TPA tournament season with 222 total points

    high confidence · Chris Friebus (ShutYourTrap) announced final standings at start of episode

  • Flipper 3.0 physics are now deployed across every table on Steam

    high confidence · Chris Friebus cited TPA newsletter confirmation

  • Multiple previously impossible shots have been fixed in TPA (Theater of Magic right orbit, Attack from Mars right ramp, etc.)

    high confidence · Bobby from Farsight detailed specific fixes for 10+ tables in interview

  • Farsight is short-staffed on art department and looking to hire another artist

    high confidence · Bobby's direct statement in interview about resource constraints

  • Farsight is exploring prototype add-on DLC packs to restore cut features (Cactus Canyon stickers, Firepower drop targets, etc.)

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus cited anonymous conversation with Farsight staffer; not confirmed by Bobby in interview excerpt

  • TPA ball physics can have issues at high speeds where ball passes through collision objects

    high confidence · Bobby acknowledged engine limitation: 'ball can still go through collisions at high speeds'

  • The early season (1-2) TPA tables feel noticeably different and inferior compared to seasons 3-4 in physics and graphics

    high confidence · Bobby confirmed retuning of Black Hole and acknowledged texture/lighting inferiority of early seasons

  • Farsight received prize codes from Farsight including The The Addams Family, Party Zone, and Star Trek TNG for tournament giveaways

    high confidence · Chris Friebus mentioned Mike Lindsay from Farsight providing codes

Notable Quotes

  • “A cradled shot can become impossible if the table is playing too fast... In real life, timing is obviously not subjected to 60 frames per second intervals, so every shot is possible.”

    Bobby (Farsight) @ ~38:00 — Explains the fundamental technical reason why TPA shots can be impossible when they're feasible on real machines

  • “I've just retuned Black Hole to feel more like the newer seasons tables. The new flipper tech should be in all of the tables for the next release on PC and mobile.”

    Bobby (Farsight) @ ~55:00 — Confirmed major physics rollout across platform

  • “The manufacturers do trust us, but they want the tables recreated as they ship. Plus, where do we draw the line?”

    Bobby (Farsight) @ ~75:00 — Explains licensing constraint preventing restoration of prototype/cut features in base game

  • “We're short-staffed at the moment and have to prioritize improvements to previous releases accordingly. But we're looking to hire another artist.”

    Bobby (Farsight) @ ~62:00 — Reveals resource constraints limiting art improvements to early season tables

  • “I tried out both Theater of Magic and Black Hole this morning. Theatre of Magic of Magic, sure enough, I was able to hit that right orbit. Boom. It felt natural and it happened.”

    Chris Frevis (ShutYourTrap) @ ~52:00 — First-hand validation that flipper fixes are working as intended

  • “I always thought it was just me being really bad at Black Hole and then the huge distances to the targets. I did too until I played a real one. Then I played a real one and I went, hey, wait a second.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~53:00 — Illustrates how TPA physics discrepancies were masking real machine dynamics

  • “We're not close to the idea [of open community modding], but the manufacturers don't like it and we're nervous about this sort of access getting abused.”

    Bobby (Farsight) @ ~69:00 — Clear stance on why Farsight is cautious about official mod support despite cabinet mod successes

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonBonzopersonJaredpersonBobbypersonJanos KisspersonMike LindsaypersonMikepersonFarsight PinballcompanyBlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: BlahCade inaugural season completed successfully with active leaderboard (10+ ranked players), monthly tournaments, and escalating prize pool (Farsight codes + custom hardware from Wizard Amusement). Season 2 starting with adjusted scoring system to reduce ties.

    high · Detailed tournament standings, prize distribution, and new scoring rules (13/9/6/4 vs old 10/8/6/4) announced

  • ?

    code_update: Flipper 3.0 physics deployed across entire TPA Steam catalog, with targeted retuning of 12+ tables (Theater of Magic, Black Hole, Star Trek TNG, Funhaus, Dr. Dude, Junkyard, Taxi, Firepower, Attack from Mars, Hyrule/Casino, and others) to fix impossible shots and improve real-machine accuracy.

    high · Bobby confirmed fixes in interview; Chris Frevis independently validated fixes on Theater of Magic and Black Hole; newsletter documentation cited

  • ?

    product_concern: TPA Season 1-2 tables significantly lag Seasons 3-4 in physics feel, texture resolution, and visual clarity. Creature's plastics specifically noted as 'blurry mess'. Early tables feel 'dull and not as vibrant' with poor insert/lighting compared to newer tables.

    high · Bobby acknowledged in interview and confirmed retuning of Black Hole; Chris Frevis called out comparison between early and late seasons

  • ?

    product_strategy: Farsight exploring prototype/restoration add-on DLC packs to restore cut features (Cactus Canyon stickers, Firepower drop targets, Earthshaker moving center) while respecting manufacturer requirement to ship tables 'as they shipped' in base game.

    medium · Chris Frevis cited anonymous Farsight conversation about 'prototype add-on' similar to ProTable model; Bobby did not confirm in available excerpt but said 'some of these features would be cool'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.204

0:00
Welcome to the circus. You're listening to the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah podcast.
0:14
The door's open, so come on in. I am your host, Chris Frevis, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. With me today is Bonzo. Guten Tag. Bonzo, where's Jared?
0:41
Some work duties, I think, so he had to leave early. Really, Arnie? Really, like before we started early. He basically showed up long enough to tell me how to actually do a recording and then left. So this is new territory for us. Me, the person that is least tech savvy in terms of doing recordings, and Bonzo on the far side of the world in Germany at God knows what hour.
1:11
It's not that late, actually. it's like 11 p.m. So I'm almost 100% awake still. And it's two in the afternoon for me. So the joys of the internet and the pains of it too.
1:30
So I think we're going to just roll straight into our good time fun that we usually have with the podcast. Just a heads up, we will be talking a little bit later. yes it's part two of our interview with bobby and for those of you that uh cannot understand bonzo's german accent quit being such a xenophobe he sounds perfectly clear to me i will do my best come on if if they can understand any indiana jones movie they can uh understand this right at least that's what we're going to play with um so let's let's talk about uh uh tournament of the month, shall we? We finished our very first inaugural season last month in July, and we, as usual, are going to talk about the tournament results. So, for the July tournament, our top 10 finishers were number 10, Dave950LAM. Number nine, Switch3Flip. Number eight, Eldar of Suburbia. Number seven, Shut Your Trap. And I should say that seven through ten, we were all tied with 32 points. So I guess we were all tied for seventh. It shouldn't be tenth. But that's how it, due to previous tournaments and placements, it does kind of give us a seven, eight, nine, ten. But anyway, enough about that. Number six, Crepolo55012. Number five, Captain Bizarre. Number four, Johnny3w6. In third place was SuperDan. In second place, PinballWiz45B. And coming out in first place for the July tournament was Gus. Now, on top of that, we have our season results. So these are after playing for six months in this inaugural season. This is how it all shook down with the total point totals. in 10th place was Ksenia with 182 points. 9th place was SuperDan with 184 points. 8th place, Jared Morgz, 185 points. Though maybe we'll dock him for not being here today.
IFPA
organization
Theatre of Magicgame
Attack from Marsgame
Black Holegame
Cactus Canyongame
Firepowergame
Monster Bashgame
Big Bang Bargame
Radical!game
Safe Crackergame
Star Trek: The Next Generationgame
The Pinball Arcade (TPA)product
Flipper 3.0 Physicsproduct
Wizard Amusementcompany
?

manufacturing_signal: Farsight art department is under-staffed and prioritizing recent releases over retouching early season tables. Company actively hiring new artist to handle texture/resolution improvements.

high · Bobby stated: 'We're short-staffed at the moment' and 'looking to hire another artist'; identified art improvements as onboarding task for new hire

  • ?

    technology_signal: TPA's physics engine has documented limitations: ball can pass through collisions at high speeds despite frame-stepping; shot timing is discretized to 1/60th second intervals (or 1/30th on mobile), making some real shots impossible on digital; angles calculated to 1/10,000th of degree creating infinite angle permutations at different speeds.

    high · Bobby detailed technical explanation of why cradled shots become impossible; acknowledged 'far from perfect' engine; mentioned need to 'get spin working properly'

  • ?

    community_signal: Community has created unofficial cabinet mods (cabinet lighting mod, custom camera angles) praised by players, but Farsight/manufacturers cautious about official open modding due to licensing/gameplay integrity concerns. Farsight exploring middle ground but not committed.

    high · Bobby: 'We're not close to the idea' of open modding; acknowledged manufacturers 'don't like it'; cited abuse potential; Chris Frevis discussed cabinet lighting mod as acceptable gray area since it doesn't affect gameplay

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Manufacturers require TPA tables to be recreated exactly as shipped; licensing agreements prevent restoration of prototype/cut features in base game. This is primary blocker for community requests to add Firepower drop targets, Cactus Canyon stickers, etc.

    high · Bobby: 'The manufacturers do trust us, but they want the tables recreated as they ship. Plus, where do we draw the line?'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Bobby's physics tuning process: start with vanilla angle set, identify impossible/too-hard shots through player feedback, perform 3 passes of fine-tuning to ensure all intended shots remain makeable. Last-second table speed tweaks often break 1-2 shots requiring re-tuning.

    high · Bobby detailed: 'There are usually three passes to fine-tune the physics. It very rarely has just worked without some tweaks.'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Chris Frevis documented pinball variance: scored poorly on familiar tables (Monster Mash, Attack from Mars ~600M) but excelled on unfamiliar table (Big Bang Bar 35M vs opponents' 10M). Illustrates volatility even among experienced players.

    high · Chris Frevis recounted tournament performance: 'sometimes the tournament goes for you. Sometimes the tournament doesn't. The pinball gods.'

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade securing hardware sponsorship from Wizard Amusement for custom shooter rod prizes (3 giveaways planned for season 2); Farsight providing software/game codes for seasonal giveaways. Indicates growing podcast relevance to pinball vendor ecosystem.

    high · Chris Frevis announced Wizard Amusement sponsorship deal for multiple shooter rods; Farsight code donations via Mike Lindsay

    • 3:46
    7th place, Switch3Flip with 187 points. Number 6, Eldar of Suburbia with 194 points. And now your top 5. That'd be myself, ShutYourTrap with 195 points. I know, check me out, right? Number four, In Vitro with 198 points.
    4:06
    Number three, yes, your top three, PinballWiz45B with 204 points. Beating him out by one point, CaptainBizarre, 205 points. Oh, that's got to hurt.
    4:23
    And coming in at number one, stunking everybody with 222 points is Gus. so congratulations to Gus he uh as some of you that visit the forums may have seen uh I would create a little avatar in gold silver and bronze that they could slap on for their uh avatar picture and you know brag they won that month uh Gus is the proud owner of the only diamond encrusted avatar I know it's pretty spiff I like it um so he he will be the in sole possession of that for the next six months which is pretty dang awesome if I do say so myself. So congratulations to Gus. We had a whole bunch of prize winners. We were giving away copies of Adam's Family Pro on Xbox, on PS4, ballpacks on PS4 for Adam's Family. We also had the Steam key that you gave Bomzo. Yeah, and that's still for grabs. I think we have to find someone new because the original winner wasn't really interested. So either there's two keys for the next tournament of the month, or maybe we should hand out the key to someone else who took part in the last one. Yeah, I think we'll just keep it going.
    5:38
    One per tournament. We also gave out the custom shooter rod of Randy Macho Man Savage. Eldar of Suburbia actually won that, and he was quite pleased. Congratulations. Yeah. So, continuing in the prize-giving mode, Farsights has been uber generous with us. I asked Mike Lindsay, the community manager, if they had any more codes that they could maybe throw our way, and I said maybe less Xbox One and PS4, because we didn't have that many players.
    6:09
    I think every single one of our players that plays on PS4 or Xbox One wound up winning something because I was trying to spread it around, you know, and not give multiples. Yeah, I think they all won it. So anyway, they mic'd through my way just oodles of copies for PS3, for Xbox 360 of Adam's family, and then he gave me some new codes, I believe, for PS4. It's Skirt Stiff, I think.
    6:41
    Oh, I think. I could be wrong. No, no, excuse me. It's Party Zone. That's what I'm thinking of. Party Zone. I was like, I want to say Elvira and the Party Monsters because I had Party in my head, and I was like, oh, they're not giving that one away. Yeah, so it's Party Zone on PS4. And then he wrote down TNG, and I got to believe that's the next generation. So I'm assuming that it's Star Trek for Xbox One. Anyway, so what we're going to be doing is I'm going to just give them away by platform in group. So for this next tournament that's coming up, oh my gosh, this week on Saturday the 29th, of august i'm going to be giving away six copies of the adam's family to ps3 users yeah six copies so join the tournament and you have stand a good chance of winning plus we will be giving away the steam key and then not this tournament but the following tournament uh our good friend mike who obviously heard the advertisement at the front of this uh podcast Mike over at Wizard Amusement he wants to give away even more custom shooter rods I was like awesome I know so that's why we actually went and made real advertisements which you'll have to suffer through again later but sorry that's to deal with having a sponsor so anyway we're going to give away even more I think we're going to give away three shooter rods throughout the course of this next season with the table of or tournament of the month and I think this time you're actually going to maybe get to pick whichever one you want off his website which is totally cool so things to look forward with the tournament if anybody out there wants to do what Bonzo was doing which is giving away Steam keys if you have any kind of game codes that you'd like to give away yourself please contact us we'd be more than happy to give it away the email address is blahblahblockade at gmail.com or you can contact myself, ShutYourTrap, via private message on the form.
    8:51
    That brings us to also with Season 2 starting, we have new rules, Bonzo. Oh. Well, kind of rules. I don't know if you know. More like point differences. So last time, if you took first place in your grouping, you won 10 points. Second place won 8 points and then six and four points for last place within grouping of four the problem with that was we're getting a whole mess of tie uh tie scores at the end of the tournament with you know the four tables so to help spread that out a little bit we are now going to give first place 13 points second place will get nine points followed by third place getting six and fourth place getting four so that should hopefully spread things out a little bit and make there not be so many ties also don't forget in this very first tournament there is no seating there is no top 10 so we'll see how the randomizer works on that i'll laugh if it's you know if we get like our top four people all lumped into one group and they'll be going to be screaming bloody murder.
    10:11
    But that's the joy of it, right? And those who lose there can work their way up the next five months. Exactly, and that's the other point Ksenia was making with having it be a 13-point first place. It'll make catching up even that much quicker if you can secure the first place. And then think about this, if you happen to beat the top 10 player, you get an extra point, so then it's 14 points.
    10:38
    Yeah, you could ratchet up really quickly if need be. Or you can be like Gus and probably just dominate everybody again.
    10:46
    On the other hand, I was lucky the first two tournaments last time, and then I was handed down every month, so this frustration might come quicker too this time.
    10:59
    Yeah, that does take place. You know, I had my pinball league a few weeks back, and it was at the super awesome house that's down at Newport Coast with the guy that has his own custom arcade and the home theater to die for and the pizza oven. Yes, of all the prototypes. Yeah, that's whose house we had it at.
    11:26
    I tell you, this time I went and I sat in the theater for a little while. and what they had rolling was a demo reel of various action sequences and the it was crazy so he's got like a 21 foot screen wide screen i mean it's huge it's it's just immense and it's about a 20 feet 20 seat theater and all the seats are uh are you know with d box no okay d box is motion seating oh my yeah so it's that 4d experience right and some theaters across the country in our country at least uh have this installed i've never been to an actual movie theater that does have them but uh yeah so somebody goes through the movie and codes your seat movements so if you're riding on a motorcycle right the seat's going to bounce a little bit and if you start going uphill the seat's going to tilt back a little bit and if go downhill the sea's gonna tilt forward a little bit so i go in here and they've got this demo reel running of all these it was probably i think somebody said it was like half an hour demo reel if if not even longer of all these action sequences from various movies and the first one that i sat in on was from the italian job and they were doing the initial break-in uh in venice and we get on the boat and the seat's doing this slow undulating like you feel like you're on the boat I mean, it was crazy experience.
    12:54
    And just clip after clip that they were doing, it was just incredible. And the sound system was rocking. I was just like, if I had this in my house and the arcade, I don't think my wife or kid would ever see me.
    13:07
    I'm home, I'll be in the theater. I'm home, I'll be in the arcade. So anyway, my point to bringing this up was the tournament, I bombed so hard. And the thing that ticked me off was the tables that I bombed on. So, like, I played Monster Mash.
    13:26
    And I think I scored... Did I even score 20 million? I don't even know if I scored 20 million. I mean, it was ridiculous how low my score was. I'm like, this is not fair. I know this table inside and out. I know exactly what to do. And I was just getting horrible, horrible drains. Taking me off to no end. And then another... There was one other table that did that. Oh, Attack from Mars. Oh. I scored, I swear, I scored like 6 million points. That was it. 6 million? I don't even know how you only score 6 million. No, I had to have scored more than that. I had to score. It was probably 600 million. But even still, I don't think I destroyed a single saucer.
    14:07
    That's harsh. Way harsh. It was way harsh. Then flip over to Big Bang Bar, and I rocked it. A table that I know nothing about. I mean, I've played it before, but I really don't know any of the points totals. I scored like 35 million, and the nearest person to me was at 10 million. So, I mean, I just skunked everybody on that one.
    14:29
    We also played this table called Radical, which is a skateboarding-themed table. A gazillion of transparent loops, if I'm right. Yes. Yeah, it's a really kind of crazy layout, and it takes a while for you to get used to where the ball's going to come out and do. Well, when I'd done practice sessions on it, I was just killing it. I was doing awesome. And then I get to the tournament, and my first two balls are just complete whiffs. I'm just scoring nothing. So my point being, hey, sometimes the tournament goes for you. Sometimes the tournament doesn't. You never know. It's just... The pinball gods.
    15:09
    Candy. 2000 Security System Online. I will say that he's got a Whitewood Safecracker. And since we just had gotten Safecracker in TPA and I had now finally learned the rules.
    15:27
    And of course, Jared talked about it last time saying how he felt that the Pimple Arcade version was still way too easy, that the scores were way too high.
    15:38
    I was like, okay, I'm going to really put it to the test and see how this feels. I did really, really good. I think TPA nailed it.
    15:47
    It's amazing what happens when you actually know how to score. I do concede what Jared was saying. There's the very target, and it's really stiff in real life. It does not want to bash back. I actually had the ball get caught between it and the little bumper without moving it all the way back. So, yes, the very target could be a little stiffer, but I don't know. maybe that's, that's one of the things where that was the one table I played. It was stiff. Maybe the one that Farsight has, it's a lot looser. I don't, you know, couldn't, couldn't quite tell you what the story was on that, but I did score. I mean, I got up to the vault a couple of times and I was, I don't know. I think I had at least 3 million, maybe 6 million points. I don't know. I, I felt like I did pretty good. And then I did a attack the vault mode and scored almost equally as well in that. So, like I said, I think I just kind of want to put it out there that good job, Farsight. You guys, I think, nailed it pretty rockin'. Do you think we've teased him long enough, Bonzo? Should we just go into the interview or something? Well we could maybe talk about some fluffy kittens for a few more minutes or something Fluffy kittens Yeah We could The internet is all about I heard
    17:09
    That was a triple X stuff. I mixed that up. It's one of the two, right? No, I'm not going to go there. It was kind of tasteless, but I was going to say, I need to say, you know, then they might try shaving the kittens. Whoa. Okay. So, There goes our rating. Hey, why don't we just go ahead and roll the music, and then we'll get into it.
    17:37
    Blockade Theatre presents Forum Questions with Bobby, Part 2. Okay, so last time we did Part 1 of the interview with Bobby. I think you all know what to expect. Let's roll right into part two. Bobby, currently in TPA, there are various important shots on various tables that are simply impossible to do, despite being possible on a real table. If you're aware of these, do you plan to make them possible, or is it particularly hard to fix? Why do these exist anyway, and is there something the new flipper physics could correct?
    18:20
    Well, since this is in my area of responsibility in terms of gameplay and pinball arcade, I tried to explain why this happens and improve and fix these issues you've listed. Great. A cradled shot can become impossible if the table is playing too fast, for example, too steep in terms of the ball rolling down the flipper from a cradle. If the table is set up fast and sometimes we choose to speed it up a bit late in development, then the ball will roll down the flipper faster. Let's say 41 frames after the player releases a trap ball, the angle from a flip is too early, and 42 frames after the player releases a trap ball, the angle is too late. I try to tune it so every shot a player would want to make is makeable from a cradle, but sometimes a last-second tweak throws off a shot or two. In real life, timing is obviously not subjected to 60 frames per second intervals, so every shot is possible. To make matters worse, when the game isn't running at 60 FPS, a shot that is possible becomes impossible because 30 frames per second, which is true of some mobile devices, only gives the player half of the timing opportunities. Keep in mind that angles from these shots are affected based on the ball's speed and our engine calculates angles to a ten thousandth of a degree. When a ball is rolling down the flipper, you get a whole new set of angles if the ball is moving a little faster or slower. This opens up an almost infinite number of angles. Wow! That's quite a lot of detailed information in here. Why don't we go ahead and go through the partial list of affected tables that I knew at the time of sending these questions. Let's start with Theater of Magic, the right orbit shot from the left flipper while trapped. Fixed. I've gotten better at creating a wide range of timing over the past three plus years. The right ramp will now be a little bit harder, but now you can hit everything. I also sped up the table across the board, so there are quite a few tuning changes to balance things out. Overall, this adds up to a pretty huge improvement in my opinion that was a long time coming. Okay, let's move on to Attack from Mars, shooting the right ramp from the left flipper trap. Ha! Fixed too! It looked to me to be possible given the tuning values, just really difficult. It's easier now. are the MAR and AN targets. Very good. Hyrule or Corsino, two of them. The right orbit from a left flipper trap and slot machine lane when the ramp is all the way down from right flipper trap. And that's kind of a maybe. We think that that was an impossible or not. Well, the right orbit was makeable from a cradle right flipper backhand. But yeah, now you can also make it pretty consistently once you get the timing down from the left flipper. The slot machine was makeable. Now it's a little easier. Fixed. Very good. Firepower, the bottom power stand-up from a left flipper trap. Yep, that one looked to be impossible from a cradle. Fixed. Yes. No more having to figure out funky ways of hitting that. That's awesome. On Taxi, the bottom pinbot drop target from left flipper trap. The angles of the left flipper tip from a cradle are now better, and we added the tech to hit more than one target at a time. We didn't have the multiple target hitting feature implemented when taxi was developed way back when. So, fixed. Very good. Junkyard, the DOG ramp from a running left flipper shot. Lots of shots to hit. This was caused by making the cradle shots easier than they needed to be. Fixed. I love all these fixes. Dr. Dude, gift of gab from a running left flipper shot. Well, this shot was possible, but really hard. I've improved the left flipper shots, including the drop targets. Fixed. Funhaus, trap door without relying on the T-target rebound angle. Well, I'm pretty sure it was possible without hitting the T before, but the upper flipper was using old flipper tech that had some big problems for upper flippers. I switched to the new tech and retuned it. It's more accurate now, but I didn't make hitting Rudy as easy as before. I also amped up the bottom flippers. They were pretty weak.
    22:40
    Yeah, Rudy, definitely should not be easy to hit, as anybody that's played Funhaus in real life knows.
    22:47
    So, moving on to Star Trek The Next Generation, the lock lane from running feed from the left popper. In hindsight, there was too much help to make cradle shots easier on The Next Generation. We've got to give the King of Flow the chance to do his thing. I changed the left flipper quite a bit and opened up the running shots more. With the new tuning, you can even hit the lock from a running shot off of the right slingshot now. Fixed. Yes. And for anybody that's wondering, this is a side note from the time this interview was done to what is up now.
    23:26
    Bobby has indeed actually gone back and done many, many fixes. for those of us that are playing on the PC on Steam. And if you get the newsletter, I know some people, the newsletter is a bear of a thing to get emailed to you. I know it's taken me sometimes a very long time to get it up. But according to the newsletter, the Flipper 3.0 physics are now across the board on every single table on Steam. Hooray. Yeah. The tuning improvements have been done to Black Hole, Star Trek, Funhaus, Dr. Dude, Junkyard, Taxi, Firepower, Hyrule or Casino, Attack from Mars, Theater of Magic. I tried out both Theater of Magic and Black Hole this morning. And Theater of Magic, sure enough, I was able to hit that right orbit. Boom. It felt natural and it happened. Black Hole, wow, totally better. Because now, for me, the flipper angles were way off. And actually trying to aim for any of the drop targets that said Black Hole was just a pure random guess as to where it was going to go. And now I was actually able to aim for them correctly and hit them. So huge improvements on those. I think everybody that's playing on Steam on their PC is going to love, love, love the retuning. I always thought it was just me being really bad at Black Hole and then the huge distances to the targets. I did too until I played a real one. Then I played a real one and I went, hey, wait a second.
    24:59
    so yeah i have to give that a shot after the recording i think i think you shall okay back to the interview just want to throw that in because this this was obviously sent um about two months ago to bobby so by the time the answers have come things have kind of uh shifted as they want to do so uh here we go with regards to the current engine and the tuning that goes on how much is tweaking or forcing its trajectory on balls hitting stuff like rubber posts and how much is handled purely by the engine. What do you feel the strong points and shortcomings of the engine are, and is a new engine build on the horizon or even necessary? Well, the engine handles all angles and trajectories on the playfield. For the flippers, as you know, we have the ability to tweak the angles. We start with a basic copy and paste from a vanilla set of angles. Then we play it, and I take input and suggestions regarding which shots are too hard, too easy, and most importantly, impossible. There are usually three passes to fine-tune the physics. It very rarely has just worked without some tweaks. I think we should get regarding the engine in general, I think we should get spin working properly before calling it good. Plus, the ball can still go through collisions at high speeds, even with our current stepping between frames. It's far from perfect. Can the current engine handle something like the pinball circus or bonsai run? I don't see why not. And hopefully we'll get to find out. Ooh, spoiler alert!
    26:32
    Trying to mind-record the smiley that's here in the... Yes, there is an emoji of a smiley face. You have Bobby smiling here. tables from season one and two often feel very different from the excellent feel of seasons three and four compare adam's family to theater of magic or black hole and it's shocking are there plans to retune these tables maybe when they get the new flippers having recently played two different black hole machines recently i can say without a doubt there's something off the flipper aim and tpa version the angles use are way off from real life see that that was two months ago question and now we know things. So anyway, this question is redundant, but let's go through it anyway. Two months ago, Bobby answered, I've just retuned Black Hole to feel more like the newer seasons tables. The new flipper tech should be in all of the tables for the next release on PC and mobile, but completely retuning all of those tables would take some serious time and require a lot of testing. We're going to try to get to the ones with the worst issues and go from there. Similarly, the resolution and textures of those first two seasons are woeful in comparison to the last two. Unfortunately, some of the most popular tables are in those seasons. Even looking at the inserts and lighting when compared to the newer tables, those first seasons look dull and not as vibrant. Some are downright ugly, like the plastics on Creature being a blurry mess. Is there a plan in place to use better resolution and textures or rework some of the baked-in looks that then don't quite work as well when the dynamic lighting is in place?
    28:09
    Mike Reitmeier has said he is doing all he can on the programming side, but most of this falls on art department. So is there a push? I think you're being a little hard on the art during the first two seasons. No.
    28:24
    Debatable. We're short-staffed at the moment and have to prioritize improvements to previous releases accordingly. But we're looking to hire another artist, so improving old tables would be a great way to get a new person up to speed on the texture artwork. Wouldn't it, though? That would be a fantastic way to plop somebody in here. These are already made. You already have a comparison. Just make it look better.
    28:49
    Hear, hear. Has there ever been any... And I really don't think we're being that hard on... Well, I don't know. I'll leave it at that. I want to be nice. Compare them yourself and think what you want to think about. Like I said, just look at creature up close with the slingshot plastics and yeah.
    29:12
    Has there ever been any thought given to outsourcing bug fixes, art issues, graphical tweaks to the community? In other words, allow unofficially mods to happen that later become permanent. Obviously many games have benefited from this. Where does Farsight stand? For instance, there's an individual who came up with his own camera angle mob that has been greatly praised by cabinet owners who have been without any other option for a long time. We're not close to the idea, but the manufacturers don't like it and we're nervous about this sort of access getting abused.
    29:44
    I can understand the abuse part. Maybe create a mod with five police flippers fighting against five terrorist flippers.
    29:56
    You know, I think, and this is again off script from what we're doing, but I think in the terms of the cabinet lighting mod that was done,
    30:07
    since it didn't affect the gameplay itself, it was kind of... The chem mod. Yes. Yeah. Because it was done outside of it, and it doesn't affect the look of the table per se. I mean, like, it's not changing art, and it's not breaking the game, you know, jailbreaking the game. I think that's one of those gray areas that it can get away with, as opposed to if somebody's cracking directly into the game and trying to rewrite things. That's what's going to make the various manufacturers nervous because they don't want their things tweaked with on that front. Tweaked with, yeah. Right. Okay, back to the interview. Is there any hope of reopening the possibility of having prototype elements of certain tables added back to the games? Gee, I wonder why that question popped up in my head because I was just at that guy's house.
    30:56
    Seems a shame that things that were... I'll tell you a little bit of a story about that later too Seems a shame that things that were cut for cost saving purposes or because of potential maintenance issues can't be put into the game to restore these to that which was intended. Everything from the bad guy stickers on Cactus Canyon to the moving earthquake center on Earthshaker or how fantastic would it be to have the option of playing Firepower with the intended and coded drop targets? Clearly you've shown to the licensors that you can be trusted by now, yeah? I know, yeah, I can't read that part.
    31:35
    Spoiler! So I'm not going to say that one. Anyway, go ahead. Answer, please. I agree that some of these features would be cool. The manufacturers do trust us, but they want the tables recreated as they ship. Plus, where do we draw the line? Some tables have tons of great features that were cut for one reason or another. and I'll go on an interesting side note. I had had a conversation with somebody up at Farsight. I'll leave their anonymity be. And I broached this very subject with them too.
    32:10
    And one option would be to make it kind of much like the ProTable add-ons that they might, and they're looking into seeing if this is possible, be able to have a prototype add-on, you might say. Or again, you pay the money, and then all of a sudden you'd have the table with the prototypes put on there. That way the licensors are getting their wish that the tables that everybody is buying with the seasons comes the way that the manufacturers wanted, but then as an added bonus, if people wanted to buy this stuff as an add-on, then they can maybe do that. So they're looking into that, whether it goes anywhere or not. That's a whole other issue, because obviously they've got to get it cleared and stuff. But they are thinking on these terms. They definitely do like the idea of some of these mods, and that it's a shame that they're not being put in place. What I was going to say, I invited Bobby down to this last tournament, and unfortunately our tournament, which is normally on the first Sunday of the month, got bumped to the second Sunday of the month for that particular event, and Bobby wasn't available for that particular event, so I was really disappointed because I wanted him to see all these tables in prototype mode and be like, look, you've got to do this, and look, you've got to do that.
    33:34
    So that was kind of a bummer. We'll get Bobby down to one of these events, one of these days, and introduce him at least to all these other pin geeks in the area because we've got quite a collection of them. yeah, I was really kind of disappointed that he wasn't able to make it because I wanted him to see some of these tables and just be like come on! I think Bobby's enough of a pinhead that he would even come down to that collection without a tournament running that day I think he love to see all those tables I quite sure about that Oh yeah but I don have that invite I only get invited to the guy house once a year via my pinball league
    34:13
    Again, he would never see me again if I was invited to his house whenever I want because I'd just be sitting in his home theater all the time.
    34:21
    Okay, let's move on to the next question. Speaking of... Wait, was I speaking of that? Yes, speaking of pinball cabinets, where are we on that front? Will it support real DMDs and animated back glasses? Is it going to be a separate purchase for the pincap version, or will it be like DX11, part of the already purchased game in Steam? Dare you guess the time frame for release?
    34:48
    Official cabinet support is on indefinite hold for business reasons. Wah, wah, wah, wah. Oh, boy, that's going to... I really feel for some people. I know at least one forum member who will be all but glad to hear that.
    35:10
    Yeah, there's going to be some people that are very, very angry. Well, there's already people that have been saying for some time that, I'm not buying any more tables until they come out with pin-cow support. Well, I guess, folks, you'll be saving your money because it doesn't look like it's happening anytime soon, unfortunately for you. But I guess that's part of what happens when you're a niche upon a niche. So I guess we circle back to the gentleman that created the table angle mod that was mentioned earlier and go download that and get that thing running because that's going to be your saving grace for a while, I believe.
    35:50
    I wonder if he ruined things for everybody. nah could you imagine if Farsight was like yeah that's good enough let him have that Fury this kind of makes the next question moot but I'll ask it all the same at one point there was a listing in the pinball magazine that had Farsight releasing an actual cab to be put on locations for paid play like a multicade still a thing or no still a thing that's possible in the future but I don't hope like I said. Yeah, so it's tied directly to the cabinet support, obviously.
    36:27
    Last time we spoke, Farsight had just made its deal with Sony. How many more tables to come from that? How many other block purchase deals has Farsight been able to make with other studios? You've dealt with Sony, Paramount, and Universal in the past. How about Warner Brothers or Fox? We won't even bother asking about Disney, though.
    36:47
    Both Warner and Fox want crazy money for the licenses we need. The Sony Pictures deal includes five licenses, but there are actors we need as well for each of them.
    36:58
    Well, if the Warner Brothers deal is a no-go, that means no Dirty Harry for us. Damn! That's interesting, though. Five licenses with Sony Pictures. So people, do the math, and I expect to see what the remaining guesses are on the forum right quick.
    37:21
    Back to the interview. Is there a foreseeable end to needing Kickstarters? A way to have the tables be profitable despite the license? For instance, whatever became of having Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Terminator be standalone apps? Do we need to be concerned for these tables' license expiring and not being available for future purchase? well kickstarter has been beneficial from a user community and marketing angle as well as allowing expensive tables to acquire all the rights for to be profitable having a kickstarter campaign once in a while gets our game noticed by the press and fans of that license but more importantly the pie gets cut up so much with those licenses that we we really would lose money with all the help of fans on kickstarter we'll be rolling out the standalone apps more slowly than expected but we're sort of testing the waters right now.
    38:13
    Yeah, exactly. So in other words, we can expect another Kickstarter, and I guess that's the way that's going to be. Is testing the waters a virus standalone? Yeah, I think that's the kind of thing with the Elvira standalone, trying to obviously test that out and make sure it functions properly.
    38:38
    see where that goes. Does anyone in the office play the pinball games from Zen or ASK Homework or any other pinball apps? Yes, we do. There are a few of us who try to play everything that comes out pinball-wise.
    38:53
    Very good. Not keeping yourselves in the dark. I like it. Are there any plans to have it be possible within the game to set up user-created tournaments or leagues? Again, I wonder why I'm asking that question.
    39:06
    So selfish. You can tell when things like that get thrown in that that didn't come from the forum. That's just me throwing in my own personal questions. Work them in like they were part of the forum questions. But anyway. Well, you are part of the forum. I am part of the forum. That's right. I can throw in my stuff if I want to. Something where the host can determine all the parameters such as number of plays, extra balls, date of the tournament, and then send out invites to who they want to play with it because that would be incredibly useful. Yes. This wasn't our original design, and we appreciate how useful this feature would be, but the complications of setting up the infrastructure have slowed the progress.
    39:46
    Yeah, I bet it has. After hearing the data pull that they have just to keep the leaderboards running, I don't doubt for an instant that the infrastructure, it probably almost needs to be rewritten rather than tacked on to what they currently have. So, yeah, I would not be surprised if it takes a while.
    40:11
    Long ago, two things were mentioned as possibilities. One was the pinball constructor kit, and the other was a professional pin designer creating a custom table for Firesight. Have those ships sailed?
    40:24
    Jay is a big fan of us getting the construction set out, so that ship is still alive and well. A new original professionally designed pin is something I'd love to do and still see us getting into, but it just doesn't seem to be something we should prioritize highly at the moment with all of the great new real tables coming out by Stern. Hmm. Hmm, I know exactly, right? I hear that and I go, well, so what are you saying here? A lot of new Stern pins there that may, hmm. Yeah. Well, coming back to the first part of the interview, I think we had a little talk about how they should release digital versions of new stone pins. So that... Oh, right, last time, exactly, yeah. It does that quite well. Yeah, it does.
    41:11
    Okay, this one should be of interest to people. Is there any interest in developing for Oculus Rift? What about a touch version for Windows that could be played on something like the Surface Pro?
    41:22
    Yes, on Oculus or virtual reality in general. Surface Pro, not so much, not at the moment. So there you go. All you Windows 8 and soon-to-be Windows 10 people, nope.
    41:36
    But all you Oculus people are going to be very pleased. And that's, you know, it makes sense that they're looking at that, obviously, with Oculus about to make the huge public drop,
    41:51
    you know, make the splash that they're planning on. I think that's probably in time for the holidays, if I'm not mistaken. that's good news that Farsight is looking into that I don't know I think the HTC Valve Corporation thingy SteamVR is also set for release this year very good that will give a huge push to VR not to mention that that could then be used with the mobile phones right I mean like the thing that you're talking about the Google Cardboard Yeah. Do-it-yourself thing. I think... But I'm not sure if this... You need a really good phone for that to run TPA in 60 FPS, huh?
    42:41
    Well, yeah, but I'm sure that all the... I mean, come on, if you have an iPhone 6, that's pretty much going to be good enough for whatever the current best and brightest of the Androids are. And with those huge screens, if they're looking into VR tech. I mean, I think it's a pointed note to note that he said yes to Oculus or VR in general. So that means that they're not just looking at Oculus, but this in general, and that would be a great way for the mobile people to, I mean, come on, if you can throw up your phone, get 3D vision and be able to move your head around and really look at the angles. And miss your train station every morning on the way to work because you have no idea where you are.
    43:20
    Yeah, that's those people's problems. so Bobby it must feel odd to not have to answer Adam's family questions anymore so let me ask an Adam's family question when will TAF gold be available for purchase by the general public wouldn't that lessen our appreciation for the TAF backers who helped us the most so maybe never or maybe as a 100 upgrade oh that's a burn that is a burn Oh, that just hurts so badly.
    43:55
    Gold is expensive. Gold is expensive, yeah. That response actually kind of surprises me because I really thought that eventually that they would kick it out there. I mean, come on, it's extra revenue. Why wouldn't you sell it as an extra add-on?
    44:13
    I mean, it's easy money in my opinion. So we'll see. Maybe he's just toying with us. He doesn't want to reveal the answer. If they plan on doing more Kickstarters, they should appreciate and respect the backers. So he's right in that way too. Yeah, but the only problem that I have with that is what if you were coming into the game right now?
    44:33
    You'd never heard of the game where they're always trying to introduce it to new people. You're a new person. You come into it. You're like, hey, there's Taff. Hey, that's awesome. Hey, I remember there being a gold version. And it's like, screw you. You can't buy it. Too bad. Didn't you hear about our Kickstarter? No, I didn't hear about the Kickstarter. I just saw the game for the first time recently. So that's my thing. How much would you have to have back? That can't be correct, but you know what I mean, to get the gold version. I'm just saying, I think that you should sell it as another table, same price as a regular table, $5.
    45:06
    Right? I think you could really piss off your hardcore audience. Yeah, but also I don't think that your hardcore audience should be so elitist either. I don't think that, you know, because I've seen that already where they're like, oh, well, that's, you know, too bad for you that you couldn't spend 400 bucks on a Kickstarter. You know what? That's kind of that's that's kind of hosed. It's one thing if you're getting a physical something sent to you. But this is a digital file. This this to me falls into the category of, oh, I'm sorry, you didn't buy your preorder from GameStop. You only bought your preorder from Best Buy. well Best Buy had this little digital doodad that you got for buying from them. You should have bought it from GameStop. Oh, well you should have bought it also from Best Buy, from GameStop. You should have also bought it from Walmart and you should have bought it from Amazon. And then you would have had all four of these.
    45:57
    You're asking people to take a bite out of the apple over and over and over again. And I think that's where it kind of rubs me the wrong way. I don't mind exclusivity, time to exclusivity. That's perfectly fine. so long as eventually you're able to buy the content. Because the thing that really ticks me off is when you have DLC that is on the disc, you know, it's there on the disc, but you're not able to access it. You know, even purchasing it. Totally not DLC, it's just screwing your customers. Exactly. So in this case, I've... We're almost coming up upon a year of Adam's family having been out. I think that's plenty of... Yeah, I know. Go figure, right? No way. it was wasn't it out by Christmas okay that's a few more months to go okay but I'm saying almost we're over halfway okay I'm almost 60 by that time sometimes I feel like it but my point being is I think that if they had exclusivity of the gold for a year I mean honestly how many of those backers were there Maybe we can agree on a compromise. Make it timed exclusive for maybe at least a year or exactly a year. That's what I'm saying. By Christmas and then price it somewhere between a regular table and what you would have back to get it. So I don't know. No, but you had to back $400 in order to get it. Really? Was it $400 or was it $100?
    47:35
    Okay, if it was $400, then yeah. I was thinking about making it maybe twice as expensive as a regular table. Not like $100. That's a little bit. That's ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, that's ridiculous. And what I'm saying is it's practically free money for them. You know what I mean? They already made it. They've already got the backers to do their backing thing. On the other hand, has it a different ROM? Is it different rule-wise in any way? Yes, it is a different ROM. There are a few different point scoring issues. Okay, so it's kind of like a different version of the game. If it was just some cosmetic stuff... No, it's not just cosmetic. I would even be okay if they left it exclusive to the backers. But if it's some kind of other new experience, everyone should be allowed and able to get it. There you go. If you want to lave all the gold trim to the exclusive backers, fine. Let me have access to the ROM, though. I want to be able to play it that different way. Because like I said,
    48:47
    at the most, how many people got that? A dozen or something? I think even less. I don't think a thousand people paid a hundred bucks. A dozen.
    48:58
    Not a thousand. Right. Yeah, I would say I think the high end of it would be maybe 30 max. Right? So, I mean, that's what I'm saying. We're just putting that out there, Bobby. You know, free money. Let's just agree to agree. Exactly. Um, okay, moving on. Speaking of requests in the Addams Family, now that art can be festered, trademarking that term, thank you very much, does that open up the possibilities on other tables? In terms of giving us options for licensed tables, we appreciated that there was very little backlash on in festering fester. Funny, we were just talking about de-licensing fast break, the entire voiceover would have to be festered as well. I'm going to touch upon that after we finish this final question from Bobby. So here comes the final question for Bobby. Has there been any consideration of getting any of the new pinball other than Stern into the game? Like Jersey Jack, Spooky, Highway, Dutch Pinball?
    50:14
    Yes, all of those companies' tables have been considered, some more than others. And with that, we want to say thank you very much, Bobby, for answering our questions. I know some of these were a little more pointed than usual, but appreciate the honesty of diving in and wading through our waters. That was really, really awesome. And I think we opened up some new ideas for all of our forum people, which was awesome. Now, let me get back to you with Bonzo in regards to NBA Fast Break. So there was the ReplayFX event in Pennsylvania just about a month ago maybe a little bit less And Norman and a couple of the other guys went to that event Norman the sound guy and also the main purchaser of all the pinball tables
    51:12
    Norman fell in love with NBA Fastbreak, which fills me with delight. Because Norman also recognizes how incredibly difficult it will be to get that table into the game. but uh i was having a conversation with him and he was talking about how he was just like i'm going to try and figure out a way for us i'm not gonna he goes i loved the table which means i'm going to harp about that table which obviously then based off this response that bobby uh gave which was them talking about de-licensing fast break i'm like come on come on come on so because honestly if you do look at it the back glasses I mean all you have to do is put people in different uniform colors and slightly alter their face you'll never know who any of the players are because that era of basketball they weren't exactly Magic Johnson or Kobe Bryant Lakers both of them why did I come up with that oh yeah because I live in Los Angeles I have no idea let me just ask you why don't you speak of any of their new stars. Oh, ouch.
    52:23
    Because our team sucks? Ah, no. They do great next season. I have great hopes for them. I have great hopes.
    52:32
    They get great drafting rights. Yes, I don't want them to get any great drafting rights anymore. Because, I know, here we go into talk that the pin geeks probably don't care about, but if they get the great drafting right this season, that means they really, really, really were even worse than they were last season. That's no fun. And if they do better, then their pick goes to Philadelphia anyway. So I just want them to make a respectable showing this year and give Kobe his farewell tour that he deserves that isn't an embarrassment.
    53:10
    And then we'll look at the new guys and see where they go. I think they've got a nice young core that has potential. At least next season I can join you in lamenting everything NBA related with my blazers just exploding this summer. Yeah, they did. I love them for so many great players of which a half of them is left. Oh, man.
    53:36
    Guess I'll just bite you. Yes. So anyway, back to the NBA Fast Break talk. So I specifically brought up the point about the announcer was a Bali voice artist, but the mere fact that they mention actual players' names, that would have to be taken out too,
    54:02
    which really was like, oh, that does kind of kill a lot if you're not getting to player teams. So I came up with this idea, though. So Zen did their, well, soccer to me, football to you, table, their football league. And they had their own Zen team. That was like, you could pick which teams you wanted to buy, the table to be decorated as, and the generic one was the Zen. And basically their players were all their coders and stuff. And so I got to thinking, I was like, well, so Farsight just has to code their own basketball teams. and I'm proposing that there is a basketball team called the blockade for which we would have players such as Jared and Bonzo and shut your trap and Sean Don Carlos and, and heretic. And who else do we have to Delta echo and time Lord and my for a neglectoid. I think that was all the guys that used to, to broadcast with us. And we haven't heard from an ages, but anyway, I say we have team blockade and that would be fantastic. And maybe they could come up with some other original, put in, you know, the Stern team, put in the Jersey Jack team. I don't know. I think that would be really kind of, if you're going to have to mess with the generic names, why not put in some names then that people can get somewhat attached to, um, that feel like they have had a connection with them in some forum or other. I think that, although coming up with, I think at the time it was 28 teams, maybe 30. I know it wasn't 32 teams when that table was out. So that's a lot of teams and a lot of roster to come up with.
    55:48
    I think, does the table have all the teams in it? That table had all the teams in it. Wow. Yeah. Where was that? Yeah, no, it was rather huge.
    56:01
    So I think if they do NBA Fastbreak, there's going to be a lot of work if they wind up having to fester it.
    56:09
    But who knows? Maybe Norman will harp so much that they'll get back into looking at the Players Association and trying to work something out. Who knows? It'd be awesome.
    56:20
    Team up with the Players Association and the NBA itself and modernize the table. But I think that would be even more ridiculous than trying to get all the... Yeah, because then, I mean, again, And you'd have to re-dot matrix all the player faces, plus you'd have to re-record all the audio. I mean, the easiest thing would obviously be to do that. I don't know, but you know what? That would be, God, that would be so awesome, because that was one of those tables where I thought, obviously pre-Madden,
    56:52
    but yeah, you could have a new roster on that thing every single season. How much fun would that be for the sports geeks that are out there that are also pinball geeks that every season you get a new pinball table in terms of who your players are and who the call-outs are. It doesn't really matter one iota against your stats.
    57:11
    I mentioned to Norman also about the head-to-head aspect of NBA Fast Break, and that really got him excited too in terms of the potential. I was like, one of my tables is being championed. However, roller games, as easy as it would be to fester those images out, Norman made the comment about, I said, it's got this fantastic music in it. He goes, so long as it's not like the Black Knight 2000 music. And I went, uh-oh.
    57:41
    It's kind of similar. He's like, oh, that music drove me nuts. I hate it. I'm like, oh, man. Well, I have to admit, as much as I love playing Black Knight 2000 in real life, if you're just looping on the upper play field for about three hours, at least it feels like the music does start to get a little stale. Yeah, it does. I can see that, too.
    58:10
    Although it's fun playing the bass line on the bass, though. I will mention also with the ReplayFX event, one of our own from the forum PinballWiz45B, he went to that event, went to the Farsight booth, and if you look in your newsletter, he's been made a star! you can now look at his face and stalk him now that you know what he looks like I was just teasing him about that this morning I'm like watch out for the paparazzi he's like well they don't know where I live they can find out joy of joys hey we're going to take a momentary break for a quick word from our sponsor and then be right back wizard amusement.com the west coast leader in classic pinball makers of custom pinball shooter rods to buyer specifications swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools even if you don't own a table looks great as a pinball memento to admire prices start at 39 but mention blockade podcast and receive 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization and we're back like I said that was momentary and we're practically done with our podcast anyway but hey we gotta keep our sponsor happy and then I will throw out there hey if any of you happen to need you know want to be sponsors of the show just saying please contact us at blahblahblockade at gmail.com and I've got a beard I think Adidas should throw $200 million. Yeah? Yeah, definitely. I've got a beard, so...
    60:05
    Our rates are really, really reasonable. I mean, right now, well, I won't talk about money or anything. Right now, we're just interested in gifts to give away, which is where Wizard Amusement comes in.
    60:19
    I promise I always wear Adidas sneakers while recording. So, win-win, totally, isn't it? You know what? and I just bought a pair of those the other day at Costco. My first pair ever, I do believe.
    60:31
    And they're kind of comfy, you know. And I just started using the shaveclub.com. So there you go. I can use some free blades.
    60:43
    Who else can we name drop and see if... Somebody mentioned that in the forum. They were like, wait, you guys don't actually get, you know, free copies of Pinball Arcade? Me and Jared are like, no. but you talk about it all the time we're like yeah well I know other podcasts where they'll name drop some beer and all of a sudden they'll get cases sent to them we're like yeah that would be a thing but it's not the thing that's been happening to us we should start randomly mentioning beer random things that we want and yeah let me start with why not Heineken do you enjoy a good Heineken it's my go to holiday beer whenever I'm on holiday at least you can be sure that there's some Heineken somewhere Heineken endorsed by Bonzo if only that would work it would be like rubbing a genie bottle maybe let's try Ferrari I was going to say, is there any kind of thing, you know, payola in terms of podcasts? I mean, I know there is in terms of broadcast radio, but, you know, I wouldn't mind that new Apple iPhone that's coming out.
    62:16
    I mean, Jared talks enough about Android. I think we need to get a little more Apple talk in here. we're such whores you know and just because I need to extend this out a little longer why not right because I haven't bored anybody with movie talk and I'm not going to today Bonzo were you ever familiar with a comic strip by the name of Bloom County featured the penguin opus no opus the penguin no it was a comic strip from you know in the daily newspapers in the 80s. And it was, you familiar with Calvin and Hobbes?
    63:00
    Not really familiar, but I know them. Ah, you silly Germans. So at the time, Farsight, or Farsight, the Farsight,
    63:11
    Gary Larson's The Farsight, Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, and then Berkeley Brethren's Bloom County. those were your top three comic strips, daily comic strips. And all three of them. Is it about the same time as Garfield? Because Garfield made it over the pond quite big. Yes, Garfield was in the same time, but was no, I mean, like,
    63:36
    Garfield was not considered smart ever. That was always... Okay, I agree on that. Right. These were more, you know, true artists at work. And all three of them basically retired at the same time. Waterston with Calvin and Hobbes retired pretty much because he was like I've had enough and he didn't want any of his stuff commercialized Gary Larson who had no problem licensing out Fireside stuff the time had just come for him to retire and Berkeley Breath was very very frustrated with newspaper distribution and being edited and censored and having his artwork tampered with that he pulled out too. So you had these three titans of the comic strip world in the daily newspaper vanish, disappear, and left a gaping hole.
    64:28
    Well, Berkeley Breath has started writing Bloom County again, and he's been publishing it on Facebook. And it's the weirdest thing because it's as if he never left.
    64:39
    It's so, I mean, like the artwork is the same and his jokes are the same. And the weird thing about his jokes, they were always kind of politically slanted.
    64:47
    Back in the 80s, he had this character called Bill the Cat, who was basically this cat that had gone through medical science experiments and so pretty much didn't have a brain anymore. And Bill the Cat ran for president, and at the time, he was running against, if I'm not mistaken, Donald Trump. And who do we have running for president now, Donald Trump? And who do you think is now being a supporter of him? Bill the Cat. So anyway, it's one of those things where it's like this total time warp. Oh, and on top of that, they talked about Clinton back then, and Clinton is back in, but now it's with his wife. So anyway, it's back and fresh, and I was a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge fan of Bloom County. So I just want to point everybody in that direction on Facebook. There is something good on Facebook to look at. Just look at Search for Bloom County or Berkeley Brev, then you'll see his daily comic strips and they're quite hilarious not just in terms of his writing but in terms of his drawing too I always found sometimes I would laugh before I ever read a single frame just the way he draws is pretty awesome so I encourage everybody to go look that up and recapture some of the 80s just like you've been trying to do playing pinball see how I tied that in nice well I gotta say Bonzo this has been a pleasure didn't miss Jared at all he's going to pull that one on me one time when I go I'm sorry I'm too busy to work I miss him I do too I miss all the guys I miss Jeffrey has recently moved by the way he's moved to Northern California because his wife got a job she'd come down to Southern California to study, I'm not sure what branch of medicine it was, but anyway, the place she needed to go was here in Southern California. She recently graduated and now has her first postgraduate job. So Oi, Tugo, Jeffrey, and his wife Annie. Fantastic. So they're moving up to Northern California, somewhat near the Bay Area, so he might be able to get his hands on the Pacific Pinball Museum or Free Gold Watch, which Jared visited. It'll be interesting to see if he can rekindle some of that pinball love. I think all the EMs at the Pacific Pinball Museum will be like the home theater and all the prototypes for you. So maybe he'll just... That's right, because he loves EMs. Just move in there. Yeah.
    67:26
    Exactly. All right, my friend. well it has been an absolute pleasure thank you for partaking in this with myself so for Bonzo I'm Shut Your Trap we will see you all next time in the blockade Aloha Remember to leave a review on iTunes or any podcasting channel blockade is distributed through we can't improve unless you tell us how until next time remember Hey! It's only pinball!
    67:59
    you