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Ten Seconds or Less and No Farts

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·46m 18s·analyzed·Oct 19, 2015
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Blockade Podcast discusses Scared Stiff, Frankenstein beta, and Zen pinball club progress.

Summary

Chris Freebus (Shut Your Trap) and Jared Morgan host the Blockade Podcast's second week on Blab.im with guest Kai Fitzner (Bonzo/Drexclown). They discuss Table of the Week (Scared Stiff vs. previous Haunted House), Beta Blah covering Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Sega 1995), and their Zen pinball book club progress (Super League Football, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four). Technical discussions include Farsight DMD implementations, audio quality differences between manufacturers, and beta testing timelines.

Key Claims

  • Scared Stiff was one of the first pro tables available in Pinball Arcade

    high confidence · Chat audience fact-check confirmed via Pinball Arcade history

  • Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has a higher resolution DMD than standard pinball tables—approximately twice as many dots as typical DMDs

    medium confidence · Jared discussing Sega's 1995 technology; noted as beta feedback, not confirmed final specs

  • 1995 was a prestigious year for pinball releases including Congo, Dirty Harry, Jackbot, Johnny Mnemonic, No Fear, Attack from Mars, Indy 500, Theatre of Magic, Whodunit, Big Hurt, Apollo 13, Batman Forever, Baywatch, and Frankenstein

    high confidence · Chris verified against IPDB during episode

  • Sega used MIDI audio while Williams DCS games used live recorded instruments, creating audio quality differences in 1995-era releases

    medium confidence · Jared's technical analysis of Frankenstein vs. Attack from Mars audio production methods

  • Frankenstein beta (Android) has DMD implementation issues affecting all other DMD tables in the test build

    high confidence · Jared reporting beta-specific technical issues; noted as caveat about unreleased product

  • The Frankenstein upper trough kick-out in beta is kicking the ball too softly compared to the real machine

    medium confidence · Jared's hands-on beta testing feedback; noted he should submit formal report

  • Farsight's beta testing window is too short—only about one week between beta release and general availability

    high confidence · Jared's direct critique of recent beta-to-GA timeline; notes recent tables were ready to GA in beta

  • Chris beat a very difficult opponent 6-0 (shutout) in Zen's Super League Football, earning a trophy achievement

    high confidence · Direct first-hand experience shared on podcast

  • Ghost Rider requires specific loop direction sequencing (can't loop backwards and forwards the same direction) to access Lost Souls area

Notable Quotes

  • “You realize you're just going to get 10 seconds of farting.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~10:20 — Humorous prediction about audience-submitted audio stings; establishes episode title 'Ten Seconds or Less and No Farts'

  • “I find that one of the trickier parts of that, but more so on the real game, rather than the TPA version, is getting into the Monster's Lab and actually getting enough hits on the pop bumpers.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~19:45 — Contrasts Pinball Arcade (TPA) difficulty with real machine difficulty on Scared Stiff

  • “The table itself is fairly ugly... and this one's just dark. But then again, it's such a god-awful ugly toy of a Frankenstein that you almost go, thank you.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~38:15 — Strong criticism of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein toy design and lighting on Farsight's digital version

  • “It reminds me so much of Jurassic Park. Even the ramp is almost in the same place. And the big head is basically where the T-Rex was... Like you've looked at it and the similarities for me, it looks a lot like Jurassic Park. Except for it's mirrored.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~42:30 — Design pattern analysis comparing Frankenstein playfield layout to Jurassic Park and Whirlwind

  • “I way prefer the original because the Edgar Wright one it just sounds like a bad 80s table I don't know it doesn't match any recreation of a song.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~46:15 — Criticism of Frankenstein's original soundtrack option vs. movie soundtrack in digital version

  • “I was kind of bummed that, and this is probably going to be the new trend, but once again, we basically get the beta and then a week later it's actually released to the general public. I don't think that's enough time to actually truly beta test a table.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~65:30 — Industry critique of Farsight's shortening beta windows and impact on testing quality

  • “And I shut him out. Oh, yeah. It was 6-0, baby. 6-0. That's a full game.”

    Chris Freebus — Celebrates competitive achievement in Zen Super League Football

Entities

Chris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonKai FitznerpersonBlockade PodcastorganizationWizard AmusementscompanyPinball Arcade (Farsight Studios)productScared StiffgameMary Shelley's FrankensteingamePinball FX (Zen Pinball)product

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight shortening beta testing windows to approximately one week between beta release and general availability, reducing community feedback effectiveness

    high · Jared: 'Once again, we basically get the beta and then a week later it's actually released to the general public. I don't think that's enough time to actually truly beta test a table'

  • ?

    community_signal: PinballWiz actively transfers known Android beta issues to Farsight developers, providing valuable intermediary support role for beta testing community

    high · Jared: 'PinWiz is really great in the Android beta. He transfers all of the known issues over, so we know that they're looking into it... really great service that he provides'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Zen pinball Super League Football features dynamic difficulty scaling with team opposition affecting ramp extension time, ball defense requirements, and lane variety based on opponent difficulty level

    high · Chris: 'The team you're competing against they have difficulty levels... you need to hit the ramps multiple times... time with the ball... other team takes control... determines how many lanes are lit that you need to hit'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Sega's 1995 Frankenstein design mirrors classic Williams tables (Jurassic Park, Whirlwind) with similar ramp placement and toy positioning but mirrored layout

    medium · Jared: 'It reminds me so much of Jurassic Park. Even the ramp is almost in the same place... Like you've looked at it and the similarities... it looks a lot like Jurassic Park. Except for it's mirrored. And I always said Jurassic Park was a mirror of Whirlwind'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.139

0:00
You're listening to the Cade Podcast. wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization you are listening to the blockade podcast i'm your host chris Sprebus, aka Shut Your Trap. With me, as always, is my co-host, Jared Morgan. Hola!
0:59
And also with us today is Bonzo, or Drexclown, or Kai Fitzner. Take your choice. Hi. No, no, no, give us a good guten tag there. I was going for a hi because of last week, but you can also have a guten tag. Ah, now I feel much better. so uh this is our second week of playing with recording while on blab blab.im and we have an audience this week we do who do we have in the chat window this week we have people people and we have people we don't want to start the trend of actually naming them or anything because you know what if this gets popular god forbid We have spent our entire podcast rattling off names. There we go. And we're done. And we'll see you later. Thanks for tuning in. It would also be a solution to get less live listeners. Yeah, that's right. So this is also my second week playing with my Samson mic. This week I'm holding it up nice and close to my mouth because after listening to it last week, I realized that it was picking up. I had it about two feet away from me. It's got a really hot mic, which is cool and all, except for the fact that it was picking up my ceiling fan and picking up background noise. So as I was listening back to the podcast, I kind of went, all right, I got to get that closer to my mouth, which has now opened up the new. You couldn't hear it? I couldn't hear it when I was doing the post-production on it. It really wasn't that apparent to me. Maybe your ears are super sensitive. That or maybe I play it really loud in my car as I'm driving home from work because there's nothing like rocking out to the Blockade podcast. That's right.
2:40
Going all the way into Earth. Exactly. Because that's the kind of show we are. No, it made me realize I need to get a... I was looking on Amazon, seeing what other accessories I could buy.

medium confidence · Jared describing game mechanic discovered via guide by 'Shuriken to the Chin'

  • Fantastic Four is one of the more shallow Zen tables with limited deep rules strategy

    medium confidence · Kai's early assessment during book club discussion

    • @ ~76:45

  • “Once you get the timing right on that jump ramp, it's just as much fun as No Fear, getting the loops around it.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~88:20 — Comparison of Ghost Rider mechanics to classic Williams table (No Fear)

    • Attack from Mars
    game
    Jurassic Parkgame
    Williams/Ballycompany
    Segacompany
    PinballWiz (PinballWiz45B)person
    Scott Umbleperson
    No Feargame
    Ghost Ridergame
    Super League Footballgame
    Fantastic Fourgame
    Kasaniaperson

    community_signal: Blockade Podcast transitioning to live streaming on Blab.im; Chris experimenting with audio equipment upgrades (Samson mic with boom arm, potential webcam addition) to improve production quality

    high · Chris: 'This is our second week of playing with recording while on Blab.im... second week playing with my Samson mic... I need to get myself one of those boom arms... one of those windscreens'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Frankenstein scoop kick-out mechanism in beta version kicks ball too softly compared to real machine, allowing unintended trap mechanics on upper flipper

    medium · Jared: 'My memory of the upper trough kick out was that it really threw that ball back super fast... on the version at the moment it's not behaving that way it's really softly kicking it out'

  • ?

    product_concern: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein digital version criticized for poor toy design (disproportionate tiny arms), dark upper third lighting, and overall aesthetic quality issues compared to real machine

    high · Chris: 'The table itself is fairly ugly... it's such a god-awful ugly toy of a Frankenstein that you almost go, thank you.' Jared notes toy is 'all out of proportion' with 'little tiny mutant arms at such an odd angle'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Farsight planning resource file (graphics/texture) upgrades to multiple tables including Big Shot and Cirqus Voltaire with potential camera fixes and transparency improvements

    medium · Jared: 'Big Shot and Cirqus Voltaire receiving res bumps... they've had a bit of trouble doing cams on them in the beta... I'm hoping that they'll make that ramp transparent because on mobile it's opaque still'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Farsight's high-resolution DMD implementation for Frankenstein beta caused cascading DMD display failures across all other DMD-equipped tables in Android test build

    high · Jared: 'They've had to change some things in the way that they do DMDs, and that's meant that all other tables with DMDs aren't working at the moment... someone switched off the DMDs and all the other DMD tables'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Audio production methodology differences in 1995 era: Sega used MIDI stereo audio while Williams DCS tables used live recorded band performances, creating noticeable quality disparity

    high · Jared: 'Sega... we're doing stereo... sacrifice to get two channels is... MIDI... whereas on games like Attack from Mars they use DCS which allowed them to basically do live instruments and they actually had bands... performed all the songs'

    • 2:54
    I need to get myself one of those boom arms. I need to get one of those windscreens. And then with us doing the Blab thing, I'm thinking, well, do I really want to leave Jared being the only one on camera? Should I put myself on camera? I don't know. But I really... I don't know. If anybody has a webcam they want to send to me, just contact us at blahblahblockade at gmail.com, and I'll give you some shipping info.
    3:20
    There's a thing called eBay there, right? They sell secondhand webcams if you're a bit tight on the old cash. Here's the problem with me. I can buy a cheap webcam for like $15, right? But then you start looking at the features and everything, and next thing you know, oh, yeah, no, I want that feature. and, oh, hey, that's got autofocus and face tracking, and the next thing you know, you're looking at these $70 ones.
    3:43
    No, you don't want those. Exactly, but that's my problem. I've got a cheap Logitech one at home. All the trend now is the HD widescreen ones, super sensitive mic pickups and everything on it, but this one I've got at home, it looks like a big eyeball that somebody's taken out of their eye socket, and it sits on the top of my monitor and it's really basic. It's probably not even HD, but it does the job. So, yeah.
    4:15
    But what if I don't want to just do the job even though all I'm doing is sitting here? I'm like sitting there looking at the ones that are good for conference calling and have auto, you can zoom in, zoom out.
    4:28
    Yeah, but they're fun. But, you know, look, I think people, I don't know if people actually even care the only reason why I'm here on visible on Blab is because I can't turn off the webcam on the service it doesn't seem that I can unless there is a thing at the top of my Chrome browser which yeah I'm not even going to attempt to alter at this stage because we're recording oh what's this no don't touch the thing oh no don't touch the thing Good stuff Hey, why don't we move into the show Proper, let's talk about Table of the Week Oh yeah, we don't have a theme song for Table of the Week We do If anybody would like to Let's put the challenge out We'll see if anybody returns the favor of doing a sting for table of the week. It doesn't need to be long, probably no more than 10 seconds long.
    5:39
    And if you just give us the raw audio of it, I can do funny things with it in GarageBand. You realize you're just going to get 10 seconds of farting.
    5:51
    10 seconds of goatee, but in audio form. it's a dangerous world there but but you know i'll put it out there though that you know we may not use it but you can send it in and uh you know knock yourself out um but yeah because i'm sure people have a much much better audio technical uh prowess than we do i have no doubt yeah so yeah go for it um anyway table of the week right table of the week hey that's what we were talking about um scared stiff it's time to get scared something of that nature which uh is miles better than haunted house which i don't think i touched it all last week no i don't think i did either i looked at it and went i just can't do it i can't yeah i just yeah does nothing for me um scared stiff even though i find it kind of incredibly easy at least it's still fun it is it's um in an era of dmd and the deep rule set that you can get on dmds it goes back to the almost system 11 gameplay where you have five sort of main goals to complete and then you know you go for it at the end it's a little bit reminds me a little bit of um dr dude and the fact that you have to like get you know you've got to shoot the the the big bully guy and then you've got to shoot the guitar target three times. It has that sort of gameplay to it and I think that's kind of refreshing in that era that Scared Stiff was released in. It's kind of refreshing just to have to go back and go I just need to shoot this thing a couple of times and then that mode's done.
    7:32
    Is there a true strategy to the game other than just shoot at the crate as many times as possible? I find that one of the trickier parts of that, but more so on the real game, rather than the TPA version, is getting into the Monsters Lab and actually getting enough hits on the pop bumpers. In TPA, it's a lot easier, but that's probably the hardest thing to actually get completed in the game, for me. Everything else, I find really easy.
    8:02
    The reason why I ask is when it's been in Farsight's tournaments, I've... I look at my score compared to the other people's scores, and they're so far and above mine, and I'm baffled as to what they're doing that I'm not doing, or are they just spending mega amounts of time on it? I guess that's it.
    8:27
    The pinball whiz in the chat is wondering if anybody got the secret passage. I've got it a couple of times, but it's... I don't even know what the secret passage is. The secret passage is a little way to the left of the skull rollovers that you can... Basically, you only really get it if it's a weak flip up the left loop, and it just falls behind this little gate at the back, and it's a secret passage, and old mate Drac goes, SECRET PASSAGE! It's very cool. It's not a wizard goal, is it?
    8:58
    I don't know. It might be a wizard... Oh, it is a wizard goal. What's your least favorite? It's not even something that is done by skill, it was done by accident. It's like, how is that a wizard? Yeah, it's frustrating. That was the same thing with on Black Rose, where you had to do the weak shot up the ramp in order to curve it back down.
    9:24
    And it's... I found that you had to then... I think backhanding was the only way to get it, because if you hit it with a strong, on the right flipper, there was no way it was going to work. Oh, right. I didn't even know that was a wizard goal. I probably wouldn't have even discovered that. you know on a real pinball table i can see it actually happening a lot because you know flipper strength and all that jazz sometimes it'll not rock it all the way up the ramp as it doesn't tpa but that's right this game's got a couple of well the highlights for me on this game is well it's elvira because you know fantastic um the for me i think one of the low lights of the game only because I haven't managed to get it yet because it seems to be incredibly difficult is to complete the spider wheel and get the spider wheel whatever it is mode it's a mode you get if you get all the lights lit um I've never been able to do it I've always like screw up like stopping the wheel um so I can get those little ones that are like in between all the ones I've lit I can I can never do it is it as difficult and on the real table as it is in tpa Is it the same delay?
    10:33
    It's pretty similar. There's like a slight delay because of the inertia of the motor that you've got to sort of like look at the one about two ahead, I think, for memory in the real game, and then it should actually stop on the one you want.
    10:50
    So, yeah, it's tricky. You know what it reminds me of is on Teed Off, how you got that spell gopher, the wheel that spins, right? and where it'll be like, why do I keep on getting G and P over and over and over again? You're like, come on, I just need that last letter.
    11:11
    Is that actually a bug that it's only doing, like, it's just been too predictable or I don't know. I honestly don't know because I've barely played the table. I just noticed one day I was playing it. Those were the two letters that I just got repeatedly and it was quite annoying.
    11:28
    Yeah. I Yeah I don really know what going on with that one I mean I know Fireside has a problem with anything that is wheel Well yeah like the roulette wheel on Yeah, that thing is very strange. It doesn't behave at all like it does in the real life. Right. There were a few bugs on this table which have been fixed. They were long-standing ones. There was a crate bug that allowed you to exploit two balls in there. They just rattled around and gave you multiple jackpots, which pleased Elvira, but not so much pleased us too.
    12:05
    But, you know, they fixed that. They fixed that collision in there. But the one thing that always irks me on this table is the fact that the flashes on the little sort of claw holders, they're clipping through the cabinet, and I just can't unsee it. It's a small cosmetic thing, and I shouldn't be so anal about it, but they clip through the cabinet, and it looks really shoddy. It was a Season 3 table, right? This one? No, Season 2. Season 2, that would probably explain it. Yeah, that's when sort of Season 3 is when we started to see, oh, Season 1, according to PimpleWiz. Really? There you go. That's very strange. I like the fact-checking.
    12:48
    So thank you, everyone, for making sure we don't suck with facts. Let's see if I can get some more information wrong that will promptly be corrected. but I think Scared Stiff, wasn't that one of the first pro tables available?
    13:00
    Oh, that's a good question. Ah, yes, I got the yes. There we go. Yeah, very good. There you go. We're doing audience interaction already. It's kind of cool. I like it.
    13:12
    Speaking of, how many of you guys have the pro mode on Scared Stiff? Because I don't have it on my PC. I only have it on my PS3. Not me. No, I don't. I wish Farsight would go back and correct it so that the good audio is there full time that's what bugs me and again it's one of those things where it's like okay fine I understand you want to make it pro mode so that we pay the money for it or whatever but then whenever I play it nothing goes towards the leaderboard and that's the only way I'm going to want to play this without audio so it's which means I'm never going to play it without audio which means you're never going to leaderboard so exactly the cycle yeah yeah vicious yeah i i don't really we've already talked about this in in previous podcasts but i generally don't go pro um on the tables i just don't really feel a need to do it i guess even for those times where you know it would be nice to actually have elvira dropping you know the more risque lines like multiple jackpots and all that sort of stuff but you know not really for the price it's probably a stupid analogy it's what $4 to unlock the pro on that one it's probably well last time I checked on Steam it was $5 to unlock the entire season in pro what? that's pretty good it's not like that on Android I don't think because normal price was $10 for the entire season you had to upgrade if you'd already bought a season pass yeah yeah that's right i forget that it's like a if you've already got the standard pack it's like an extra like it's probably about 10 i think but i think the reason why i wasn't doing it um was because a lot of the uh the cabinet switch um tech was pretty poorly implemented i don't know if that's been improved but um certainly i would expect on season certainly on season one and season two it was pretty terrible so yeah if it's a half-baked sort of feature i'm not going to buy into that, but if it's working well, then I'll do it.
    15:20
    Speaking of tables that we've been playing, and things that have been coming out, it's time for Beta Blah. It is time for Beta Blah.
    15:39
    Again, if somebody would like to make a drop for beta blah, they could do that too. Same conditions, 10 seconds. Make it awesome. Please no farting.
    15:53
    So beta blah. This week is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Indeed. And unfortunately, once again, since I haven't bought the season, I'm only able to play far enough into the top score. So I've barely been able to crack into it, but I'm kind of impressed with the table. I don't think I played this one in real life now that i'm you know looking at it i i have played this one um it was on location in one of the very many arcades in the city um back in the heyday of pinball and um yeah it's an interesting game to play it's a interestingly there's the the 1995 alumni for this particular game is quite, let's say, prestigious.
    16:39
    So let's just go now to IPDB and just take a look at what lovely tables we have. So from Belly Williams we've got Congo, Dirty Harry, Jackbot, Johnny Mnemonic and No Fear. From Midway we've got Attack from Mars dropped in this year as well, which is pretty impressive. Indy 500, Theatre of Magic also Whodunit and Big Hurt from Premiere so compare that to the Sega releases of Apollo 13 which was insane the most balls and the quickest time you'll lose them in any football game ever then we have Batman Forever, Baywatch Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and this other one from an unknown manufacturer that is very strange. I've never heard before. So, yeah, an interesting year. So the thing that I'm finding strange about this table is the audio quality. And this is not necessarily a Farsight thing. This is actually Sega's way of doing their audio back in 1995. How are you pronouncing that?
    17:51
    Sega. I'm sorry. Come on. It's Sega. Yeah, I know. It's Sega. um yeah people are gonna be listening to this we're like what the hell's this sega sega what is sega it's bob sega i don't remember sega yeah well you know okay sega there you go so there the way of doing audio of course um to get sega i think at that time um we're doing stereo um sound and i think the sacrifice i need to make there to get two channels is to think about the way they were doing the audio which i think was mostly midi um back then so um whereas in on games like attack from mars and all those they use dcs which allowed them to basically sort of do live instruments pretty much and um and record it using like proper like really proper live instruments and they actually had bands i think and in Williams that performed all the songs for the DCS games.
    18:58
    And so you get this really strange sort of audio quality compared to the other tables of that era in sea of titles.
    19:07
    So, yeah, that was one thing that stood out for me with this game, particularly now that we can actually listen through headphones and actually hear it really clearly. It was like, oh, boy, that's really jarring compared to the quality of the same year. So what do you think of the sort of game in general on PC, Chris?
    19:30
    Well, I mean, my first impressions were that there seemed to be quite a bit of shot selection. Like there was, I didn't feel like in my limited play that I immediately was going, oh, it's hit that ramp over and over and over and over and over again. There's nothing else to the game. I almost could fool myself into thinking that it was a Bally Williams game. So to me, that's high praise right there. The table itself is fairly ugly. Yeah, it is. I'm playing it in DX11 like I always do. And I was going to complain that the upper half, or actually not the upper half, probably the upper third of the table is relatively dark it's not well lit and this always happens whenever farsight has put in one of these giant toys you know like the boxer and champion pub or yeah you know anything that's tall like that they haven't they don't light it and i don't understand why they don't light it because any photo i've ever seen even in you know dark mode the the toy will be completely lit or you know they usually have some stuff yeah and this one it's just dark. But then again, it's such a god-awful ugly toy of a Frankenstein that you almost go, thank you. Yeah, it's terrible. Well, you know what's wrong with it? It's all out of proportion. Yeah, it's got these little tiny mutant arms and they're at such an odd angle. Yeah, you're like... I don't know. Yeah, it's weird. It's very weird. What they said was, geez, we're going to have to make a mechanism here that throws the balls out. And the theme is Frankenstein. So it'll have to be something to do with Frankenstein. Okay, well, we'll just put a big, you know, we'll basically replace... See, this is the thing with this game. It reminds me so much of Jurassic Park. Even the ramp is almost in the same place.
    21:29
    And the big head is basically where the raptor, not raptor, the T-Rex was. and the pop bumpers kind of in the same place as well. Like you've looked at it and the similarities for me, it looks a lot like Jurassic Park. Except for it's mirrored. And I always said Jurassic Park was a mirror of Whirlwind.
    21:51
    That's right. Pinball Whiz makes a good point here that it actually looks a bit like Harley Davidson as well, which is quite true.
    21:58
    Yeah. So anyhow. But it plays better than Harley. I will say that. Yeah, that's right. It doesn't have that video mode. So it's good.
    22:07
    And I hope the shout-out's up. Yeah. Well, except for, I'm wondering how soon it's going to be before I get tired of hearing Frankenstein going...
    22:18
    Yeah, I know. Yeah, that used to really wear thin when I was in the arcade, too, because every time you hit that ramp, he does that, and it's like, shut up, dude. Yeah.
    22:31
    There goes that mystery rider again. I did play it one version because you get to choose right off the bat whether you have the movie soundtrack or the Edgar Wright soundtrack and I played through both sessions with both music cues and I gotta say I way prefer the soundtrack because the Edgar Wright one it just sounds like a bad 80s table I don know it doesn match any recreation of a song You know it terrible Yeah I know I should really stop playing the Edgar Wright version of it because I always used to, and I think this is where I'm getting my cranky opinion of the table is because of that thing playing all the time. I should just switch over to the movie soundtrack and do myself a favor. Yeah. I did have in the, again, playing the beta, the first time I switched over to the Edgar Wright soundtrack, the soundtrack didn't play at all. And I thought, oh, interesting choice. You were thinking, oh, didn't they get the Rotsport or something? No, I didn't think that. I figured it was beta, and for some reason they hadn't programmed it in yet. And then probably on my third ball, all of a sudden I hit a particular switch, and boom, it started playing up. So I've had that kind of audio issue before. There's actually one that currently does in Whirlwind where whenever you get to quick multiball, it stops playing all the music. Oh, right. Okay. And I've registered that complaint because it plays in DX9. It's only in the DX11 version that it doesn't play the music during that segment. So I figured it was something of that nature. But since then, it's actually played that soundtrack.
    24:24
    Right. So on to the, I guess, okay, I need to caveat this. This is feedback about a beta that's currently being tested. This is not reflective of the final product. Take this as you may. So on the Android version at the moment that's being tested, there's a few strange things happening, which I think is probably down to the fact that this table, if you remember, has a really huge DMD on it. Yeah. It's essentially an HD DMD compared to the other ones. I think it's got twice as many dots or something like that. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Fact check is in the chat. The gallery. Sure, it's like, yeah, the fact-checking gallery. But, yes, because of that, they've had to change some things in the way that they do DMDs, and that's meant that all other tables with DMDs aren't working at the moment. So, yeah, it's like someone switched off the DVDs and all the other DMD tables. So you can almost guarantee that this is relating to the way they've had to redo the DMD for Frankenstein. But I'm almost certain that will be solved before it goes out the door. So this was Sega's big sell. They're like, look at our DMD. It's twice as big. Yeah. Because at the time, it was all about movie licenses. So this allowed them to represent the sort of captured movie scenes a lot better on them. um oh okay you know what i mean um yeah more dots high resolution easier to animations yeah that's right um i think i don't know um my memory of the upper trough kick out was that it really threw that ball back super fast towards the upper right flipper and on the version at the moment it's not behaving that way it's really softly kicking it out so much so that if you hold the the flipper up you can kind of trap it on the flipper in a way like it will actually feed back nicely just roll a little bit up the flip of that and then you can take a shot towards the ice cave really easily and if you had wussy little arms like that you'd be throwing them like a girl too no this is there's actually do you know what i mean like there's a little there's a scoop yeah that scoop is weak it needs to be tuned a little bit better i think um and i should probably raise it in the beta thread as well because i don't think i've done that yet um and I think they were doing some, um, updates to some of the other tables as well. I think big shot and, um,
    26:59
    uh, circus Volterra receiving, um, uh, res bumps res, uh, the, uh, resource files that far. So, um, you know, do the tables, uh, and all the graphics and everything, and they're receiving bumps, but they've had a bit of trouble doing cams on, on them in the beta. So we'll just have to wait a little bit longer to get those, but that'll be really good. I'll be very interested to see what they do on Stigasville tier. I'm hoping that they'll make that ramp transparent because on mobile it's opaque still.
    27:28
    It's pretty not nice. We'll see what that looks like and what they've done there. Early days for the Android beta but I'm sure that Scott Umble will get right onto it when he gets back my Tuesday and back on US Monday and get onto it. He's really good that way. Looking forward to the second version of it differently.
    27:50
    I was kind of bummed that, and this is probably going to be the new trend, but once again, we basically get the beta and then a week later it's actually released to the general public. I don't think that's enough time to actually truly beta test a table. I don't know what any issues that we pop up with. It's kind of like you don't get a chance, a good crack at them. I know iOS is getting it much earlier for beta testing. They're doing most of the grunt work on it. I know. I know PinWiz is really great in the Android beta. He transfers all of the known issues over, so we know that they're looking into it and everything. So that's really a great service that he provides for us Android testers.
    28:32
    But yeah, I do agree. I think the beta times are a bit short. It would be better if we could have a little bit longer to do. I mean, the last couple of tables, we really didn't have a lot to feed back to FastLock because they were of very high quality in the beta. They were ready to GA pretty much. I only mind the cosmetic things, but this one's got a few more issues. They could have actually done with an extra week, I think.
    28:58
    Or maybe they just, I don't know, internally have a good reference now of what they're going for. Maybe they're phasing out us people.
    29:08
    I don't think they would be. They'd have to make a pretty big decision to do that. But, yeah, it's interesting. I've enjoyed the beta so far. Yeah. What if we should chat about something else we've been doing, Chris? You know, we probably should.
    29:36
    It's a very Zen-like way of playing. So we're going to do a little update on how we've been doing with Zen, our Zen book club reminding everybody I'm currently playing Super League Football and Jared is playing Ghostwriter and Bonzo changed his mind so what are you playing now?
    30:01
    Fantastic Four no longer Missplosion Man so Fantastic Four so I've tinkered around with the I just want to say soccer it's a soccer table okay god damn it i'm in the u.s we have football doing it's completely different so there uh um i've i'm enjoying again my problem is i could care less about the score i'm just concerned about being the teams that i'm playing against and one of the things i've discovered that i didn't realize before was that uh the team you're competing against they have difficulty levels and based on that difficulty level you need to hit basically you need to hit the ramps multiple times in order to extend your time with the ball you might say before the other team takes the ball away and you have to defend against them and you wind up having to hit the ramps a little bit quicker and your time for scoring on them when the ramps are lit for scoring becomes a little bit shorter but worst of all is if the other team gets control of the ball based on how difficult they are determines how many lanes are lit that you need to hit in order to defend and what your time limit is to defend those lanes yeah and i i become this wreck when i lose the ball because i'm like oh crap i can actually hit these and the other night i was playing and i was against what they were telling me was a very difficult team, and I shut him out. Oh, yeah. It was 6-0, baby. 6-0.
    31:43
    That's a full game. And you know what I got for that, which was awesome? Apparently I've done it before, but I've just kind of completely forgotten about it, because they were up there. But if you do a particular achievement of that on this table, there's a trophy shelf, and there's all these little trophies, and so I unlocked a trophy because I blanked a hard opponent. Yeah, that's right. I remember that. There's achievements inside the achievements, so you can actually get a little trophy. Yeah, that's cool. I remember that. And like you, I went, oh, a trophy. How did I do that?
    32:18
    That's mostly how it is with pinball effects for me. Oh, a trophy. Oh, look at that. Oh, did I do that? I was pretty stoked because not only was I feeling good about beating the team, but I earned something for it so i'm now trying to really hone in so i can give you proper advice jared and and kai on what to do with this table and i thought i was doing wonderful and then uh one of our listeners kasania who also uh does our the spreadsheet for the tournament that we run every month he then posted his score and it was like triple what mine was i was like god dang it yeah who did the same. Yeah, I saw that on Twitter. I went, oh, jeez. And they did the same for me on Ghost Rider as well. I just went, oh, dude. And then I gave him a ribbon. I made the mistake of giving him a ribbon. I said, well, consoles don't count. He goes, oh, yeah, but I play on the PC. My poor PC is feeling so, so depressed now.
    33:16
    Not a PC. Not a console PC. So how are you doing with Ghost Rider then? Yeah, pretty good, actually. I'm actually enjoying the game to bits, actually. It's a... when I played it casually, I just couldn't get into it. There was a blocker up there for me for getting into it, but since I've been concentrating on this week, I've grown to love it, actually. Once you get the timing right on that jump ramp, it's just as much fun as No Fear, getting the loops around it. So I'm having a ball with it. And the thing I didn't really understand until I read the really great guide by Shuriken to the Chin, I think he wrote it, is that the way you actually get into the Lost Souls area and the little flip-flop ramp that's on the right-hand side there as well,
    34:07
    the loops, you have to actually loop in a certain way. You can't just loop backwards and forwards the same direction.
    34:15
    So it's a bit sort of, yeah, unusual in the way you play it. But once you get used to it, it's great. Yeah, I'm loving it. And what are you learning with Fantastic Four? I only had a couple of rounds on it until now. And it is as always with Pinball at Me as long as I don know what I doing I doing quite well And as soon as I read rules and try to hit shots in a certain certain row it won work for quite a while so I hope I make some progress the next few days and then finally manage to actually get decent score on the table. It's fun but I think it's maybe one of the more shallow Zen tables. So it's not that much of a guide I can give. Why don't we bring in who I like to think is the resident Zen expert, PinballWiz45B. He's joining us. Maybe he can give us some quick pointers to try out for this next week, tell us if we're on the right track or not. PinballWiz, are you there?
    35:26
    I think he's actually there. Oh, he's silent. He's getting here, man. Looks like he's... Oh, there he is. Hey, how you doing? doing fine. I just wanted to...
    35:36
    What were you going to ask again? Maybe in this... Because we're going to be playing all of our respective tables for one more week before we hand them off to each other. So Super Elite Trouble, Fantastic Four, and Ghost Rider? Ghost Rider, yeah. Are we playing them appropriately as discussed so far? I think so. Ghost Rider I haven't been too much into kind of not fitting the theme for me Super League Football I've actually been nailing that table in the past my advice would be if you can lock the three balls in each of the different holes and then score the goals and you can activate up to four ball multi-ball. Collecting all ten of these players in the center of the play field will activate the wizard mode. And you can get even more goals just by collecting the super jackpots within the multi-ball.
    36:47
    Do you know what activates the gold soccer balls? Because I had that happen the other night and I have no idea. You'll have to collect all ten of the players on the center of the play field and how exactly do you collect the the players uh locking the balls each each of the three holes um well we'll designate a player like as attacker um sender or defense okay so like a minimum of four uh multi-ball activations will do it okay and then can you answer me this uh during halftime multi-ball is there actually anything that we're supposed to be doing other than killing time until... It's 50,000 points a shot.
    37:28
    And it just makes him perform tricks. Nothing major. Yeah, I usually just wind up kind of waiting for it to give me the sign that I can shoot the dugout or whatever it is.
    37:43
    Probably just best to end multiball and then just shoot the dugout. Right. Yep. Get on with the job. Gotta get more goals in Gotta get more goals Cool Do you have anything for Fantastic Four to concentrate on? That one's got some crazy ramp action, doesn't it? Indeed I haven't played on that much recently But there's basically many spelling modes In effect in this game That's probably all I know I'll need to play it again just to refresh.
    38:26
    Okay, well, a lot of fat help you were. Thanks, boys. Thanks for the note, guys. All right. Well, thanks for popping in and giving us the quick licks there. No problem. We'll talk to you again soon as we get farther into these tables, and maybe you can sample those other two and give the boys some advice. All right. All right, talk to you later. Thanks, boys. boom and with that I kicked him out I love that power so yeah I think we'll continue on I'll keep on playing keep on getting my Johnny Blaze on but yeah I think I actually wouldn't mind switching around a bit between the three I like to sort of just I think I'll just casually sort of play the three anyhow and just mess around the other day I played a bit of Fantastic 4 I think the one where you get to pick the balls when you launch them. Is that Fantastic Four? No, that's Avengers. Avengers, yeah. That's a strange game as well. Yeah, that's one that'll be interesting to spend a month with because it seems like you'll need a month to spend on that one. Yeah. It's very much like the whole selecting the balls thing at the beginning is very much like you select the doctors on Doctor Who and they give you different powers in the game like easier skill shots and all that sort of stuff. I like selecting songs on ACDC or Metallica. Very much. Interesting. Yeah.
    39:58
    All right. Well, that's cool. Yeah. If you want to jump around, that's fine. I'm going to stick with Super League for another week, obviously, and then I'll… Just going to keep it real.
    40:09
    Well, you know, in my friends list, I'm number two. Oh, nice. I'm coming after you. Yeah, I am too. I'm number two on Ghost Rider 2, but Martin Rusby is kicking my ass at like double my score. I got 53 million on Ghost Rider, and he's like 109 or something like that. So yeah, he's totally owning the leaderboards in my group at the moment. So if you would like to follow me on Google Play, definitely add me to your Google Play friends list. Jared Morgz is my handle. And I'd love to see you playing some of these tables and competing against us. Because remember, with pinball, it's more fun to compete.
    40:53
    Yeah, well, if you want to play against me, I'm on Steam with Shut Your Trap. I'm Bonto on Steam. And it's fun with the white bleeder boards on Steam or in the PC version. So it's quite easy to be second, third, or even first on some tables right now. I think that might change in the next few days. Zan Pinball was just posted in the chat here that his personal best was 2.3 billion in Super League. My best right now is like 325 million.
    41:28
    I don't even know how long that would have taken to get that score. Is that like four hours of play or something on that table?
    41:35
    I have no idea. Way too much. It must be insane. but um but it's somehow i think it's much more more fun uh having a break with uh then pinball than it is with pinball arcade it's it's uh it feels so much more like a video game so i don't feel i don't feel like cheating when when just uh hitting pause and exiting the table and then coming back two days later to continue the same game somehow it feels totally different from yeah I agree. That helps a lot. PinballWiz just clarified that that score took him one and a half hours.
    42:09
    I just went, really? Wow. There you go. One and a half hours of concentrated awesome. Pretty sure it's going to take me a lot longer. We should probably wrap it up, guys, because it's been about 40 minutes now.
    42:28
    See, we're never, ever going to hit that half an hour mark. I just know it. You might have noticed in the last bump out that I said, and we're in overtime. Because we always are. I figured that was about right, really. I should just put that on the end of every podcast. Well, we'll see if I actually get some pinball playing time in this week.
    42:48
    The work schedule that I was keeping this past week was kind of nuts. I wasn't getting home until three in the morning, basically.
    42:58
    So it would be wake up, go to work, come home from work, go to bed. yeah pretty much and repeat yeah and then and then so contrast that with uh yeah so friday i went in on 2 p.m got home at you know 2 p.m 3 p.m somewhere around there and then on monday i'm gonna go work on new hbo show called uh west world yeah okay oh yeah so i get to go a day play on that, and it's a 7 a.m. start.
    43:31
    Unfortunately, the location is about an hour and a half away from me. So, I'm going to be getting up at like 4.30 in the morning.
    43:39
    That's a bit rough. Wow. I know some people do that regularly, and then they go and exercise and crap like that, but no, I can't do anything that early in the morning.
    43:52
    Do not want. I always feel for these radio You know, the morning radio guys that, you know, yeah, their shift starts at 530 in the morning. I'm like, how do you do that day in, day out?
    44:04
    It's rough. I mean, for me, I'm getting up at like to make the recording on Monday. I get up at five o'clock to get in here by six to have breakfast and caffeinate myself to a level where I'm actually able to talk and then then talk at 630. So you take a train in, right? Normally, yes, I do. So I catch a train to the station, then, sorry, I ride my scooter to the station, then catch a train in, which allows me to, you know, do all the editing on the podcast on my way in, which is really good. Well, I was going to say, yeah, because at least you're not having to concentrate on the road or anything. You know, you can actually somewhat relax a little bit. Yeah. It's kind of good to actually sort of, you know, decompress after a big day. You can get on the train and just, you know, listen to podcasts and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's a good way of decompressing. speaking of that ladies and gentlemen is the sigh of it's all over it's over I will wrap this up for us let me get my thanks out to pinball whiz 45b for joining us and giving us some tips there for Kai Fitzner for Jared Morgan this has been Chris Freebiss Say, okay, shut your trap with the Blockade Podcast. See you all next time.
    45:27
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