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AtGames Legends Pinball 4K Hands On Discussion

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 0m·analyzed·Mar 18, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Blockade reviews AtGames Legends 4K cabinet: solid hardware, great haptics, but Magic Pixel games criticized for lazy design.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss their hands-on experience with the AtGames Legends Pinball 4K cabinet, covering hardware design, firmware updates, UI/UX, haptics, surround sound feedback, and game content quality. They praise the cabinet's build quality, customer service, and the Magic Pixel surround sound implementation, but criticize Magic Pixel's lazy DMD design across all tables, repetitive visual design choices, poor music quality on most games, and volume inconsistency between Zen and Magic Pixel titles.

Key Claims

  • AtGames Legends 4K cabinet has proper glass top with bevel above playfield, not direct screen placement

    high confidence · Chris describing physical specifications of cabinet from hands-on experience

  • Firmware updates took 1-1.5 hours with multiple download/install cycles and required a second update after completion

    high confidence · Chris recounting his setup experience with the cabinet

  • Magic Pixel Deluxe tables use identical DMD font and swirly background design across all games regardless of theme

    high confidence · Chris's detailed observation after playing multiple tables

  • AtGames customers who purchased the cabinet receive automatic 2-month Pinball Pass subscription, extended to 3 months due to Pinball Net integration delay

    high confidence · Chris explaining promotional offer for Legends 4K purchasers

  • Magic Pixel Deluxe tables use stacked layer approach that creates visual confusion due to lack of cloudiness depth variation

    high confidence · Chris's analysis of visual design technique in Magic Pixel games

  • AtGames Legends 4K cabinet startup time is approximately 1 minute from power-on to playable game, faster than most current Stern machines

    high confidence · Chris's measurement and comparison to Spike 2 system performance

  • The cabinet includes real coil solenoids (not plastic toys) that fire with flipper button presses alongside speaker feedback

    high confidence · Chris confirming solenoid authenticity through video verification planned for upcoming post

  • Magic Pixel volume levels are approximately double Zen volume levels when both set to same numeric value (e.g., 30 becomes perceived as 60)

    medium confidence · Chris's observation of volume imbalance between game developers' audio mixing

Notable Quotes

  • “The level of detail that gets put in becomes absurd. So when I first started doing the video, I almost wanted to mock it... I just want to build the damn thing.”

    Chris Freebus @ early in conversation — Explains his approach to unboxing video creation and why it resonated with audience despite his initial skepticism

  • “It looks like a pinball machine. It's not that narrow crap that was the previous version.”

    Chris Freebus @ cabinet comparison section — Key improvement highlight distinguishing 4K version from previous AtGames cabinets

  • “The cold is there. You know what I mean? The, you want the cold, you want the cold steel feel that's there.”

    Chris Freebus @ powder coating discussion — Describes tactile quality of cabinet finish and justifies design choice over chrome/polished steel

  • “What Magic Pixel has done—they have utilized that surround sound feedback to the hilt. Right? That table is alive. That ball, you know where it's rolling.”

    Chris Freebus @ surround sound section — Highest praise for Magic Pixel's audio implementation and spatial awareness in gameplay

  • “Magic Pixel, you're lazy. Every single DMD has the exact same font, has the exact same swirly, stupid background. It's lazy. It has nothing to do with the game itself.”

    Chris Freebus @ game content criticism section — Strongest criticism of game design philosophy across Magic Pixel Deluxe tables

  • “Inexcusable. That's just lazy.”

    Jared Morgan @ DMD design criticism — Co-host's agreement with severity of design criticism

  • “Customer service—I sent the notification on a Sunday evening. By Monday morning, they had already emailed me... Really good.”

    Chris Freebus @ customer service section — Positive acknowledgment of AtGames support responsiveness

  • “On Addams Family and Snoopy, Zen, you got some work to do, right? Their surround sound sounds like it's muffled. It sounds like it's in a box.”

Entities

Chris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonAtGames Legends Pinball 4KproductMagic PixelcompanyZen StudioscompanyBlockade Pinball PodcastorganizationPinball FXproductPinball Pass / Pinball NetproductArcade1Upcompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: AtGames customer service responsiveness: support ticket filed Sunday evening answered Monday morning with picture request; issue resolution followed within 24 hours

    high · Chris's positive account of AtGames support handling topper connectivity issue

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Zen Studios audio mixing problematic on AtGames cabinet: surround sound described as muffled, underwater-sounding, lacking brightness/treble; issue appears to be cabinet enclosure audio dampening rather than game design

    high · Chris's detailed audio comparison between Magic Pixel and Zen implementations; hypothesis about speaker enclosure causing muffled effect

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Magic Pixel employing lazy design approach: identical DMD fonts/visuals across all games, stacked layers without depth, mini-playfield overuse, repetitive visual tricks (floating clouds) applied to all tables

    high · Chris's systematic critique of Magic Pixel design choices across Deluxe and Natural History tables

  • $

    market_signal: AtGames Legends 4K unboxing video exceeded expectations in viewership, suggesting strong consumer interest in detailed product evaluation content for high-ticket virtual pinball cabinets

    medium · Chris noting his unboxing video 'took off' and generated significant viewership despite his skepticism of unboxing video format

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Magic Pixel demonstrates inconsistent design application of exclusive features: cloud overlay mechanic applied to all 4 Natural History tables despite being noteworthy on only 1, suggesting limited design iteration or quality control

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.181

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world it's jared morgan hi everyone How are you going?
0:25
Hey, folks. How's my audio level? Yeah, that's right. Hopefully, it's a bit better after we've been messing with it. I had to knock Jared down by like 10 decibels. Yeah, knock me down a couple of notches. Right. Something like that. Apologies for that. To my ear, when I listen back, it sounds just fine, but apparently not.
0:49
Yeah, it's not that you weren't audible. was just I was really loud when it was coming through. So it was like a mismatch of audio. But hopefully this one's better. Certainly our pre-recording tests suggest it is right, but who knows? Maybe my computer just likes balancing them out just nice and then when it kicks it out, it's just like... Yeah. Don't know. I don't know.
1:11
Weird. How you been, Jared? It's been a little bit. It has felt like a little bit. Yeah, we've missed a week here and there, haven't we? Yeah. Because reasons. Right. reasons here and there you know that's okay um uh y'all might have noticed i've been kicking out content and some of it y'all have been watching a lot of so how are your all your little side projects been going as far as videos go yeah yeah um you know they're getting a decent amount of use um i think the curiosity factor uh certainly plays and uh it's been a learning curve to be sure um it still feels weird when i do recordings to just start talking in a space to an invisible audience because i know that the people in my house all of a sudden are like what is who's he talking to do you actually have a camera a doing some work for you is it all just tripod no it's all just tripod so it's just spur of the moment all of a sudden i set it up and i just start talking and you know and when i'm out in my garage and i got the garage door open and people are just wandering by what is this guy doing he's talking to himself right in front of a pinball machine um yeah so So that's been kind of strange and something for me to like. I have no problem doing these podcasts talking to you because it's as if I'm just on a telephone call, right? It's just like we're having a chat. That's really what it's about. Right. Like we're on a Zoom call. Yeah, yeah. But when you're delivering content, there's a different way that you speak and the way your cadence comes out. It's just it's odd. That's all. um i can yes it's yes it's almost like yeah it would be different i've sort of done it before when i've just been recording my own things downstairs yeah for just like you know with handheld phone doing the walkthrough of the machine or like doing some nerdy thing that i'm doing down there yeah and it it feels weird i i end up just talking really and it's probably a bit sort of ad hoc i don't know yeah feels feels fine it just i don't know it sort of feels natural i feel the exact same way about i i don't have uh you know nest products around the house or anything um but i do have a remote that sometimes in the case of searching that you push and then you go you say the name of the show or whatever that you want and i feel so weird whenever i have to do that too. Talking to the remote control. Because the whole house is silent and all of a sudden you'll be like House of the Dragon. My little pony. And it's just like and then you're right back to being silent.

Chris Freebus @ sound quality comparison — Identifies Zen's audio mixing/cabinet integration issues relative to Magic Pixel

Legends HD
product
Pinup Popperproduct
Spike 2product

medium · Chris criticizing cloud mechanic repetition across all four Natural History tables as lack of variation

  • ?

    product_strategy: AtGames Legends 4K differentiates from competitors through legitimate solenoid haptics, proper 7.1 surround implementation with multiple speaker placements, glass playfield top, and faster startup (~1 min vs Stern ~30-60 sec)

    high · Chris's detailed hardware specifications and performance measurements against Arcade1Up, Legends HD, and Stern cabinets

  • ?

    product_strategy: AtGames extended Pinball Pass trial period from 2 to 3 months due to Pinball Net integration delays, indicating good-faith customer retention effort

    high · Chris noting 2-month auto-subscription extended by 1 month due to integration delay

  • ?

    product_strategy: AtGames working on arcade game support and OTG controller mapping for Legends 4K; currently arcade controller included but no games available; XBox pad emulation workaround required

    high · Chris's discussion of arcade controller mapping issues and AtGames working on support; Pinball Net integration still pending with 2-week to April timeline

  • ?

    product_concern: Firmware update experience problematic: 1-1.5 hours with multiple failed cycles and cascading updates; previous Legends HD had bricking issues during updates

    high · Chris's detailed account of update process taking hour+ with download/install failures; reference to Legends HD bricking complaints

  • ?

    technology_signal: Volume mixing imbalance between game developers: Magic Pixel games perceived at double volume of Zen games when both set to same numeric level (30 = 60 perceived), suggesting AtGames failed to normalize audio output

    medium · Chris noting Magic Pixel volume disparity and criticism that AtGames should have balanced volumes across developers

    • 4:18
    They're probably listening to you going what? Sure, House of the Dragon. Okay, fine. You know. I feel like it's doing karaoke if you had headphones on nobody else can hear anything um oh the silent disco sort of thing as well like you know when you dance the and there's no music right and it's like right it's good yeah um but uh the the the one video that i made that uh everybody apparently really likes was the unboxing of the at games legends 4k pinball um that thing that thing took off right it did that's unboxing man it did really well yeah and i'm like i find unboxing videos to be ridiculous and so i totally agree man i can't watch them i can't watch unboxing videos at all and the thing of it is is that half the time i'm just like get on with it what are you doing it's like cut the tape man like just cut it and open the thing up i don't want i don't really care if the box feels like 150 gsm or whatever right the level of detail that gets put in becomes absurd so when i first started doing the video i almost wanted to mock it and so it's a parody video and and and so i like i did the really close-up of the razor blade as i was going across the door and i went oh what are you doing um But I quickly dropped that because I'm like, that's not the kind of video. Otherwise, I would have spent five minutes on the kind of foam that they packed it with.
    5:58
    Meanwhile, I'm just like, I just want to build the damn thing. I just want to get the thing out of the box and build it.
    6:06
    So, yeah, what started out as kind of parody-ish just kind of went into more, look, if I was doing this, this is what I would want to see.
    6:14
    And apparently, you know, y'all enjoyed viewing it. so um yeah we're gonna talk i must admit yeah hand on heart i had to stop i couldn't watch it all i i just believe you i believe you that you unbox the thing and it's good yeah sorry yeah if you did watch the unpacking video then you got a fair amount of the impressions that I was surprised by mainly the size of the thing.
    6:44
    The look of it looks like a pinball machine. It's not that narrow crap that was the previous version.
    6:56
    Yeah, the previous AtGames version. Yeah, yeah. So that's an improvement. The height is taller than the previous AtGames version. I did compare it to my Pinsim cab, which measures exactly the same height as my pinball machines out in the garage. And this one is shorter by, I think it was like an inch, and it's narrower by three inches. But when you don't have it sitting next to anything, as to by itself, you don't notice.
    7:30
    Right. Okay. Yeah. That's good. The powder coating, I, again, first impression when I saw the pictures, I was like, oh, why didn't they just go with steel? Why didn't they do polished steel? Chrome. Chrome, whatever. Yeah, you know.
    7:45
    But then I realized that isn't most of Stern's stuff powder coated now? Sure is. Yeah. And, again, once I put hands on it, it just went, yeah, the cold was there. You know what I mean? the the you want the cold you want the cold steel feel that's there um it's just ridged because it's you know it's that powder coat texture on there um so your hand doesn't slide it what i think stern you know why i think stern went down that path this is a theory is it like over the years and i know this because of all the ones i've got chrome gets knocked around it looks a bit rubbish really yeah over the years yeah um but powder coats tough and and even on some of the really old absolutely hammered early sterns like you know simpsons pinball party and of that era the powder coats on those they're still they might be thin spots but they're still holding up and re-powder coating something it's easy like you know re-chroming something not so easy although i mean like all the got leaves and stuff it's not chrome it's just polished steel uh all the gotley well all my got leaves seem to be chromed like the legs are chrome the lockdown bar are chromed and the side rails are chromed no mine's just polished it's just made of steel because chrome would flake chrome would flake oh it's and i've taken i've taken polishing wheels to this stuff before. So you reckon it's actually not chrome at all? It's not chrome at all. No, it's steel.
    9:31
    And I say that because I have seen videos of people sending out their legs to get them chromed. And chrome is incredibly expensive to get done. So even if you buy brand new legs off of, you know, from Marco or from Pinball Resource, your legs are going to cost you 20 to 30 bucks per leg if they were actually chromed i think you're talking about 60 bucks per leg they've got to be then polished steel and that's why they rust as well and that's why they corrode um yeah yeah yeah so you think yeah that actually does make sense because if you think about it you're you're tightening and loosening the leg bolts all the time on pinball machines yeah that will be the first point where the chrome cracks on there so i think the maybe it's anodized metal because if you think about it on like let's say indiana jones it has that sort of like colored legs on it like a sort of yellowy sort of legs yeah so maybe that's anodized that's probably anodized anodized i'd say yeah yeah but not chromed probably because it would be it would be shiny if it was chromed right yeah um the actual feel of the cabinet it it's got a heft to it um there's there's a decent doesn't feel like a toy no it doesn't feel like a toy there's weight behind it for sure you don't feel like you're gonna lean on and break it um the the decal feels nice and attached it doesn't feel like some cheap paper or anything it's definitely a vinyl that's there um when i opened up the back of the cabinet it wasn't just all sudden raw mdf it's all black like it's got a um a wrap on it of sorts oh right so it's like covered mbf yeah yeah yeah like very similar to like you know if you ever bought a modern ikea bit of furniture they've done that now with all theirs like it's got like a vinyl sort of coating around yeah yeah yeah um skin it's a skin uh attaching the wires it was all very obvious. There was label and label and the labels were all different colors so you just matched up the two colored labels and plug, plug, plug, good to go. The only thing that proved an issue to me was the topper. I plugged that thing in. It didn't turn on. I could have sworn that I tried doing the plug the opposite direction because it's the only plug where the plug is directly in the center of the housing. all the other ones the plugs are staggered so there's only one way to plug it in i wound up filing a trouble ticket and was about to get it taken care of and i saw a video of somebody having the same issue and they were like you gotta turn the plug i was like i know i did this i know i did this i went took it apart saying bang it lit up i went unbelievable that being said customer service i sent the notification on a sunday evening by monday morning they had already emailed me asked me to send pictures i sent pictures and all my information and they were going to look into what was going to be needed to be done and by the next day i'd already figured it out boom sent a message back to them got it covered they're like great so customer service really good yeah the customer service was on top of it um so that was excellent that's really really good to hear yeah um the the very first firmware updates that took a good solid hour hour and a half it would well it would be downloading downloading installing downloading and then go fail and then you gotta start again and it was almost like it was just bit by bit doing each one it finally went all the way through and then it went there's a new firmware update and had to do another firmware update after that um so that was no joke that took a long time to get it up and running and going um that doesn't sound right but i mean that's just again that's that can be the nature of a firmware update but now i understand because people with the legends hd were complaining now and then about when a firm to where update would happen and it would completely bork everything uh brick everything yeah yeah um i mean i can see how frustrating that would be because yeah all of a sudden you would just have something that doesn't work um and you'd be waiting and waiting for them to to adjust it um fortunately that hasn't happened as of yet the ui is very intuitive um there's no instruction manual comes with this it comes with a qr code and you scan the qr code and the qr code gives you a brief video of them assembling the machine that's about the end of it there's no go to here and this is what this but the ui the way it's laid out the instructions on it are pretty clear tell you exactly what everything is going to do um i futzed around and you know tried ab comparison things you figure it out pretty easily it not it not difficult it pretty intuitive so that nice um and if you don like the way this ui looks which basically looks like pinup popper where it's you know balls rolling um you can go to the grid if you want okay that's cool uh the d-pad that it comes with yeah it's cheap it's nothing to write home about um i then quickly installed my arcade pad um it's a little punchier on the sound a little more lively but it is nice just having that joystick and having the buttons uh unfortunately and i'm having a really i haven't gone otg yet but unfortunately i guess it's still not mapped um and talking nice to computers you have to do like a way of fooling the computer into thinking it's an xbox pad and i know that's something that ad games is working on um or to make that experience a bit easier to be like a controller right now you cannot download any arcade games onto the machine so you have the arcade controller there's no games that you can play on it currently the only things you'd be playing is if you're playing otg but those are coming and i have a feeling that once that is there that's when out games is going to be addressing it i'm sure oh probably yeah and we'll get that working properly it's interesting though because that the ball that's in there now is was the updated board in the previous version of the full taping ball so you would think that they would have addressed those driver issues or that interface issue then um but maybe i don't know it's a different bit of software they're using so therefore um like they've had to they haven't got that support in there yet obviously yeah um trying to think of all the little uh little ticky tack things that go on there uh oh i was very pleased that it's glass on top um there's a slight bevel that then goes below that then goes to the playfield.
    17:19
    It looks nice. It's... Like I said, I was very pleased. I thought that it was directly on top for some reason. Like direct screen. Direct screen. But there's a nice piece of glass there.
    17:34
    And the actual playfield itself, you can look at it from any angle. It looks great. Also the field, the The field of view is great. Yeah, field of view is great. The back glass monitor, yeah, if you start going to the side, you start seeing the colors fade.
    17:54
    Look, they've put the money where it needs to go. Where your eyeballs are going to be. Yeah. That's exactly the right way of doing it. Yeah.
    18:03
    And then the same thing goes for the little DMD screen. Yeah, it's very directional. Yeah. Which, again, there was options of, I believe, being able to stretch the DMD, but I was very pleased that right out the box, Adam's family plays with the DMD and the proper aspect ratio. I don't think it would look very good at all stretched. No, but that's what people were doing on Arcade 1-Up's machine when they were importing, and I was just like, that drives me bonkers. that's yuck i'd rather have it thin and correct aspect ratio every day yeah um i will say that the dmd it's still a little small um yeah it's fine when it's using the entire 60 by 9 but for the four by one dm for the letterboxd md it's it's small there's no doubt about it as an aside not cabinet thing, but I've actually gone and selected the maximum size DMD in game in Pinball FX. It's much better. I've gone the biggest one you can possibly do. It makes a massive difference to mind joint of the game. Being able to not have to squint at it and be able to just really easily glance.
    19:25
    It's worth experimenting, but I agree that on a cabinet it would be nicer if that screen was just a touch wider and taller.
    19:35
    But, you know, it's still a price, and you can still see it and use it. And you're right. If it's like a full-screen video, it'd be absolutely fine, perfect size. Yeah.
    19:44
    The startup, you started up, so from flip the switch to playing a game, it's about a minute, maybe possibly a little bit more, barely.
    19:55
    So it's a pretty quick startup. It's better than most Stearns at the moment. like with this mike 2 system like you're waiting a lot longer for a game to come up to power maybe about 30 to one minute so as well so yeah you know it's probably fine uh in terms of things that uh you know quality of life that would be interesting for them to change in software terms and i know that a lot of people are asking for it um high scores whatever table you have selected like you know move the menu over to it'll display global high scores up on the back glass top 10 if you wait a long time eventually it'll show your local high scores so the ones that you have on the table it as far as i'm concerned i want to see those first uh yeah make me look up the global but i want to see my high scores pop up being able to select what scores display first makes sense to me as well. That would be a nice quality of life. When you post a score, it just says you've scored on the high scoreboard. It doesn't tell you where. It doesn't tell you your position.
    21:11
    So that's kind of like one of those, well, no, I want to know where I placed right then and there. Yeah, exactly. Just like Zen. But unfortunately what it is, is it has to communicate with the network first. so and it doesn't do that until you exit out of your game that's when it makes its connection and does the talking because sometimes it doesn't talk immediately it sometimes can take an hour or two for your score to actually populate oh so it actually caches it cases it or maybe it doesn't and it sends it in the leaderboard to the thing that are taking a while to refresh yeah like the actual software leaderboards um and that's a that's a subscription feature isn't it you gotta have a sub to get access to global league wards i don't i honestly i don't know they're up there right now i don't and i don't have a subscription anything okay um but that's good then because you know i think there's some stuff they restrict and i'm a bit hazy on the details so they haven't released yet what they're calling pinball net yeah that's the thing pinball net allows you to basically have access to all the games for a monthly fee. That's like Pinball Pass. It's Pinball Pass. Kind of like Pinball Pass. Yeah.
    22:26
    They still haven't integrated that. That's not supposed to happen until I think two weeks from now. If even that, it might not be until April. There was a delay, and because of the delay, they're going to give everybody... Everybody that purchased one of these machines was going to get an automatic two-month subscription. and they're now extending that by another month um oh that's cool just to get a little bit more time yeah um yeah that's cool to mess around with all those and so i yeah i don't know about the global leaderboards if that is only via that or not um hard for me it's hard me to say.
    23:09
    How about them haptics? Okay, so. Yeah. I got the surround sound feedback kit pre-installed. They, I was going to do it myself because I didn't want to delay in the shipment, and then they were like, no, we can get it to you with no delay. It's just the 50 bucks. I was like, okay, fine. I'll pay the 50 bucks. eliminate the hassle of me having to drill a hole in the bottom for the subwoofer to come through and all that. And I'm very glad I paid it because by all accounts, a lot of people are saying it's finicky lining up the speakers where they're needing to go and avoiding all the wires that are dangling about. And some people have caused damage who weren't being particularly careful. so yeah um for me it was worth it however my game still got delayed the amount of time that they initially had told me it was gonna be so i didn't get it um basically i got two days before my birthday at the end of february so right um but still though sounds like if you were like considering buying one of these cabinets and you're in america and you wanted that surround sound thing just pay the money and i'm going to tell you right now unless i'm sure there's a third party that are doing surround sound feedback kits i mean they were doing it for the legends hd so i'm sure that they'll do the same thing um with those it was though you had an exterior module and an amplifier and you could turn the volume there this it's all integrated into the software which is kind of what i wanted um so if you didn't do the surround sound feedback all you would have is the two haptics that are underneath your palm where the D-pad board is or where the arcade stick is. And there are two solenoids pounding into the bottom of the cabinet. And I checked today. There's a video I'm going to be posting real soon this week that they're legitimate real coils solenoid fires. It's not, again, arcade one-up. They have these little plastic things. Yes. that, again, it felt like a toy. It was nice that it was an actual solenoid as opposed to, again, I don't think Legends HD had a solenoid at all. I think it was all speakers. All speakers, I think.
    25:33
    But this is a legit solenoid. So, when you're playing, both the speaker fires when you hit the flipper button and the solenoids fire.
    25:48
    Those solenoids are loud. Loud. You can turn the solenoids off so that it's just the speakers, and now you have complete control of your volume, how loud those are actually going to be playing. That's cool. The surround sound feedback is pretty amazing. Is it? It's pretty amazing.
    26:12
    I'm going to just say right now, what Magic Pixel has done, they have utilized that surround sound feedback to the hilt right that table is alive that ball you know where it's rolling you know where found things are firing the sound that they use um that they've utilized is bright and in your face and it sounds like you're in front of a real machine wow um that sounds really cool i'd love to really experience that it really does uh and and you know when the pop-uppers are going it feels like because it's the speaker that's way up there it's a 7.1 surround sound basically um wow where do they put all the speakers on the sides of the cabinet oh do they right so yeah so basically what basically what you got is you got the two speakers coming out the front, right? Yeah. You've got four, so two directly below those speakers at the back of the cabinet, two midway, and then you've got the two that are right underneath your palms, and then you've got the subwoofer. So there's your seven-point. Wow. Okay. Right. The subwoofer doesn't, like, when you do an audio check, it barely sounds like it's on. Yeah. and oh and the subwoofer is encased in a box so it really is can be boomy um so it's got the same base reflex chamber yes right it's not using the cabinet as the base reflex chain which pretty much all other pinball machines do right um and i think that that was what was causing initially people having an issue with the nudging accelerometer misfiring.
    28:06
    Oh, because it was vibrating too much. Yes. So I don't know if that's what the enclosure was supposed to help. I haven't had the subwoofer fire off my accelerometer. But what people that first got this were saying the subwoofer was really loud, and then the firmware update that I obviously updated immediately and didn't know any different was, apparently killed the sound of the subwoofer. And it's something, again, AtGames, I guess, is looking at adjusting, making it better.
    28:35
    That being said, depending on the game that you're playing, sometimes, man, it sounds like that subwoofer's rocking. Like, you feel the rumble in the cab and stuff.
    28:47
    Yeah. So it actually, would you say that it kind of emulates like a shaker motor a bit or is it not quite shaker motor no not quite and again i'd be very curious to like if zen put out uh roadshow that's where i'd really want to know because obviously that's a shaker motor i don't know that magic pixel is trying to emulate a shaker motor in any of theirs and i say that because they have a table that's dino dynasty dinosaur dynasty there there's a moment where it's like a dinosaur stomping and the whole the playfield shakes oh yeah but you don't feel it yeah and that would be it seems like a key moment where that subwoofer should be like you know firing yeah making a lot of noise yeah on adam's family and snoopy zen you got some work to do right their surround sound sounds like it's muffled it sounds like it's in a box they need to adjust the timber of everything and brighten it up just crank up that treble um because it all very muted and muffled sounding adam family my god you can hear that ball drop into the subway You can hear the ball roll forward into the eject I mean, you can hear all the mechanics working underneath, which is cool. But again, it's just when you compare it to what Magic Pixel is doing, it just sounds muffled. It doesn't sound as good. Just because, like, they're probably tuning it for speakers that are exposed to the air, but probably because they're inside the cabinet, everything sounds like it's underwater, essentially, right? Correct. And I'm going to get into, this I think ties into other problems that Zen is having. I'll get into that in a moment. Okay.
    30:49
    So my cab came with 15 tables, came with Adam's family, and then four natural history tables, and then a mess of, what is that, four? and then 10 Zacharia Deluxe tables. Right, okay, with the video screens. Right. I have never played any of the Deluxe tables, and obviously never played the Natural History, because those are exclusive to this cab. At games. To at games.
    31:19
    Magic Pixel, you're lazy. Every single DMD has the exact same font, has the exact same swirly, stupid background.
    31:33
    It's lazy. It has nothing to do with the game itself. It's not even themed. It's not themed at all to the table. At the very most, there's a graphic that'll pop up that is themed to the table, but it only pops up momentarily, and then you're back to the scoring, and it's back to the exact same font, exact same kaleidoscope swirls.
    31:53
    It's on every Magic Pixel title. including the Seuss tables, including the Taito tables, every single one of them. Inexcusable. That's just lazy.
    32:08
    That is pretty bad, yeah. The, and I'll eventually do a breakdown of, I'm going through it right now, of the tables, and my kind of review of them. but in general all these deluxe tables are all this all all match pixel did was just stack layers but because we're looking at it top down you can't tell and they didn't right like the clear layers there should be cloudiness as you go deeper and it's not and so it is visually very confusing on a lot of things and you know how i'm not a fan of mini playfields they've got many playfields up the wazoo and they're pointless and sometimes i can't for the life of me figure out how to get to them because they'll have something magical come and grab the ball and drop it on there which means you have to do a sequence of something in order to get it to grab the ball in the first place it's not a ramp directly leading to it no so i don't problem don't like that um the natural history tables all four of them have this cloud that floats over the playfield would have been cool on one of them but the fact that it's on all four of them and the cloud is different colors so like on amazon it's a rain cloud on uh dino dynasty it's the cloud from a volcano on the exoplanet it's a green cloud but it's a cloud and it just floats all around the table obscuring your vision which is like i'm fine with the fact that it makes it more interactive but the fact that they put on all four of the tables is just you're repeating the same trick and in general all of these deluxe tables apart from the samey they're very the same the oh and oh the synth soundtrack oh you can turn off you can turn off music yeah but if you turn it off for one table you turn it off for every table so if i want to go play out of this family i then have to go back through the menu the you know the main settings menu turn music back on and then i have music with adam's family but then if i want to go play any of these other ones i'd have to go back and turn off the music and believe me i want to turn off the music on most of them i want to turn off the music there's only like maybe three or four where i'm like music works i'm cool with it um and it's mostly the ones from zen well no no i'm talking about of the magic pixel stuff uh what ones do you think have tolerable music on um on from the magic pixel collection i mean off the top of my head it's hard for me to even go there um it's a question for later then it's a question for later it's a question for later um that that'll be something that i keep in mind uh when i do an actual review of that stuff uh oh the volume level between zen and magic pixel magic like zen if you set your volume to say 30 you then play a magic pixel game and it's as if it went to 60 just yeah blows you out. Which is really annoying.
    35:54
    Yeah. Zen always, like, the thing is that Zen always has had troubles with volume leveling in their games, and they still do. They haven't got it quite right. Yeah, but I would expect that app games would have balanced the volumes. Do you know what I mean? They're the hardware vendor, not the software vendor.
    36:09
    It comes down to the person cutting the code for each of the packages. No, but what I'm saying is, your hardware does have volume control. yeah and if you're having you know because eventually farsight's games are also going to be on this thing okay but the gottlieb collections i want everything to be even volume you know there's no reason why at games couldn't pre-do the volume levels so they're matching um because there's no if i don't expect zen to talk to magic pixel and go hey what you know Let's balance these out. That's not a thing. It's really just a concept of what are the decibels coming out of the speakers. That's what they need to level it on. And that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. If they're getting like a feed of like five decibel out and it sums 10, then they adjust it at the hardware level to be a consistent thing. They could do that. I think that that's possible.
    37:08
    Keeping up with Magic Pixel. So I was fortunate enough, the contact that I have at AtGames gave me some table codes. So I wound up getting the Dr. Seuss tables, and I wound up getting the Taito collection tables. Okay. And those Taito tables surprised me. Oh, really? Some of them are excellent. some of them are eh no what you find out though is okay Space Invaders hands down great wonderful fantastic except for you go on forever and you're doing the same thing the entire game which is it's a very open play field on purpose because you have waves of invaders. You start off with one invader, then it's two invaders, and then four, and they just keep on expanding, right? And their health keeps on growing. And it's not just you hitting the ball and whacking them. You have turrets on your slingshots that are firing at them or can fire at them. And then by hitting ramps, you can freeze them or hitting stand-up targets. You can fire missiles at them or hitting this other thing will send out a gas that decreases their life by half. So there's ways of making them go lower.
    38:45
    Okay. But it's also a game where it's not just three balls. You basically have five lives. And you have to eliminate a certain amount of the wave. otherwise even though you still might have five lives the game might just end because you didn't eliminate enough but if you're eliminating enough well at one point i had 11 lives now that's a lot of lives and you're just playing and playing and it becomes where it's like there's nothing new that i'm doing though i'm hitting the exact same shots i'm not even paying attention to where the Space Invaders are. I'm just trying to freeze and nail and go. And there's where it gets repetitive and kind of same-sie boring. Well, I guess that's Space Invaders, right? That's Space Invaders. That's how the game plays. So Space Invaders is in one pack.
    39:43
    Bubble Bobble is in another pack. And Operation Wolf is in another pack. All three of them, the exact same game mechanic.
    39:51
    Oh, really? Lazy! Lazy. All three of those have great sound packages. Right. Stripped from the games kind of thing. Again, the Space Invaders one sounds great. Yeah. But lazy.
    40:10
    Then you have the other tables that come with them. And they are all, all of a sudden you have an EM reel, basically. Except for it doesn't roll like an EM reel. It just goes digital. But it looks like an EM reel. And I get lazy. Lazy.
    40:27
    And the scoring is more akin to what an EM would be. The layouts are very much, and this is where Magic Pixel excels. I've always said they should be doing Gottlieb EMs. They're good at the simple layouts. Please. They're good at those. Give them Gottlieb EMs. So there's a handful of titles that are quite fun with the layouts. There's one called Chack'n Pop that literally is a reskin of William Sorcerer. Oh, really? It's the exact same layout. I mean, I really need to do a layover and see what has changed. But as soon as I saw it, I went, that's Sorcerer. um where they fail or don't do as good they're just not very good at coding yeah for the games at the rules so if you treat it like an em which also isn't going to have an amazing set of rules they don't then you're gonna be fine then you'll enjoy it um yeah the physics are great love the physics it's a very bouncy ball um but it's a very live ball it's not floaty like what Zachary of Pinball used to be like, where it was kind of odd. It just felt weird. It felt like Farsight's physics. No, these are... They feel great. It feels like you're playing a machine. That's pretty good.
    41:59
    Very narrow flipper gap, though, so your games go forever. Oh, and that's something, you know, on every single one of the Deluxe tables, the Seuss tables, and the National History tables, there's a center post, and the center post lowers then can raise back again and when i say lower it's like a zipper flipper where it slowly goes down to make the gap bigger but then if you do something it'll spring back forward so that it's now directly in between the flippers but again like zero chance of draining yeah it makes the games go on a long time yeah right um and again is that why are you doing this on every single one have it have a purpose it's a feature like that that was a feature on all other games there are some of the and i think this is in the tato ones definitely in the seuss ones where you're like why did you put a flipper there there's literally nothing for that flipper to be flipping to like why is it there what am i supposed to be shooting with that yeah it's a diverter. That's all it is. That's all you're doing. So, weirdness there. Okay.
    43:12
    Like I said, Tato Collection, though, worth the money. Okay. That's good to know. Seuss Collection, the two and a half year old that comes here and that my wife watches, loves playing the pinball. He just goes, but he really likes the Seuss tables because he's been reading Dr. Seuss.
    43:36
    So, if you've got a kid in the house, it's a great pull them in. That's an instant purchase. Yeah, it's a great way of pulling them in. That being said, they're not easy tables because they work in zones.
    43:51
    Oh. And that's not an easy way of playing pinball. So, said kid drains fast because there's not a long play. Whereas Space Invaders, He goes on a long time because it's a big open play field. Yeah.
    44:11
    I'm probably going to be getting one or two of the Gottlieb collection, basically the ones that have the EMs in it, because I don't want anything to do with, you know, Bum Busters or Winter Sports or, you know, whatever, Wipeout. Yeah. But I do want to try them and see, did Farsight work on these? Or did they just port them to HD, which is what I suspect happened. That being said, theirs have been delayed from when they were supposed to come out, which is par for the course for Farsight. Which is, absolutely. They probably had to find an engineer that knew how to compile the code. Yeah. That's still on staff. Yeah. But do I think for an instant that the graphics were all updated and that there's not going to be a scorecard that crystal clear to read Nope I guarantee it going be blurry um no set your expectations as low as you can and then be pleasantly surprised at what you get yeah all right it's very harsh i know but come on we're realists here so let's talk about the two zen titles that are available uh adam's family which came on the machine and then snoopy um which i also got uh elephant in the room lag exists 100 it is there um it is it unplayable no you can play it very much reminds me of when i had my projection tv and i was playing uh on my ps3 through a receiver, and that was introducing lag. Oh, yes. And my brain got accustomed to it, and I was able to deal with it. Where it becomes painfully obvious, and this was the exact same thing with when I was playing it there, is when you need to do that quick save, that twitch, because the ball went off funky on the tip and went over to the other side, you're not going to have time to react. You just don't. You're going to lose it. but I've been able to post pretty good scores on Adam's Family I've made the top 50 on the board I think I'm in the 30s right now oh that's great it's playable it's just you notice it it's not as crisp you go and play one of the Magic Pixel titles and you're like damn that feels good you play out of this family between the audio and that you're like it's you know it's not uh you're not in love with it it's yeah you have reservations yeah you want to feel crisp and snappy it's not um yeah that being said i know for a fact zen is still working on this issue um yeah they're very much aware of it video that I'm going to be posting. I did purchase Goldleaf Springs because everybody was saying, oh, it makes a ton of difference. And I went, it's not going to make a difference. It's a software issue. And I saw another YouTube video where the guy did super slow-mo on his button pushes compared to the flip. And he broke it down by milliseconds and went, there's no difference because it's software. It's software, folks.
    47:46
    There's things you can do i turned off the solenoids yeah because the solenoids were firing as soon as you push the button but then there's the delayed sound from the surround sound so it was like an echo so i turn off the solenoids so i don't have the echo again helping my brain work into being able to be playing absolutely so it's there that being said the tables play great um they're crisp they look fine um am i noticing that there's a lack of lighting fidelity compared to what is on the pc not particularly uh because it's right on par with what the magic pixel titles are looking like so will i notice once i go otg probably i'm just not there yet i don't i don't have the graphic card yet to be able to to run it um so you know there's that um another thing with the audio and this is what i this is what i legitimately think zen did i don't think zen programmed for the surround sound feedback i don't think they did either um and i say that i probably didn't have it when they actually had their cabinet no um to test um it feels like it is programmed for the rumble on your controller.
    49:17
    And I say that specifically because whenever the ball hits your flipper, like if you want to do a dead pass and it hits the flipper, there is a deep bass. Boom!
    49:31
    I'm like, what the heck is that? It's the thing that would have triggered on the rumble pack to make you feel like it just bounced. yeah it's the wrong sound zen get rid of it yeah it shouldn't do a funk it's louder than when the ball is in the pop bumpers oh no that's not right that's what i'm saying it's coded for the rumble it's not coded for surround sound now i should say they obviously did do something because you can hear the direction of where things are happening on various pieces but zen needs to spend more time on it they need to go in and do us bespoke surround sound um to get into there i think obviously all their attention right now was on the lag and not on that um that's the right place to be spending the money let's be frank but um announced they've got next generation twilight zone the three star trek tables and then obviously they got the cabinet for Attack from Mars coming out.
    50:41
    That's a nice lineup. It's a nice lineup, but if you're having this problem across the table, all of it, people aren't going to be happy. People aren't going to want to necessarily be buying this stuff. So it needs to be fixed sooner rather than later.
    50:57
    Yeah. I think that after the lag, that the sound issue needs to be addressed right quick it honestly comes back to my concerns about having that RockChip package on their board it's definitely fine for the MagicPixel stuff because they're not running Unreal but yeah I don't know whether they can actually solve this with software yeah like it's it is a they're bottlenecked by the hardware at the moment i just don't know how to get moved around this i mean i don't know and magic pixel has obviously had a lot longer time with to optimize well i mean yeah because they were doing everything for legends hd so they've had a lot more time with this whole thing being able to figure it out so it makes all the sense in the world they knew the sounds surround sound feedback boom got it absolutely We're designing for it. Exactly what to do, yeah. Whereas Zen is clear is just porting to this. Yeah. But, you know, again, Zen, you're competing with yourself for anybody that's doing OTG. And if you want to make this, anybody that's buying these cabinets and you want to make them feel like they're getting the best experience, is little... Well, the lag isn't a little thing, but the audio, that's a little thing that shouldn't... You just need somebody to go in there and redesign the timber of all the sounds. Yeah. Just adjust the levels. And you'll be good. Yeah.
    52:45
    Otherwise, I mean, that's just kind of running down there, but I'm happy with this, Jared. It's cool. it's a lot of fun it sounds really good it sounds like it's a great little thing to have in the corner of your house just to walk up to and play that's exactly what it is it's just sitting in my living room and I get done watching TV or whatever and I'm like I'm going to go play a game or two and next thing you know an hour has passed like I said I've now got 35 games built into this thing I'm looking forward to being able to sample all the tables that I don't have which will basically be all the regular Zachariah collection.
    53:24
    Yes. Just to see what those all feel like and look like. Oh, that's the other thing with Zach with Magic Pixel and these deluxe tables.
    53:34
    Because it's top-down, there's so much stuff that's obscured in terms of reading anything. Oh, yeah. Did you guys not... You were designing this exclusively for this cabinet, not to be played elsewhere. You should have thought about some of this. Just saying. but I'm really looking forward to getting the computer hooked up and playing OTG. Same with the differences there.
    54:03
    I just need to get a better graphics card because I watched to follow up on last episode. I did actually watch space. These videos on how to get everything set up. And he definitely did a great job. Oh yeah. That video.
    54:17
    I actually, I still don't have time to actually do it, but like watching it, it's like it's still even if you use the installer um the board installer to install everything you still got to go and select the right main package if you want to use vr you still got to it's still assembly required but it gets you a long way there i was gonna say but are you do you feel like you're a little bit more inclined to try it now than you were before 100 yes like it's like i would watch that video a few more times get my head around it and at least i know where to start And I think the flow chart that Spacey's used in there to show the different bits, it makes you go, I don't need that, I don't need that, I don't need that because I don't have a cabinet. And you don't have to worry about it. Like that's really useful information. And it pains me to say this, but now that I have a cabinet, so much of my focus is on it now. Yeah. that's what I when I say I'm really enjoying this that's my biggest takeaway you know because I had a screen that rotated and I could play cabinet mode but I was still sitting doing the thing telling you folks once you go this route yikes it's very enticing and it's you want everything adjusted for it now even though you know that you're niche among everybody else is playing um it's it's a spectacular feeling and i know jared feels the same way when he's played vr where it's like oh please make it all for this now um man i'm counting down the days probably you know towards the end of the year let's be frank probably before you even see anything vr yeah but like geez well what i'm really hoping for good what i'm really hoping for is that i can use this cabinet as the controller for when i play vr yeah you can basically get rid of your pin sim and this becomes your controller yeah yeah it's got all the things you want in it it's got it's got all the doff it's got yeah well it's got surround sound it's got everything you would want in a cabinet to be leaning up against it would be amazing it would that would be just like that'd be it done and you know what it would be even better well even more interesting is that with um quest well just as jared was going to say something interesting bye jared oh there you try again my back try again hello hi right the other thing was um with quest three and then your vr headsets you've got ar pass-through so imagine being able to stand in front of your legends cabinet and have some sort of like i don't know a vr code like a qr code that keys in all the surfaces onto your legends at games cabinet oh come on gives you how about that right just imagine if you could actually do that in vr and they coded that in that would be like shut up and take my money that'd be amazing yeah so i am In conclusion, for everything, I'm just going to say, if you're looking, I can 100% say, if you're looking to get into VR cabinets on the cheap end of things, that you didn't want to spend the $4,000 minimum to do the full size cabinet with the 46-inch screen or whatever it is, and all those bells and whistles where the price tag just shoots up really fast, but you really feel second to none. this feels so much better than the arcade one-up cabinet that i tried out at costco which did feel like a toy and it looks way better than the legends hd looked via pictures and artwork um plus you've got three screens and everything like that i think um i mean in terms of building yourself price-wise fit and finish i'm happy um for right now you know again i've had it for a month and a half um it's hard to say what the build quality will be you know a year from now but based off of everybody's experiences with owning the legends hd it seems like it'll hold up um nobody has complained about the packaging that this has been shipped in Any damage has been purely because of FedEx.
    58:58
    So I think it feels like it's a good product. I think Zen made a smart, wise choice here. So, you know, keep your eyes out. Maybe pick up one of those pre-sales for less than the $1,500. But get your surround sound feedback kit in there for sure. That sounds like a game changer, that feedback kit. And get them to install it. Yes, get them to install it. Don't mess around.
    59:25
    It really should just be sold that way. But what are you going to do? All right. This has been exceedingly long because we had a long gap in between time.
    59:39
    But next time, who knows? Maybe Zen hasn't put out a game in a while. Maybe we'll have a game by the next time we talk. It's possible. You never know. but if we don't talk about that we'll talk about all the things jared likes to talk about she's a blank screen okay go jared stuff and things i'm presuming that went through because i don't know the audio went through but you were completely frozen it was fantastic all right folks until next time bye-bye see you later