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Vol. 4 Reactions and Live Drop Contraptions

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 5m·analyzed·May 27, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Blockade goes live; Zen Volume 4 tables feature groundbreaking flipper physics modeled from high-speed camera data.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss Blockade Pinball's new live streaming setup and its production benefits, then dive deep into Zen Studios' Volume 4 pinball table releases (Whitewater, Hurricane, Road Show), focusing on the revolutionary flipper physics engine that took a year to develop and uses high-speed camera data of real flipper behavior. They praise the visual and mechanical improvements over Pinball Arcade while noting gameplay challenges and design choices.

Key Claims

  • The new flipper physics in Zen Volume 4 took approximately one year to develop and were modeled using high-speed camera recordings of actual flipper behavior.

    high confidence · Chris and Jared attribute this to Mel's previous podcast discussion and note Deep's involvement with high-speed camera recordings of flipper compression and ball impact.

  • The new flipper physics will only be released on Volume 4 tables initially (Whitewater, Hurricane, Road Show) and will be applied to other volumes later after community feedback.

    high confidence · Chris explicitly corrects Mel's statement: 'Not the case. It's only going to be for Volume 4 right now. Basically, they're using this as a public beta.'

  • DeadFlip (Jack Danger) switched from Zen physics mode to Arcade physics mode on Whitewater and was immediately impressed with the difference.

    high confidence · Chris describes watching DeadFlip stream: 'he's playing it in Zen mode... put it to arcade mode... within two flips he was like holy crap, why the hell would anybody not play in this mode?'

  • Zen Studios' art direction uses 3D renders based on cabinet artwork and flyers rather than original designs.

    high confidence · Chris states: 'it's not like Zen is just freestyling on their art. No. They find the art on the cabinet or on the flyer and they basically do a 3D render of it.'

  • The flipper physics implementation allows for visible ball backspin effects that change trajectory and enable more convincing dead passes and post passes.

    high confidence · Chris describes: 'the ball doing where it's got some backspin going on to it, and it'll also change trajectory a little bit because of that backspin... they do absorb the energy of the ball a little bit.'

Notable Quotes

  • “It's taking the same amount of time as it takes to record the episode, only to then do post-production on it.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~0:03:00 — Explains the production bottleneck that led to developing the live streaming solution

  • “He fixed it the next day. It was like, sweet!”

    Chris Freebus @ ~0:27:00 — Demonstrates Zen's responsiveness to community feedback on flipper physics during beta testing

  • “holy crap, why the hell would anybody not play in this mode?”

    DeadFlip/Jack Danger (cited) @ ~0:13:00 — Endorsement from respected player validates arcade mode flipper physics as superior

  • “He was sitting there with a high-speed camera watching it in super slow-mo, seeing how the ball hits, seeing how the rubber compresses, if it compresses at all, seeing how the flex of the flippers go. It's crazy.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~0:29:00 — Details the meticulous development process behind the flipper physics engine

  • “This is what happens when you get people that are obsessive about pinball, and they're the programmers and the designers and all of the above.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~0:30:00 — Explains the philosophical approach underlying Zen's technical excellence

  • “Zen doesn't read the forum. Let him know on Twitter... That's the best way to communicate with them.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~0:31:00 — Practical guidance for community feedback channels during public beta period

  • “Pinball Arcade and he looks like he had a go with some bleach. It's washed out.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~0:08:00 — Visual comparison highlighting quality gap between Zen and Pinball Arcade rendering

  • “I think Zen has better things to do than worry about the color of the lock bar.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~0:47:00 — Commentary on community controversy over Road Show rail colors and design priorities

Entities

Chris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonBlockade Pinball PodcastorganizationZen StudioscompanyDeadFlip/Jack DangerpersonMelpersonDeeppersonWhitewatergame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Zen Studios implementing public beta approach for Volume 4 flipper physics, limiting rollout to three tables while actively soliciting community feedback via Twitter to refine before broader application.

    high · Chris: 'they're using this as a public beta... It's only going to be for Volume 4 right now... Let Zen know on Twitter... They'll see it and they'll be able to react to it accordingly.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Minor design controversy regarding Road Show's blue rail rendering (based on promotional artwork) vs. community preference for chrome; hosts view controversy as trivial given rendering quality.

    medium · Jared: 'People are making a big deal out of it. It's not a big deal.' Chris: 'When I play I don't even notice it.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Whitewater arcade physics mode's challenging center drain vulnerability and complex multiball strategy (two-time score build + boulder garden five-time light + multiball + jackpot shots) creates tournament-relevant scoring meta shift.

    medium · Chris discusses Jack Danger's observation: 'he highlighted about how you've got to get this two-time score... and then you've got to get in the boulder garden... and then immediately you want to start multiball... it's just like massive score instantly.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Hurricane enhanced mode clown character rendered in menacing Pennywise-style appearance conflicts with original family-friendly theme aesthetic; hosts consider this design choice divisive for players.

    medium · Chris: 'The clown—he's just not cute. He's rather evil-looking... Clearly that's a reference to Pennywise right there. Creepy clown... I honestly have to turn off the enhanced mode because... he really does need to be wearing a Pennywise costume.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.197

0:00
you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast hello i'm getting it playing back again i'm getting that whole intro spiel playing back again i don't know why hello everybody we're trying new things today a few new things all right so we're chris how about you explain we're we're trying some we're trying to do this live now folks with the music. We figured out a way. Thank you, Jeff Strong. You really helped me out on this.
1:00
There's obviously going to be some hiccups. A lot of hiccups. Just initially, I think you could probably go into a little bit how it's all set up and how many things you need to monitor at the moment and a quick TikTok with Chris. TikTok! So for a very long time, folks, we have been wanting to basically produce the show live because poor Jared, after we get done doing the podcast, he then has to upload it to our hosting site for the podcast itself. But none of the music is in there. So he's also got to record it with the music in the front, put the music in the back, and then he takes all of his timing notes, and it winds up taking a very long, laborious amount of time for him. Essentially, it takes the same amount of time as it takes to record the episode, only to then do post on it. So if you're ever wondering why the podcasts sometimes come out so much later after the YouTube stream, that would be why. Because the problem is, like, normally this wasn't a problem. Like, before I started the job I'm in at the moment, it didn't really matter. I had time up my sleeve to do this during the weeknights because it was a very clear sort of stop. But where I work now, they're quite particular about logging time. And, you know, that in itself is actually good because you want to make sure you're doing, you know, the right amount of work and doing your hours at work. The problem is that you quickly realize that, wow, I've got a lot of time to make up if I've got to do school run and all this sort of stuff when you're actually tracking it down to the hour. So my evenings now are usually like on my work from home days, which is Monday and Thursday, are usually working up until I go to bed to make up my hours. So on those days that I normally do that work on the podcast, I don't have those days anymore. and I found that doing it on the way to work in the train, it was okay, I could do it, but it's much easier having two screens up where I've got my Cakewalk Digital Audio Workstation 1 screen and Medium up with the show notes, transcribing those live as I'm listening to the show. So all these things culminated into me getting the show out pretty much, oh, my God, I have to do it on Friday night quickly.
Hurricane
game
Road Showgame
Pinball Arcadegame
Attack from Marsgame
Scared Stiffgame
Circus Voltairegame
Pinball FX 3game
VB-Audio VoiceMeeterproduct
Jeff Strongperson
ShoutEngineproduct
YouTubeproduct
Cakewalk Digital Audio Workstationproduct
Steamproduct
Lovin' McLovin'person
Netherworldorganization
A-Ball Deluxegame
Tedperson/character
?

design_philosophy: Zen Studios' art direction uses 3D renders of cabinet artwork and promotional materials rather than original creative designs, ensuring aesthetic authenticity to original machines.

high · Chris: 'it's not like Zen is just freestyling on their art. No. They find the art on the cabinet or on the flyer and they basically do a 3D render of it.'

  • $

    market_signal: Reputable player Jack Danger's immediate endorsement of Zen arcade physics mode (switching mid-stream) serves as credible validation for new flipper mechanics targeting competitive and casual audiences.

    high · Chris: 'People trust Jack with his opinions about pinball... for him to go, oh, okay, this is the thing that you do, right?... Zen has got themselves a whole lot of new customers, really.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade Pinball implementing new live streaming production workflow to reduce post-production time from approximately 2 hours to under 30 minutes, addressing host schedule constraints and workflow efficiency.

    high · Jared explains the new approach: 'I can literally, after the show ends and the YouTube live session goes public, I can grab the audio and just download it and literally take the whole file and upload it straight to ShoutEngine... I'll be done in less than 30 minutes.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen Volume 4 enhanced mode adds significant visual flourishes (animated characters, environmental details, dynamic back glass) that meaningfully enhance visual appeal but may not affect core gameplay.

    high · Chris describes Hurricane enhancements: 'little ducky targets... zigzag back and forth. And as you drop on a drop target, one of the duckies will disappear. Just a fun little extra visual thing.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Arcade physics mode in Zen Volume 4 tables features improved ball surface texture interactions and proper ball spin mechanics that address issues present in Zen mode (side drain behavior, return lane routing).

    high · Chris explains: 'they actually created a texture for the surface for the ball to react to. So it's not just gliding... that's why it's behaving better in arcade mode than it is in Zen mode.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Visual rendering quality in Zen Volume 4 represents significant improvement over Pinball Arcade, with superior lighting, color accuracy, and detail (e.g., Bigfoot rendering described as 'nice, dark, rich chocolate-colored' vs. 'washed out' in TPA).

    high · Chris compares: 'The Bigfoot that Zen has rendered is this nice, dark, rich chocolate-colored... You look at Bigfoot in TPA's version, and he looks like he had a go with some bleach. It's washed out.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Zen Studios' new flipper physics engine represents significant technical advancement in digital pinball physics simulation, modeled from high-speed camera data of real flipper behavior including compression, flex, and ball impact dynamics.

    high · Deep conducted high-speed camera recording of actual flipper behavior and modeled everything off of that—'He was sitting there with a high-speed camera watching it in super slow-mo, seeing how the ball hits, seeing how the rubber compresses.'

    • 3:32
    And get your account book. Yeah. and you go, ugh, show. I really enjoy it. Why do we have to do a podcast again? The thing is that I actually, the act of doing the editing and doing the post-production, I actually don't mind doing that. It's just trying, it's always being reminded that I have to do it. That's the thing that makes me resentful and that, you know, oh no, I still have to do that. Oh no, I still have to do that. And that just keeps on eating away at you all week and it just really chips down your enthusiasm. So what we're doing here is we're experimenting, as Chris said, with a way of doing pretty much the bump in and bump out and as we get better at it, other stuff during the middle breaks of the show so that I can literally just after the show ends and the YouTube live session goes public, I can grab the audio and just download it and literally take the whole file and upload it straight to ShoutEngine, do the medium post, which would take me about 15 minutes, and I'll be done in less than 30 minutes. So it halves production time. translation, you the people that don't watch YouTube but just purely listen to the podcast auditorily, you'll get it much faster. Yeah, you'll get it quick. You'll get it quick. That's how we make the sausage here. Yeah, how the sausage gets made. The thing that is just like infinitely frustrating to me and the whole point of us hooking up our microphones and being able to talk to you guys, that's no problem. Getting sounds off your computer is insanely complicated. And I thought, why? It's all right there. It's all functioning in the computer. Why can't you just do one simple push of a button and, hey, whatever noise comes from your computer gets sent to whatever you're recording to? And I know all the people that broadcast on Twitch and use OBS and stuff like that, they've all had the exact same kind of questions, but it's kind of built into those programs as opposed to YouTube doesn't have that built in nice and easily for you to do.
    5:32
    So we've tried it various times. We've failed all those times. And I finally found something to use. We're using this thing called Voice Meter, which is a donationware software. So we'll probably be having to make a donation if it works out for us. And it's allowing us to actually maybe be able to play music. So we're going to have to be playing with levels. I don't know what level is too low before you can't hear the music, even though it's playing in my ears. It may not play on the YouTube stream. So there's still going to be some experimenting about. But again, the whole point is hopefully we'll make a better show for you guys. That's right. And easier on us. So there you go. Yeah. So we win. Chicken dins. We win. Chicken dins. So last week we, well, we, me, spoke to Mel. and he had all sorts of stuff to say, obviously not just about the volume four releases, which we're going to talk about first, but even going into that wonderful giant cabinet that I can't wait to get my hands on. So let's first talk about, because I've been playing a ton of this stuff just in the past couple of days, broadcasting my gameplay. And I'll tell you guys right now, Those of you that are watching on YouTube right now, as soon as the podcast is over, I'll be popping into Steam. If you look my profile up, Shut Your Trap, I'll be playing some of the Volume 4 tables so you can actually get an idea of what they look like pre-purchase.
    7:04
    But yeah, I've been obviously playing the three tables, which are Whitewater, Roadshow, and Hurricane. and each are interesting for showing off, obviously, what Zen is capable of.
    7:20
    I'm assuming, Jared, with your busy schedule, you've not been able to really take a little gander at them. Only in the alpha that was released to us a while back, and that's the version that had the ticking cymbal noise in Whitewater. So have they – because I know that Deadflip did a stream.
    7:39
    I wonder, have they actually done almost like a release candidate final for him without the weird audio thing? That's what I'm playing. Oh, right, okay. The same version that Deadflip was playing. I approached picking, so I don't know it.
    7:57
    Oh, that must be the one that's... Have they just updated the original beta, have they? Yes. The beta is slightly different.
    8:05
    There's a little bit more polish on it, but not much. I'll check it out. Yeah, I'll need to check it out. I want to check it out.
    8:11
    So, first of all, let's go ahead and talk about Whitewater. And... The first thing that jumps out at me is those ramps. They're so clear.
    8:24
    They're really beautifully rendered and nice and clear and the whole table in general, it just looks proper. Crisp. Yeah, crisp. For those of you that sit there and go, I already own these tables in pinball arcade, watch one of these streams and compare what the tables look like compared to those. It is night and day.
    8:49
    For instance, just look at the Bigfoot. The Bigfoot that Zen has rendered is this nice, dark, rich chocolate-colored. Chocolatey brown. You look at Bigfoot in TPA's version, and he looks like he had a go with some bleach.
    9:12
    It's washed out. It's not a proper brown. It just kind of looks... There's nothing about it that's photoreal. Let's put it that way. Yeah, that's right. Or it may be photoreal, but it's done with really bad exposure. Exactly.
    9:26
    The ramps don't look to scale or whatever. There's kind of a weird perspective aspect going on with it. And then that's on top of just playing the physics that go along with playing it. So, I mean, right off the bat, it just looks phenomenal. The lighting is fantastic on it. Nice warm amber glow to it. All the inserts, none of them are blown out or anything like that. So it's got that going.
    9:59
    Play-wise, it's brutal. Is this on actual simulation mode? on Pro Physics mode. On the arcade mode. I've only played it in Zen because I just find it's terrible, but it's more accessible for me. It is more accessible. What's funny, so I was watching the Dead Flip stream, and he's playing it, and somebody was asking about the Flipper physics, and I quickly looked, and I was like, he's playing it in Zen mode. So I typed in the chat thing, I'm like, put it to arcade mode, and he's like, what? Oh, okay, so we stopped the game and restarted and put it into arcade mode. started playing it within two flips he was like holy crap why the hell would anybody not play in this mode convert right then and there and that's saying something because you know dead flip knows his way around mr danger knows his way around a pinball machine so for him to go oh okay this this is the thing that you do right yeah no we got him excited the only thing that he wasn't because he was playing obviously with a controller he kept on complaining that his nudges he just wasn't quick enough on them there's a disconnect between when you're in a shaking machine and having to reach over with your flum and flip a joystick so yeah it was kind of funny that he just his reaction was immediate he was like holy crap this is so much better you know that really plays well to them because like people trust Jack with his opinions about pinball. So if he's saying that, then, well, Zenz has got themselves a whole lot of new customers, really. Yeah.
    11:41
    Obviously, the big thing to talk about with all three of these tables is going to be the flipper physics, and I'll get into that in just a little bit, but I want to talk about the enhanced mode. So with the enhanced, suddenly you got a standing Bigfoot, which they took, and I commented to this to Mel in the last podcast, it's not like Zen is just freestyling on their art. No. They find the art on the cabinet or on the flyer and they basically do a 3D render of it. Yes. The way Bigfoot looks full-bodied is the way he looks on plastic or a flyer or somewhere. Exactly. My only complaint is he's now small because of that. I wish they had just stuck with half-body and had him animate. Yeah, his head actually fully animate. Yeah.
    12:37
    Rowling at you and snarling at you. When you hot-foot him. Right. But I mean, that's just kind of a small quibble that I would have liked. Other than that, all they did was they added a sign and down on the pop bumpers they added two rafts. Down on the apron they added another white-rodder raft. and some life preserver floats. And that's really it that they did for the enhancements. No water enhancements in that one. Yeah, no water on the waterfall, which was kind of, I was like, oh, man, I really would have liked that. But I know, again, it probably would have just been a beast for rendering.
    13:15
    Yeah. And also probably may have actually got a little bit tired after a while as well, maybe, because you do tend to shoot that ramp a fair bit. Like if you're going for combos, if you're going for rough combos, It tends to end up there a fair bit.
    13:31
    Yeah, yeah. But again, it's not as easy as it was in TPA. No, it's not like vacuum ramp. No, no. But what they did do, okay, so if you put the ball into the whirlpool, there will be a water splash. If you put the ball into the boulder garden, all of a sudden little chunks of boulders fly all over the place. Chunk off, yeah. Yeah. So they did, if you do, it might just be if you do No Way Out, I'm not quite sure which ramp you hit. It rains on Bigfoot. So there's all sorts of little subtle animations that happen on that. So that's pretty cool, too.
    14:09
    But, yeah, the... I drained so much on that table. In price figures mode, yeah. It is a center drain disaster.
    14:20
    And there's even the right outline. If the ball goes up towards the boulder garden but doesn't quite hit right, it's going to drain out the right side pretty quickly. Also, too, if you do a right flipper catch out of the mine and it rolls up the in lane or the return lane, it will most likely go down the side as well. In Zen mode, it will. Not in arcade mode. Oh, really? Yeah. Because that was annoying the bejeebers in me. In arcade mode, it'll go straight up and either come straight back down or it'll start going to the left and sometimes go on the other side of the slingshot. Oh, that's good. That's how it should behave. And you know why it's behaving that way? Proper ball spin. And it's now got the, because they didn't do this on Zen mode, but they did this in classic single-player mode. That's arcade mode. Regular single-player mode, that's what we call Zen mode. Just definitions.
    15:13
    I really wish they changed it. It's just so annoying. It is annoying. But in arcade mode, one of the things that Zen did for the physics, they actually created a texture for the surface for the ball to react to. So it's not just gliding. So when the ball has proper ball spin, and if it was going up the in lane the way it does, that's why it's behaving better in arcade mode than it is in zen mode. In zen mode. Ah, that's great. You'll definitely have to try that later on today. One of the things I really noticed, and I noticed it a little bit in volumes. 1 through 3, but in Volume 4, I'm really noticing the ball doing where it's got some backspin going on to it, and it'll also change trajectory a little bit because of that backspin.
    16:04
    Very nice. And that's because of how it's reacting to the flippers. If you want to see the flippers in action, Whitewater's not really the table, though, to see it with.
    16:18
    The table to see it with is Hurricane Because Hurricane has for instance if you go and shoot the hurricane ramp and you don quite make it and it rolls back down and you don't do anything, you just do a dead pass, it's going to come rocketing down, it's going to hit your right flipper, and you're going to see that right flipper do the little thing, and then it's going to bounce over to the left flipper. And it looks so good. It's just that subtle little thing that's so... Simulated mechanics, basically. simulated mechanical physics. Yeah. But here's the other thing. It's not, although it's simulated mechanics, it also does absorb the energy of the ball a little bit. So it's not just visual. Yeah. So when we first, the very first day we got the beta and we were testing it out, it felt like it was just sucking up all the energy of the ball. And I made a comment, uh, actually deep as the one that posted and said, Hey, how do you guys feel about the, uh, the energy of the ball. And I said, it's being absorbed. You guys got to fix it. He's like, that's what I thought. He fixed it the next day. It was like, sweet!
    17:24
    So what is the difference, what you'll notice in these dead passes is instead of the ball bouncing straight up, it's doing a proper low arc to the other flipper. So you can dead bounce it really convincingly. Really convincingly. It does allow you to do better post passes. Also, again, they behave more naturally. I mean, you were able to do them before, but now it visually looks appropriate.
    17:52
    You see that sort of bit of, like, if you slow mode on the Zen tables with the, you know, proper physics on, and then compare that with a table with new rubbers, et cetera, you'd be looking at the same thing, basically. Yeah. you know the ability to do flipper tricks I'm not good at those to begin with I can't really tell you how successful I can do a post pass that's about it but sometimes I can flick them in a tournament at Netherworld and I go oh and I'm just like you know try and save the ball I guess that was a tip pass I have practiced live catches on my A-Ball Deluxe. I had the glass off, and I was literally just rolling the ball down over and over again to try and do a proper catch, and it's so hard.
    18:53
    You can start because of the machine, and you're familiar with the machine, and you're familiar with the reaction time of the flipper. You can start to get consistently doing it. The same can be said for Zen, that you can start understanding the speed and when you know what your flipper timing has to be to do it um i know some people are complaining they're like why is it so hard to do a live catch and i'm like because women how often do you see pro players doing it they don't do it consistently they they probably like make it look easy but really they go i hope this works yeah but and I think again Mel mentioned this flipper physics it's not something that has been just thrown together quickly it's taken like a year for them to do it or pretty much as soon as they were thinking about this as like they've been working on it a very long time and it even to the point that Deep did high speed camera recording of actual flippers behavior and modeled everything off of that.
    20:06
    He was sitting there with a high speed camera watching it in super slow-mo seeing how the ball hits seeing how the rubber compresses, if it compresses at all, seeing how the flex of the flippers go.
    20:19
    It's crazy. You can see the result. The result that Deep has been able to engineer with the flipper physics is just unbelievable. Yeah. So, I mean, this is what happens when you get people that are obsessive about pinball, and they're the programmers and the designers and all of the above.
    20:41
    You know, because... And again, this isn't something that they can charge for. It's just part of the game. It is core game experience, basically. And if you're wondering... So, Mel made a mistake in the podcast. I've corrected it on Twitter, because he asked me to. But he initially said that it's going to be like this for, upon release, all four volumes. Not the case.
    21:03
    It's only going to be for volume four right now. Basically, they're using this as a public beta. So if you have a problem once you get a hold of this with how it plays, if it doesn't... You need to speak up. Speak up. Let Zen know. Not on the forum. Zen doesn't read the forum. Let him know on Twitter.
    21:26
    you know, just hashtag Zen studios, hashtag pinball effects, three or at, excuse me, not hashtags, but at, uh, your Twitter handles. That's the best way to communicate with them. They'll see it and they'll be able to react to it. Uh, accordingly, but Lovin McLovin is all over the social medias. So he is, I cost is everywhere. So like, I see a fair bit of outreach happening on Twitter as well. And I mean, personally to me, I think it's perfectly fine. But, again, people that actually are able to do these tricks might have some other comment. But by limiting it to just these three tables, they can eliminate the factor of, oh, it's because of how this table behaves and something else. This table behaves. It's a more focused look. They can quickly address whatever problems are specific to these tables, whatever they learn from this. Then they can go back and apply towards all the other tables. so it will be coming it's just they need to do their research to make sure the public likes what they see exactly that being said I can't wait for it to be popped in because when I play one of the other tables I'm like oh I mean again it's not that it feels incredibly different but that little visual cue just you miss it back to Hurricane though Hurricane I honestly I have to turn off the enhanced mode because the clown clown he's just not cute he's rather evil looking he really does need to be wearing a penny wife costume I didn't even notice this until uh until the other day uh zen actually posted the the gif of it happening and then I watched it happen in game if you wait for because normally I as soon as a game ends, I'm not waiting for the match animation.
    23:26
    But if you wait for the match animation to happen, the clown who apparently has either a very large back pocket or a... Let's call it a back pocket. We'll call it a back pocket. Yeah.
    23:39
    But he reaches behind and he pulls out a balloon and he blows it up and it's a red balloon and he grabs it straight and he floats up into the air. I'm like, uh-huh. Okay, not Pennywise. Not at all.
    23:54
    I've seen that. I went, oh, well, clearly that's a reference to Pennywise right there. Creepy clown. Yeah, but one cool animation that they have is on the left-hand side there's some drop targets and there are duck targets. Yeah, they're cool. And they put animated or well, not animated real ducks, but little ducky targets. They zigzag back and forth. And as you drop on a drop target, one of the duckies will disappear. Just a fun little extra visual thing. I don't care for the carousel that they have on there. No, that sort of really gets in the way. I don't like the visual of it.
    24:34
    So, there's that. Again, they went pretty subtle though with the enhancements. Other than the clown being right there front and center, they didn't go too nuts with what they did with Hurricane the really cool thing and I didn't I actually again in one of my comments on Deadflip's stream I said the back glass wasn't animated and then I accidentally while playing it these times bumped joystick to look at the back glass and I went whoa wait a second so in those moments when it does the spinny wheel of whatever your prize is the random award go ahead and flick it up to look at the back glass it's spinning, it looks beautiful. And it doesn't have the same initial fault that Fastlight's implementation of it was, where it was spinning, then it just stopped like it was like a immediate stop, like someone hit the brakes. Now this one is just like, it has that continued roll, just as the motor winds down. Yeah, on top of it, it's a high-res image. It's beautiful. The other lights that go on in the back glass are actually animating. Animating, yeah. If you went with Safecracker and the animated well, the chase lights.
    25:47
    Yeah, how they're actually animating as opposed to Farglights I don't think animated at all. They were basically a static image.
    25:57
    This bodes really well for Circus Voltaire. Oh yeah, the back glass. The back glass on that. And it bodes well for if and when they do Scared Stiff. Oh, I can't wait to see that spider without the key in it.
    26:15
    For those of you who don't know what we're talking about, just go ahead. Next time you're playing Scared Stiff in Pinball Arcade and you get to the Elvira back glass spider wheel, just look dead center. Right at the very top, you're going to see a key in the machine. Dangling down. Dangling down because somebody didn't pull that when they took the photo.
    26:37
    You know, it would have literally taken them probably another minute to just redo the photo and then put it into the game. A minute. and they would have had it done.
    26:47
    And, you know, if they wanted to, at the same time, they could have just literally taken the spider wheel out of the game because it's a separate thing, I think, in the back glass. The whole panel comes out, take the spider off, take the photograph of the panel, then, you know, put everything back together again. You'd have a nice, crisp image. But no, let's just take a photo of the whole back box and then let's just superimpose the spider over all that. yeah this is fine I mean it seriously is it's like the more tables we get the less I play the other I can't remember the last time that I've set up Pimble Arcade I started up literally to compare and that's the end of it that's where it stopped oh no no I take it back I've actually looked it up to look up more detailed rules again that's the best thing about it is the rule set Yeah.
    27:44
    Because I was looking up the rules for Whitewater on Zen, and it's literally six pages, and that's it. Okay. It doesn't tell you much.
    27:57
    It doesn't tell you much at all. Is it essentially just the instruction card rules, and that's it? More or less, yeah. I mean, really, for someone who's new to the game, that's actually probably the right amount of rules to offer them. You've got to remember the audience. yeah well if if you're already if you've been playing on pinball okay chances are you don't actually need to look at the rules so you know um you know for people who are just learning the game like you've got to remember the new audience that zen has now with with this if they are coming to the game would you want to read 40 pages of rules before starting the game i certainly wouldn't and i can tell you for the fact i never have i never use the rules in the I knew the rules to learn how to meet the goals. And by learning how to meet the goals, that basically taught me all the rules I needed. The funny thing is, is now when I'm playing these tables coming to Zen, I'm sitting there going, oh yeah, like attack from Mars. I'm sitting there like, okay, no, don't, uh,
    29:02
    you get two orbits and two ramp shots, shoot them three times. And then, uh, that activates the hurry up. You don't hit the center on any of them until you've got all four lit, then automatically you get full and idly. And it gives you a billion point bonus. I think the first one is 100 million if you do two ramps at the same time as 300 million, three ramps at the same time as either 6 or 750 million. I can't remember which. I think it's 600 million. Essentially, by doing those ramp shots and loop shots, you're relighting the hurry up each time you complete the build.
    29:45
    And there was a wizard goal in TPA that was only if you got the billion point hurry up award. What do you think I do whenever I play Attack from Mars? I'm always in my head trying to not hit the center. I'm like, it doesn't matter. There's no wizard goal to earn. No one standing around going to be impressed with doing it, just get the stupid point and go on and on. Collect the points and then do it again. It's not worth a billion. That being said, and again, watching Jack Danger on his Deadflip Twitch stream, he pointed something out on Whitewater that I was like, I can't get a good score to save my life on that. He highlighted about how, you've got to get this two-time score that just goes permanently, and then you've got to get in the boulder garden, you've got to light the five time, but before you actually light it, and then immediately you want to start multi-ball, and then you want to hit the jackpots, and it's just like massive score instantly. And so in my head, I'm like going,
    30:53
    okay, I'm going to have to learn that for when I play the mobile app, and I'm doing the one ball, five ball, or one ball, five minute, and survival challenges because I'm going to need that in order to beat these challenges. I can guarantee that's probably what they're going to be doing, measuring how to actually get that goal because that's what I've seen in some of the other mobile challenge modes. There's a particular set of steps you need to do to be able to meet the challenge mode. And it's almost like if you don't do those steps, you're not going to be meeting it.
    31:26
    So yeah, that's a good tip from our friend Jack. Friend of the show, Jack. not friend on steam i've put my invite out but he hasn't accepted it yet so bastard oh well okay he's dead to us then right um what more can i say about hurricane uh i really don't like the table uh but that's that's not zen's fault that's just no the table doesn't appeal to me either but again the table is is well done the table doesn't appeal to me For those of you that it does appeal to, I think you're going to be very excited by it. If you love the trilogy, the theme park trilogy, you're going to really like this table because it's very slick.
    32:13
    So the last table then is Roadshow. And apparently there is a bit of a controversy going on because Zen has rendered it. They gave it the blue side rails and lock bar that were in the flyer photo and in the promo machines.
    32:34
    And people are going, that's supposed to be chromed. I want my steel side rails and lock bar In regular mode in non mode Well that how they probably do it They could just make the blue ones in Well that what some people are asking Hey, can you just make it do that for enhanced mode? Yeah.
    32:54
    Problem solved. I think Zen has better things to do than worry about the color of the lock bar. Which, again, if you look at the flyer, that's the color. It's taken a couple of hours to do it. It's taken a couple of hours to do it, honestly. The way they've got everything laid out in the app. Like, you go, oh, so you want Chrome? a plucker frame touches in the boat flip it out when you change it over probably wouldn't even take them that long like very simple trivial things to do but it's people are making a big deal out of it it's not a big deal it's not that big deal no when I play I don't even notice it yes when people first load up and you're doing the flyby you go oh hey look purple or not purple blue that's the last I think about it because why am I not thinking about anything else it looks gorgeous Oh my god. So crony. They are amazing. They have so much character and depth to them. They look fully three-dimensional. They don't look like a flat. Do you know why they look three-dimensional, Chris? The lighting. Yes, the lighting. Lighting actually makes a difference. It does make a difference. Just a slight one.
    34:03
    Enhancements on this one. They've gone hard. They've gone hard, and they're going to divide you a little bit. They made Ted have a bulldozer that sits on the apron of the machine, and this bulldozer is very animated. It jumps around. When you do something like the very first mode that a lot of times happens, which is smash the New York taxis, it jumps into the middle of the play field, and for a moment you're like, oh, God, please don't stay there.
    34:34
    Yes. and then it jumps away just as the ball starts launching which is highly distracting um but you know what i feel like doing every time it does it i go oh i just want to hit it i just want to hit the bulldozer i do wish that we could uh plow into that imagine if that was in front of um uh ted up the top and you were smashing that thing and it was animating you know as you were smashing it or you know it'd have to be a cab of course because you know that's you're the bulldozer But yeah, if it was actually driving into the cab or something like that, they could really have gone a little bit nuts with this as far as animations go. Yeah. The only other animations that they did were basically over by Bob's on the upper left. They made a little flip book of the days of the week. Yeah. With Monday, with Ted being very sad. Very sad, Ted. By Friday, he's like, ah! A big old wide open mouth, and he's so excited that it's payday. which... Playing this whole bunch, I'm just laughing. So the whole point of this game is Ted wants to get drunk.
    35:39
    He keeps on saying, baby, it's party time. Tie one on. Does he say tie one on? I can't remember if he does or not. He doesn't say tie one on, but he goes, we're going to hound the hog tonight or something. Oh yeah, we're going to hound the hog tonight. It sounds vaguely fictional.
    35:59
    He's saying, I want to get drunk. Yeah. And then all of a sudden Friday payday happens and Red's like, let's do it. And he's like, no, I'm tired. Yeah.
    36:10
    Yeah. The other thing that cracks me up is, so Red, the female, is Ted's boss. And yet Ted sits there and goes, come on, baby. And he throws out these little terms. I'm like, nope, wouldn't fly today. And then when you do like spring break and it's in Miami and he does the little wolf call whistle and she's like, oh, Ted. Well, she doesn't say, oh, Ted. Oh, yeah. Escape me with the phrasing that she uses. It'll come to me in a moment. But again, it was. Well, yeah, after he.
    36:46
    After he just kind of goes, oh, just a bit of fun content, she's like, oh, Ted, like, oh, you, you're just such a guy. And again, I'm just like.
    36:55
    Oh, I know. She goes, jerk alert. Yep. I think she's actually referring to the people that they're bumping into. I think. Immediately after Ted Whistles.
    37:11
    Oh, okay. So I read it differently. I think it actually has something to do with the jerks that are at spring break, essentially. That's how I read it. I wasn't thinking so much about Wolf Whistling, but maybe I'm just, uh, yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those things that now that we're in the times that we are, you start interpreting things a little bit differently. Differently. Yeah. Western state taxi cab driver. Woo boy.
    37:36
    Yes. Slightly stereotypical, you know, like Indian sounding. Yeah. Very, very, uh, yes. Very stereotypical. Yeah. I'm not going to call these things racist. It's just stereotypes. Now, if you want to call a stereotype, a racist thing, that's very much like the same with diner. Like, yeah, they are stereotypical representations. I'm not racist. Um,
    38:08
    really, really want to debate that. I don't think we need to go there. Um, yeah, you could go either way on it. Like if it offends you, then yeah. Well, you know, that's the thing about like racism and that sort of stuff. It, it's racist if it affects you. so if you feel offended by it then yeah it's racist so that's racist considering the phone call that I was just on today disputing a credit card charge I basically talked to the taxi cab driver so did he remove his bulldozer from your street I wound up getting passed along to somebody else that would you know a supervisor that could help me more but my point is it's not like the voice is inaccurate when speaking English so I'm just saying but yeah the other things the only other things that are animated if the radio plays music little music notes pop out of it it's really funny that you might remember that when we were looking for a new logo there was one submission that actually had that radio focused with speech bubbles coming out of it. And one of those speech bubbles was blah, blah, blah, blah.
    39:25
    Now, that's actually what comes out of the animated radio. And when I saw that, I thought, ah, isn't that funny? Yeah, during the, ah, talk radio. Yeah, talk radio. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when I saw that, I actually laughed quite a bit when I saw that. I went, ah, look at that. Maybe that's where you shot. Audio drop of that. I've got probably may or may not have a large collection of soundtracks from pinball machines maybe or not may or may not allegedly yeah the only other animation is the horn so whenever you hear the driving going by you'll see the horn kind of animate yeah but again other than the bulldozer is kind of subtle with the enhancements. Of course, all of them have the mirror blades, or not mirror blades, but the side blades. Ah, blades. So that's all pretty cool. But yeah, all three of these tables just play so much more difficult.
    40:37
    Again, I'm thrilled if I actually hit the replay mark. One thing I noticed in the earlier alpha, like this is the not the very first alpha with the weird physics but the second alpha um when i was playing on zen physics mode so the regular arcade style arcade style it's so confusing zen that the zen untouched not williams pro physics mode um what i noticed is when i was shooting that left ramp it was hard like it was really hard to get it up that ramp in regular non-pro fancy physics.
    41:14
    But in the pro physics or the arcade physics, it behaved like normal. So I don't know if you observed that as well, if you switch back to Zen standard physics. I didn't do that switch. I noticed that in arcade physics that it's not like the ball rockets up that. right it was like table so it kind of goes up and and crests decently but I've had rollbacks on it also yeah but this was like almost all the time it was like you're flat out making the ramp kind of like the right ramp on medieval madness yeah yes yes quite a lot like that actually like it would get tantalizingly close to the apex and then just roll back down again like it would if you were playing it in the arcade and like in on a real machine you think oh that that right flip is weak it needs to have a rebuild because it was like just just creeping over the top of the uh the ramp and so much so that like the the baked in like um sound effects that you get when you make that switch at the top of the ramp the ball was moving so slowly that they didn't match up with the ball's position on the ramp so like it was it was slow so it may have been tweaked or it may have just been part of that particular alpha version of the of the um code that i was looking at but i just i noticed it and then when i flicked over for example it's the same in um uh hurricane it was it sort of felt a bit the same so it's almost like i felt like they were actually swapping the two physics models around so it felt like to me that as far as ramp shots go we had the uh the arcade physics or the pro physics applied to the um uh the other way around okay yeah yeah but just just the ramps everything else was like it seemed fine but it was just the ramps felt weird but clearly that's no longer a problem and clearly you'll want to be playing these on proper simulation physics and apparently tournament mode the table angle has been decreased a little bit a lot of complaints about the speed of the ball being just insane and so deep the rake was just too high was it? so deep has changed that the speed of the ball is not quite so severe and he says that he will be going back and lowering it on volumes 1 through 3 also basically because he said that they're not going to be resetting any leaderboards and they can't make things tougher because that makes the high scores that were set prior unobtainable. So they don't have a problem making things a little bit easier because then people can still surpass whatever is on the leaderboard. And that's an interesting point, isn't it? Because that's obviously why they've gone for hardest snails first up so they have some wiggle room so they can back it down and not have to worry about those concerns. So that's smart. That's smart planning on their behalf. Truth be told, with the tournament mode, to me, tournament mode is all about the difference in the scoring. Yeah, the rules. Like being consistently in leveled. That's what tournament's about. It's not necessarily about the difficulty of the physicality of the table. You'll see that in PAPA tournaments, but they remove posts and block off holes and stuff. Whenever I would go to league, they would set up the machines to tournament by going into the menu and applying to the settings.
    45:05
    They weren't then all of a sudden sitting there crawling under the table and adjusting the legs. Legs, no.
    45:11
    Because when you do that, it would take so long to spin up a tournament. Say you did that at Netherworld, you have like 10 machines in the tournament. You have to go under each one, bump the legs, then go in and actually adjust the tilt ring so you weren't actually having tight tilts and then you had to change all that back. What I did notice though I was just going to say that Stern used to, I mean they, on some of their machines they had a tournament button. So you could push the button and now you're playing tournament style. So again it doesn't have to be anything about the rake. No, just the rules. It's about the rules. Like for example in tournament mode on most machines extra balls pay out points for example and that's a really that's like the most basic tournament rule you can get pretty much um i noticed that we're in netherworld there was a point at which um jason lambert or lambo he was actually going in and changing um not only the tournament rules but also changing further features in the game to make it a faster playing game because we have a real problem with getting through games before nine nine a.m The tournament starts at 4 and the finals begin at 9. And the other week, because we had about 50 or 55 players, we had to extend it by half an hour. It's a lot. And so we have to do everything we can. You'll find that the games that mostly get selected in the Netherworld tournaments are System 80s. Not System 80s. Sorry, System 11s of the Ilk of Taxi. And I haven't remembered a tournament once that didn't have Trident in it because it's just a brutally fast game. And then, you know, the ones that they have to really tweak are things like, I think Walking Dead always has extra balls off because it's a long player. And then there's a few other ones that are culprits for being super long. Deadpool, gee, that's terrible. That's a tournament game. You could just keep going and going on that thing. Yeah, there's a few. So you've really got to do it in a tournament. But yeah, the rules are the thing that you need to change, not any physicality at the table.
    47:15
    So, I know I've heard quite a few people have kind of piped in going, I'm not thrilled with this pack.
    47:23
    When I first started playing it, I wasn't thrilled with it either. Truth be told. That being said, now that I've been playing it a little bit more, getting back into it, again, Hurricane's never going to be one that I'm just like, yeah, let's play Hurricane! But Roadshow, I really do like it. There's a lot in that game, too. You can do a lot of different things in it. Yeah, and Whitewater is one of those that once I figure out the rules, and I've done this before where I figured out the rules and then I have a great time on it,
    47:51
    but before figuring out the rules, it's a slog. It's a hard table. It's in a lot of respects kind of like what the police believe or not like.
    48:01
    Where you need to first understand how to score. Once you figure that out, then it opens up the table and becomes a lot more fun to do. I would say, give it a shot, folks.
    48:14
    Look, you know ultimately you're going to buy it, so even if you say you're not going to buy it now, fine, wait for the sale. It'll go on sale eventually. Yeah, totally. We'll do the sale.
    48:24
    We've got three... We've got two packs left, and basically what Mel said in the way I asked the question, it was kind of my whole point, we're going to get these other six tables that are the DMD machines. They can be cleanly broken into one pack of nothing but Williams, one pack of nothing but Bally. So it's just going to be a question of which pack comes first,
    48:47
    Bally or the Williams. And I think you can probably apply a fair bit of manual drop logic to these as well, because, uh, yeah, they're running out of, they're running out of manual stacks, you know, in the video, the first video. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, like I said it going to be it going to be a combination of Circus Voltaire uh Whodunit Cactus Canyon That your Bally pack And the Williams pack is Tales of the Arabian Nights
    49:15
    No Good Gophers, and I'm going to blank on the last one. I'm really excited to see NGG. Oh, No Good Gophers is going to look fantastic. It's going to look fantastic. I just really hope they... The thing that frustrates me the most about the game is just how touchy and sensitive the pop bumpers are in TPA. You could just literally go and make a coffee sometimes while the ball rattles around in those pop bumpers. It is the source of frustration for me. Thank you, Craig, on YouTube. Jackbot, that's the final tip. Jackbot. See, that's one, you know, people go, oh, it's just a remake. But, you know, there's some strategy in that, which I couldn't tell you, but I know it exists. because I know there's a way to blow up that game. I certainly like Jackbot way better than Pinbot. Pinbot, you don't score anything until you drain the ball.
    50:09
    It's like the entire game is scored off the bonus count. Yes. And I hate that. Yeah, that's a valid point. It is frustrating. But yeah, it's much... Essentially, by doing that proper re-theme and actually re-rules, it's made it a much more balanced game. And sure, it's a big scorer. like you can get ridiculous scores it was in the era of belly williams games where they were almost competing with i think it was data reased for ridiculous scores um you know in the like johnny mnemonic for example the the billions and billions of gigabytes that you can earn in that game is just preposterous you know so yeah it it was it's kind of comical when you hear about, I think it's Comet that was the first table with a 1 million point shot.
    51:01
    1 million points. If I launch the ball in Theater of Magic, I earn 5 million. It's so weird. It's gone back full circle again where things like the Jersey Jackpins are really low scorers. I hate that. Honestly, I hate it. To me, there's a... We've talked about this before. System 11 scoring is probably the best. It feels right. You feel like you're getting just enough payoff for that big shot. You go in a taxi and you get that meter jackpot, for example.
    51:37
    That's another interesting one in tournament too. They've got it permanently locked at Netherworld to 1.5 million because people were deliberately waiting to late in the tournament to put all their games on taxi so they could get the cumulative jackpot and just basically get position one automatically. Yeah. And, oh, man, that game, locking it to 1.5 million, is the best thing that you can do for that game in a tournament, like seriously.
    52:04
    Yeah. The System 11s are a well-balanced game, so they really do feel good to play. Jersey Jack just kind of drives me nuts because it's like, you'll be sitting there playing, you'll be having a really good ball. You might be on that ball for 45 seconds to one minute. Yeah, that's a really good ball.
    52:21
    Like dialed in, you're smashing all those flashing lights. It's just nuts. And it goes $7,000. What?
    52:29
    Come on! I had to have hit something. Exactly. Even EM scored better than this. Oh, I've just flashed into my mind that I need to mention something that's relevant to me.
    52:45
    Yes, I'll keep that there. Let's continue. But remind me that I have a thing to talk about at the end. You got it. The other things that... So, basically, what Mel said, and I'll just summarize some of what was in the previous podcast, is we're going to get through the six. Alpha numerics are indeed on the way. On the table. I did not ask about numerics, but alpha numerics for sure are on the way. There is a list over on Digital Pinball Fans. There is two threads. If you look under... I think it got put under the Zen categories. But it's basically, what are going to be the first alpha numerics? What are going to be the first numerics? And there's a list of all the possible tables that'll pop in. If you look at the numerics tables, holy crap, what was up with Bally between 1978 and 1983? They produced so many tables, it's redonkulous.
    53:42
    And they're not rethemes either. They're genuine bespoke design tables. It is crazy. Crazy. Most of them are just mediocre.
    53:52
    Yeah. There's a few in there that are good, but yeah, you're right. They're rinse repeats, aren't they? If you went push comes to shove in terms of what Zen would do of the numerics, it's pretty much going to come down to the exact same ones that Farsight did. Yes. Because they're the stronger games. They are the stronger games. There's no doubt about it. Paragon, for example What's that? Paragon, for example, I think that's a belly It is a belly, and you know there's only the six Y-bodies that belly did and while it would be great to have all six of them in there I don't think that it's a style of table that many people, well A, you're not going to get Space Invaders, that's just get rid of that one for all the license issues and then you've got a table called Hot Dog Most people don't really know about that. No idea about that. Which is kind of, you know, racy. That would cause problems probably for their console. That would be a censorship nightmare, that one. Yeah. And then you've got Paragon and Embryon, which are both pretty good.
    55:00
    I'm not sure if I'm missing one more. I think I am. Yeah. I can't remember. Anyway. But, you know, things like Centaur. Yeah, you're really going to want it. That's right. you're going to want Space Shuttle, I'm sure.
    55:17
    There's tables like that of 8-Ball Deluxe. You're going to want. But it's going to be the Alpha Numerics. But before the Alpha Numerics, he did say first license table now is probably going to be around Halloween.
    55:29
    So I guess that might be. We'll see. Everybody immediately goes to thinking it's the Farsight way of thinking. Where Farsight was like, Halloween table for Halloween theme. This is them. We don't know. it's going to be their first licensed table who knows what it's going to be they didn't say October they said Halloween I might know what some of the possible titles are based on conversations so I'm going to keep myself out of it and the new original table three tables that they're working on as he put it game development problems they've been delayed. They won't be coming out until 2020. Yeah.
    56:12
    I made a point of indexing those directly in the show last week because I thought people wouldn't know about that. I put a timing note in the show for that last week.
    56:22
    In terms of I asked him about his conversations with Stern and nothing is set in stone, folks. He didn't say, yes, the deal is imminent. Which he wouldn't say anyhow. Yeah, he would play anyhow. That being said, he had conversations with them.
    56:43
    They talked, at least. And Gary finally got digital. That's the thing that was a big thing in the meeting. Gary worked out that while they were standing, no people came up to it. Gary got to see at Star Wars Celebration, he got to see the big pinball machine. The big cabinet. And we don't have enough time to talk about it this time. which is fine we always need topics so we'll talk we'll go into that uh next week about the uh what zen can do with this big monstrosity machine but let's just say that that thing opened gary's eyes so he went wow everyone wants to play this thing yeah and they don't want to play our you know chopped liver tables within the context of the event that they were at and that's the important thing to realize but if you want to get warmed up for that topic next week you go and listen to the interview podcast and look for those timing notes. That you should. Okay. Well, I have a thing. You have a thing, yes. What is the thing? So what I've been looking around in forums for is, I mean, you know, the Star Race boards, you know, they are continuing to be finicky.
    57:50
    So I was going, all right, well, I've heard through Ed of the pinball or pinball that there's a, a guy in France called Pascal and he makes these boards for System 80s and they're just called Pascal boards. They're a direct drop-in replacement for the System 80 architecture and all the System 80 revisions basically are supported with this board. And the board is like you know how the whole light box in a pin machine is typically taken up with a series of boards. this thing is like a postage stamp in the bottom left hand corner of the board it's that much refined so i figured what would be possibilities i could do if i could get that board well i was thinking well maybe i could actually completely redesign the back box of my table and have like a low a low boy back box with just a small like almost like a a video game marquee style back glass in it because my back glass is pretty rough it's not in good condition it's flaked and there's a lot of missing paint so I could go you know I could just basically cut down an old board and then just reposition the lights and then just make up a custom back glass in photoshop or whatever and get that printed and make a lower back glass and just make it a bit of a yeah yeah and exactly or just put a big LED strip in it because you wouldn't need all the incandescent bulbs in the back it'd be really easy so i think okay cool and you know ed was saying oh this is what i've done for all my games i'm just putting these boards in their direct replacements you just don't have to do any rewiring it's great i thought oh that's that sounds right my alley so i went on to the pascal site and i saw the board and i thought this looks great and then they had a little link saying oh you know not all games are supported because i thought this board you just basically take the rom chips out of your existing game dump them into this board and you'd be done but the way pascal actually um writes his code is he completely de-engineers the the rom and recodes it because he adds things in like ball save and um like other stuff that's just not possible with the current system a the architecture which you can turn on and off at will like it's all dip switch settings so you can have it original purely original or enhanced and it's it's really good but the what he does is amazing but the problem is that star race is not on the supported rom list so star race because he said look i've been trying to find this game in france for years and i cannot find it they come up for sale and because it's such a rare game boom it's gone before i can even put a bid in so because i'm really having a hard time getting a table because what he needs to do is of course have the table in his shop because he needs to put oscilloscopes on probes and stuff like that in the game to measure outputs and all that stuff so he can actually detect the signals coming from the ROM and then orchestrate that in his new version of the ROM.
    60:55
    So I said, look, as an owner, is there anything I can do for you? I have a mate who has access to oscilloscopes and a whole lot of bench testing equipment. I said, could we do this remotely? Could I actually take measurement points for you and help you with this to get this ROM available for your customers and in turn for me.
    61:14
    He goes, look, that's a very, very generous offer and thank you, but actually I really do need it in the studio because I need to play it and then look at and essentially record the outputs from the game while it's playing so I get a realistic representation of how to code things. I'm going to ship it free.
    61:32
    Ship it over, yeah. That'd be cheap. No, I'll make him pay for it. Well, no, he said, look, I've been looking for a loan machine for ages as well, but there's just not a lot in France. Yeah. And so I was going, oh, that's a real bummer. And the way that the ROM boards work is they're proprietary. So if you want, like, you free updates for life for them. But to get an update, you need to just ship the little tiny business card size board over back to him. He'll reflash it and post it back to him. So I was thinking, oh, you know, if I just got his under NDA, I even said, look, if I need to enter into NDA, I will do that to make this happen. and he said, look, I've got to have it there. But I could go into NDA, he could send me his flashing software, I could flash ROMs when he'd made them available, etc. to cut down time, but it's just not possible. So my call for action or my call for help for everyone who's listening to this show, and it would be really good if you could share this message out wide, is if you know anybody in France who has a Star Race, whether it's in their private collection or anywhere, Could you please go to Pascal's site and get in touch with him? Because he could really do with some help here. There's a list of games that he can't find ready examples for, and all he need would be get a loan of the table for like a month, and then he could actually make these ROMs and save a lot of pinball owners' problems with the System A board sets that are floating around at the moment. So I'll put the link to his website, which is, I believe it's flipwith3ps.fr. But if you do a search for Pascal Boards in YouTube, you'll see them. So, yeah, if you could do me a solid, that would be really great if you could ask around on anywhere that you might know people in France. And I think probably I might actually end up starting a post on Pinside in the Star Race Owners thread to see if anyone is on there in France and could actually help this guy out. because the possibilities with this board to completely kind of make this very unique and very interesting, this game, would be very cool and very interesting indeed. So yeah, please, please help if you can.
    63:52
    That would be wonderful. So cool, yeah. So cool. And, you know, personally beneficial for him. Well, for him too, because he can then sell Rome. Exactly. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of Star Wars owners out there, I think, still with games that are probably on their last legs. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, the system 80 boards are pretty robust, but to get them pretty robust, you've got to spend a pretty penny on them, as I found out.
    64:24
    Oh, hey, Jer, what's that? Whoa. It sounds like music. It's end music. That means, folks, it's coming to an end. That is correct, folks. you need to follow us on socials. So, we are at Blockade on Twitter. Jared is at JaredMorgz. I am at ShutYourTraps. Go ahead and follow us, won't you? You got an email that you want to send us? It's blahblahblockade at gmail.com or why don't you just go ahead and visit our website, which is blockadepinball.com slash episodes. Last but not least, don't you want to buy a t-shirt? You know you do. You need to go to redbubble.com and do a search for Blockade and then you can do some really groovy things. Alright.
    65:08
    With that, if anybody wants, follow over to Steam, look up Shut Your Trap as a profile, and you can maybe see some Volume 4 gameplay going on in just a minute or two. Alright, until then, we will talk to you all again next week. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye!