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Facts Are Hard

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 38m·held·Feb 13, 2015
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Blockade hosts discuss Arcade Expo, Australian restoration imports, and LCD backbox display innovation.

Summary

BlahCade Podcast hosts discuss the Arcade Expo in Banning, California, where Jeff Strong attended a massive collection of ~750 pinball machines owned by one collector. Jared Morgan covers his visit to a warehouse in Brisbane, Australia that imports and restores classic pinball machines, and notes the impact of Australian currency on new machine pricing. The group also discusses Wizard of Oz's LCD backbox screen technology and debates whether it's a revolution or just eye candy.

Key Claims

  • The Arcade Expo in Banning, California has approximately 750 pinball machines, with 99% owned by one collector

    high confidence · Jeff Strong speaking about attending the expo; described as 'pretty incredible' collection

  • Tim Arnold owns over 1,000 pinball machines in warehouses

    medium confidence · Comparison made to distinguish the Banning collection from Tim Arnold's known collection; described as 'I know, over 1,000 machines as far as I know'

  • The Banning expo facility is subject to zoning restrictions and can only operate twice yearly (February and October)

    high confidence · Jeff Strong: 'they're only able to have it open twice a year now... they're just doing the Expo twice a year. So it's going to be back again in October'

  • The Saturday session of the Arcade Expo set a Guinness World Record for most people playing pinball simultaneously

    high confidence · Jeff Strong: 'they broke the record For the most people playing pinball at one point in time They got the Guinness World Record'

  • Australian distributor pricing for Stern LE models will reach approximately AUD $11,000 due to currency devaluation

    high confidence · Jared Morgan: 'the distributor down here... is probably going to have to end up charging eleven thousand dollars australian for a an le'

  • Australian Stern Pro models now cost around AUD $8,000 due to currency factors

    high confidence · Jared Morgan: 'Pros like with the Australian dollar falling below 80 cents is they're going to be up around $8,000'

  • The Third Rail venue has not reopened following a fire that destroyed the building

    high confidence · Sean Don Carlos: 'the third rail still has not reopened' and 'it takes a lot of effort to rebuild a building that was destroyed by fire'

  • Wizard of Oz is the first pinball machine to feature an LCD screen in the backbox showing movie clips

    high confidence · Sean Don Carlos: 'Wizard of Oz obviously was the first to do it. By all accounts, they made good use of the thing. It shows clips from the movie'

Notable Quotes

  • “This place makes the Pinball Hall of Fame look like a garage.”

    Jeff Strong — Emphasizes the extraordinary scale of the Banning collection relative to other known large collections

  • “It was almost like, man, don't want this night to end.”

    Jeff Strong — Captures the emotional experience of being surrounded by such a large number of playable machines

  • “I think it's great for drawing the crowd... but you never you just never really have time to look at it.”

    Sean Don Carlos — Articulates the core tension with Wizard of Oz's LCD screen: good for spectators but not beneficial to active players

  • “Pinball machines are in beta for the first six months of their existence because the programmers can't get done everything they want to get done.”

    Sean Don Carlos — Commentary on industry-wide code release practices and game maturity timelines

  • “So there's a couple of guys doing this... these guys are one of them... these guys really are keeping pinball alive down here, making pinball affordable for people to play”

    Jared Morgan — Highlights the importance of restoration/import services for maintaining accessibility in currency-challenged markets

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJeff StrongpersonJared MorganpersonSean Don CarlospersonTim ArnoldpersonEdpersonMarkpersonArcade ExpoeventAll PinballorganizationBlahCade Podcastorganization

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Arcade Expo in Banning set Guinness World Record for simultaneous pinball players on Saturday; well-executed with volunteers, food court, live music, and dual-room setup (pinball and classic arcade)

    high · Jeff Strong: 'they broke the record For the most people playing pinball at one point in time They got the Guinness World Record' and detailed description of execution quality

  • ?

    venue_signal: Banning facility operates under industrial zoning restrictions limiting operations to twice yearly (February and October expos); owner seeking permanent weekly operations but facing legal/permitting barriers

    high · Jeff Strong: 'they're having some legal issues with their permit, because it's kind of like an industrial zoning... they're only able to have it open twice a year now'

  • ?

    collector_signal: Single Banning-based collector owns approximately 750 machines (99% of expo inventory), representing one of largest private collections globally; rivals but differs from Tim Arnold's 1000+ machines in warehouse storage

    high · Jeff Strong: 'they said like 99% of these machines are owned by this one dude' and comparison to Tim Arnold's known collection

  • $

    market_signal: Australian dollar weakness drives dramatic cost increases for new Stern machines; LE models projected at AUD $11,000, Pro models at AUD $8,000, making classic affordable restoration market (AUD $1,500-$2,700) increasingly critical for local accessibility

    high · Jared Morgz: 'the distributor down here... is probably going to have to end up charging eleven thousand dollars australian for a an le' and 'Pros... are they're going to be up around $8,000'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.296

0:00
We need shuttle bots. Engage focal distance. Standing by. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. Welcome, everyone. I'm your host, Shut Your Trap. Also known as Chris Frevis, but we don't talk about that. With us today is Jeff Strong. Happy New Year. No, wait, we did that one already. Yeah, we did that one.
0:32
Jared Morgz. Hello there, everybody. And Sean Don Carlos. Greetings, Earthlings. Hi there. My God, she's alive. Yes.
0:45
So, here we are. We are in the midst of February. Which is actually hard to tell here because it's about 65 and sunny in St. Louis right now. That's why I was just going to comment. Here in Southern California, it's bright blue skies and 75 degrees, maybe 80. I don't know. It's definitely not winter. The difference is that your 75 and 80 will last through tomorrow and mine will not. It's supposed to be 30 here tomorrow.
1:14
Wow, that's a temperature swing. Welcome to St. Louis. My God, I'd be sick constantly. Yeah, well, we are in the winter. I know, but I know you're sick every time you go in and out of cold weather to hot weather kind of thing, and that would just be torturous. Yeah, it gets a little silly here sometimes, but we're used to it. That's what you get for living over there, though.
1:36
I know. No culture. Lots of pinball here, though. Lots and lots of pinball. Actually, we're going to be getting into a little bit of lots of pinball because, Jeff, did you or did you not go to the Arcade Expo in lovely God-knows-where-it-actually-is Banning, California? I can actually confirm that. I was there. I mean, Banning is pretty much one of the armpits of California. I mean, there's nothing around there. I mean, even the name sounds bad. Well, it's kind of on the way to Palm Springs, isn't it? Yes, it is on the way, and there is a casino that's like this. You're driving down in the vast world of nothing, and then there's this one giant, you know. Oasis of some sort. Exactly, exactly. This bright neon blinking thing of, stop here otherwise it's another 45 minutes to civilization hope you don't break down in between sounds like a good place for a moderator conference actually it does it's right near there it's actually only 20 minutes from my house actually so I kind of live right on the edge of the desert anyway so and it's like hey man 20 minutes it's like I'd be fooled not to go because me and Heretic were talking about it in the chat room I was like yeah I might go and he's like, what are you, retarded or something? You're talking about not going and it's like 20 minutes from your house? I was like, yeah, it's probably going to be super crowded and stuff. And he talked me into going and I was like, man, it was such a blast. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they only have 750 pinball machines. I don't know if it's worth my time or not.
Pinball Hall of Fame
venue
The Third Railvenue
The Wizard of Ozgame
Firepowergame
Whirlwindgame
WrestleManiagame
The Hobbitgame
The Walking Dead (LE)game
Pinball Arcadeproduct
Stern Pinballcompany
CPR (Custom Pinball Restoration)company
Farsight Studioscompany

operational_signal: Container import model of classic pins from Zimbabwe and other sources sustains affordability in Australia; All Pinball and similar importers fill supply gap created by new machine pricing

high · Jared Morgz describes All Pinball warehouse with Zimbabwe container shipment; frames as critical for 'keeping pinball alive down here'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Wizard of Oz pioneered full LCD screen in backbox showing movie clips; WrestleMania uses LED display in playfield instead; The Hobbit expected to follow LCD model. Community debate ongoing whether this is gameplay revolution or spectator eye-candy

    high · Sean Don Carlos: 'Wizard of Oz obviously was the first to do it... It shows clips from the movie' and discussion of whether this will be 'that kind of revolution in pinball, or is this just going to be eye candy'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Wizard of Oz's LCD display adds value for spectators but minimal gameplay benefit for active players due to table brightness and rule complexity making continuous screen monitoring impractical; players report never looking at monitor during play

    high · Sean Don Carlos: 'it's great if you're watching someone else play... it adds almost nothing While you're actually playing the game Because you never have time to look at the thing'

  • ?

    product_concern: Industry pattern of releasing pinball games in semi-finished state with 6-month beta period before reaching stability; Wizard of Oz required code updates to address initial issues

    high · Sean Don Carlos: 'pretty much pinball machines are in beta for the first six months of their existence because the programmers can't get done everything they want to get done'

  • ?

    venue_signal: The Third Rail arcade venue remains closed following fire damage; rebuilding taking longer than owner anticipated; insurance process and reconstruction efforts ongoing

    high · Sean Don Carlos: 'the third rail still has not reopened... it takes a lot of effort to rebuild a building that was destroyed by fire... he's still doing it. It's just taking a lot longer than he'd hoped'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: CPR (Custom Pinball Restoration) provides high-quality reproduction playfields (e.g., for Firepower) enabling upgrades of vintage machines; combined with System 7 board upgrades and ROM modifications to add features like skill shots

    high · Discussion of Firepower restoration with 'CPR reproduction' playfield, System 7 board, and 'deluxe ROM' that added skill shot feature

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: WrestleMania theme generates minimal enthusiasm from podcast hosts; described as less appealing than even X-Men/Marvel themes, suggesting WWE/sports entertainment IP has limited appeal in enthusiast pinball community

    medium · Sean Don Carlos: 'Wrestlemania does not interest me one iota as a theme I could care less they found the one theme that I could care about less than X-Men'

  • ?

    content_signal: All Pinball's Facebook page documenting imported machines and availability attracting Australian collector interest; Jared Morgz leveraging podcast platform to share restoration marketplace information with community

    medium · Jared Morgz references All Pinball's Facebook page listing inventory and inviting him to cover Walking Dead LE unboxing for audience awareness

    • 3:11
    It's pretty tough, right? Pretty measly offering, but I guess I'll grace it with my presence and go. That being said, I didn't bother to go. It's 90 minutes away from me and I was worried about the crowds. And for some reason, I had it in my mind that this was the, well, I'm sure nobody knows. About a year ago, maybe a little bit longer, there was a Kickstarter. The guy that owns the majority of these machines was wanting to open up a full-time pinball facility,
    3:42
    like something of the nature of 70,000 square feet of pinball. And he wasn't able to get the funds to open. And so he said, don't worry, we'll be opening later or whatever. and then a year later all of a sudden it's this pinball expo and this is his thing, it's in the building city bot and I thought, oh sweet, this is just the opening weekend and I'll go when it's less crowded and then I found out that no, he's just doing the expos right now he's not actually opening the place up for people to come every weekend right after I went I was like man, I gotta get a hold of this guy and find out when he's going to be open when is this thing going to be regular basis open to the public and it turns out that they're having some legal issues with their permit, because it's kind of like an industrial zoning that they're in. I think it's like an old industrial building of some sort. Well, that'd be really the only buildings big enough. Yeah. I mean, this place is huge. Yeah, exactly. Two huge rooms that they've turned. One's dedicated to pinball, the other one's dedicated to old, just arcade games in general, like, you know, Dig Dug and Pac-Man and all that. So it's just enormous. But the problem they're having is just with their zoning, and they're only able to have it open twice a year now, So they're just doing the Expo twice a year. So it's going to be back again in October for another Expo. Yeah, that's a long wait. But, yeah, it's pretty incredible to think that, I think they said like 99% of these machines are owned by this one dude. That's got to be close to some kind of a record as far as. . . I was going to say, that has to be either the largest or one of the largest collections in the world, if that's true. I know Tim Arnold has more. He does? He's got thousands in a warehouse. This place makes the Pinball Hall of Fame look like a garage. No, no, no. Tim doesn't have them all on display. That's the thing. Tim has a warehouse, and it was once or twice a year he was opening up the warehouse and having people come and play machines, and that's what inspired him to open up the Pinball Hall of Fame, where it could just be a daily thing. Oh, that's right. Because wasn't it like Farsight actually went to one of his warehouses, like some airplane hangar or something? That's how the Gottlieb collection, I think, came into being. Exactly. So, no, he's got, I know, over 1,000 machines as far as I know. I mean, I think that was one of the things that I had read.
    5:57
    Now, in what working shape? I don't know. I think these guys were in much, much better condition than what Tim has. There were so many that were in working condition, but there were quite a few that weren't just because he has so many. And they've been in storage, and, you know, I mean, that's a lot of work to get them all up and running. I bet he got some volunteers. He did. He had a lot of volunteers.
    6:20
    Just after the expo, people just went like, I want to work on these. Yes, I will commit some time and make this better.
    6:28
    For sure, man. If I had the skills, I'd be right there ready to sign up. I mean, in a heartbeat. So what was it like walking into that room and just seeing that many machines? I mean, the noise must have just been incredible. It was just awe-inspiring, man. I mean, I've been in some larger arcades as a kid. I mean, like I mentioned before in a previous podcast, Indiana Beach was as huge as a kid. I mean, it was just an enormous arcade. But going into this, it was almost like going back in time to that, but on an even bigger scale. I was just blown away. And, of course, I mean, just hearing the bells and chimes from all the EMs and then mixed in with the DMD machines and the new stuff, it was a pretty nice mix. You know, it was incredible. It was almost like, man, don't want this night to end. And, of course, you didn't have time to play even a fraction of the machines that you wanted to play. So that's one of the things. It's almost like, did you even have time to walk the aisles and see everything? Or was it just kind of this blur? No, I mean, you don't even have time to look at everything, let alone even try a portion of the machines that you'd like to play. So, I mean, I didn't have time to. They were all set on free play, right? Yeah, of course. It was only like $20 to get in per person because we found a Groupon ticket online for a discount. and it was quite the deal to be able to go in there and play to your heart's content for that amount of money. And it was just mind-blowing, man. And I didn't have time to go to, like, any of the conferences. They had all kinds of little, you know, Roger Sharpers there putting on a conference and different people and stuff. And it's like, man, if I have the choice to go around and do the conferences or play, I think I'd rather play, you know. So I spent my time as wisely as possible. And, like, I didn't even talk to Farsight or anything. It's like, you know, I've met the guys before. I've been to their studio. We can talk to them when we want. Yeah, this is a goldmine of Pimble's. That's right. I may not have access to for another few months until October, so it's like I'm just going to take advantage of every single moment of time I have and make the most of it. Awesome. They had good music. They had, I think it's called like chiptune music it's called. It's like the 8-bit NES style music. And they actually had people performing that live on stage, which was pretty cool. So they had that kind of pumped in. I'm actually well into that. Yeah, you would have loved it. There's a really cool chiptune. There's this Japanese guy I follow that was really sweet. It's called Sexy Synthesizer. Very cool if you haven't heard him. I would think that would get grating after a while, though, but maybe with all the pinball machines making racket, you can't really hear it. Yeah, it was kind of cool because they had that on the outside stage, and it was kind of like in the food court area you could hear it. But then in the pinball machine area, they had kind of like 70s music, like old classic rock and soul music and stuff playing. So it kind of felt like you were going back in time, especially if you were playing the EM machines and stuff. So it was a pretty cool mix. I just have to give them two thumbs up for the execution. They had all kinds of volunteers as far as people helping out with the food court and everything. So it seemed like it would be really well executed and planned. So I think the one in October is going to be even better. You're going to have to do multiple days then in October? Yeah, I think so One day wasn't enough We went on Friday night And actually the crowds weren't really too bad on Friday Yeah, I saw the pictures from Saturday though Yeah, that was the day that they actually The pictures from Saturday They looked like just a clogged artery Yeah That was the day they broke the record For the most people playing pinball at one point in time They got the Guinness World Record So it was quite Packed to the gills on Saturday Wow. How do I look? You look good. She's alive!
    10:05
    Jared, you are helping some gentleman that also has a rather large collection of pinball tables now, aren't you? Yeah, well, I actually got contacted by Ed of All Pinball. He saw what I was doing online, like doing the Blackade podcast and that type of thing, and he wanted to get me over to the warehouse that he works at, which is over in a suburb called Morningside in Brisbane. It's about a 20-minute drive from me where I live. And I thought, sure, it's pinball. I'll go and have a look and see what's going on. And went out there and it's pretty crazy, hey. Like, he has got all pinball. He actually is a contractor who works there for the owner, Mark. and they have just got, it's early solid state heaven. They've got racks upon racks of pinball machines waiting to be fixed up. Oh, baby. Oh, man, it's incredible.
    11:12
    It's like a little treasure trove of pinball underneath the area where these guys are working. I couldn't really have a look too much in there because there's just so many and it goes back so far. but they've got an incredible stock of early solid states there that are just waiting to be refurbished. And I know these guys, they actually imported a container of pins recently from, of all places, Zimbabwe.
    11:38
    Okay. It's Zimbabwe, right? This is the educational part of our show. I have learned something. I know, me too. I was really surprised to hear where they got it from. Anyhow, they got a container and they're slowly working their way through them and getting them done. So as a bit of information for Australian people, probably not so much relevant for US because of the amount of money it would take to get over there, if you want, they've got a list up on their Facebook page, but they've got some pretty nice titles there, some of them rather sought-after titles that you probably wouldn't be able to see very much of these days. for example, there was a Dolly Parton that was there,
    12:24
    and there were a couple of other... What were some of the other names that they had there? Let me just go in. If you'll bear with me, I'll just go and open up my tablet. I'll go to Facebook.
    12:35
    Don't worry, we can fill time for you. If we could have some loading music. Starting with the fact that Dolly Parton's pill-bolt machine is almost an insult to her, but go on. we have one at cp pinball it's um not the most played thing in the uh the building i'll tell you that yeah well they've got um okay here we are so here's a page that so the post says um so they're selling these these games from between this is refurbished 1500 australian to 2,700 Australian depending on condition. But for those guys who want to pick up one as a project pin, which is really, really rare to see these days in Australia, you can actually pick them up unshopped as well. So they'll sell them to you as is and it's up to you to make it work. So when I went there, in that shipment, they actually had the Indiana Jones that was just done up like a Williams Indiana Jones. There was also a Frankenstein there that was waiting to be done up as well, which looked quite good. But the other games they've got, they've got a Gottlieb The Games, a Williams Blackout, Gottlieb Jacks to Open, Belly Pool Sharks, Belly Knight Rider, Williams Pinbot, Williams Alien Poker, there's a Rack'em Up from Gottlieb, an Incredible Hulk from Gottlieb, some of these I haven't even heard of before. A Belly Nitro Ground Shaker,
    14:04
    Oh wow, I don't see those much anymore. But even, how about this, there's actually an LE a stern alley like Muhammad Ali I think so they're not that common there's a kiss lady luck, laser war jeez there's even a big guns from Williams, Matahari Black Pyramid I know those ones are really popular Black Pyramid they just had Black Pyramid at the league night I was at and everybody was complaining about just how bad of a pinball it is like they go it's they were kind of the guys who were playing it were kind of commenting that it's enjoyable for about five minutes and then you realize there's just nothing to do on the thing I kind of enjoyed it I don't know if I'd like it in my collection as such because I have so many pinballs at home at the moment you know it's fun I played it at Free Gold Watch in San Francisco there and it was not bad actually the other thing they got there is a Flight 2000, and that's not one I think I've ever seen down here in Australia. Flight 2000, I believe that might be the table of the week right now. Yeah, I heard that. More on that later. Yeah, more on that later. There's actually a Taxi, Black Knight 2K. There's some really good titles in here. I won't go through the whole list because it's rather long, actually. There's lots and lots of good games here that you can get for, well... Sounds like it. yeah pretty cheap that wasn't actually an ad they didn't pay me for that I just thought it would be worth sharing that they've got all these really cool old tables here that are available for sale and that just doesn't happen that often anymore so yeah they've actually a picture so if you go to the if you want to have a look it's the all pinball slash play well games Facebook page and they've got some shots there but they also invited me over so I could see an unboxing of the walking dead LE as well so it was cool to be able to play that and see it actually being pulled out of the box and play it sort of the first it's actually the second one to play it so that was pretty nice and I tell you what I've seen the Walking Dead Pro and the Walking Dead LE just blows it away it's so much better well that's pretty typical of Stern's the Pros aren't worth bothering with anymore the Pros are just for tight operators who don't want to spend the money the problem is that from us down here in australia it's going to be uh become increasingly more and more difficult to justify the premium or le models because with the australian dollar the way it is at the moment the uh the distributor down here um is probably going to have to end up charging eleven thousand dollars australian for a an le so even pros like with the Australian dollar falling below 80 cents is they're going to be up around $8,000. So gone are the days when you could have gone and picked up a Walking Dead, not a Walking Dead, like an ACDC Pro for like five or six grand down here. It's just no longer possible. Man, that's incredible. I know. So this is why these project pins, these 1,500 to 2,700 jobs down here, sure, they're old titles, but it means that pinball remains affordable for people in Australia. So there's a couple of guys doing this. These guys are one of them. There's another company that the Pinheads Pinball Podcast featured a while back who imports containers from all over the world. And these guys really are keeping pinball alive down here, making pinball affordable for people to play and actually have in their collections. Because I might be able to do like a $1,500 pinball machine, but there's no way in heck I'll be able to do an $8,000 one. No. So, yeah, I thank them for doing what they do because it's a risky business. I mean, the Pinheads Pinball Podcast have covered on a number of occasions how risky it is to actually commit to, like, importing a container down here. It's, yeah, you've got to have nerves of steel to do it. So, you know, when people like this do it, it's where all the pinheads around Australia are very thankful. Find Jared's GoFundMe page.
    18:26
    Although they just gratefully accepted it. I've made a little bit of space in my garage, actually, which has been taken up with boring things like reclaiming fence palings and painting them to make borders for fences. I'd much rather fill those places with pinball machines. So if anyone would like to donate to the Make Jared Have Pinballs in His Garage Fund, you can use my Gmail address. and please send me all the money. So yes, go do that now.
    18:59
    Speaking of pinball restoration, so I was at the league night and it was on Super Bowl Sunday. So there goes to show you where pinball people's priorities are. Although we did have a Super Bowl up on many TVs. The way the guy had this house set up. Anyway, you don't need to know. But, so, I've mentioned it before, our league, we go to different collectors' houses and we play their machines. And so, this guy, his name is Tim, he had built an add-on to his house, just a small little room, but it can hold nine tables. and he had a custom tile put down so that it had a little flipper and ball at the entrance and a little pinball machine at the exit and he put a sign outside that's lit up in neon and says tilt.
    19:52
    It's just a cool little space for these tables but he likes his machines just shy of immaculate and he had this firepower in there that was mind-blowing to me. He had done a full cabinet restoration on it.
    20:17
    It was just like high lacquer black. It was just incredible on the outside. His playfield was a CPR reproduction, and he had it LED'd out, and it had the drop targets instead of the stand-up targets and stuff. But anyway, so how can I resist playing this thing because you know we just I've got one kind of you've got one it's there it's a big piece of furniture at the moment he showed me his old play field that he replaced and I can say that my play field is in better condition than his was so that made me feel better and he oh he found a I guess in 1992 or something like that Williams reproduced the back glasses because the original back glasses were notorious for flaking and the paint all coming off. So Williams did a rerun of the back glass and he got one of those, so he had his old back glass and I checked that out and again, mine was in about the same condition, which isn't horrible. It's not great, but it's not horrible by any stretch of the imagination. So I was like, okay, mine's just kind of the average look and stuff, but this thing looked like a sparkling jewel and it didn't play a thing like the Pinball Arcade version. That doesn't really surprise me.
    21:39
    It was... Well, you know, the biggest shock was it's so much slower and the flippers do not have near the power that Pinball Arcade put in it. Getting the ball up to the top ball lock was kind of like a prayer and a wish. You could hit that spinner perfectly perfect and it would barely maybe, the only time I got it in, it actually bounced off of the top of one of the in lanes and bounced in.
    22:11
    It needed that hop. But one of the cool things that he had done was he had installed System 7 boards, and that way he could also have a 7-digit display instead of the 6-digit that it normally came with. But I guess there's some individual out there that created custom well, they call it a deluxe ROM. And so it added just a couple of little tweaks to the game. And the biggest one that I thought was just so cool was a skill shot.
    22:41
    And what that was, what it was, was it left the spinner lit for about, I don't know, maybe five or ten seconds. So it would be, you know, launch the ball, have it drop through the in lanes, try and catch the ball, and then send it up the spinner. and if you did, then you got, and I don't know how many points because I never came close to hitting it. It was like, ah, the pressure!
    23:05
    But it was just one of those little things where it's like, man, it doesn't take much to tweak a game to make it feel just a little bit more modern.
    23:15
    It was pretty cool, and those drop targets were the bomb. Those were awesome. Oh, man. Well, you know how the stand-up targets are kind of death if you hit them at certain angles? Oh, yeah, no doubt. Yeah, well, the drop targets going away and then just having the rubber behind it, it didn't make them quite so deadly anymore. That being said, it is every bit the outlane drain that it is in Pimble Arcade. I mean, they got that part right.
    23:44
    Yeah, I was going to say, man, those outlanes are pretty wide on that thing. Oh, no, it's vicious. It's vicious. Gaping chasms. Gazing gaping chasms. but what I was going to say too right next to it was he also fully restored a whirlwind which was pretty awesome and then on the other side of that was Wizard of Oz and so here you've got this the most modern pin well this is not anymore the most modern but the most modern pin that I have seen and sitting right next to this machine from 1980, 1981 and it was every bit as sparkly. I mean, it was just like, wow. You would have thought that it just rolled off the production line. Back at the third rail before it burned, there were some machines from the late 70s There was an Evel Knievel and a Mystic I hated Mystic Mystic did not like me and I did not like it but same thing I mean they were in the exact same condition Their playfields were all shiny. They were perfectly, you know, obviously you could tell they were older just because of the, you know, they didn't have the DMDs and everything, but I mean, as far as mechanical appearance and performance, they were just as good as they were probably the day they were made.
    25:05
    Unfortunately, the third rail still has not reopened. What's wrong with them? Well, you know, it takes a lot of effort to rebuild a building that was destroyed by fire.
    25:16
    From what I heard, he's still doing it. It's just taking a lot longer than he'd hoped. He needs to get cracking. Get those insurance dollars in. Jeez. People.
    25:28
    Hey, since we have Sean, I'm pretty sure you all know what that means. It's time for Lost in the Zone. Are you ready to battle?
    25:43
    Take it away, Sean. All right, so I've got two things for you. The first thing, and since you brought up Wizard of Oz, we'll do that first.
    25:52
    Now that Stern has gotten on board the post-DMD machines by putting an entire monitor in the back glass for WrestleMania, thought it'd be good to kind of talk about how we feel about that. Are they kind of... Is this going to be the next big thing in pinball? Is it just a gimmick? What kind of thing is it?
    26:16
    Wait, so maybe am I looking at the pro version? When I looked, it looked like it was still a regular size DMD screen, but I was thinking it was just an LED screen instead. You're saying it's the same size as... This is the LE... Okay, so maybe I haven't seen the picture. So it's the same size as what Wizard of Oz has. I think it's a little smaller.
    26:40
    And I couldn't really tell from the picture of it because it obviously wasn't on. It was just kind of like a... I don't even know if it was really a photograph or more of an artist rendering. It almost looked like it has a DMD as well.
    26:55
    But more generally, just the whole concept of having this... an LCD screen in the back glass. Wizard of Oz obviously was the first to do it.
    27:08
    By all accounts, they made good use of the thing. It shows clips from the movie and when you're saving Toto, you can actually see the woman running away with Toto in the basket on the bicycle and everything.
    27:23
    I'm having a look at the LE. I'm just looking at an ArcadeHeroes.com post about the LE. It doesn't actually have an LCD in the back box. It actually has what they call the... There was a particular name they gave to the massive stadium TVs in Wrestlemania. It escapes me at the moment, but they've actually got that in the playfield at the very back.
    27:46
    Yeah, something like that. Jumbotron or whatever it's called. Anyhow, they've got like a little LED screen in the playfield sort of around where the dot matrix display would be in the... maybe they changed it then yeah I know I saw a picture of one but like I said it was it wasn't even really a photograph it was more like a almost like a drawing of it and I haven't been following it because to be honest Wrestlemania does not interest me one iota as a theme I could care less they found the one theme that I could care about less than X-Men and Marvel characters.
    28:31
    But, you know, such is life. So anyway, we'll forget WrestleMania since nobody's really sure what that thing is. We'll just concentrate on Wizard of Oz.
    28:42
    Since The Hobbit's supposed to have that same LCD screen as well. So it's not like Wizard of Oz is going to be the only one that ever does this.
    28:52
    But anyway, the thing of it is, and I've played several Wizard of Oz's now. It's a great machine, especially now that they've got some of the... the new code's got some of the issues fixed.
    29:05
    It seems to be the thing now where you don't release... pretty much pinball machines are in beta for the first six months of their existence because the programmers can't get done everything they want to get done.
    29:17
    But the thing with it is it's great if you're watching someone else play. Yes, it's a good audience tool. It's good for attracting attention to itself It adds almost nothing While you're actually playing the game Because you never have time to look at the thing You're always Especially because Wizard of Oz is so damn bright to begin with The LEDs on that Every LED in that thing is multicolor And so it's constantly You're trying to remember If this arrow is flashing in this pattern And it's mostly blue, that means this thing but if it's mostly red, it means this other thing.
    29:57
    You're so concentrating on trying to figure out what the stuff on the play field means and actually play a game of pinball that you never look up. I mean, you might look up when multi-ball's starting, and you've got a few seconds to breathe, but it doesn't really do anything for the actual player. I was going to say, and then, of course, you look up, and the thing is divided up into four quadrants, and now you've got to figure out what quadrant am I actually looking at to figure out what it's asking me to do. it's kind of confusing to me just a little bit, I'll agree on that I only got to play it twice plus a handful of single ball shots, but full games I only played it twice, and I found I didn't look at the monitor at all, because I didn't know where to look, and the table like you said, is so busy that I was trying to figure out what was even going on just on the playfield let alone trying to look up and be like oh, okay, yeah, it wants me to do this loop that's followed by this, it gets me down this chain road that opens up this mode. What? Yeah, and the thing is, too, is if you do look up, it does have sometimes some helpful information on there that you can't get from looking at the play field. It'll tell you how many more hits on the door you've got to make to open the castle up and rescue. it'll tell you things about you know skill shots and multiplier I mean all sorts of things but you never you just never really have time to look at it like I said it's great for people standing around because then you're like okay that's what it was doing while I was too busy looking at the table but you know I don't know that this is now I haven't seen the Hobbit yet I'm assuming obviously it will have scenes from the movies maybe they'll learn a little bit, maybe they'll do it differently, I don't know I don't think anybody's really in a position to say yet but I guess the general question is, I mean, is this you know, obviously when DMD's hit the scene 23 years ago, 24 years ago um you know, they were a big deal and it kind of changed how what you could do with pinball because you could have animations, you could have much more detailed instructions, you could do a lot of things with the DMD that you couldn't do with off of numeric. Is this going to be that kind of revolution in pinball, or is this just going to be eye candy?
    32:25
    I think it's eye candy. And I think, but it's I don't think it's necessarily bad eye candy. Again, I think it's great for drawing the crowd.
    32:39
    And giving those standing around something else to look at. I kind of feel that way even with we got to play the new color DMD on the Simpsons table.
    32:53
    And while you're playing it, you're kind of like you're aware there's colors or whatever, but you're not eyeballing it at all. But those of us standing around waiting our turn, we were just like, oh my gosh, look at that, oh, that looks so cool. We're talking about all the animations that are going on because we're not looking at the ball. So I think for an audience perspective, it works. For a player perspective, I don't think it adds anything. Although, I should say, I'll take one thing back. When you hold the flipper waiting for your status report, I'm sure it's much easier to read status report on a big monitor than it would be on a DMV. It'll tell you everything you want to know and that and some. And the other thing it's good for, although this isn't even a player thing, but when you're in the operator's menu, it is so much easier to navigate that thing because it displays so much more. I mean, it's so easy to run tests. The lamp grid and stuff actually, like, shows the pinball table.
    33:51
    You know what it reminds me of? Instead of just being a box of squares. Do you know what it reminds me of? It actually reminds me a little bit of the Pin2K diagnostics menu, but much, much better. Yeah, sort of. You know what I mean? It's just so good to use. I remember when I was doing diagnostics on that, I found a trick where you could actually use the pinball back glass from the pin 2K back glass as a quick way to see the diagnostic screen while you've got the play field open. So you can just slide that in. It's got these two little notches where the back glass goes in so you can sort of see what's going on. It's a bit of a hot tip there. I'll have to remember that. So what would everybody's preference as a player be? would you prefer just digits, reels, alphanumerics DMD or monitor? I don't know I think I'm talking about as a player well I'll throw another perspective into the pool here there's a game a lot of people like hate fans would be familiar with called Revenge of the Robobot now what these guys do is they actually have the full size back glass which is just a normal sort of DMD-style back glass. But because it's a digital pinball table, what they've got is they've got a terse version of the back glass in a little, very small windowed region that just displays the pertinent messages up on the DMD.
    35:19
    And that would be kind of cool to have in playfield view when you're playing a game as complex as something like, you know, The Wizard of Oz or something like that, just to give you cues quickly that you could just dart your eyes up at, and just as a quick reference guide, essentially, while you're playing, rather than having to pause the massive LCD screen and go, ah, I just need to find out this information. And what do I need to do? Maybe that's why Stern moved that monitor where they did. Maybe one of them. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how it's utilized in-game. Jeff? When I'm playing, I guess I just, you know, I don't find myself really looking at the DMD that much anyway, unless it's like a video mode or something. I basically just like to see my score, and that's about it, really. I mean, I could take it or leave it. So as far as the LCD screen goes, eh. It's cool, like you guys say, for people that are observing. As a player, I really could do without it, but it's fine. I think as a player, for me, I like alphanumerics. And the whole reason being is the information that I need which is my score and what ball I'm on is almost always on display. I know that there's some DMVs now where you're like can you please just get off the animation so I can see what my score is or what one of the other players scores is so that I can figure out if I'm close to them.
    36:44
    Well what the newer Sterns do which I actually didn't like it at first because it kind of cuts down on the area that you can use for other things but After playing League a bit, I've understood why they do it. The area on the left is pretty much permanently your score and then whoever else is playing with you. And the animations are confined to the area on the right. So no matter what is going on, you can always tell what your score is and what it is in relation to the other players.
    37:16
    But yeah, some of the Williams machines, especially the late 90s ones, are really bad about that. You'll get into some mode and you won't be able to see your score for the entirety of the mode. It's just like, okay, I'm like one million points behind this other player. I really need to see if I need to take this risky shot or not. The other thing I liked about the alphanumerics is that whenever anything important happened,
    37:41
    it would capture the ball and whatever the information would go streaming across the bottom of it for you to read. But you could safely read it without worrying about the ball bouncing around. and this isn't always the case on a lot of the DMD machines. Williams is fairly good about pausing the ball and then giving you information, but I have noticed on some Sterns and stuff where it's throwing information and graphics and animation at you and you're like, I can't look up because I've got three balls in play right now.
    38:14
    Yeah. I'll tell you which one's really bad about that is Lord of the Rings because it's got that delayed lock on the right side, and you can be looking up at something, and it's unbeknownst to you that pin has dropped in the right return lane and a ball's being fed to your flipper, and it gives you zero, you know, it doesn't even flash a light or anything to let you know, hey, buddy, something's going on down here that perhaps you should take a look at.
    38:40
    I lost quite a few balls before I realized it was doing that. yeah the newer sterns are a little better about it like ACDC usually sometimes it'll catch the ball and do stuff the thing with ACDC though is a lot of it's high scoring shots are designed to be made while other things are going on like the oh I can't think of the name the multi-ball super jackpots you're actually supposed to fire the cannon and hit the bell while the multi-ball is still going on Oh man. And it's tough. It's really tough.
    39:17
    But it scores quite a bit when you do it. It's easily a 15 million shot before multipliers. But yeah, that one, the thing with that one is it doesn't even really, I mean it flashes the light in front of the bell for you but it doesn't really come out and tell you that you're supposed to do it.
    39:36
    And so it's actually I had to ask somebody because I'm like it's flashing the bell. What am I supposed to do? It was like, your cannon was loaded. Fire it. I'm like, I didn't see. I was trying to keep the other balls alive.
    39:46
    But getting back to the subject on the DMDs, I mean, I grew up in the DMD era. The machines I played were all either late alphanumerics or early DMDs.
    39:58
    So, I mean, to me, that's what pinball is. It's not a real pin if it doesn't have a DMD in it. I can stand Wizard of Oz.
    40:10
    it's just, I don't know there's some tables that I think that's going to work with and there's some other ones that's just like you know, just show me my damn score and what mode I'm in and what ball I'm on and let's get on with it you know, like if they had done it with something like Mustang I don't care I don't know what you could put on the LCD screen Drag Race I would want to look at Yeah, well, I know, but if I want to see that, I'll go watch NASCAR or something.
    40:42
    I think the movies and stuff, they'll be able to do it with, but I'm not just sure. You know the Corvette? Oh, it's got the two drag racing cars. We'll see. Mustang could have done that, but they could have done it up on the screen. I don't know.
    40:57
    Well, they probably do in some mode. It's just I'm not good enough at that table yet to really get very far with it. But we got a Metallica and a Walking Dead here now, so my attention is elsewhere at the moment. Yeah. You know who did their DMD? Actually, I mean, I think it works with its placement. And I know Sean's going to talk about this table. Circus Voltaire.
    41:20
    I got to say that. You know, that's the only one that did that. I know, and it works really well. Actually, your attention is always on that DMD a lot. and it's amazing how just lowering it down into the play field area those, you know, what, five, six inches it commands your attention which is funny though because Circus Voltaire is a game that you don't really need to pay much attention to it true, and it's got the longest animations on the face of the earth oh, yeah no, it really does yeah, you stop, take a cup of coffee, brush your teeth come back And that video mode is so compelling. Oh, yeah, we'll talk about the travesty that is the video mode. Sorry, Jared, I know you like kangaroos, but... No, I don't like that video mode. It is my most hated video mode ever.
    42:12
    Yeah, it's not. It makes me stabby. It makes my teeth itch. But, yeah, I guess I'm not opposed to monitors, but I'd hope that after the first few games they use them intelligently and maybe put the important stuff at the bottom of the monitor so that you can just take a quick glance up and get what you need to and then go back down, look back down at the table rather than divide it into quadrants like Wizard of Oz has done.
    42:46
    Because anything in those upper right or upper left quadrants I'm not looking at because I don't have time. yeah what we really need is like a heads up virtual reality display that just has like little things as we're looking down and playing it has a little heads up display you know so we don't have to look up at a dmd or I know yeah I want to put an overlay over the entire glass yeah exactly I want to put an overlay over the entire glass so I can play Tetris at the same time as pinball and you know oh my god just wait until Multimorphic get the games out that's going to be cool having the interactive LCD in the middle of the play field. Now, that will be a perfect implementation of what we're talking about because that's right in the play view and having that big screen right in the middle is just going to be a lot more intuitive for a human. Maybe not for an alien, but for a human.
    43:41
    I don't know. I think it would be pretty sweet. Totally. I would love to play one. Never will play one, probably, down here in Australia because they'll only be going to private collections. But, you know, it will be cool to see one. Yeah, I don't know how I feel. Well, I guess when I see one, I'll judge it then. It's just something that bright, and then you've got these shiny pinballs rolling over it. It just seems like a recipe for glare and distraction.
    44:10
    Seizures. Maybe I'll just wear my sunglasses like I do with that Ripley's, and all will be well. Polarizing lenses. anyway so Sean before you get into the breakdown of Circus Voltaire I do have to call BS on you so again at Tim's house he had a Twilight Zone and that wound up being one of the tables that I had to play for League and you were very adamant about it's not so easy to do the ramp ramp piano into the camera shot that four combo shot and I'll be damned if I didn't well, apart from the fact that I was botching the camera shot I was doing ramp, ramp, piano I'd probably nail that about five different times.
    44:58
    In a row? Or just over the course of the game? Through the course of the game. Oh yeah, that you could do. It's doing it consecutively that's the difficult part. Oh. I mean, you almost have to do it that many times to get to Lost in the Zone. So I wound up skunking my other players, which I was quite stoked about, because I rarely play Twilight Zone.
    45:22
    Either in real life or even in TPA, but I wound up doing a, I think it was a $276 million or something like that. And the nearest guy to me was $160 million. And then the other players were sub $100 million. Yeah. I mean, those combos are worth $10 million, and plus whatever the P&O decides to give you off the door. Right. I mean, if you did it five times, that's $50 million to your score. I mean, that's more than a multi-ball jackpot.
    45:55
    All right. Okay. Well, I just wanted to say, you know, I was like, hey, Sean didn't say this was possible, but okay. If you're saying in a row, I'll retract my call. Well, you know, like you can do in TPA, where you just hold the flipper up, it'll bounce over, and then you can endlessly loop that.
    46:11
    I'm assuming your slot machine was slightly more ill-behaved than that. I don't think I hit the slot machine once. No, I mean like coming out of the slot machine to the flippers. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, there's a little more randomness. I mean, if somebody's got it adjusted really well, maybe you could kind of control it, but it's not like Adam's Family, which we'll get to in a future podcast since it's in beta now. and kind of interesting kind of their machine must play a little differently than the four that are here but don't worry we've been sort of hammering the feedback into that a little bit later but for now let's go forward with Circus Voltaire join the circus and all that alright kind of another older table but one of my personal favorites it's again, it's a little easier in TPA but it's not quite as bad as some of them it's certainly not anywhere near as bad as Twilight Zone is about that still got Earring Masterhead and all the fun little bits, including the very interesting outlines as far as gameplay differences between TPA and the real one there aren't really that many the only real difference that people and people have been commenting about this since the day it came out. It is a little floatier in TPA than it is on the real table.
    47:44
    I don't know if Farsight's version of it is just slow or the play field needs a good cleaning or if they just have it pitched lower than the regular edition. It's pitched lower because it plays really slow. Yeah, the one in TPA is really sluggish compared to a real one that's kept in good shape. Now I have played one that has not been kept in good shape And it's about right That may just be all that Farsight's table needs It may just need a good cleaning It would have been clean To digitize it So I'd imagine that It would have been clean to start with You know I was looking at some of the pictures That Chris took When he took that trip up there Way back in the dawn of time Yes You know some of those I mean, yeah, they were restored, but they weren't. You know, some of them still look like they were. Oh, no, that was the biggest shock to me. I honestly thought that these things were being fully shopped and restored and all that. And, no, that wasn't the case. Basically, they're getting them running.
    48:54
    Well, you know, they're stripping them, taking their pictures, and then getting them running so that they can actually understand how it's, you know, how the ball bounces around and stuff. But, no, you're right. If the table isn't completely shopped, obviously it's going to play the way that they bought it, and maybe not the way that it was intended. When they were showing the... I don't remember which Kickstarter it was, but the Twilight Zone machine was in the background of the picture and I was looking at it and was like you know that thing doesn look that great The thing is they have to meet a minimum standard of cleanliness on the play field so they can actually get clear shots of the art. I'm not saying that, you know, that actually completely restore the play field because I can do that digitally. But to actually get clear shots of the existing artwork, they'd have to at least like get it all the solenoid dust off at a minimum. this is why it would be really interesting for the guys to actually do something either on their Facebook page or something about the restoration process or the process to digitisation I know there's a thread about Kickstarter at the moment that's running on the forum where folks are going it would have been really nice to see that this time around with the Addams Family and I kind of agree to an extent that it would have been nice to see it right anyway, now that we're done with this diversion.
    50:13
    Which is kind of like my normal. Yeah. Lockade Podcast, subtitle, Divergent here. We heal in tangents.
    50:23
    Keep on target? What's that? Anyway, the Circus Voltaire, one of the last of the Williams Valley machines, came out in 97? Sounds right. We'll go with it.
    50:39
    And of course, it's known for the lovely neon that runs down the right ramp, which if you encounter a Circus Voltaire and that neon is not working, you have the right to be disappointed, because it really does make that table. It's along the lines of Medieval Madness' castle and Adam's Family's multi-ball star as one of the great visual attractions of the pinball world. Attack from Mars, Strobe as well. Yeah, the Strobe multi-ball as well.
    51:08
    It does come in the different colors, and I think the one here, it's been a while since it's been working, I think the one here is orange.
    51:17
    And normally they're matched with the little ball that's trapped in the cage on the left-hand side. So if your neon and your ball doesn't match, you know that at least one of them is not the original.
    51:29
    That being said, the neon tube, for whatever reason, is kind of finicky and does like to stop working on its own for no discernible reason. it may be why the one at CP Pinball he may have just finally given up on keeping that thing running it would be really great if they could actually do some sort of LED strip mod for that and just actually make it with LEDs and just remove the neon ballast and just wire it in using LEDs instead I'm assuming they could because we sell lighting for a living at my company and we do a lot of neon replacement and LED now you have to replace the glass too because you need a frosted glass, so you'll see the little LED dots. I mean, it looks just like the real thing. It's not quite as bright.
    52:14
    It's a little more even, so you can kind of tell that it's not neon, but it works. It looks just fine. I don't know if it would do neon multi-ball as well, though, because neon you can switch on and off really fast, and it will respond really quickly. LEDs sometimes they ghost a little they take a little while to turn on and turn off and so if you've got it flashing real quick like it does in neon I don't know if it would look quite right or if it would look different so maybe you'd have to try it I'm sure it could probably be solved with appropriate circuitry but this is the pinball podcast and not the electrical engineering podcast so we're not going to go any further into that as interesting as that might be so Actually playing the machine. After all that, we're actually going to talk about how to play the thing.
    53:05
    This is kind of like Medieval Madness in that there is a tournament-approved way of playing it, and then there's the fun way of playing it. The tournament-approved way of playing it is to basically smash the ringmaster's face over and over again.
    53:22
    That's how I play. This depends on your ROM, though. if you have all but the newest ROM and by newest I mean 1.4 not the 2.0 home ROM all but the newest one you can do what you can do in TPA and you can basically after you bash the ringmaster enough times to start ringmaster battle you don't actually win ringmaster battle you just smack them around a few times and then you kind of let the mode go the reason for doing that is the Ringmaster battle mode scores ridiculous points.
    54:03
    Pretty much getting to a million a hit. It's actually more lucrative than finishing the mode. You do get an extra ball for finishing, but after you do that, the Ringmaster's locked out until you join the circus, which is kind of difficult on a real one.
    54:21
    Now, if you've got the 1.4 ROM, they wised up, and whether you win or lose Ringmaster battle, it resets the Ringmaster back to the first one, and you have to climb through Frenzy, Raz, and Special to get to the battle again.
    54:37
    Even still, because the right flipper bounce to the Ringmaster's head is such a safe shot compared to everything else on the table, you're still probably better off doing it. It'll go a little slower, but, I mean, in league conditions, you're not really concerned about how long the next player has to wait. In fact, the more agitated you can make him, the better, because he'll make mistakes when he plays. The psychology of pinball for you.
    55:04
    So, yes, if you're going for pure score, that's probably the way to do it. We're not going to cover that, because A, that's already covered in the CV tactics and strategies thread on the forum, which you can go see.
    55:19
    And B, for just playing for fun, it's boring as hell. and you don't get to see all the fun other things the table can do.
    55:27
    But it's a good way of not getting frustrated. Well, that and it is satisfying to smash the ringmaster's face over and over again, especially when he's taunting you. Yeah.
    55:39
    That being said, I came across the table that I played recently. So ringmaster is down, right? So I'm just trying to hit the wow targets. But he didn't seat properly. So, and the magnet, and I've seen this on a lot of these, the magnet that's in the center that captures the ball is kind of raised a little bit higher sometimes. Yeah. Anyway, it wound up acting like a ramp, and the ball would continually just shoot right over the top of the wow targets and land behind. Yeah. And it was like, I cannot hit the ringmaster to save my life to start this mode because it's acting like a ramp.
    56:19
    Yeah, that's, that's, I've seen one like that. really the best you can do is get it on the right flipper and try to aim for the left W and wow, and hope you don't actually cross the magnet. And maybe you can graze the top of the W target while it's flying over.
    56:40
    But yeah, that's one of those unfortunate the game is almost broken thing if it happens. Yeah. The perils of mechanical pinball. Yes. Assuming your ringmaster is functional, that's the way to go. Other things you can do with the table. Obviously, the other main objective is to join the circus by collecting all the little lights that are in the diamond grid in the center.
    57:08
    Most of these, honestly, it's not like the modes in Stern Machines where they're really involved in intricate things. Most of these things that it's asking you to do are things that will happen in the course of the game anyway. even the multi-balls you know, Juggler wants you to shoot the orbits and Highwire wants you to light the locks and shoot up the center ramp you're doing that for so many other things anyway that it's almost like the game kind of naturally progresses that being said it is worthwhile to try to stack each of those two multi-balls with something if you can Highwire and one of the Ringmaster multiballs is really fun because you get four balls instead of, especially that first one Frenzy's only a two ball multiball and with the outlanes being the way they are the multiball, that one doesn't always last very long so making it a four ball by combining it with Highwire is very nice and gets you lots of points Juggler can be combined with Strike and Arc, or not Strike and Arc that one's only Highwire basically just stack your multi-balls you'll kind of know where you are in the sequence if you don't it's not the end of the world of the multi-balls themselves juggler is probably the easiest to do well on just because it gives you three options for the jackpots, the left to right orbits and the little inner orbit around the back of the ringmaster and those are all relatively safe shots except for if you do the orbit the inner orbit the other way where you go right to left it will probably try to center drain on you that inner orbit is kind of deadly like that that's one of the reasons why people don't generally go for the spin marvel right away just because it kind of happens anyway and B, that shot's... Why would you make a risky shot at the beginning of the game? You know, save it for when you... Do all the lucrative stuff first and save it for when you have to.
    59:28
    Other than that, the outlines, since we've mentioned them, they are the same as they are in TPA. The inner divider is missing.
    59:35
    And the thing with the real one is it's kind of... It's not that they're obstructed. It's not like Star Trek or ACDC where there's a cannon in your way and you literally can't see the outline. But it's kind of visually busy down there. In fact, both of them are rather, you know, everything's red near there, and it's kind of hard to actually see where the stuff is sometimes. But generally, side-to-side motion, as we've discovered in pretty much every game I've reviewed, side-to-side motion is bad. It will get you in an outline. And because Circus Voltaire's outlines are so huge, since they're technically the outline and the inline, you really, really, really don't want bouncing around on your slingshots. Nudge, bump, if you have to burn a warning, so be it. Get them off those slingshots. If you do get in the outlanes, well, the first thing you can do is if you see the ball heading over there, you can kind of bump the table up and see if you can actually make it hit the top of the slingshot and bounce upwards.
    60:36
    It's safer to do that on the right side because there's really not much else up there unless the Volt balloon is going.
    60:44
    And so you usually just kind of bounce up harmlessly, and it'll fall back down to somewhere where you can catch it. If you do it on the left side, it's still worth doing, but you may hit the Menagerie ball, and that thing kind of throws the ball wherever it wants, depending on how it hits. The physics of that are kind of weird, because you've got steel ball hitting kind of rubbery ball. I don't think it's rubber at all. I think it's a plastic ball, kind of like what you'd see in a bolt-it.
    61:14
    Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Yeah. I always thought it was like a racquetball. It's hollow. It's a hollow plastic ball. I wonder if somebody's replaced the one in here to make it more interesting, then. I don't know. I mean, it's the right color. It's not like somebody put a little tiny medicine ball in there or something. Because that table's at three of the houses that we play at, and all three of them, it's a plastic ball. You know, injection mold, plastic, you know, hollow. It's enough to divert the pinball, but it's not actually bouncing the pinball.
    61:50
    I'm just getting all sorts of facts wrong today. Geez, Sean. I know. That's going to show me. It's been a while. You're going to have to dock your pay, man.
    62:05
    Well, I haven't gotten any pay. Those damn carrier pigeons can't seem to cross the Pacific to get me my check.
    62:12
    I blame your union pigeons, Jared. My union pigeons, yeah. It's coming with your T-shirt. Yeah, yeah, well. Any time now, Wilson.
    62:23
    Keep your eye on that mailbox. Anyway, regardless of the composition of the Menagerie ball, it is slightly more dangerous to hit it. it will send it in some random direction, and sometimes straight back down the out lane that you were trying to get it out of. If you actually get in the out lanes, probably the best thing to do is try to use the walls of the machine to kind of gently push it into the in lane. There's a trick to this, because if you slam it too hard, the ball will get thrown into the side of the slingshot and go back outward to the out lane, which is not what you want. so even though you're probably completely panicked and freaking out by this point you have to use a light touch so that you do not nudge it too hard so that it just kind of rolls gently into the in lane area and not slammed against the slingshot and back out for the rest of the modes acrobats all the other stuff just kind of do the balloons probably will spell themselves several times out of the vault several times in the course of the game. There is an extra ball for getting 15 hits on that, that vault balloon. It's kind of a pain to do that simply because that, that one balloon does have a little ring on it that kicks out and trying to keep the ball anywhere near that thing is, is interesting. Probably your best bets to actually try to aim to the right of it and see if you can get a trap between that bumper and the other two. and see if it'll bounce back and forth a few times.
    64:07
    Other extra balls, the one for Ringmaster Raz is in there. If your operator has changed the setting, it may be Frenzy or Special instead. If it's Frenzy, yay. If it's Special, you're probably not going to see it.
    64:21
    Yeah. The games don't last. At least the ones here. The games don't last too long just because the outlings are so evil. to be honest probably I think replay on the one here is like 10 million 9 million it's low it's not like it is in TPA where it's 25 so you may not be seeing very much of the game each time you play it unless you have your A game if you do get to join the circus I've only managed this a couple of times but if you do get there obviously go nuts while the ball savers are still going just hit everything you can with reckless abandon once it starts flashing really fast try to trap up you don't want to be playing the circus rounds with a juggling style just because it's asking you to make pretty precise shots you do get score while the rest of the stuff that you're hitting on the rest of the table, but it's just the base value of the targets. You can't actually activate anything. So there's really no benefit in having the balls running around striking things, because you're only going to get the couple hundred points at the base switch value.
    65:40
    That being said, probably the things you want to hit right away are the R for the high wire ramp and the S for the acrobat orbit, because those are the two hardest things to hit. the ramp in particular you want to do while the ball save is still going so that if you miss and you hit one of the lock targets instead and the ball goes rocketing down to the center you don't lose your ball from it unmask Voltaire is going to be the hardest part of it you have to alternate the ringmaster in that absolutely evil ramp and for some reason the ramp that you've been hitting all day all damn game, just deuce high wire and strike and arc and all the other multiples that will disappear from the play field on you in this.
    66:22
    Even though it's right there. It is now a centimeter wide. Yeah, it's a big ramp, and it's right, I mean, it looks like I should be able to hit this thing in my sleep. You will not be able to hit it.
    66:33
    I don't know what it is about, even in TPA, I have a devil of a time hitting that. If you get past that part, the last part with the meet the circus members is just shoot the lit jackpots. Just shoot carefully. There's really not a strategy to it. you have to make the shots in the order that it wants you to. So just kind of go.
    66:52
    I wish I could tell you what party ball looks like on a real one. Unfortunately, I've never actually finished, you know, gotten that far on a real one. I imagine it's the massive frenzy that it is in NTPA. You just kind of shoot everything.
    67:06
    Everything's lit for a million anyway, so have fun. That, and if you've gotten that far in this game, you probably are not listening to my attempts to... I was going to say, you're really not needing your tips, are you? You're probably not needing my advice at this point, especially since I seem to be fact-challenged today.
    67:27
    I'm pretty sure that Bowen is listening to our podcasts all the time. He's getting all sorts of good tips from you, John. Well, you know, the number of times I reference him in these... because that's kind of where I learned to play, was his tutorials on the... Well, first the Papa website. Now they've got the Papa TV thing going. Now their Kickstarter is over.
    67:47
    And a shameless plug, I'm not involved with them, but if you haven't actually experienced Papa TV, you should, because they broadcast tournaments. In fact, I think they're going to be doing Pinberg coming up. I can't remember if it's end of March or early April. Look it up on the site for what day it is.
    68:06
    One of their two main tournaments. and they have live commentary and it's actually quite interesting. You're not pinball playing, friends won't think so, but they make me watch golf on TV, so I don't really care.
    68:19
    And then they've got all their pretty much gameplay videos, tutorial videos. I think they're up to like 50 or 60 tutorials. Everything from early sterns and fathom and all the way through the latest modern sterns. It's really a great resource for anybody who's thinking about playing real pinball. Lots of tips, lots of things that you probably would never have discovered on your own. And it's all free. They don't even ask for donations.
    68:50
    But we do. Anyway, that's really about all I have for the table this time. Obviously, next time we'll be covering that table that they had the big Kickstarter for and has a Cousin Ed on it. What is that table? Oh, wait a second. Oh, guys. Guess what?
    69:14
    I have somebody calling in right now. Oi! Are you taking effects or what are you doing, eh? Dear God, Heretic. It's Heretic. Heretic, what in the hell are you doing here? Y'all owe me an apology. What are you talking about, an apology? Why do we owe you an apology? well you all mocked me all those times I guessed Adam's family oh god whoa whoa whoa are we like going back in time to one of our early podcasts is that what you're referring to aye you did that contest where you had everybody guess what the table was and I always guessed Adam's family you all mocked me for it well yeah we mocked you because you were like way off base on all of them because you were dead wrong all the time Yeah? Well, who's the smart guy now, eh? What's the first table that's come out of all those guesses? Adam's family. So that was right. He does have a point. Go home, Heretic. You're a drug.
    70:14
    You're a drug. Go home. And stoned. So seriously, dude, that's what you called in for right now, was just to ask for an apology? No, it's not somebody's birthday.
    70:26
    Yes, it was your birthday. Yes, happy birthday to you, Heretic. We all have them. Yay. How'd you celebrate?
    70:34
    Mm, had a peanut bong. All right, see you then. Later, Alex. Wow. The man is consistent. I'll give you that. The man, the myth, the legend. You know, the thing was, I knew that phrase was coming, and I was still startled by it.
    70:55
    It's like I was waiting for it, and I was still shocked. He says it every time. I mean, you know, since it is the end, I think Jared is our official closer of the door. But we now need to make Jared do it in funny voices. Last time we had him do it as a squealing teenage girl.
    71:12
    Let's see. What could we have Jared do it? Jared, I'd like to hear you close the door as an old man relieving himself.
    71:25
    Really? All right. I love how you set these challenges live You don't give me anything Of course You can't have time to repair Yeah okay Right Don't Shut the door Does that work I agree It'll suit the purpose I think it worked so uh it was requested of me based off of how i did the giant movie list last time that somebody said hey we would like to hear shut your traps oscar pics but uh here's the thing of the best pictures that are out i've seen two and that would be Birdman and Grand Budapest Hotel so it wouldn't be exactly fair of me to actually give what my picks are or what even deserves the pick because apparently I've been talking about things that I know nothing about all podcasts so why should I have all the fun go ahead I'm like looking at the list right now I'm like let's see American Sniper yeah and you know I'll watch it at some point but I really don't want to pay for it and Boyhood I've been attempting to rent it over and over and then I just you know rent things like Let's Be Cops instead classic you know you got the imitation game which is like oh yay historical drama yay and Selma which is like again historical drama yay and then they've got The Theory of Everything, which this one cracks me up because I understand that the actor did a really good job of portraying Hawking, but every other report said the movie sucked. I mean, like, the movie itself isn't great. It's just a really good acting performance. And yeah, I already saw one of those movies, which you all recall would be Beast of the Southern Wild, and I hated that. So I'm like, no, I'm not watching any movies just for the actor. It's got to actually be good. the one that I was I did want to actually see I was going to try and see it when I was out in New Orleans and it wasn't playing anymore it was Whiplash which is the band instructor just railing on the drummer over and over again that one I actually I think that was alright yeah and I think it actually is out on video now so I might have to check that out But no I not making any Oscar picks because I haven seen anything I saw Birdman so yay if Birdman wins because I really like that movie. But Oscar movies, they're not really my thing, especially when John Wick was my favorite movie of the last year.
    74:17
    It's not really my thing either, but I'm guessing that Interstellar is going to win something. But it wasn't even nominated for any of the big categories. It wasn't? Oh, that shows how much I know, too.
    74:28
    Let me see if it got a... I thought maybe... It didn't even get a director nod. I guess they always pick some kind of artsy movie for the movie of the year, it seems like. Usually nothing but independent films. Yeah, shows how much I know. It's the classic pat yourself on the back thing of making themselves feel better.
    74:50
    Anyway, so this podcast, you guys don't have to hear me blather on about movies, because I really don't have much to say.
    74:59
    Hooray! Tashed a bullet there, buddy. There it goes. Whoa, Matrix style. Yeah. What I will talk about, however, is Table of the Week. I hope everybody's been enjoying it so far. We've merely just cracked the surface.
    75:21
    We've got 55 plus tables to get through, So this is a... Well, it'll be good for at least a year then. Well, good for at least a year. And I'm dead serious. You guys might think that I'm threatening the wrong thing, but I'm tempted to go into Zen tables after we roll through all the TPA tables. Why not? There's plenty there. Yeah, well, there's plenty there. And it's just one of the things where I think what inspired me to want to do this, and yes, I label it under Blockade Presents because we are the blockade and we like to promote ourselves. but one of our users, one of the forum members, Leroy Third, he had contacted me and wanted to do a little tournament just between me and him. And so we picked two tables, one from TPA and one from Zen.
    76:09
    And I hadn't been playing much digital pinball at all, and just that, it was like I was throwing in at least a game a day. and we would then text each other and be like, oh, I just knocked off your score and then get back, oh, I just did that and it was cool. We were going to do it for an entire month. We pretty much petered out after a week and that's when I realized, you know what, spending more than a week on one table or even two is, it's kind of asking a lot.
    76:39
    But I wanted to have more of it and that's why I thought, well, let's just see if we can get any attention on the forum.
    76:46
    And the forum has responded rather well. I mean, I don't know exactly how many people are actually doing this thing, but it certainly has reinvigorated conversations on tables that are long since released.
    77:03
    Yeah, unfortunately, it's also putting the massive eye of Sauron on all the tables that were in Season 1 and 2. And we're going, oh, that's balked. This is broken. That art's wrong. Sorry, Farsight. We're making a lot more work for you now, eh? Yeah, you could kind of tell the difference. Yeah. But that's okay. You know, it's good, again, it's good to reapply. And I think some of it, too, though, is now that some of the hype has gone down on some of these tables, maybe we can reevaluate them on that standpoint, too. Well, I think the other thing that's happening is I think Farsight was taking at least a halfway art path through some of them. Because I know, like, no good gophers, at least on mobile, it's ramps are translucent again. Yeah, transparency. Yay! And that's true. Like, they're doing what they can that doesn't require an art pass. As long as the ramps, the original resource files for the ramps were made with transparency, they've been able to, like, the developers can just go through and adjust the transparency on those. but if the resources for the ramps didn't actually have any transparency baked in, that requires an art pass. Same with alpha effects and flashes as well. It's an often requested thing for me. I'm sure Farsight's sick of hearing from me about it now.
    78:24
    Oh my god, it's a damn alpha person again. Oh, is that Jared? I wish he'd shut up about the alpha. Yeah, so it's me, Mr. Alpha, Jared Alpha Morgan.
    78:37
    That's your new name. Yeah, that's right. If it's something the programmers can do then it can be done but if it's something that our team requires then well, good luck No dice I'd be very curious I don't know if Farsight has access I don't know if it's baked into their program about usage and plays for specific tables or whatever but I'd be very curious to see if all of a sudden they've seen an uptick or a spike in some of these table plays where we are going to actually find out how many people are actually participating is that starting the February 28th, the final Saturday of every single month we are going to be doing a tournament.
    79:27
    And what that tournament will be comprised of is the last few tables of the week that we've been playing.
    79:34
    I think for this first one we might wind up with five tables. just because we started mid-January, so I don't want it to... I was going to think only four tables, but then we're always, like, behind. Anyway, it's still being worked out. But last Saturday of the month, that's all I have to remember, there's going to be a 12-hour window for people to play the tables and post their scores to a website that we will be posting on Twitter and on the forum for everybody to post their scores into.
    80:08
    The posting of the scores will be completely anonymous, so nobody else will get to see what your score is. The big thing, and this is where we're hoping that you guys are honorable in this request, we don't want this to be a grind fest. If you want a grind fest, go play Farsights tournaments. This is what it's like in most leagues. We're going to give you two chances to play the table. Which is one more than you'd get in a league. Yeah, I only get one chance in the league. But you know what? I know you're at home. Nobody else is looking over your shoulder. Your first two balls are house balls and go right down the drain. You're like, well, screw this. I'm not going to post this as my score. I'm going to play that. That one didn't count. I'm going to play the next game. So I'm asking everybody, you've got two chances to play the tables. Pick the top score from whichever table. Post that as your score. Like I said, if you want to do grinding, then fine. Grind, go play on the leaderboards, go play in Farsight's tournament. That's not what this is about. This is more about seeing what can you do with a limited chance of doing it. So it is the honor system. There's no way we can enforce that, unfortunately. That's why, though, I'm giving a 12-hour window. Again, I will post the times that scores have to be put in as we get closer to the date.
    81:24
    All that stuff will be communicated later. Here is what you do want to know, though. so let's say of the tables that we have been played so far which is Firepower Genie and currently Flight 2000 oh and Attack from Mars so there's four tables so you go to play Genie you're going to be thrown into a bracket with three other people and with those three people it'll be randomly selected who those three people are and I'm going to try and post who your heats are ahead of time just so you can know who you're up against But anyway, those four scores are the ones that will be compared against each other. Top scorer will get ten points, second place gets eight points, third, six, and fourth will get four points.
    82:08
    That'll happen across every single one of the tables. Everybody will play all the tables. The next table you play, you'll be playing with a completely different group of people, probably. There might be one or two people that mix back in. But I'm going to try and randomize it so that you're always playing against different people.
    82:27
    And then at the end of that is whoever has the most points, not scores from the tables, but those 10, 8, 6, and 4 points, that's who's going to win the tournament. So if you're only having four tables, maximum points would be 40 points. In the case of a tie, that's when we go and look at head-to-head scores on individual tables and see who came out on top of that. So that's what we're asking.
    82:56
    And we'll see how this first tournament runs, work out the kinks from there. But we hope you all participate.
    83:03
    Have fun with it. Don't be dicks. Don't make up fake scores. And in regards to the fake scores, we're not going to ask that everybody shows proof of their scores. However, if anybody questions your score and says, come on, that looks like bogus BS. No way did you score that. We will expect a screenshot.
    83:24
    You will have to post that screenshot so that we can see, and we're going to need a timestamp of some sort. Jared says that on mobiles, the timestamp is baked into the photo itself. Is that correct, Jared? Yeah, so if you do a screen cap on, I know with Android, if you do the key code command to capture the screenshot, it's actually in the image data. and, you know, there are ways you can fudge that, but really, come on, would you, for a pinball tournament? Just don't. Exactly. You know. And for people taking photos of their actual monitors, whether it's their TV, you know, because they're playing console, or their computer monitor because they're playing Steam, I might put up a word that you have to put on a Post-it note and slap that on your screen so that I know that's actually included. If you're on Steam, just hit print screen and it'll take a screenshot and then just paste it into your photo editor.
    84:14
    Okay. So anyway, like I said, we have no way of enforcing that. We're just asking people to, you know, come on, play fair. This is all for good fun. Now, here's the exciting part. Have some personal honor.
    84:26
    Have some personal honor. And yes, the personal honor will be you've all seen our logo. I will be making up special logos where in the background it will be gold, silver, or bronze. top three finishers for the tournament will be able to proudly display that on the forum page as their avatar and say, look, I won for this month!
    84:49
    I know, baby! Yeah! But, here's the exciting thing. I'm thinking about once every three months, we're going to do a super tournament. A super tournament will comprise, say, twelve tables for everybody to play. And the good news with that is Mike, our friend over at WizardAmusement.com. He will be providing prize. Guess what it is. That's right. Custom Rod Shooter. Woo! Baby. Yeah. Sweet. If you saw the picture from our last winner of our Twitter contest, you know they're pretty damn cool. So, like I said, WizardAmusement.com. He's going to be providing them. Go visit their site if you want to just buy one. You'll get 10% off if you mention Blockade podcast.
    85:39
    And I'm hoping that maybe we can work in a prize or two else. We'll see how it goes again. It's all in the beginning stages.
    85:52
    And then on top of all of that, your points that you earn each month, so let's say you earn 36 points this month, and then you earn 28 points the next month, whatever. Well, those are going to be accumulated, and we'll keep track kind of like a season.
    86:12
    So you can see where you're faring against other people. So again, we're just trying to make it fun, make it interactive, make it something that keeps you guys interested in playing digital pinball. Because I know this far into the release it's kind of hard to keep your interest.
    86:29
    Yeah, it is. Like it's a bit of a grind sometimes. You go, ah, which table do I play today? At least this one gives you a sort of a focus each week. Yeah. It's good. It's a good time. You're going to skip going nuts, right? You know, I'm planning on having, like, going nuts, El Dorado, and lights, camera, action all in the same period. Get it out of your system. Oh, come on. El Dorado. At least a couple of steps above those two.
    86:58
    You know, it's funny because I found a randomizer online, and I just put in the list of all the tables, and then I push randomize, and whatever comes up number one, that's the table that we pick.
    87:11
    And it did pick lights, camera, action right after Genie, and I couldn't do it. I was just like, sorry, guys, I can't go there. You know, I'm still, this thing is still in the infancy. I want people to actually want to do this, not just be like, oh, my God, he's picked the worst. So I was thinking of building a little spinning wheel and then going on Twitch and doing a live broadcast of what table we picked. And I was just like, does it really – does anybody care? No. Probably not. It's like tuning in for the lotto numbers or something. All right. Exactly. Well, that's what's going on in my head. I'm like, oh, yeah, we'll have ping pong balls bouncing and some – Oh, yes. Today's table is – Now I want to see you do it, just to see if you can pull it off. Oh, I couldn't. I'm not mechanically inclined.
    88:03
    Well, no, not build the machine. Just do the announcing bit. That'd be if I could actually figure out how to do Twitch to begin with, because I'm just bad that way.
    88:18
    I've got all the programs downloaded, but I can't figure out for the life of me how to make them talk to each other, and I actually can't make it broadcast. I can't get my IRC to work for the chat room right now I'm definitely not qualified to do Twitch I think I need to call in PinballWiz and have him hook me up or something or maybe I should just have him do it I should have him do it during one of his because he does a weekly Twitch feed have him announce it during his Twitch feed or him and Captain could team up Yeah, exactly. Do a show. Speaking of Twitch, did you guys see the Chocolate Rain guy has a Twitch channel now?
    89:00
    Oh, really? No. Yeah. What? He's broadcasting Hearthstone now. Taze on Day. Yeah, it's funny. He's actually, the other night he had like almost 5,000 viewers. He was like one of the top streamers for the channel or whatever. Speaking of Hearthstone, Jeff posted a link to a video that showed him kicking the butt of the number one European player. Hello. Yeah, I did. That was crazy. I was like watching the stream earlier that day. I was like, hey, he's number one legend on European servers. Then he came over to the North American. Usually what they do is once they get it on one server, they'll move over to the North American server or the Asian server or whatever and try to get legend on every... World domination. Because it resets every month so that's like the race to get legend on every server. Then he comes over to the North American server and I saw that his rank was similar to mine, which is, I think, around, like, 9 or 10 at that time. Yeah, he was at number 9. Dude, that's high. I'm 25. And so, like, I was just watching a stream, and then I was like, oh, that's cool, you know. And then I went to play, and I'm like, holy crap, it matched me up with him.
    90:08
    And it just, like, kind of shocked me. It's like, let's lay down to smack. Yeah, because at first I wouldn't think it was really him, you know, because, I mean, you could, like, change your name to be anything pretty much. I mean, but the fact that he was the same rank as me was like, and I saw what deck he was playing and everything.
    90:21
    The bummer was that his stream didn't have any, they had to mute out the audio because I guess he was listening to music or something. Yeah, yeah. I couldn't hear, I really want to hear what he was saying because I'm looking at, you know, it's got the picture in picture, so it's showing him playing and he couldn't have looked any more bored. That's how he is, yeah. He like doesn't even, like in between his plays, he's just like looking off on his other monitor, you know, reading chats. He's like all nonchalant and everything. But I did see a couple times where he got a little wide-eyed at some of my plays. And I think the fact that I was a golden paladin, which is kind of rare, because you guys may or may not know this, but paladin was considered one of the weaker classes for a while. So to have a golden portrait in that class is pretty respectable. It's pretty rare because not very many people played that class.
    91:07
    And so to see a golden paladin, I saw his eyes kind of widen a little bit when he saw that in the beginning. So I was like, oh, yeah, he's a little impressed.
    91:14
    But yeah, it was quite a treat to beat him. It felt pretty good. Yeah, another thing I wanted to mention, I think we'd be remiss if we didn't mention the release of Time Shock, the old tradition on iOS.
    91:29
    And it's every bit as good as we had hoped for. It's just gorgeous. Yeah, Sean, we expect that when they actually build the real machine that you're going to do a Lost in the Zone on that. Just give me a heads up. He has to. The physical machine?
    91:45
    Yeah, building a physical machine. Well, I know that, but I didn't think it was that close to completion. No, we're saying when it comes out. That's your problem.
    91:55
    Get on it, buddy. Let us know. It depends on if CP Pinball gets one. No, no, no. You're going to have to track that beast down. You're going to have to be knocking down doors and traveling across the country to find it. There's too much pinball going on here for it not to be somewhere. But yeah, anyway, the release, I think it was a smashing success so far. And I think the Android hopefully isn't too far off. I don't know exactly. I hope so. I haven't really heard a lot, but I know that was their next goal after iOS was out to get the Android build sorted. I can't wait. I can't wait to play it. It's going to be great. Yeah, man. All digital pinball for the win. It blows anything else out of the water on mobile as far as graphics. Oh, it's gorgeous. There's no doubt about it. It is gorgeous. The physics are insane. When you spend, what, three years on one table? Damn, I better be good. Yeah, that's true. And the thing is, though, man, it's like... One month versus three years. Well, to be honest with you, I take this one table over all the TPA tables combined. That's just me. But the physics are from, you know, what, 1997 or 98? And they're still way better than, you know, TPAs and... Are they wildly different? I mean, I played it on the phone, and I hate playing TPA on the phone also. So it was really hard for me to judge how much better the physics were.
    93:17
    I know they have better flipper physics, if I'm not mistaken, right? Yeah, the flippers. In terms of ball bounce and stuff. Yeah, and you can do, you know, you actually have control over the flippers as far as you can do tap passes. I mean, it just feels so much more like a real machine in so many regards. But it's definitely way more grueling and brutal. The game times are much shorter. It is tough. Yeah. And, I mean, hitting those ramp shots, those ramps are so damn narrow. Now, once I get it on PC, it'll be a little better because I can use the controller. That's what I'm looking forward to. For a touchscreen, it's pretty brutal.
    93:55
    Yeah, I'm really looking forward to PC. I'm going to use my shield controller with it. It'll be great. There you go, man. On the shield tab. Yeah, it's going to be sweet. Have you guys played much on the new Color Monkey pinball offering? What do you guys think of that? I tried it out briefly, but I don't... I just tried the free version, so it timed out pretty quickly. I haven't got a chance to really take it for a spin yet. It requires a newer iOS than I have, and I was kind of too lazy to update it. I kind of like the whole luchadores. What do they call them, luchadores? The Mexican wrestlers? Yeah, the luchadores. Yeah, I thought that was kind of... The humor was pretty amusing for what I saw. Yeah, I haven't had a chance really to do much, even with Time Shock, other than to play a couple games on it. I have actually the That Which Sleeps game, which I was talking about a couple podcasts ago, is actually kind of heading into its beta cycle, and so I'm kind of involved with that at the moment.
    94:51
    Obviously we'll have to take a break for when Adam's Family comes out, because, you know, we've only been waiting for this for years.
    94:58
    Four years! Four seasons. A few of us have got our hands on it, too, for the beta purposes. Yeah, I need to upgrade my tablet. My iPad is still on iOS 7, and Apple has screwed with the... Oh, the beta, that's right, they switched. You have to be on iOS 8 to do the beta, and it's... I just like upgrading my Apple device, because it seems like every time I do that, the battery life gets shorter, and the thing runs slower, but I guess I have no choice. That's how I am, too. I'm still on iOS 6. I'm assuming it's just planned obsolescence, is all that is. It is. I've been holding onto my iPad 3 for a while and it's just like, you know, I don't need a new tablet. I like what I have, but it's getting to the point now where it's getting really sluggish.
    95:46
    Anyway, first of all... Maybe do a factory reset on it. Do a factory reset on it. It always works on Android.
    95:52
    Yeah, the... I can't remember if it had iOS 5 or 6 on it when it first started, but it's been upgraded a couple of times. It's probably got a lot of junk lying around. Do a factory reset. Blow out the cobwebs. trust Jared, he knows what he's talking about right he's about stuff exactly well gentlemen, I think we've gone on long enough and taxed our listeners ears but they'll be happy that they got a pretty much pinball exclusive podcast out of us which is a rare thing and nonsense and movies and crap like that for another time and for the errors and omissions I did get a text in the middle of this that CP Spinball Circus Voltaire is a plastic ball.
    96:39
    They had a rubber ball in it at one point to spice things up for a tournament, but that has been removed and replaced with the original plastic. So I wasn't completely losing my mind. Wow, that was quick. I asked him. I swear to God, there was a rubber ball in that thing at some point. I'm not losing my mind, am I?
    96:58
    Yeah. Anyway. Anyway, so gentlemen, until next time, thank you so much, listeners. Thank you for tuning in. Again, check out wizardamusements.com. Go get your discounts and check out some shooter rugs that you may be able to win in a couple of months.
    97:16
    Play Tournament of the Week, or Table of the Week, excuse me. Keep your eyes open on Twitter and on the threads for all the detailed information of where to log in your scores.
    97:25
    For Jared Morgz, Sean Don Carlos, Jeff Strong, I'm Shedrick Trapp. We'll catch you again later. Peace! Goodbye, Earthlings.
    97:36
    Good luck. Oh, hang on. I'm not Bonzo. He's having a country identity crisis. You are becoming the man of a thousand voices.
    97:47
    It's obviously old men taking a crap. That was funny. I'm scared of what was in that toilet, personally. all I can say is Metamucil is your friend man wow you know you guys didn't really like try to freak me out this time I'm kind of disappointed well we gotta keep you on your toes Sean oh is this just to lull me into a false sense of security is that what it is it's something like that maybe who knows Maybe next time we'll have Heretic in the entire time. Oh, please no. Yeah, I was going to say, I think Heretic might be done taking his pee. Oh no, run!
    98:34
    Yeah, but then he forgot what the hell he was doing. Yeah.