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Fifteen Trabillion Megadoodles

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 2m·analyzed·Oct 15, 2017
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Filmmaking discussion leads to FX3 tournament critique and speculation about Stern Pinball Arcade strategy.

Summary

Chris (Shut Your Trap) and Jared discuss filmmaking techniques in Blade Runner 2049, La La Land, and historical cinema, then pivot to their experience running a Zen Pinball FX3 tournament and grinding the matchup mode. They critique FX3 tournament mechanics (linear scoring, excessive grinding), discuss upcoming Stern Pinball Arcade on Switch with DX11 lighting, and speculate about Ghostbusters moving from Stern exclusivity to The Pinball Arcade, raising questions about Stern's viability as a separate product.

Key Claims

  • Zen Pinball FX3 tournaments have the best entry surge in the final hours before closing

    high confidence · Chris states Sven warned them about this pattern and it held true: ~5 people early, 17 total with final entries coming at the end

  • Iron Man scoring is entirely dependent on completing modes; only 3 modes possible in 5 minutes

    high confidence · Chris analyzed tournament results and determined 13M-13.7M scores = 2 modes, 18M+ = 3 modes

  • FX3 matchup mode has broken progression incentives: grinding second-place scores is more efficient than challenging top scores

    high confidence · Chris describes the disparity bonus system makes safe second-place attempts yield same points as risky top-score attempts

  • Stern Pinball Arcade on Switch will feature DX11 lighting, matching the PC version experience

    medium confidence · Jared states this as fact: 'It's running DX11 lighting...true DX11 lighting, proper actual DX11 lighting' but doesn't cite official source

  • Ghostbusters was promised 'free' with physical Stern Pinball Arcade PS4 copies and has been 'announced' for ~9 months without release

    high confidence · Jared confirms sticker on PS4 cover promised free Ghostbusters; Chris corroborates ~9 month delay

  • Stern Pinball Arcade app has poor user interface and slow table release cadence, contributing to poor reception

    high confidence · Jared: 'it's still not a great user interface environment to play on' and 'people were dismayed by the fact that it's taking so long for tables to come out'

Notable Quotes

  • “Like that—that worked well for me.”

    Chris @ ~10:30 — Agreeing on near-future sci-fi film aesthetics blending contemporary and advanced tech

  • “This is the migration strategy.”

    Jared @ ~58:00 — Framing Ghostbusters' shift to The Pinball Arcade as deliberate strategic move by FarSight/Stern

  • “I hate the spell-out ramps, man. You know my hatred for them.”

    Chris @ ~42:00 — Chris clearly has established preferences against spell-out mode mechanics, repeated by Jared in acknowledgment

  • “It's basically a PC experience for certain people. You'll get all the lighting, all the room modes, everything that you have in the PC version on the Switch. Pretty amazing for a handheld.”

    Jared @ ~55:00 — Endorsement of Stern Pinball Arcade Switch version's technical achievement

  • “I would literally wait. Here's the initial release, and then I'm going to wait until you have another table.”

    Chris @ ~57:00 — Chris signals skepticism of FarSight based on past Nintendo platform experiences (Wii U delays)

  • “Because like PS4, it's dynamic lighting, but I don't think it's DX11 lighting. I don't know how they managed to put DX into a platform like this.”

    Jared @ ~54:30 — Technical assessment of lighting differences across platforms; expressing surprise at technical feasibility

  • “And so I just kept on shooting that ramp over and over and over again to spell 'courage' three times to get multiball going. And again, total slogfest. Horrible.”

    Chris @ ~44:00 — Direct criticism of Han Solo table design; demonstrates frustration with grind-heavy mechanics

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen Pinball FX3productThe Pinball ArcadeproductStern Pinball ArcadeproductSvenpersonBlade Runner 2049productZen StudioscompanyFarSight StudioscompanyNintendo Switchproduct

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern Pinball Arcade facing viability questions: poor UI, slow table release cadence (~9 months for Ghostbusters), causing Ghostbusters to migrate to The Pinball Arcade instead

    high · Jared: 'This is the migration strategy'; Chris asks 'are they actually going to get rid of Stern as a concept and just kill it off?'

  • ?

    community_signal: Zen FX3 tournament design successfully drives repeated engagement via short-window participation hooks; players logging in out of curiosity rather than obligation

    high · Chris: 'I've logged into Pinball FX3 more in this past week—not out of duty, but out of curiosity' than ever with FX2

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Chris skeptical of FarSight based on past Nintendo platform issues (Wii U delays); will wait for second table release pattern before purchasing Switch version

    high · Chris: 'I am so gun-shy on FarSight and consoles...I would literally wait...see if it becomes like PS4 and Xbox, where it's a twice-a-year release'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Zen's spell-out ramp design (Han Solo, Bob's Burgers) criticized as unfun, grindy, and unsatisfying compared to mission-hole-based gameplay

    high · Chris expresses hatred for spell-out ramps, calls Han Solo 'total slogfest, horrible'; prefers mission holes

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Zen tables with multiple stacking modes create confusing UI and decision fatigue; unclear which mode is active/timing out; reduces fun

    high · Chris on Bob's Burgers: 'they're going to all be stacked, but it becomes very confusing where you're going, What's timing out? What's doing?'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.188

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Frebus, aka Shut Your Trap.
0:21
Truthfully joining me from halfway around the world, Jared Morgan. For really real, hello Chris. for really reals this time your internet works yeah it's not borks like beyond recognition so much so that I rage quit and throw my cookies out the window and disgust with our crappy internet I was going to say and I'm sure cookies were thrown we could hear it in your voice it was oh yeah I was not a happy camper last week like the one time I really need the internet to work properly is just Sunday at 8 a.m. in the morning. Just give me that. Give me that, NBN Co.
1:03
Well, good. It is officially working today, so we can get on with our normal bit of business. Yeah. So I went and saw Blade Runner 2049 yesterday.
1:18
Oh, you did? Yeah, I sure did. And I checked it out in 3D. Good. Oh, yeah? Good? The movie is excellent.
1:27
The 3D was non-offensive, but kind of also... No. It wasn't in your face, which I didn't expect it was going to be, and that was kind of my question of whether I'd go there or not.
1:41
Iron Man
product
Han Soloproduct
Bob's Burgersproduct
Ghostbustersproduct
  • $

    market_signal: Ghostbusters moving from Stern Pinball Arcade exclusive to The Pinball Arcade signals platform consolidation; customers frustrated by broken promise on PS4 cover sticker

    high · Jared: PS4 copy had sticker 'free copy of Ghostbusters when it's released' leading to 9-month wait; Chris: 'irking everybody that has it'

  • $

    market_signal: FarSight's past platform strategy (Wii U delays) has damaged consumer trust with Nintendo, creating hesitation on new Switch release

    medium · Chris references 'how they did with you' on Wii U; acknowledges FarSight claims 'great relationship with Nintendo' but won't instant buy

  • ?

    product_strategy: FX3 matchup mode unlimited ball save enabling risk-taking gameplay; players exploring previously unreachable game sections

    high · Chris: 'now I can be risky with shots' and 'see what happens'; plans to exploit on tables where they've 'been dying to see where it goes'

  • ?

    product_concern: FX3 tournament mechanics are flawed: Iron Man scoring is entirely linear (modes only), forcing players into single optimal strategy rather than varied approaches

    high · Chris: 'Here's what you're going to have to do if you want a decent score.' Killed fun factor; determined not to replay after being beaten

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern Pinball Arcade on Switch features DX11 lighting parity with PC version, Shield K1 processor enables advanced graphics

    medium · Jared: 'It's running DX11 lighting...proper actual DX11 lighting' with 'all the lighting, all the room modes, everything that you have in the PC version'

    • But your eyes real quickly just assimilated to the 3D of it, and then it stopped being a factor. So they weren't constantly reminding you of it. And I think that winds up being kind of what makes 3D effective is you can't just let it sit there because after a while you become so acclimated to it, you may as well be watching a 2D movie.
    2:04
    They have to constantly be either having something go way, way, way, way deep. But it did. It had very, very much depth going for it, which, again, I think that's what I acclimated to. But I think now and then you've got to poke things out of people's eyes to make them show that the dimensions come in the other direction too and kind of trick the brain, make the brain go, oh, yeah, this is what we're looking at. This is what I have to pay an extra five bucks for. Yeah, yeah, essentially. So it's kind of interesting. But like I said, it was also not offensive 3D in terms of it wasn't – it was definitely being utilized, and it wasn't hard to watch or anything else like that. But it was kind of bizarre on that aspect. But in terms of it being a Blade Runner movie, it feels like it.
    2:57
    It doesn't necessarily look like it because I just rewatched the original a couple of days back just to really kind of get it back in my head. what I would equate it to is if you take a movie like The Hustler and then 30 years later or whatever they came out with The Color of Money and even though it was the same characters and kind of had the same vibe it was wildly different also and I think that's kind of what I got from this where you it felt like time had passed on you know what I mean it wasn't I think I would have been more disappointed if it had have been an actual direct look and sound and everything else like that sequel.
    3:42
    As opposed to this, I bought that it had been 30 years since the original. Just even in the story itself and how the environments look and basically everything of that nature. So, no, it was cool. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it definitely begs to be seen on a big screen. Yeah, I would like to go and see it. There's actually a promotion running on Google Play at the moment where you can watch Blade Runner for 99 cents the original one.
    4:12
    I'm very tempted just to go and do that because it's foggy in my memory about what was going on. I think I saw it a long time ago but I don't really remember the movie.
    4:23
    I think I should probably go and watch it again. It's funny though because it's Blade Runner 2049 it's not like 2249 it's near future. well the original took place in 2019 yeah right see we got a lot of catching up to do because the environment I'm seeing in 2049 the shorts it's like okay well we better start developing lots of flying stuff now so you know it's funny because when you think about our tech and how quickly things have advanced and I'm always marveling when I think about people that were born say right at the turn of the century of 1895 to 1905 let's say if they were born between that time period what they saw in their lifetime you know you went from basically having a wire horse-drawn carriages and wire telegraph to suddenly having these flying machines and these automobiles that not only did you have automobiles but all of a sudden now you had have paved roads and you know and and the train was no longer wherever that station was no longer what constituted a city um exactly and and then you go from there from tech you know from you've had this typewriter which was a marvel to suddenly this computer thing that oh i wonder where this is going to go and you know it's something that takes up an entire room and now today we're holding something that's infinitely more powerful in the palm of our hands. I actually saw a picture on Twitter where someone had a photo, an old historical photo of a computer being detrucked and wheeled through a warehouse door. And today what they did is they took basically the same picture with the same angle and everything, but held up a Raspberry Pi and said, this is basically it now. This is more powerful than that thing that was being wheeled into that room. And that is sort of like Sons of the Rock really in a nutshell, doesn't it? It absolutely does.
    6:40
    If you watch two movies that I watched recently that kind of really hammer this home, one of them is Hidden Figures. Oh, that's a good movie. It is, which is the women computers, you might say, of NASA. Women computers, yes. and literally it was a room full of people doing slide rule as fast as they possibly could to do computations and they just got delivered their first IBM thing. Mainframe. They didn't know what to call it. Mainframe, yeah. IBM Mainframe and that itself was actually a sub-story in the whole movie that was delightful as well to watch. Right, and basically at that point in time the actual people were almost as fast as the computer, you know, and sometimes more reliable. Yeah, that's right. And then, if you also watch a game called The Imitation Game, which is about code-breaking in England, they came up with the... Ah, I'm forgetting, the Enigma machine. Yeah.
    7:46
    And it's the same kind of thing, when you think about they were inventing the computer and it was, you know, wheels and gears happening. Yeah.
    7:56
    It's relays. All you have to do is think about, in pinball terms, think about an EM versus a state machine. Basically, they have the big, yeah, the whole thing is valves and relays and truth tables and all these sort of manual big things that fill the room because they're big.
    8:22
    So I think futurists, when they do these things in the movies, they always think, well, look at all these advances that happened. But they also never really look at – it's individual pieces that wind up advancing, but it's not also the cities and the transportation and everything else at the same time. It kind of – Yeah. We might get a flying car. That's what they thought was going to happen. Yeah. So like, well, we might get a flying car. Right, but it's not going to – But we're still going to have the Empire State Building, for example. like you know Rand in 2049 most likely you know so it's sort of like near future I think there seems to be even more of an art form in getting near future right like I felt that there's some science fiction movies like not Elysium is sort of I'm thinking more like that where you know they got the dystopian world below and then like the really futuristic world above. And that's easier from a filmmaking perspective because you can separate the two concerns. But at the same time, the thing that was cool about the on-world experience was the fact that they had, basically it looked like a third world country down there, but they still had, you know, flying cars flying around, you know. And that's sort of like the blend between like super modern or like the future and the now for me. like that that worked well for me yeah it was not near future though that was 21 49 or 21 something so that was a long time yeah it's it's i think uh if i were to make a movie today that took place in the future i would definitely advance it a good 200 years so that nobody watching today would be able to 50 years later go hey where's my you're gonna be dead before it ever comes about so you can't complain. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, basically make it, yeah, future prediction more than, you know, 100 years or so is the safe bet. Although is, I don't know, is it actually a good thing to do that? Like is actually a near future prediction in a movie actually kind of the reason why we watch these science fiction movies to sort of go, and the reason why we are revisiting Blade Runner 2049, from the original Blade Runner because we feel that it actually is almost entertaining and fun to actually rewrite the future that was written in a movie franchise because knowing what you know now, you can do different things with it and continue the story. So maybe making it irrelevant in a way by putting more than 100 years in the timeframe would just mean no one cares about it.
    11:09
    True, true. I think that the advantage that Blade Runner had was it was so vastly, wildly different than what Los Angeles, you might say, looked at the time it was made back in 82.
    11:30
    That even today, when you're watching the movie, it's so vastly different, right? as opposed to when you watch Back to the Future and their future was basically a facade, slapping on a stroke of paint and saying, this is the future. So that's why it doesn't hold up as well. You know what I mean? You just kind of laugh and mock it instead.
    11:51
    You laugh at the neon lights in the corners of the curves. That's the thing that sticks in my mind for that movie. That is the absurdity factor of that movie. But in a way, that's good because it actually makes you remember the movie. Like, it actually is a thing that sticks in your mind going, you know what, this is ridiculous, but I remember that part of the movie because of its ridiculousness and because it was preposterous. Yes.
    12:16
    The statement that it's making. So I don't know, maybe it's good. Maybe. Actually, I actually did watch a movie last night that I hadn't seen before, and it was La La Land. Finally caught up with La La Land. Oh, really? No, still haven't. It's on my DVR right now. Just one of those things where it's just I haven't been in the mood.
    12:39
    It's a thing that really struck me about the movie without going into too much detail about it was just the camera work. There's a lot of continuous shots in that movie.
    12:54
    Big, big continuous scenes that I go, wow, that was all done in one shot. That's pretty impressive stuff. you gotta know what to look for but there's plenty of areas to hide well if they did hide them my hat's off to them sir because I tell you what it looked very very contiguous to me like it was very good if you ever want to watch a like today with digital it's digital filmmaking and CG and everything else like that It's rather easy to make these seamless things happen. Hitchcock did it all the way back when he made a movie called Rope. And he made the movie so that it looked like it was entirely one continuous scene. But obviously they were shooting film, and film was only even on a 1,000-foot mag back then. You only got 10 minutes worth of film running through the camera. And so footage, right. And so what it was always when he would pan, it would be panning through a column behind a chair or something. That's how they hit it. But it's kind of you can kind of see the cut, you might say. Today, if you watch a movie like Birdman, good luck finding the cut. I mean, it's very freaky and sneaky how they did it. But what I always point to is if you want to see a true, authentic, one-take wonder that will blow your mind, you've got to watch Hard Boiled, which is a John Woo movie.
    14:32
    And there is a hospital shootout scene that is one take, and it has all the carnage, all the explosions, all the just crazy action happening. and the camera work is phenomenal but this is it was made in I think 88, 89 somewhere around there so no trickery it's true all practical and it will blow your mind it's about a I think it's a 4 or 5 minute scene yeah it's incredible so that's what I miss about older filmmaking is that you knew it was real and the trickery was true magic as opposed to now where you feel the trickery is just a wave of a stylus.
    15:27
    Yep. So it kind of takes away the fun of some of this stuff. But, you know. Speaking of fun we ran our first tournament on Zen on PinballFX3 Oh how it go Wound up pretty good
    15:47
    I was told Sven warned us about this last week and that is that when you look up tournaments when you first go to it I think they have maybe 15, 20 tournaments listed and they're all ending within a half an hour. so if you want to find a tournament that is older you actually have to search for it and know what you're looking for so he told me that most of your entries are going to come at the very end and true to form we had about five people in the tournament leading up to it finishing today and our final entries wound up being I think 17 people playing in the tournament wow that's good for an online tournament? Yeah, for the fun of it. And you know what? Truth be told, I've joined a couple of these tournaments where I'm just like, hey, look, this one's ending in 10 minutes. Sure, I'll put in a game and see where I rank on it. So it's actually kind of effective what Zen has done because throughout the week I've been logging in. I've logged into Pinball FX 3 more in this past week, not out of duty but out of curiosity and going, oh, yeah, let's see what's going on over here. than I ever was with Pinball FX2. Yeah. It's like, that's your host. They've got a good way of getting you hooked. There's no doubt about it.
    17:17
    In regards to our tournament, so we played Iron Man five minutes, and I had preloaded some of the bonuses that could be people choose.
    17:28
    So coming in at number five was CC178. He's a pinball arcade fan's forum member. He came in at $13.1 million. Angie, A-N-D-J-I, came in at $13.7 at fourth place. I was holding number one up until a few hours ago at $18.2 million, at which point then Xenia, a.k.a. Sven, he came in at $18.4 million, and PinballWiz45B came in at $18.44 million. So close. Very close scores. Very close. Well, here's things that we learn when we make these tournaments. It turns out that with Iron Man, the key to scoring, the only way to score is basically by finishing modes. And you doing your absolute best, only concentrating on doing the modes, you could complete three modes at most. And that also depended on what modes they gave you, because some modes take a lot longer than other modes to complete.
    18:35
    And I came very close to completing three modes probably about five or six different times and then finally was able to get it, and that's what got me my 18.2 million score. These scores of 13.1 and 13.7 million, that's what happens when you only complete two modes. Right.
    18:53
    And the everything else. Yeah, and I think I was able to, because Pinball has had a score of 14 point something million, and I was able to beat that with two modes just barely. And it was like hitting combo after combo after combo was the only way to do that. But you have to do the modes in order to actually get a decent score. So what I think we'll do for this next week, I'll post another tournament. I don't think I'm going to start it today. I will have it start on Tuesday when this podcast drops, make it only a five-day tournament.
    19:31
    I think the trick is because I don't want to have the unlimited amount of time play. I don't find that interesting for tournaments. No, that's boring. But I think definitely I'll pick a table that the scoring is more varied on and also let people pick their own bonuses. I think that's where the combination of fun can be. With this one, it was very linear. Here's what you're going to have to do if you want a decent score. And so it kind of killed some of the fun for me. Like when I saw that these two had beaten my score, I went, I'm not even going to try again. It's not worth it.
    20:03
    It's so random luck. It's not, you know, there's no skill involved in that. So I'll come up with something. I'm not sure which table I'll pick, but make sure you look for on Pinball FX3 in tournaments. Just look up Shut Your Trap, and you'll see whatever tournament we're going to be running for this week is the one. Yeah, right. Well, that's really good. So it sounds like fun. I really hope at some point other platforms that aren't consoles and Steam can actually get on board the FX Streetwagon. Even if they're just like after they've done the testing of it on those console platforms that they actually incorporate into FX2, that would be good, I think.
    20:43
    Yeah, I tried looking up my tournament on my PS4 because I did have Iron Man on the PS4. And every time I looked it up, it crashed. so I don't know if that's because I'm the same username on my PS4 as I am on Steam if that was causing it a hiccup going wait a second are you the same person but you're on a different platform I don't understand so I don't know I would love to hear if anybody out there was able to join our tournament playing either Xbox or PS4 I'd love to know if you were able to do that yeah it'd be good to actually get the feedback back for that because That seems to be the killer feature of this, like the cross-platform, breaking down the stovepipes that are imposed by those ecosystems with a cross-platform tournament system is just the best idea as far as I'm concerned. Like, it's great. The problem is that doing it is non-trivial because you do have to actually go into all those platforms and re-architect the way your apps communicate, not using the normal systems that probably those platforms have in place to broker that. So it's hard. I really do credit Zen for actually taking the plunge with that because, yeah, it ain't easy.
    22:06
    And then after spending a full week doing their matchup mode, I'd done it last week to get out of Bronze 3 into Bronze 2. It wasn't terribly difficult. This week, going Bronze 2, trying to get into Bronze 1. It is a grind fest. You got to play those tables just over and over and over again to earn just, I mean, the maximum you can earn, I think, is 70 points, 70, 75 points.
    22:35
    And it's just a slog fest trying to get those points to go. And so I'd finally, yesterday, I'd finally gotten into the top 20% that would move me forward. I checked it this morning and I was, boom, dropped right back down. so I agree with Sven with what he said last week they need to institute it where if you lose a match you are losing more than just 5 points but you're losing a full 50 points so that choosing to grind it out yeah because right now it's just it's real easy if I want to get my points, if I want to get a safe 50 points I don't go for the top score, I go for the second top score and I can usually beat that with no problem. That score doesn't seem to change that much. So I know what of the four tables, I know where I'm scoring on average on each of the four tables and I just kind of go, yeah, I can knock that out. And the thing is, is I can knock that out and be so far over the second top score that I get a huge bonus for disparity bonus as opposed to if I try and knock out the top score and I'm barely going to get past it, which means I don't get any disparity bonus, which means I wind up getting out the same amount of points as if I had done the second. And it seems like the top score is the only one that escalates higher, whereas the second top score kind of sticks around the exact same each time. So they definitely got some kinks to work out to make it better because already two weeks in, I'm like, ugh, I don't want to do this. And it reminds me of basically what TPA's tournaments were like, where it was fun for a couple of weeks and then you just kind of go, you know what, I don't want to grind. It's just no fun to grind and try and… The key with these tournaments, right, and any sort of achievement that you're trying to do is to get the goal short. So the shorter the goal within reason, the better. And I think this is something that by the sound of things, they need to look at tweaking because there's only a certain type of person that will go, you know what, I want to be the top. I don't care what it takes to actually get there.
    24:47
    And, you know, those people generally... You see what some of the place totals are, and you realize that they're playing hours and hours and hours. Yeah. I mean, there's no other way that they can get that many points. And that's pretty disheartening for someone who, you know, actually has a life and just wants to enjoy the game and be competitive, have a bit of fun, but at the same time, you know, not invest basically their life into a video game because, you know, there's probably better things you could be doing with your time out there.
    25:17
    One thing I do like though with the matchups and selecting these four tables is I'm playing tables I never touched.
    25:27
    I shouldn't say never touched. Didn't necessarily play much of. So like this time it was Bob's Burgers which I barely ever played. After playing it I kind of realized why I barely played it. It doesn't really those fox tables don't sit well with me at all. They were a regretful purchase. It's one of those things where you're constantly there is no particular mode start. It's just if you shoot this ramp three times a mode has started. And if you shoot another ramp three times, that mode has started too and you can start three modes at the same time. So they're going to all be stacked but it becomes very confusing where you're going, what's timing out, what's doing and that just doesn't appeal to me.
    26:13
    We also had Excalibur, which I realize is kind of a fun table. I just haven't put any time in it to figure out what to do on it. It is a fun table. It is pretty fun though. I was liking that, so I might play that some more. We also had Civil War, which again, don't care for it. I can't figure out what the heck is going on. It's all sorts of banter and talking between Tony and Captain America and just randomly all here, so-and-so, has joined Captain America? I don't even know. It has something to do with popularity and what shots you're hitting, but the shots are really bizarre.
    26:59
    And there's a lot of virtual ramps that suddenly appear if you hit a shot, and sometimes it'll go on this crazy automatic shooting spree, and other times it doesn't. And that screws you up, because sometimes you're like, oh, here we go with the automatic, and it doesn't happen automatically. And then other times, you're all set and keyed and ready to hit the ball, and nope, it just does it automatically. And so I didn't... Yeah, I realize that that's why that's a table that I don't play much of. And then the final table was Han Solo, which is another no-mode game. It's... you shoot a particular ramp seven times basically, and that gives you step one of that mode. And then if you shoot another ramp a particular amount of times, that starts that particular mode. So there's no, uh, mission hole. It's just shooting these shots. Well, again, the shots aren't necessarily satisfying. And, uh, I found out how to do multi-ball and that gives you a whole boost of points. and so I just kept on shooting that ramp over and over and over again to spell courage three times to get multiball going. And again, total slogfest.
    28:15
    Horrible. I hate the spell of ramas, man. You know my hatred for them. Oh, I know you do.
    28:24
    I'm definitely a fan of something that allows you to have a mission hole and get a mission going. I can key into that much better. yeah they're just like going because there's some i'm sure there's some tables in zen that i haven't even unlocked modes on or like you know modes ramp based modes on because i probably don't even know that there's actually ramps you need to shoot to activate a mode like because i typically zen i don't i don't read the instructions i just play them until such time as i go uh this game is making zero sense to me whatsoever so i need to then go and read my shuriken to the chins guides yeah well the table guides aren't bad they they can clue you in uh yeah to at least somewhat what you should be aiming for or what you should be doing um so i've been i've been using those a little bit but no there was a table last week and i can't remember what it was um but it's a table i played a fair amount of and all of a sudden this mode started and i was like what the heck is this is awesome i've never even seen this i have no clue how it started yeah i would do this again I want to do this again. Pretty much. So, and it was one of those things where I was like, I know that Zen said they've tweaked some of these tables, either in shot selection or doing something to make more sense, make it easier to get mode started, I think is one of the things they said.
    29:52
    And that made me think, oh, is this one of those that suddenly that's why I got this, where I've never seen it before.
    30:00
    But I don't know. I don't know how truthful... Yeah, I don't know how truthful that is or not. The other thing that I'm enjoying, and I haven't really fully played with it other than in this matchup mode, because matchup mode is unlimited balls. It's just constant ball save. And what I'm realizing, and I especially noticed it while playing Iron Man, because Iron Man is a brutal table that will just drain on you and you'll just scream bloody murder because you've taken forever trying to get some mode unlocked or whatever. Yeah, the spell time.
    30:34
    And so now having the ball save mode, it's like, oh, now I can be risky with shots, and I can just finally see what happens. Yeah. So I think I'm going to exploit that on a couple of tables because there's a couple of tables where I've been dying to see where it goes, and I've just never gotten that far.
    30:52
    Yeah, so basically just take the glass off and play the thing until you complete it, basically. Yeah, it's great. It's like virtual glass, unlimited balls. So again, I think what Zen has done here is certainly a vast improvement over FX2.
    31:10
    It sounds like it. And I've certainly noticed it in the lighting on certain tables. And again, on those older tables, you will notice the ball physics being different Speaking of lighting I heard some news recently that was very interesting in the fact that on the Switch they're about to get Stan Pimble Arcade,
    31:34
    which is probably out of all the handheld platforms that you could choose, definitely the best one to actually deploy this on. the Switch is basically it's got the Shield K1 processor in it that the Shield tablet has and it's got some chops underneath it and the thing that's interesting about the Pimble Arcade version on Switch is that it's running DX11 lighting yeah true DX11 lighting proper actual DX11 lighting because like PS4, it's dynamic lighting, but I don't think it's DX11 lighting. I don't know how they managed to put DX into a platform like this, but they've got it.
    32:26
    It's basically a PC experience in certain people. You'll get all the lighting, all the room modes, everything that you have in the PC version on the Switch. Pretty amazing for a handheld.
    32:39
    I think the disk is due to be released very soon. So if I was a Switch, it would be an instant buy for me, Switch owner. That would be amazing. Would you? Yeah, totally. I still wouldn't. I am so gun-shy on Farsight and consoles, especially Nintendo with Wow They Did With You. Now, I know that the guys have said we have a great relationship with Nintendo and the Switch is a breeze to work with. as opposed to the Wii U.
    33:13
    That's encouraging, but I wouldn't instant buy. I would literally wait. Here's the initial release, and then I'm going to wait until you have another table, and I'm going to see do you instantly release it on Switch, or is it going to become like the PS4 and the Xbox, where it's a twice a year release.
    33:38
    It's a world of frustration at your fingertips. Yeah, yeah. So that's why I would be a definite wait and see.
    33:48
    Yeah. I guess the other news with Stern is that, well, yeah, we're going to have to eat our words about exclusivity, aren't we, Chris? Because Ghostbusters is now in TPA, and that is surprising the heck out of me that they've actually done that. does that mean that opens up a world of questions like okay so for ghostbusters if that's no longer exclusive to stern then are they actually going to get rid of stern as a concept and just kill it off because i i have heard that it wasn't super like well received um as a as an app um or an offering well this is the migration strategy here's here's the issue from what i the rumblings I've had and actually having been able to play the app,
    34:37
    it's still not a great user interface environment to play on. once you get into the game itself, well, then it just feels like TPA.
    34:55
    And I think that people were dismayed by the fact that it's taking so long for tables to come out for this. And that is what made me wonder in terms of Ghostbusters. It's been announced to have been coming out for probably going on nine months now. Yeah, about that. If you bought the hard copy of Storm Pinball Arcade for PS4, on the cover it's got a sticker that says free copy of Ghostbusters when it's released. Oh really? Okay. that's been out for a while. So I think that's the disturbing part for everybody. You know, that's, that's what's been irking everybody that, that has it, um, is where's the releases, where's the releases. You keep on talking about these things, but where are they? And I'm wondering if releasing Ghostbusters on TPA is kind of a, not necessarily an apology, but more of a, Hey, we understand. Sorry for the wait. We're going to make it available to everybody, but, hey, check out the Stern Pinball app also.
    36:06
    I think on the Stern Pinball app you get access to skins, like Ghostbusters skins. You get the Ellie skin or something like that. Right, apparently they have that for that, but I think they also are selling that on the PS4 and Xbox One, which is also causing people issues because they're like, well, I already bought the pack, the original pack, and now you're selling this additional pack. it actually sounds very much like Stern's tiered pricing model who would have thought and this comes down to again how much do you blame on Stern how much do you blame on Farsight from what I understand most of this is on Stern they're the ones dictating all this so I don't know I would be very who knows maybe Stern's looking at the numbers too and going hey where's our cash payday that we were getting look at what we were getting in Pinball Arcade, and we're not getting that with Stern Pinball Lab. So, yeah, you're right. It's a grand experiment to see what happens.
    37:09
    Just today, I was kind of looking over some of the threads, and one of the things was like, $10? You're not getting my money, Farsight! And that's where I went, well, guys, if you looked at the Stern Pinball app, all the tables are $10. This is standard pricing for per table.
    37:28
    When it comes to TPA, it's also going to be $10. I don't know if they're doing cross-buy. I thought they were. But that's also ticking off people that did the Stern Pinball app and bought the season or whatever the pack because they're like, well, but I also have a season pass on TPA and so now I've essentially bought the table twice, which, no, you didn't. You bought a season pass, and that gives you a discount. You get an entitlement, yeah. Yeah. So basically, if you buy a season pass on TPA, you also get. So it works on TPA. If you buy the season pass, you get the table included. And if you've bought the table explicitly in Stern, you get it included, but you also get it in TPA as well.
    38:21
    I don't know if it's backwards. No, that's right. It isn't. They're separated, but the gray point in here is the season pass and TPA. That's the bit that's making people savvy.
    38:34
    So it's sort of like you get a free ride if you get a season pass, but if you don't have a season pass, you can buy it separately, but the price is $10 regardless of what platform you buy it on. And it will work in both versions of the game. So it's sort of like, eh, eh. it's interesting the season pass complicated matters in this respect but yes so I was excited because it popped up in the beta and so I looked at it and it does the table flybys and that's all it does I can play it oh you were able to play it I was not able to play it I managed it it's been just released into the beta test channel for Android and a lot of Note 8 users in there There's a fair few dudes that have invested in the new Samsung Note 8, and they can't. It's too jittery for them to be able to play it at the moment. There's some performance issues. But strangely enough, for once, on the Shield tablet, it actually is butter smooth. And I've got a feeling based on the fact that Samsung, and I've said this a number of times before, Samsung typically has issues with GPU. No matter what thing they decide to use in their phones, It always has GPU clocking issues. And the Shield tablet, of course, is basically a PC architecture in a tablet. So the only thing it doesn't have is RAM. So it's only got 2 gig of RAM in the tablet. But the K1 processor is doing its job with this table. It is making it run very well, and there's no performance issues at all. But when I tried it on my Pixel XL, on initial load, the game will start, but it's jittery as anything, what you then do is you put the app into what they call background and then bring it back into the foreground again. And for some reason, that resets the emulation and I can get a pretty decent game out of it on my Pixel. So what I think is happening there is on initial load and trying to actually run the game code, there's some sort of lock happening with the processor. threads and it's actually not giving enough um processing power to the physics side of things because the ghost slings which are very interesting to see working real time they're very cool actually yeah um because i've never seen a premium version of this game i have no idea what they look like and i was going oh that that's pretty sweet how they got them done i reckon they are the thing that is causing the performance issue probably because it's like basically they've had to introduce a brand new physics model just for the ghost scenes because they do some pretty creative things oh yeah and i don't think they could actually emulate that properly unless they had a physics layer doing well there is some program magnet uh action happening uh on the real table uh oh yes no there is but the thing is that that you know is is governed by actual real-world physics to actually read right to replicate that exact behavior in tpa i don't oh right i don't think they would actually be able to do that just with a digital version of the magnets they would like unless the physics engine caters into to magnets as well i don't think so so that's what i think is causing performance issues in in the platforms at the moment but this is only the first beta um so i'd say that probably what they're doing is the right thing they're releasing it as it is to see what devices struggle and then they'll concentrate on those devices to actually improve the performance the one thing i have noticed with the tpa version i haven't actually seen it on stem pimple arcade yet they they haven't actually done a beta for it but i can tell immediately the sound quality um is totally different to what you hear in stem pimple arcade because the audio is not being directly streamed like it is like it's got that horrible downsampled audio that's warbly and gross and like i can i just can't wait until it gets to the stern pinball arcade so i had the true audio experience with it like the you know listening to things like star star trek and stern pinball arcade not stern and mustang um in the stern app is a is a delight with headphones because the audio is crisp and cd quality but this is just
    43:07
    don't get me wrong it's it's passable definitely in in comparison to the other table audio quality because it's sort of like being sourced from cd quality audio but yeah it's still crackly and it's got some artifacts in it that make me a little bit sort of strange feel strange about it but from a gameplay perspective it's fun like geez playing the premium version versus the pro version. I really hate the Pro version even more than I do now.
    43:39
    That plastic ramp, geez, it's just such a cop-out. Such a cop-out. I look forward to seeing, but like I said, right now on Steam, the DMD didn't even pop up. That's why I say, I don't think, all you got was audio, a track audio, and the flyover at the table. You push start, nothing happens.
    44:02
    So I don't think they quite had it loaded in yet all the way. It sounds like it was nearly there, just not quite. Nearly, but not quite, yeah. So I've got a feeling that this one's going to have a few beta rounds because it's going to be a bit of a balance between tuning and actual gameplay with this one. And the thing is that I'm surprised for a start that we're even able to get this into TPA because TPA's emulation structure is very different to and Pinball Arcade's native support for the app. So getting this into a state that they can actually emulate in TPA's framework is in itself a very impressive feat.
    44:48
    We might have to have a conversation with Norman again and figure out what the heck. Yeah, I'd be very interested to hear what he has to say about how this one managed to get to the platform. It might be an interesting story to hear. I think everyone would like to hear it. so we'll see if we can get him on the blower and see what he reckons about it. Also interesting that I kind of went, huh? Was, did you happen to see pictures emerged this week of Jersey Jack's new table, which is Pirates of the Caribbean. Pirates of the Caribbean, yeah.
    45:23
    What? That's fairly, A, it's fairly, I shouldn't say fairly recent to CERN's. Theirs is, what, maybe five years old? If that. Yeah.
    45:35
    A little bit more like 10, I think, isn't it? I don't know if you're... I think you're going a little bit too far back on that. But it's also not very timely.
    45:47
    I mean, the latest just came out on video. It didn't do extraordinarily well at the box office, and here you are with a Pirates of the Caribbean table.
    45:58
    No, it's 2006 Pirates of the Caribbean. I'm right. Wow. Yeah, it's an old game. Okay. So I guess, Ster, I'm not going to put that one in the vault and re-release Vault Edition, I should say. Well, maybe, maybe not. I don't know. They probably wouldn't because I don't think it was super popular.
    46:19
    Well, I also think that this is clearly Jersey Jack got the license and I don't think you would have two companies with a license at the same time. No, you're probably right.
    46:29
    So, yeah, it looks like an interesting table. It does. It's got a spinner right there in the middle. Big old spinner and two ramps on the sides. I think it's a wide body again. It doesn't look like a narrow. It's got the double in lanes. I don't think Jersey Jack do narrow bodies. They're all wide body games. No, they're not. Dialed in is a narrow body. Oh, narrow. There you go. Why do you think I like it so much? Oh, right. Okay.
    46:56
    Yeah, no. Dialed in is definitely a narrow as compared to Hobbit and Wizard of Oz but this one looks like it a white body Like I said it got double in lanes so it kind of tells you right there Although Adam family has double in lanes on one side and it's a narrow. On one side. Yes, on one side.
    47:18
    But yeah, I was kind of shocked to see that. That does look interesting. So we'll see what they do. Apparently, the killer feature with this game is just the combinations of modes you can get. You can get something like, I forget the measurement they used, but it was something like 15 trillion megadoodles or something like that. It was a huge amount of different play combinations and really they can make the claim that no game will ever be alike as far as when you play it because of the combinations of modes, which is pretty amazing, really.
    48:00
    Yeah. See, Jersey Jack are doing some very interesting things with pinball, like more than Stern are at the moment. They're actually treating it differently. I heard an interesting analogy, and I kind of went, you know what? You're kind of like that. And that was that Stern hasn't really done anything wow factor, as she might say, innovative since Metallica. Yeah. And this isn't my opinion. This is what this person was saying. And I kind of went, yeah, you're not too wrong on that. And they said essentially what they've been producing since then, is a whole bunch of Hondas. They're safe, they're reliable, but they're not sexy and they don't make you jump for joy. Jersey Jack is more swinging for the fences and you might wind up with a Kia and you might wind up with a Tesla, but you don't know.
    48:49
    It's true. They're experimenting and that's the thing I like about Jersey Jack. They're actually going, we're not just going to sit here and take a formulaic approach to this product, what we're actually going to do is we're going to use a bit of, well, product-based thinking, really, and we're going to go, right, what experiments can we perform on our machines and on our product line that will allow us to then, for the next machine, learn from that and actually make something even more different?
    49:19
    It's very interesting. I've got a feeling they've got a very different product development approach there at Jersey Jack than Stern do. Yeah. And it's probably because they have the luxury of being a new pinball manufacturer and they can have a different approach to it because Stern has a reputation to uphold to an extent. And I think that is probably holding them back a little bit from what they can do. Well, Jersey Jack is still in the experimentation mode of finding out what works, what the customers like, what sells, what doesn't. Stern has so many tables under their belt that I'm sure they've got a spreadsheet that tells them exactly what works and what doesn't. Yeah.
    49:59
    And unfortunately, then you wind up with something like Star Wars. Yeah. So, you know, I don't know. I've also heard a rumor that Stern is thinking of doing an original license. That's about time. Table. they've got the designers now they could probably pull it off that would be quite amazing because Gary Stern has been very vocal about I will never sell a non-licensed pin again yeah very interesting I think he's probably seeing pressure from the industry going you know what there's a lot of people out here that are doing things with pinball that aren't licensed well and again maybe we can look at dialed in as an example where it was like, hey, I let a well-known designer have his own theme and he went nuts with it and did a really good job.
    50:58
    And if the sales of it are doing just fine, then maybe that proves that, hey, now and then you can drop one of these and people will actually pay attention.
    51:07
    Exactly. I think it's good. This is the thing that competition brings. It's very good. so I've been doing some stuff during this week yeah if you've been following Jared's Twitter feed you'll have noticed exactly what he's been doing and we were going to talk about it last week but some of you didn't show up somebody with the information couldn't actually talk about it so I've got a while back I wanted to try and get back into doing pinballs again for real and that's finally happened I've got an arrangement with one of the guys who has a, the guy who actually had a large shipment of African pinball machines. And he's got such a backlog of them that he needs hand actually turning him around and getting him out to people. So he's calling me to just do Clayfield work for him. So what I'm doing is I'm, I'm doing the tops, I'm doing the bottoms and I'm just replacing all the, doing all the labor stuff that takes him the greatest amount of time. And then he basically gets him over the line with any minor things that need to be done after that. So I'm essentially saving him about five hours a table, theoretically.
    52:24
    Theoretically, you've already spent a good 10 hours at least. Oh, more than that. Much more than that on this particular table. I'm just saying off your posting, so Jared's been working on, what's it, Jack's Open? Jax Open, which is a 1983 sold state by Godley.
    52:42
    And he spent a good five hours taking off Mylar, which hopefully you'll try the freezing off method next time. No, I tried it. It was not good. It actually removed much more paint than the other method. And also, the Mylar just broke into pieces basically.
    53:03
    So I tried to pull it off. It wasn't coming off in a nice continuous sheet. It was just snapping and taking paint with it. So, nope, not doing that. But what I did find was quite effective was isopropyl alcohol to actually loosen the glue. So what you do is you take an edge up and you just start spraying the table with isopropyl alcohol and it just dissolves the glue. Yeah, because it evaporates faster than the table will absorb it. but it takes care of the glue for sure it just melts it basically it melts into a gooey mess that's fine but you get the Marlowe off no problems at all with it and the paint mostly stays on there this table had a lot of issues with planking because these African tables are pretty rough and they were stored in strangely enough a wet environment over in Africa I don't know how that happens but the cabinet on this one actually is rotten on the bottom.
    54:08
    It's pretty rough, the cabinet. But the playfield itself actually is sold enough. But yeah, I found out there were actually two layers of Mylar on this particular pinball. Oh, my God.
    54:22
    So there was a top layer which was poorly applied, and it was poorly applied over the top of the already bad Mylar that was factory installed. so what happened is of course with with the fact that you've got like a a big void underneath the mylar that you're trying to fill in with those bits that are worn through you already know what happens with that basically the ball wears through it twice as fast right um so you get these massive cliffs in the play field basically around all the inserts so i thought well i can do one of two things here i can basically get the money like spend the time that um was estimated for this table to budgeted for the table to take and just get it out of my life or i can go down the rabbit hole and i decided to go down the rabbit hole with this one because number one i was enjoying the hell out of doing it and number two i just i i couldn't i couldn't leave that mother on i just I was looking at it all the time. I was trying to get all the ball swirls out of it, and it wasn't coming off at all. And I was just going, no, this is triggering me so badly. I need to get rid of this Mylar, and I'm going to just, like, clench my teeth and hope that I don't screw up the play field on it. And I did actually say to the guy I'm doing the job for, so I need to let you know I kind of went to the next level with this one, He looked at me strangely. I went, yeah, I kind of demyelad the play field. And he goes, oh, well, that's okay. Because what we can do is we can touch up the play field underneath and then, you know, we'll do those play field touch-ups and it will actually be a little bit easier. But I think he wasn't expecting me to do it because he knew the effort involved to do it. So he didn't say, oh, well, do it, but I'm still going to give you the same amount of money because I can't afford to give you any more. But because I went to the extra step to do it, it's actually been good because he's been able to see what I can physically do with these tables. And he knows now that I had scope to do it. And if he needs it done, I can do it for him in the future. See, there you go. You make a good first impression on the first one you do, and you never know what it goes from there. Well, that's the thing. You go a little bit extra, like you're saying. It doesn't hurt to actually prove what you can and can't do. And, you know, he was saying, oh, yeah, I don't know about that flipper. When he delivered the table, he had a good close look at the underplay field and goes, oh, no, I didn't realize this pinball crank had a sheared bolt in it. Oh, jeez, I'm going to have to take this one back to the shop. He goes, oh, well, no, don't worry.
    57:03
    This isn't my first rodeo. I can more than likely fix that. You'll just need to give me the replacement, Paul, and I should be able to get it. He goes, oh, okay, look, he says, if you can get this flipping, well done because it's pretty much the deep end. I've given you one that's kind of the deep end here and I want to see how you go with it but yeah I managed to, it took me a good 45 minutes but I drilled out the tempered steel bolt in one of the four assemblies and jeez that was hard work because I tried to initially, I didn't have a centre punch so I couldn't get the flipper and the bolt and drive a pilot hole into the bolt so when I started drilling the drill wandered a bit and it sort of went off centre when I started drilling the bolt out which means you've pretty much got twice the effort to try and drill the bolt out because you're going off centre so you need to go wider and wider and wider so I ended up getting the thing off but I had to drill I'd use like an 8 or 9mm drill to actually drill all of the spring metal bolt out but I got it and I was surprised, I thought oh man there's no way I'm going to get this I had to actually clamp the play field against the side of the cabinet so I had something to push against and then I had to clamp the flipper down with a big G clamp, adjustable G clamp and like crank up the flipper so I could actually push against the mechanism because the bolt was in an odd spot so I sort of jerry-rigged all this stuff and got it working to the point I could just use two hands on the drill and just drive the drill into the spring metal thing. And, yeah, managed to get it. So I was stoked. It was like success at the end when I got this thing out. So how much more work do you feel that you have on this one? So I've got to replace interstroke switches. I've got to put a new flipper crank on the other side of the pinball machine. and then I've got to put back the big nine bank drop target assembly again. Okay. And that's okay. I've got some spare parts for the drop target. There was a crack target in it, so I thought I'd just strip that apart as well.
    59:24
    And, yeah, just get that all cleaned out. It was disgusting. It was full of oil and grease, basically. So there you go, folks. If you follow Jared's Twitter feed, you'll still be able to catch – You'll be able to catch the tail end of what happens to Jax to open and see where he's going. It has been interesting. He's been showing before and after pictures of what he does each step.
    59:52
    For those of you that are into your table restoration porn, there you go. Follow Jared at JaredMorrigs on Twitter.
    60:02
    On Twitter at ShutYourTraps. you can of course always follow the show at blockade then you can find out things like what may or may not be happening with our logo and which we've had some activity going on on the forum thread with somebody wanting to donate a little of their time also so we'll see where we will be full on those ends yeah we'll see what happens yeah also be sure to send us an email if you have information that we ask during the show if you have questions, if you want to make comments, our email is blahblahblockade at gmail.com. Be sure to visit the website blockadepinball at, see, I always mess it up, jared, blockadepinball.com.
    60:51
    And there you can download past shows as well as read show notes and timing notes and websites that we happen to mention. Yes. which I should point out the Kickstarter that I mentioned about the Spinner Cube it took less than a week, it's fully funded and now they're going into stretch goal mode which they haven't announced yet but they said they do have plans for so that thing still has another three weeks to go that's good people have a thirst for things they can spin and click so there you go alright until next time, like I said, be sure to probably check out Zen on Tuesday I believe that's when I will post the next tournament and that's when I most probably will maybe have the episode done exactly there should be a tournament on Zen, I'm going to try and do this every week, like I said I wish that I could have it actually title blockade but it's using my username so shut your trap is what you're going to want to look up to find out what that tournament is and I'll be sure to tweet out about it also so everybody knows to hop on there and play alright, with that we shall say thanks for listening see you next time, buh-bye wizardamusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter odds, easy to install, totally unique, mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order wizardamusement.com, sales, restoration customization
    62:30
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favourite podcast hosting service that BlackAid is delivered to We can't improve unless you tell us how Now stop listening and play some pinball