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Were you finished? Allow me to retort!

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 31m·analyzed·Nov 25, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

BlahCade hosts discuss early SS machines, backglass restoration costs, and Arcade1Up 4K marketing clarification.

Summary

Chris Franchi and Jared Morgan discuss Jared's recent acquisitions of two early solid-state pinball machines (Bally's Lost World and Williams Pocorino), restoration projects and costs including new backglasses imported from Italy, and a detailed technical analysis of the Arcade1Up Legends 4K pinball cabinet controversy—clarifying that '4K' refers to the monitor capability rather than the games running in 4K resolution, while addressing marketing ambiguity and the technical limitations of mobile chipsets driving multiple screens.

Key Claims

  • Williams and Bally were innovating in solid-state much earlier than Gottlieb, which were about two years behind with their first System 80/System 1 boards (Genie era, circa 1979)

    high confidence · Jared Morgan discussing the relative technological advancement of manufacturers during the solid-state transition

  • Pocorino features an innovative 'Newton ball' mechanism with a stack of three balls captured in an area that loops and triggers star rollovers with a pin mechanism

    high confidence · Jared Morgan describing the Pocorino playfield mechanics in detail

  • The Arcade1Up Legends 4K press release from September 15, 2023 never explicitly stated that games would play in 4K; '4K' is branding referring to the monitor capability

    high confidence · Chris Franchi reading and analyzing the official press release quotes from PK and Mel Kirk

  • Arcade1Up uses a RockChip mobile platform (not Snapdragon) managing three screens simultaneously, which Jared questioned in episode 266 at the 12:54 mark

    high confidence · Jared Morgan and Chris Franchi discussing the technical specifications and platform limitations

  • For pinball gameplay, 60 frames per second and minimal lag are more important than 4K resolution

    high confidence · Both hosts discussing player priorities regarding display technology

  • Bally circuit boards have corroded header pins and connectors that require replacement, typically addressed with Molex connector upgrades

    high confidence · Jared Morgan discussing technical advice from his Gottlieb restoration technician

  • Lost World backglass was unrecoverable ('flaky city') and required a brand-new replacement from Italy

    high confidence · Jared Morgan describing the condition of the Lost World acquisition

  • Jared ordered four new backglasses from Italy for approximately 1,250 euros, which incurred additional Australian import duty and GST of approximately $500 AUD

    high confidence · Jared Morgan detailing the cost and customs implications of the backglass order

Notable Quotes

  • “Williams was a little bit further ahead than Bally when they were doing their move over to solid state. And both of them were faster than Gottlieb.”

    Jared Morgan @ early segment — Establishes relative technological advancement of manufacturers during solid-state era transition

  • “I love how we're excited by a spinner, because that's the first thing that gets dropped in Pro models.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-early segment — Commentary on modern pinball design philosophy and feature elimination across pricing tiers

  • “The 4K is a branding nomenclature. It's saying that because it does have a 4K monitor, as opposed to the Arcade1Up Legends Pinball HD, which does not have a 4K monitor.”

    Chris Franchi @ mid segment — Core clarification of the Arcade1Up marketing controversy

  • “Nowhere in that press statement does it state from either of them that they were bringing these tables in 4K onto this machine. Instead, where that came from was the influencers trying to make bold statements.”

    Chris Franchi @ mid-late segment — Attribution of 4K gameplay claims to influencer speculation rather than official sources

  • “Paramount is being able to play in 60 frames per second and having no lag. That's what's paramount.”

    Chris Franchi @ late segment — Statement of player priorities regarding display technology vs. gameplay smoothness

  • “What is essentially a mobile platform for something that's going to be pumping out to a 4K, 32-inch screen plus two more screens? That's a lot of things to drive.”

    Chris Franchi @ late segment — Technical analysis of the computational burden on the Arcade1Up platform

  • “I'm paying in euros, in Australian dollars. So there's that, which is about 60 cents to the Australian dollar at the moment. And because I ordered four, they were 1,250 euros.”

    Jared Morgan @ early-mid segment — Illustration of international restoration costs and currency impacts

Entities

Chris FranchipersonJared MorganpersonMel KirkpersonBlahCade Pinball PodcastorganizationArcade1UpcompanyZen StudioscompanyPocorinogameLost WorldgameAlltech

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: BlahCade Podcast interview with Mel Kirk generated significantly higher viewership than typical episodes; channel approaching 1,000 subscriber milestone with organic growth model

    high · Chris Franchi states interview 'one of the more viewed videos that we've ever had in such a short period of time'; notes 60% of viewers are subscribers; needs 150 more subscribers to reach 1,000

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade hosts demonstrate critical analysis of marketing claims and technical specifications; willing to acknowledge errors and correct misinformation in public discourse

    high · Chris Franchi publicly owns up to being incorrect in comments about 4K advertising; both hosts emphasize importance of reading specs and critical thinking about influencer content

  • ?

    industry_signal: Pinball gameplay prioritizes 60 FPS and minimal lag over 4K resolution; frame rate and ball movement smoothness more important to player experience than visual resolution

    high · Chris Franchi and Jared Morgan both emphasize frame rate/lag as paramount; discussion of players reducing resolution to 2K to improve perceived lag; references to polygon reduction necessity in mobile ports

  • ?

    content_signal: Influencer content about Arcade1Up 4K gaming resolution exceeded official company messaging; influencers speculated and overstated features not promised in press release

    high · Chris Franchi identifies influencer speculation as source of 4K gaming claims; contrasts with actual press release language focusing on platform branding, not game resolution

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Williams and Bally innovated in solid-state earlier than Gottlieb by approximately 2 years during the transition from electromechanical systems

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.273

0:00
Thank you. Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, is Jared Morgan.
0:35
Hello, everyone. How are you going? Hello, everybody, indeed. Hey, a quick thank you to everybody that tuned in to our interview with Mel real quickly, just in the short time that it's been up. It's one of the more viewed videos that we've ever had in such a short period of time. So thank you so much if you definitely enjoyed watching that. give us a heads up and I hate doing this the call to action but here it goes like and subscribe we actually you know what as our subscribers Jared typically about 60% of the viewers are subscribers so we actually have a pretty high number it is pretty good people like to hear us rambling on about stuff yes my thing is we are getting dangerously close to having hitting our 1000 subscriber mark and I would very much like to hit that in this year. We only need about 150 more subscribers. 150 more seems attainable, even though we are a very, very niche topic area. We are, and I mean, our growth has been very organic over the years. It's very slow, but I think that that's why our viewership numbers are the way they are, because it wasn't just flash in the pan. Yeah, I'll subscribe to that and never watch it again, kind of. yeah so yeah so again big thank you to everybody uh for that um all right jared you you were teasing me with this earlier uh hit me with uh what just arrived this week yeah so before the show i was telling chris that i now have two new pinball machines in the garage and they're not got leaps yeah so i managed to get um two um still still sticking well and truly in that early solid state era which is i just seem to like them so i'm not going to deny myself anymore uh that's the era that i like and that's the era they're going to keep on collecting if i do so um so the the games got were um belly's lost world and a williams pocorino so these are two pocorino's 1978 by williams so it's like i think williams was a little bit further ahead than belly when they were doing their move over to and both of them were faster than gotley gotley oh yes they really were like gotley were like two years behind that like the first System 80s or like System 1s which were using the spider chip from Gottlieb were that genie era and I think that was 1979 so they were a little bit behind the 8 ball there, Williams and Bellewere innovating much earlier so this, Pocorino is 1978 and it's an oddly card themed game it's got women dressed in card costumes on the back glass it's such a weird look to it strange strange looking game um it's also um it's like you look at it it's it's a massive square play field this thing yeah it is just a big square and it's really open at the bottom like you don't really have much to shoot at all at the bottom it's all at the back it's got this really um innovative well for the era probably innovative newton ball sort of thing where you've got a stack of three balls in this captured area. And they go around a loop and trigger a star rollover, and their little pin sticks up and stops them. And then you can shoot another one. It depends. It says how many mutant balls you need to kick up there to complete the card hand. And it will then hold them there until they're all done, then drop them, and they will release back down again. So I've never seen that before in a game. That's pretty cool. um and it's got a spinner and it's got a reasonable amount of drop ties got three banks of drop targets but they're like two banks of two drop targets and one bank of five i love how we're excited by a spinner because that's the first thing that gets dropped in pro models yeah like this was like a spinner when whenever you look at one of these games i found it's particularly on the belly and williams of this era it's like if you see a spinner you also have a look to see if it's got a 1000 point like modifier on it and go all right how do i how do i like that because honestly that's where your points are in these games it's like spinner with a um a spinner multiplier on it's great so is it uh uh i mean square play field which means it's you know slow motion ball um oh very slow motion especially if you actually put it at the uh three percent tilt grade that they're usually recommended for yeah oh yeah um how's the uh how's the condition oh look it is i'm gonna have to do look pretty much all of the primary inserts are cupped and lovely nice so i'm gonna have to like either gently coax them back into not cupped um and then actually re-glue them in. So I'm pretty sure that eventually I'm going to have to do a playfield strip on this. It's also got very, very poorly applied book contact to the playfield. It's not a Mylar. It's definitely book contact because there's two distinct panels of contact on there with a void between them. So it's lovely. so yeah i'm going to have to do some some work on this to bring it up to it's look you can play it now it's playable okay um the ball rolls around on it you can hit things one of the pop bumpers is completely floating loose it's just flopping around so i have to tighten that up put some matchsticks in there or whatever but you know it is it is playable the flippers need to be shopped they're pretty weak but um uh overall you can flip it which is more than i can say for lost world lost world unfortunately um was sold as a working game arrived doa um with a probably i think it's a um logic board fault on it it wouldn't wouldn't boot to to game over mode so we're definitely looking at um a new logic board but honestly when you're messing around with this era of belly, you just junk the boards. And you can – they are repairable. You can repair them, but then it's whack-a-mole. Well, that's what – when I got A-Ball Deluxe, the first thing everybody was saying to do was, oh, you've got to re-pin all your connectors.

  • “I don't want the headache. I want this thing to work. And once it's got new boards and a rectifier in it, it's going to absolutely rock on.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid segment — Restoration decision-making philosophy prioritizing reliability over cost savings

    • company
    RockChipcompany
    Legends Pinball 4Kproduct
    PKperson
    John Gristperson
    Tangles Techcompany
    Farsight Studioscompany

    high · Jared Morgan's technical assessment comparing Pocorino (1978) to Gottlieb System 80/System 1 (Genie era, 1979 approx); statement about Williams/Bally innovation speed advantage

  • $

    market_signal: Arcade1Up Legends 4K marketing ambiguity regarding '4K' resolution for games clarified as monitor capability, not game rendering; official press release contains no explicit 4K gaming claims

    high · Chris Franchi reads and analyzes September 15, 2023 press release showing PK and Mel Kirk quotes reference '4K platform' and 'digital pinball space' not specific game resolution claims

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jared Morgan acquired two early solid-state machines (Williams Pocorino 1978, Bally Lost World) representing intentional collection focus on early solid-state era

    high · Direct statements about machines arriving this week and explicit decision to focus collecting on early solid-state era machines

  • ?

    product_concern: Bally early solid-state machines require extensive connector/board replacement; corroded header pins and logic board failures common in this era

    high · Jared Morgan's Lost World arrived DOA with logic board fault; discussion of universal requirement to replace Molex connectors; decision to use Alltech all-in-one board replacement

  • ?

    restoration_signal: International backglass restoration costs significantly elevated by currency conversion and import duty; €1,250 order resulted in ~$500 AUD additional customs/GST charges

    high · Detailed cost breakdown: 1,250 euros + 40% conversion + $500 duty/GST on order exceeding $1,000 AUD tax-free threshold

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Jared Morgan prioritizing technician expertise and reliability over cost savings for Bally board restoration; choosing professional re-pinning service to avoid potential complications

    high · Quote: 'I don't want the headache. I want this thing to work.' Decision to use John Grist for re-pinning rather than DIY kit despite cost savings potential

  • ?

    technology_signal: Arcade1Up Legends 4K uses underpowered RockChip mobile platform managing three screens simultaneously; technical constraints require gameplay compromises vs. 4K resolution capability

    high · Jared Morgan's technical analysis of RockChip platform limitations; Chris Franchi comparison to RTX 4060 GPU power requirements; discussion of polygon reduction and aliasing in mobile ports

    • 7:33
    And I was like, what? They were like, oh, yeah, you've got to change everything out to Molex. That's the very first thing you need to do on these. That'll solve 99% of your problems. It didn't solve 99% of them, but it probably solved 90% of them.
    7:48
    Yeah. And then the boards, where's the other 10%, you know? But yeah, yay, Bally. Yeah, Bally. So yeah, definitely, you're spot on with the connectors. That's what I've been told by my, not my resident tech, but the tech I use all the time to do my Gottliebs. He goes, yeah, expect to be replacing a lot of header pins on the boards and connectors because they're just cactus. Yeah. so I'm just going to be going with a whole set of boards, probably Alltech, I think. Tangles Tech down here in Australia have their own Australian-made set of boards, but they don't have solutions for all the different boards that are in the back of their head, so I might just go for an Alltech solution, which is all-in-one. You can even get a brand-new rectifier board as well. So it's interesting to see how Belly do their rectification versus Gottlieb. So Belly, as anyone who's had a look inside the head of a Belly, will see there's this one teeny tiny little circuit board with all the high voltage conversion done on it. And you've got to tap wires from the transformer directly into this board. So you're taking transformer wires and putting the wires through the board and tapping them into all these different spots in the board. That's the hardest bit about it, to actually get those right. Because if you screw that up well, you also have a dead board, a brand new dead board that you've got. So I definitely want to get a new Rectifier board as well. I'm just going to get a whole new board. I'm going to take it over to John Grist. I'm going to say, like, your job's easy. Can you just repin it for me? Yeah, I know you can buy repin kits where you just buy the kit and repin it yourself, which might save me some money, but he's got all the right gear there. And I just... I was going to say, there's a difference between saving money and saving headaches.
    9:42
    Yeah. And I don't want the headache. I want this thing to work. And once it's got new boards and a rectifier in it, it's going to absolutely rock on. The play field on Lost World is actually not too bad. And mechanically, it feels like it's in much better condition than Pokerino because I've inspected the mechanisms on the play field. and the only thing I could really spot was a sloppy flipper on the left because one of the links was blown out. So that's an easy fix. But everything else seems to be in reasonable playfield conditions. The playfield has a playfield protector over it, like the plastic flabby one, which I hate. So that will probably go eventually, but for now I just want to get the thing flipping and then go from there. So I think that's going to be a project for next year. I just need to save up a little bit of money because the third thing that's happened, Chris, is that all my back glasses have arrived from Italy.
    10:41
    And those aren't cheap. Those are definitely – you're correct, Chris. These are not cheap. I'm paying euros for them in Australian pesos. So there's that, which is about 60 cents to the Australian dollar at the moment. um and because i ordered four they were 1250 euro wait you ordered four back glass i did so i basically got brand new back glasses for my entire fleet including oh world okay okay because lost world's back glass the other thing that was wrong with lost world's back glass was it was unrecoverable yeah flaky city like flakes beyond any hope of recognition yeah so it needed to have a brand new one like there was no no disputing in that um uh so i had to get that one added to the order but i've yes i've got a new back glass for force 2 um timeline and pink panther and boy look they're expensive but geez they just look stunning compared to the other ones the colors the the art that was missing off them you don't realize how much art was missing until you get a new one and put it in. And, oh, man, it's so expensive. I had to pay, because it was $1,250. That's about, you know, if you add 40% on, we're talking close to grand, really, Australian. So that's well over the $1,000 Australian dollar tax-free importation limit. So hello to $500 of duty in GST that I had to pay on top of that as well. so it was an expensive exercise but i didn't have a choice yeah these are just unobtainium and you can only get them from europe so you pay the man yes you gotta do what you got to do gots gots to do what you got to do so but i like seeing them now i'm going okay i've now got a complete machine like these are now looking more like restored machines yeah So yeah, have a look at my Instagram. We've been posting progressive pics on there. So if you're interested in what the before and after looks like, have a look. They're pretty stark. Very good. Yeah, very good. All right, let's shift over to something here. So in our videos with the Mel interview, particularly the shorter video that was just all about at games and that, the comment thread it got a little uh interesting oh yeah it blew up didn't it there were some comments yes um and uh so i just i said i would do this if i was proven wrong in one of the comments and therefore i'm going to do this indeed so where we were uh getting a little bit uh in the weeds happened to be in relations to uh whether or not uh the 4k cabinets were advertised specifically the Adams family cabinet because that was the first one was advertised as being able to play the games in 4k that the tables included were in 4k and I was pretty confident that no they didn't do that but if you were able to bring up the original flyer that was released back in September it did actually indeed state that built-in tables were in 4k and then there was even in a playfield image of adam's family that said that it was in 4k so right yes the advertisement at that point did say that so this is where i was incorrect in the comments that i was making so i'm owning up to that i'm able to do that however more to what i was saying was that But Mel Kirk, Zen Studios in particular, never once stated that these tables were going to be playing in 4K. There was a press release that came out, and we'll get to that in a moment. The press release has quotes from both PK and Mel. Neither one of them said anything about the tables playing in 4K. um and instead what you gather is that the idea of the at games legends pinball 4k the 4k is a branding nomenclature it's saying because it does have a 4k monitor as opposed to the at games legends pinball hd which does not have a 4k monitor So what we're really doing is we're stating this to be a – it's a branding purpose. It's telling you what the monitor on the play field, what it is capable of.
    15:37
    Yeah. And so although the argument can be made, well, if you call something 4K, then everything better played playing in 4K. I understand that, and I understand why some people would be confused by that. But – Yeah, you're right. That is an easy thing to draw a conclusion to, isn't it? Like, oh, okay. Oh, okay. Well, everything's 4K. But this is advertising. This is what draws you in. Now, if you're not going to read the fine print, if you're not going to read the blurb underneath that tells you more truthful things, that's on you, right? It's the whole buyer beware thing. Is it shady? Debatable.
    16:16
    It's being a little slick, sure. but what what do you expect them to call this without having to differentiate between the old and the new because the old one was like at games pinball right yes um and so it was at games pinball hd did they have no the hd came out as a branding rebranding as a differentiator as a differentiator same thing is at the same time they came out with the uh at games mini right so you know now you have a now you have a product line and it is about differentiating rather than just saying at games 2 because if you say it's at games 2 now you're going to have to read the blurb underneath to find out what the 2 is right instead of just calling it at games 4k you automatically know that this is capable of 4k okay well yeah i guess i have to call it something yes things is hard yes now uh there the the channel in question that was uh questioning us then went on to state something to the effect of you know look if i buy uh an 8k tv it's gonna it can perform in 8k which was an interesting argument to be made because yes you can buy 8k tvs however to this day you cannot buy any 8k media there is no streaming in 8k there's in there's no network that broadcasts in 8k there is no physical media that is in 8k you can play xbox and ps5 are capable of 8k gaming however whatever they have is very few but far between nobody believes it's an actual 8k because if you play on a pc nobody's playing those games in 8k because the video card simply cannot handle all the you know without dumbing down uh you know turning off a lot of stuff it ain't gonna play in 8k a lot of these things these games struggle to be played in 4k so yeah i found that to be a very interesting uh thing to bring up because an 8k tv again is simply branding it is capable of but it does not mean that it will do my tv resolution specification yeah it has this many pixels per inch yeah my tv is a 3d tv that at the time uh it ever was advertised as having hdr it does have hdr however it can't play any hdr content because since it came out the hdr was codified across the board into what is now known as hdr 10 and my tv is not able to uh interpret that information it's beat em x versus vhs all over again right standards change um so i my tv was a hey yeah we have it before a lot of other tvs had it but then all the streamers all the content were like yes and this is the this is the standard that we're going to be using and my tv went oh i don't meet that standard it's still hdr it's still hdr capable and to be fair if i use amazon uh i can actually stream things in hdr over that all right interestingly enough i don't know That's the only place I've ever been able to do it in. So that's where your content comes from for that particular thing that you're talking about. Yes. And I haven't even tried it in a while because it was terrible.
    19:57
    The buffering on it was absurd. It was horrible. Unwatchable for the most part. Because you can doesn't mean you should. Exactly, right? um those are the content creators that uh use the space to comment on gaming news um we should have a better sense of comprehension folks we should be able to read through uh what is merely a statement for hype and what is actual truth um you know we should be able to be critical about this and understand who is doing the announcing and are those credible sources.
    20:44
    So, and I think Jared and I can agree on this, influencers are exactly that. They're meant to influence. They're not out there to read a press release and immediately go, well, that's not going to fly. No, they're going to hype it up. They're going to – they're being a vocal mouthpiece for marketing without it – Because they're being paid or getting some sort of kickback. Right. Without it being official so that anything that they say, if it is incorrect, the actual company can go, no, we didn't say that. That was them. And truth be told, there are some influencers out there that purposely exaggerate or expound upon information purely so that they can have their content be different than the other five channels that were all given the exact same press release to read. Same press release. Yeah. Yeah, because what's more boring than hearing the same thing repeated from a press release five times over? Right.
    21:46
    Yeah, no one's going to watch that. No. And I think that in any industry, announcement claims are often walked back from the initial announcement to what actually gets, you know, all these things prior to release. In the case of Adam's family, soon after the announcement, the press release or the flyer wound up getting changed to reflect. Right. So I'm going to say that Zen probably read it and was like, no, we're not actually doing 4K gaming. I think where it really came to a head was when it went to the, I don't know if it was the Texas gaming show. It was some gaming show, and they had the cabinets out there, and the one or two people that were allowed, the influencers that were allowed to play it, were like, oh the lag on this is bad Like it was really bad And I think that where it was you know hey we going to make our corrections here
    22:52
    Now, it's something to be noted because people are like, it's a class action lawsuit waiting to be happened. no because prior to at games shipping anything they offer are you sure that you want to buy this and if you don't you can cancel the order um right so this is after all the adjustments to the wording and the pitch of the product were made right right so even up and up because they didn't ship until January. So there was plenty of time in the interim to cancel the order.
    23:34
    And so by that point, the information had been corrected. Okay. Yeah. So let's take a quick look at the actual press release. I have it actually.
    23:48
    Play that. Yeah. There we go. Here's the actual press release that was the pre-release. You can see it was released on September 15th of 2023.
    23:59
    And it just kind of runs through who they are, what's going to be on it with Adam's family, what the list price is, yada, yada, yada. But down here at the bottom, we have this quote from PK that says, we are very excited to announce our new Legends 4K pinball machines and their premium features for an authentic experience. PK goes on to say we'd also like to thank Zen Studios for bringing their iconic virtual pinball tables to our new exciting Legends 4K platform 4K platform, right? The addition of Zen's pinball table tables is a game changer for our community and platform as we're now able to provide them with ongoing access to the top pinball tables and iconic brands So again, I think that right there it's being established that this is a platform Then Mel states, Zen Studios is always looking for best-in-class partners to help bring our iconic virtual pinball tables in new exciting ways placing them in the 4k digital pinball space that app games has created is an exciting blend of nostalgia and innovation we look forward to seeing our fans reaction to this exceptionally engaging platform so the 4k digital pinball space not yes that that's the space yes that's the brand name of the space right is that what i'm reading into here that's basically what you're reading into nowhere in that press statement does it state from either of them that they were bringing these tables in 4k onto this machine instead where that came from was the influencers uh trying to make bold statements uh being the first of their kind to state uh such things um i think we as content creators in general and this is not just influencers but this is anybody that is on this space um yep you know we're not privy i mean we can make all the assumptions that we want of what we think went on backs you know behind the scenes and and you know and the argument was oh do you actually think that zen didn't promise 4k to to add games i have no idea i personally don't believe that's the case because at because zen is well aware of what they're able to provide um they already did it with arcade one-up where they did have to release the tables in 720 because that was the screen that arcade one-up was providing even though at the time mel said we could have done it in 1080 um if we had had the proper uh chips hardware and well tips yeah um and i mean i raised concerns when i saw like the spec way back when the 4kp you did indeed jared you raised those in episode 266 and if you want to watch it for yourself go back watch episode 266 is the 1254 mark jared literally reads the press release and then immediately questions whether it would be possible yeah because it's like the the platform that they're using. I mean, go and watch the episode if you really care, but it's a rock chip platform and it's managing three screens.
    27:12
    And it is a rock chip platform, folks. The way you explain it to me, that's a mobile platform. Yeah, it is. It's a mobile chip. It's a mobile chip and it's an underpowered mobile chip. It's not a Snapdragon series, which is like the one where most modern flagship mobile phones are using. RockShip is like the stuff you see in embedded media controllers and stuff like that. So, look, I do really question. I was skeptical back then. 4K was, while it did, the specification for the board did say, yes, it is capable of outputting 4K. um that's a very different situation to what you're actually getting the board to do under load um and the build that you're giving it to actually run on correct it's like it was i don't know how they're actually doing what they're doing now on it to be honest like it's it's staggering to see what they're able to do with that board specification so apparently nobody was questioning whether it could play in 4k so we're nobody jared um but that's a broad broad broad statement and i think that again is where you need to tone back your hyperbole uh because there was people at the time of the press release jared and myself going no probably not uh and again that's just us speculating much like other people were speculating the opposite direction but do we know in fact what the negotiations between Zen and AtGames were? No, we do not. Why would we? We are not Zen Studios employees. None of us are that are in this space. Shoot, even Zen Studios employees don't often know these things because I've questioned them before and they go, huh?
    29:07
    If they're not working on the project, they're not told because they don't need to know. Yeah. Now, I'll also state that in the case of AtGames and Zen, AtGames is entirely responsible for the marketing and sales while zen provides the software and that's all they're doing that's they just provide the builds and at game spins it the way they want exactly okay so nobody's being thrown under a bus it's just simply stating the facts of this is where information comes from and there are plenty of marketing departments that also don't quite read the specs and they put their assumptions out and if somebody's not proofreading what they're putting out well that's on them, but this is kind of funny to me. All you have to do is look at what happened to Mattel and their series of dolls for Wicked. I don't know if you're aware of this one, Jared. No, tell me about it. On the back of the box, they have a website for you to go visit. Oh, it's the one that takes you to your porn site. It says Wicked.com. Wicked is an adult entertainment company that's been around for years and has had that website for years. Yeah, somebody done screwed up and didn't realize that they had to put a Dash movie onto it. So, yeah, that was a major whoops. Somebody didn't proofread, and that's for Mattel.
    30:35
    Yeah. So, you know, marketing departments, their job is to make money and sell things, right? Yes. They're going to do whatever they need to do to make that happen because they get measured on KPIs and how much their marketing efforts contribute to sales. So I don't know. Now, let's go back into just critical thinking and what Jared had been saying with the board.
    30:59
    If a similar – I'm not saying the one, the board that Arcade 1-Up used is similar, but it was also a mobile platform video board. these boards if you look on the inside of the they're they're tiny they're nothing major right you whip out an rtx 4060 which is the base model video card that's out there much bigger much much bigger two fans heat sinks and that's just the gpu that's all it is right so why would you and and the 4060 is what i can run otg in on the you know the computer that i have that's plugged into my ad games yeah it can play it can play in 4k but you feel the lag so i play in 2k yeah i can still feel some lag but it's very playable it's not an issue um i don't it doesn't bother me in the least um the only thing i don't play is hard yeah and the only thing i don't play with i don't uh use i don't do the array tracing um because again i put it on and i didn't notice a it wasn't visually different enough for you to like not to receive the benefit of it exactly not and not for the sacrifices that instead i was witnessing um hdr looks great array tracing yeah you know you get some some pretty light trails in some of the graphics so the statement was made that hey playing in 4k for pinball players is that's huge that's paramount no it wouldn't be paramount is being able to play in 60 frames per second and having no lag that's what's paramount um well yeah and that's what everyone's talking about on like most of the time the the the perceived issues of lag and gameplay come down to your your frame rate's too high yeah like drop your frame rate down to lower and then you'll get much smoother gameplay um so yeah that seems to be the common theme that people prioritize more when playing pinball it's smoothness of the ball because that's essentially the primary gameplay it's the ball movement on the play field and how it interacts yeah your flippers so again it just comes back to what kind of miracles were you expecting to have pulled off on what is essentially a mobile platform for something that's going to be pumping out to a 4K 32-inch screen plus two more screens. One of them is playing video in DMD. The other one is just pretty much passive, which is your main back glass. But still, it's taken out of it. That's a lot of things to drive. That's a lot of things to drive to the point that even – If you're doing that on a PC, you'd need a grunty card to do that. Even on the PC, in order for the controls to not just randomly give out and stop working for a couple of flips, I had to get a powered USB.
    34:01
    Right. That was, this is what I'm saying. Beefy PC. Like there's nothing left in the board. Yeah, I still need to add things into it, you know, to power this through. I expecting what is in one of these to handle this come on I mean you're just deluding yourself and I don't care I say this like what they've been able to do with that platform is incredible absolutely I don't know how they've done it but certainly corners have to be cut right some of those corners have to deal with the lighting that is used um whether the text is all razor sharp whether there's any aliasing and curves um those might have to be sacrificed uh in terms of zen my argument from what i witnessed it seems like there might be a few fewer pixels being used um you know if you say even they're not pixels polygons if you save on the polygons always you save on a lot now where it's plain obvious is if you look at the Gottlieb tables that are on there that Farsight pumped out, they are definitely 100% using the mobile port that they used for the tablets compared to what they used DirectX 11.
    35:25
    Because if you look at their round shapes, they're octagonal a lot of times. It's like lots of straight lines and you can see them. um you know boy the the amount of jaggies well because they and they told us back in the day that in order to make it playable they had to cut polygons they had to cut of the remember the whole audio discussion that went on there were some severe corners to be cut you know they had to slice off every part that they that they went, okay, well, if we want frame rates to remain at a playable limit, then this has to go, that has to go, see you later, that thing. Which again... Because its frame rate is a key. Yeah, and again, if you're looking at it on a much smaller monitor, if you're looking at it on a 12-inch tablet or smaller, it's not going to be as noticeable. You blow that up to a 32-inch monitor, it's going to be noticeable. You're going to notice hexagonal round things. Right. The other thing is that, look, I can watch a show in 4K resolution on Amazon. However, it actually isn't always the best presentation based off of the streaming and the buffering that goes on in that. Whenever I would try and watch in 4K, nine times out of ten, about every two or three minutes, I would see the resolution of the screen go and go pixel city until it buffered enough and also it'd pop back up. It's variable bitrate when they stream, right? And that gets exceedingly annoying seeing the quality go up and down up and down. Anybody that watched the Tyson Logan Paul fight knows this because, I don't know if you witnessed it, Jared, um it was bad choppy oh beyond choppy um yeah and that was it was knocking down to sub four what is it 480 was standard definition it was going to see was going below that it was like big blotchy blocks um completely unreasonable test craft resolution oh it was it was nice And then sometimes you just get the spooling bar.
    37:45
    And you didn't know how long you were going to get the spooling bar for. Which, you know, in something like a boxing match is not what you really want. Well, fortunately, you would pick up exactly where you left off. So it wasn't like you missed stuff. But you'd still be like, mid-punch, spooling.
    38:03
    Buffering. Buffer city. And so what I would wind up doing to fight that when I would be streaming off Amazon. It's one of the reasons why I don't subscribe to Amazon because I hate their buffering thing. But I knocked it down to just give it to me in 1080p. I'm fine. My TV is good enough that it does some great upscaling, and I don't even notice the difference for the most part. No. But then I had a consistent quality the entire way through, and that becomes less of my focus. And this is what I'm saying in terms of with pinball. So long as I got 60 frames and no lag, then my pinball experience is going to be great. where the text gets muddled is in the apron or in fine print but never on the inserts so again i'm fine because how often am i staring at that stuff very very rarely right because while i'm in the moment and i'm playing that's what's important that's where the feels are for sure this is why in our interview i mentioned to mel the fact that that surround sound feedback kit is the deal breaker right there. Having that makes me feel connected to the table, makes the gameplay that much better, and it is why I play the tables natively on the AtGames 4K instead of going OTG, even though there are aspects of the OTG that are better. And again, we're going to get into that because I've got examples. Last thing, though, I kind of want to say about this, and I think this has kind of always been Jared and I's mission statement, and that's that we will always be truthful with our experiences.
    39:42
    If we're having fun, we're having fun. If we're not, then we're not, and we'll say that. But just because something could be better does not make it unplayable or not worth playing. Would I love to see Zen Tables eventually be on par with the amazing presentations that people do in VPX? Absolutely.
    40:08
    Yes, that would be amazing. I would love pure photorealistic pinball to be played. But are we there yet with Zen? No. Does that make Zen's product bad? No. It's the same reason why we said back with Farsight when we were playing that. We really enjoyed playing Pinball Arcade. We did say, oh, if Zen ever got a whole list, the physics would be amazing and the graphics would be better. And then one day Zen got a hold of it. We were like, congratulations, yay! And we looked and then we'd look back at Farsight and go, hey, now with 2020 vision, we can go, yeah, these were where the problems are. It was like, well, that was good at the time. At the time. But now there's something better. Exactly. So we're going to talk about that now. Exactly.
    40:51
    Also, I would like to say that we're not always going to be perfect in our analysis. but we're also not going to play ignorant purely for the sake of pleasing any studio.
    41:03
    No. So we do... We've been doing this long enough now for like 10 years, right? We, yeah. We don't placate studios. If there's something wrong with it, we're going to tell them and they can take it or leave it because at the end of the day, it is our opinion. It doesn't mean it's correct. It's just what we think. We do enjoy our relationship with Zen and Mel.
    41:31
    No lies about that. Zen is who actually contacted the Digital Pinball Fans Forum. And we were put into contact with Zen way back before the announcement of the Zen acquiring Williams was.
    41:48
    Yeah. And we've nurtured that relationship since then. uh you know mel is definitely a friend of ours um ours is not a platform for gotcha style interviews no um because that would mean that mel would not come on our show anymore because why would you if that's the way you run your style of presentation exactly so you know hey you're free to reach out and uh try and secure an interview with anyone from zen go for it ask the questions that you want to ask we happen to know that there are certain questions that Mel is not prepared to answer because that's not within the designation of his role at the company.
    42:28
    Whenever we get into the weeds on technical specs, he's not the one that's dealing that. He winds up having to ask his technicians and stuff. So if it's something on the fly that we're going to ask, we tend to avoid those kind of questions, whereas we can get into it on licensing all day because that's primarily what Mel deals with. you'll see that that's like really the the things we're talking to mel about is the business of pinball yeah and and not so much content and stuff like that because like everyone talks about that like you know we offer an interesting angle from that perspective because we've been doing this for 10 years we have enough longer shared and lived experience longer now but you know we have all that experience that we've gathered over the years of talking about commercial digital pinball that you know content's great but like it's not that interesting to us when we can talk about other stuff that you know you just don't hear on other on other videos so let's talk about that instead do something different we also uh just you know be clear we do have ndas with various studios uh when we yeah when we speculate on behind the scenes goings-on it's just that though it's speculation we're not a source for leaks uh we're not putting out the truth without you know it being an official thing um no we keep our mouth shut about the things that would get us in trouble and force us to violate ndas and then we speculate about the things that we know that we can actually speculate um without being in trouble for that um is our speculation grounded in certain amounts of truth? Yeah. It is. So whether or not you, the viewer, choose to believe the things that come out of myself and Jared's mouth, whether or not you care to believe that we are protecting for, I don't know what purpose, any individuals, that's not the case. All we're asking is that content creators out there actually use critical thought beyond what is hype or hot takes and actually is founded in how a business would actually function and work. And, you know, that's something that we had been doing a very long time. watch countless of our videos and you've seen us do exactly that where it might sound like we're taking the side of the company but we're purely taking the side in terms of hey this is what it takes to function as a studio and keep the doors open and in this environment with a lot of studios doors closing i think that's fair for us to talk about in that respect commercial realities of commercial digital pinball are a thing and we prefer to focus on that rather than wild speculation and just you know other stuff so anyway because it yeah yeah but that my retort as far as i concerned i don't need to say any more on the piece because that's literally all i've had to say but if you do drop comments at us i do appreciate if you actually you know show your sources it's not about me doing homework to prove your own point if i prove a point i prove a point by actually showing sources and bring your receipts folks um so we want to see them yeah don't make me go looking for whatever receipt is that you're looking uh and by the way if you go on to at games website you will not see anywhere on there stating the fact that games are in 4k but interestingly enough, let me bring up something here.
    46:24
    And that is Wagner, Wagner's Tech Talk. Wagner actually does work for AtGames now. He went through and was checking the latency of all the tables. And he checked them before the latency patch and then after the latency patch. So just right off the bat, if you look at the top there at Attack from Mars, before the patch it was at 128 milliseconds and now it's at 87.6 milliseconds.
    46:58
    Also, you'll notice that it shows the resolution that these are displayed in. So in the point of Attack from Mars, it's 2240 by 1260, but then look at Galactica, it's 2560 by 1440. So these do vary in terms of... in terms of what resolution they're trying for that 2k mark um sometimes hitting it sometimes not um i'm just curious to see what adam's family is adam's family according to this it is in 2k uh-huh okay yeah proper 2k uh and you look at it it was at 138 milliseconds now it's at 94.7 milliseconds um now that's pretty good i again i think these tables play phenomenal and i was able to play them just fine even at the slower latency and when i say just fine i'm saying i was actually able to get uh you know with with uh world cup soccer i was number one for quite a few weeks with the score that i posted so i can get those high scores now if we look over here at the match pixel titles these are in fact in 4k according to this right okay yes yeah those are 4k yeah yeah right so all the zacharia all the uh title tables these are all in 4k you look at these milliseconds these are all in the 60s too yeah in terms of uh where they're where they're averaging what about seuss is 62 50 yeah the Taito games these are all mid 60s so there's your ad now is this available on the ad games website? No, this is you would have to go to Wagner's tech doc and look it up that way but I did want to bring Wagner's done such a good job at getting doing this legwork here and getting these facts like they are extensive and the way he's done this is almost kind of scientific like he yes he's get like controls and he he has a certain benchmark he's shooting for well not only that but he lists how he achieved it and how you at home can achieve it too if you want to do to replicate your own yeah yeah it's really really it's like there must be hours sunk into that days probably i'm sure i'm sure uh so let's do a little something here jared um okay mine is not scientific so what i went ahead and did because i i was very curious i was like well let's see what the difference is uh visually between uh what you can get in otg and what you can get in at games on these tables uh the south park tables just came out this past week and when i'm playing it i'm amazed at how good they look they look phenomenal they're really crisp good minimal i mean like i wasn't the some of the ramps are curved or you know have curves on them the habit trails and i wasn't seeing jaggies or nothing it was just like wow these are wow okay it's a great so what i did was i took a photo using my camera this again this is where the non-scientific part comes in right took a photo on use a phone camera phone camera photos of yes of a screen we know how taking pictures of the screen is exactly what you want right But I don't know how to get screenshots off of this thing.
    50:38
    So this is what I did. I took a picture of that, and then I brought up the exact same table in OTG. I took a picture of that. Now, the one difference. So you were showing it. You didn't take these shots on your computer screen. You took them on the AtGames 4KP through OTG. So they're using all the same pass-through stuff. Yes. I play, like I said, I play pinball effects in 2K so technically if these keys are both of them are in 2K, they should be there's parity within there the only area where there's a difference is that the App Games is clearly using the angle 1 version of the screen and while I wanted to have the exact same table angle used with pinball effects. The problem is that a lot of times, angle one, it zooms in more and cuts off the apron. And I wanted to show the apron because that's where the text is. So I would wind up going to view two to be able to do this comparison. So wherever you're going to notice this, I'm going to just bring this up right now.
    51:48
    So here we go. Looking at those two, you can see that just up in the upper right-hand corner, you can't see the little slinky tube. Oh, yeah, the Slinky Toons. Right, and that's just purely because angle one, you would have seen it. Angle two, it's not seen because things are stretched more. This also plays into, this is what I was asking Mel about, with their cabinet views, where the cabinet views are always tilted.
    52:19
    They're always keystoned at the top. There's nothing that's ever just purely straight up and down. At games, everything's straight up and down, complete overhead. but it's they've keystoned it correctly so you're still having a slight angle to be able to see at the table which definitely helps for those upper rollovers and seeing the insert lights because a lot of times those are hidden underneath things um uh so because like when i play butters on otg mode and i'm in angle two i cannot actually see the uh inserts light up for the lanes at the top in view two. If I go to view one, I can see them. So it's just a slight angle tilt that's happening. But in angle one, again, it cuts off more of the apron and puts the flippers longer, makes the screen look larger. I mean, there's trade-offs that go along. So anyway, that's why you're seeing what you're seeing here in terms of it not being one-for-one perfect. So let's go ahead and... Okay, that explains that. Yeah, let's go ahead and zoom in here.
    53:23
    A little bit more. So if I were just looking, again, AtGames is on the left, PinballFX is on the right. If we're just looking here and looking for differences, you tell me, Jared, visually, does the lighting look the same?
    53:43
    Yep. Yeah. I was going, oh, my eyes were originally, like, initially drawn to the slingshots and the shadows coming out of the slingshots. no they're they're there and then you've got the same yeah all the lighting seems to be the same so the only area i will say this as a still picture these look the same in motion the lighting is more dynamic with pinball rocks there's actual subtleties it seems like it's flickering a little bit or there's movement um there feels like there's shadow that actually happens um whereas the at games is more flat uh and more just like a consistent there right um when it comes to now this is where you can tell that i took a picture on a phone that that text there i can actually read it uh in the at games and that same text they're just you know opposite side here i can go uh yeah obviously not in these pictures because none of these pictures right but i can read on the yeah i can read both of those texts in you can put your face close to the glass and actually read that and read it yes yes okay um and then if i look over here at the curve now again what you're seeing up at that curve those little jaggies that's more about the phone resolution being zoomed all in uh looking at it honestly you don't see it. So there's where I'm looking and going, wow, that's really good. I don't know if that also has to do with the fact that this table was developed for Pinball FX 2.
    55:26
    Oh, yeah, sorry. Pinball FX 2, yes. So, with that being said, let's flip over to Adam's Family, because this is the big one, right? Right, this is the AAA title that was released. Again, if I look at these two and I look at the lighting, am I seeing anything vastly, grossly different? um again no in fact i think even the if you have a look at the textures from at games on the chrome i actually think they look a bit brighter to be honest so this is where there was a actual improvement in the at games so before okay that looks like it looks jaggy city right there on the corner okay yeah before it was just a flat gray there was no yeah it was just a flat chrome no chrome i would rather have the chrome look than the flat gray yeah um yeah look that's really if i look over at there's the pinball effects version yeah so it's it's less jaggy on the curves less jaggy on that particular curve because it's trying to do the chrome effect also so i think there's a difference with the uh uh butter's table because it was just a powder-coated look rather than yellow yeah they all powder-coated rails yeah um like the transparent just look at the trip like okay just zoom back out look at the um the thing ramp exit near the upper left flipper right okay like on the pc version it looks a little cloudy if i can get on the acting's version like take a look at it it's clear it's like it's better i mean it might It might be too clear, but... Well, maybe. Maybe. I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean, I've seen... If you look at some of the really nice brand new ramp kits you can get for this game, they look like that.
    57:25
    Where it is obvious, and again, forgive my camera's... The jagginess of this phone screen capture. My phone screen taking. This text here in the apron is very difficult to read in the AtGames version. as opposed to... Let's bring it over here. Even in the phone, you can tell that it's a little bit clearer because it's very clear.
    57:47
    Yeah. But... So they've made the sacrifices in the right area because what are you going to be looking at more? Are you going to be looking at the apron or are you going to be looking at the bits in the play field? It's the play field all day. Now, let's look at the one that was the most egregious of problems prior to the fix and post-fix.
    58:08
    It was 100% this. Now, the coloring was way wrong on AtGames prior. I was actually quite surprised then to put these side by side and go, well, that coloring looks virtually the same. You can see some shadow detail, especially in the cannons, gets lost in the AtGames version.
    58:26
    Yes. They're very bright. It looks like this table has a very, very strong ceiling light shining down on it. Yeah. It's like from multiple angles, so there's no shadows. But otherwise, the purple, previously the purple on the AtGames was significantly blown out. Like, it was way more. And now it matches color-wise. This is also a super pin, so it's a wide body.
    58:52
    Yep. So the lines of your habit trails are much thinner. Because they have to zoom out so much. They have to zoom out so much. So previous to the lag fix, this up here, this curve of the habit trail, was a janky mess. It was jaggies all get out. And you can tell not much chrome going on here, right? This is kind of what the – No, not much curve. Yeah, this is what Adam's family previous looked like. So not really chrome down. I mean, that's not even that bad, honestly. But if we look at, oh, I barely have the curve here, but you can see where they did the more chrome look. The shadowing. Yeah, but if we go over here, again, the lines are thinner, so the jaggies are going to be a little bit more apparent.
    59:46
    Oh, yeah. So that's on, that's pinball effects, and this is ad games right there. So you can see how much significantly it's more pronounced on the ad games.
    59:58
    It is, definitely, yeah. And then when you look at the text, the text even on the Pinball FX version, it's, again, it's much smaller. It's a little bit wispier.
    60:12
    It's pretty much unreadable on ad games. It's just bleh, mush. okay but yeah all in all it plays so much better now the lag fix yeah right they fix things they 100 fixed the game you look at this it's not some wildly significant difference between these um and i'm going to we're not talking about like a a farsight difference in quality between pc and mobile no like they're and if i'm going to be minor textural differences but apart from that and if i'm going to be playing with again surround sound feedback kit uh that's going to make all the difference to me and i mean you know that's it oh i will also state the pinball effects it does have better physics right okay it feels better it does you're able to flipper tricks work better let's just put it to you that way um yeah when i try and when i try and pass between flippers i can do it much easier on pimple effects than ad games so something did get sacrificed in the programming of physics there which i'm sure physics actually take up a lot of of uh processing yes yeah that would take up a lot of compute um yeah um let's look at the one it feels like more does it feel more like fx3 than fx on that games or do you think there is elements no i'm I'm going to go back to it feeling like FX2.
    61:43
    Oh, right. Okay. So there is a definite difference. There's a definite difference. Yeah. Well, that does... Not that the FX2 physics were terrible. They were pretty dang good. They're just not that super-duper physics that Deep has gone and implemented. Right, yeah. Okay, so I wanted to bring this up and show Demon's Tilt. Demon's Tilt, I also have... Xenotilt in this case. Excuse me. Xenotilt, not Demon's Tilt. Yeah. We know what you mean, though. Yes.
    62:17
    This is at 2K resolution for it, but it obviously has an 8-bit or, I don't know, not 8-bit, probably 16-bit look to it. That's its intent. Look at how jaggy that is. That's how it looks in the game. I mean, that is the engine that they're using for this game, though. Right. It's got that retro feel to it. It's got that retro feel. Does it make it any less fun to play? No. Oh, no, not in tape mode. This game is amazing in tape mode. It's fantastic. I'm envious that you'll be able to play this on a cabinet because, man, I'd be playing it all the time if I had a cabinet mode. Yeah, it looks really good. It's a lot of fun.
    63:01
    But that's my point. Which table looks better just at a glance? Look, Trek. And this is, like I said, the most egregious of the not-that-great-of look compared to Xenotilt. Both of them are in 2K, but I'm not worried about the jaggies. I'm not worried about the larger pixels in Xenotilt. I'm worried about the gameplay and how smooth it plays. And believe me, you need smooth gameplay in Xenotilt. Oh my god, do you ever. This is not a game that you can sacrifice your frame rate on. Oh, jeez Louise.
    63:37
    If you've never played Demon's Tilt or Xeno Tilt, when it goes full-on shmups on you, and you cannot find the ball for the life of you because there is so much stuff flying about, you better believe that it's damn important that you're playing this at full frame rate.
    64:00
    At the highest frame rate that your equipment can output because you need every single frame. yeah every single frame on this game so again whether it's in 4k doesn't matter because it truly is it this is in 2k but no matter how many k's you put back to it it's not going to make the blocks look smoother that's not how it was designed it's not how it's you know you know it's going to look i've i've played this both in 1080p and 2k which is my standard resolution on my computer and even in 10 ap i can really crank the frame rate on this like i can get it like 120 fps okay and the difference between 120 and 60 that's where the money is on this table like honestly if you can like this was on older hardware but now i can play it in well you know 120 on you know 2K resolution and it just looks phenomenal with everything cranked up to mind tearingly intense and it still hangs in there but when you had to make a sacrifice you'd make the sacrifice in resolution and you'd bump the frame rate up. That is every single time what you do with pinball if you want a good experience.
    65:20
    And it was like the difference was marked when you did that. It was like a completely different game when you played it yeah so anyway that's a frames win games that is that is um so i think that's as much as we can possibly say about that particular topic let's move on to the actual interview that that we do we always like to we always like to comment afterwards on uh some of the things that piqued our interest uh yes it's kind of really jumped out you know I know for me, the day and date sometime in June for tables dropping from both in Pinball FX and onto the AtGames platform, that's huge. That's great that they actually do, like they treat AtGames as just another platform. Yeah. Because, you know, they do it with Switch, they do it with PS, they do it with all those. Why not AtGames? Well, yeah, they kind of do it with Switch. Switch is still behind the ball on quite a few things. Oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, Switch is a little laggy because of Nintendo. But maybe, maybe all these ports that they're doing for ad games will actually have a benefit for Switch.
    66:30
    Oh, maybe. Because they usually have to hold it. Is it release? I don't know why they have to hold it for Nintendo. Is it just they were sketching it weird? No, I don't think it has anything to do with the window. I think it has to do with they having to make the port for it. Because, again, Nintendo Switch, it ain't a PC. It's not a PS4, even.
    66:52
    No, it's not. It actually is basically what I was playing on a tablet on Android about eight years ago. Right. It was like it's an NVIDIA Tegra tablet with a few extra additions to it. Which kind of moves me into the fact that we're going to have... What are we calling it? zen pinball world or something like that on mobile yeah that's that's what jumped out at me like the they're running a closed beta at the moment if you're not aware um anyone can sign up to it in fact the more the merrier because they really need performance data from as many different mobile platforms how would they do that jared uh so they go on to the um there's a form that you fill out and they announced that recently on socials so you can go and sign up on the form and they'll allow list your email address that you use on google play and then that will allow you to download the beta because you're essentially permitted to do so i have as an aside i have seen some people experiencing some difficulties with doing that if you are experiencing that go and hit up the team and they should be able to unblock you. Although I think it comes down to the classic problem that Android always had where they have to sort of allow list all the devices that they going to offer it on if yours isn on that list you won be able to install it so okay um but sign up because it's incredibly valuable for them to see what the performance is across the different devices and i know that they've just released an updated build for the mobile platform just a day or so ago at time recording. So I think the initial rounds of feedback were saying that definite lag problems on some devices, which was across the board, and I'm sure they were expecting it. Yeah. Because this is like a non-optimized first release, just see if it runs sort of build. So I think the next build they've got probably addresses that. I haven't actually started it up yet because it's been nuts. Yeah. But again, if they can get this worked out for mobile, that's only going to benefit Switch in the long run.
    69:08
    Yeah, I think so. And interestingly, I have to assume, not knowing too much about this, so correct me if I'm wrong here, Chris, but I have to assume that there's some sort of mobile build being run up for AtGames here. It feels like they must be running on some sort of Android platform or something. Because didn't they say in the interview that they had to retool to Linux? Yeah, retool to Linux. That doesn't mean that they got away from Unreal, because Unreal actually can run on Linux. Yes, it can.
    69:46
    Linux eliminates a lot of the headaches. Yes, that's true. You have to efficiency headaches that might be elsewhere. so interestingly too that's i mean android is a linux-based operating system to an extent okay so it uses the linux kernel um to like as its build so you know interesting um so get on the beta because it's very it's promising that's for sure um pretty good yeah okay so that was that was the thing that i think most stood out to me with the in terms of ad games um then the game gate release is going to be big yeah yeah and then of course like i said mobile coming uh vr uh what was your what was your take there yeah so i remember like as mel was saying they dropped a hint about this really early this year uh in a pinball bites episode that they were doing vr and it was coming along but it sounds like they're ready to go pretty much like next quarter we're going to hear news about apparently you know uh according to my notes here it's gonna be january february that we're going to have an announcement about it and get more an idea of the features but one thing i think i've i can pretty much confirm allegedly is that we're going to have a VR pass-through mode in this. So the reason why I'm saying that is that Mel said that, yes, we're releasing on MetaQuest 3, and he goes, you know what the Quest 3 can do, quote-unquote, in the interview. So I do know what the Quest 3 can do. One of its main selling features is its full-color pass-through, which means that you can do lots of augmented reality stuff with it. So that suggests to me that we are going to have a pinball machine in your house, in your room, with a whole lot of theming around it. It just looks like it's going to be part of your lounge room, which is wild to think that they are going to let you do this. Like, I'm thinking, because if you go into the MetaQuest free now, you can actually create a pass-through virtual environment. So rather than having the MetaQuest room and the environment, your room can actually have artwork on the walls and objects in the room that you can interact with and put things on virtually and stuff like that. So if they're leaning into that with pinball effects, this is going to be incredible. Like, think of having your pinhole that you've got now, but in your house with posters on the wall and stuff, shelves. Like, amazing. Yeah, I reached out to my contact at AtGames and I was just like, please, please, please, please, please somehow work with Xen so that we can use the AtGames as a controller for VR mode. Please. Yeah. And then if they did the overlay on top of the machine itself. Oh, imagine putting the overlay on top of it. That's what I'm saying. That would be great. I would love that. Oh, yes. That would be amazing.
    73:03
    Pinball M, there wasn't really anything wildly amazing other than the fact that he was saying that eventually there will be a Williams title or two in Pinball M, to which we're like. me and Jared off the air were trying to figure out what machines would require that because everything was general release to the public it wasn't like when Sopranos came out or what a lot of Stern titles now where they have family friendly versus very unfamily friendly dialogue that comes out of machines yeah exactly you know so I mean we've seen like I thought it's originally drawn to something like Elvira, right? Because it's risque and stuff. But in previous releases, they've all been allowed without some of the more adult mode speech turned on to an extent, like giving Elvira multiple jackpots, etc. Yeah, but again, that's nothing that wasn't allowed in an arcade. In the license. In the license, yeah. Yeah, that's right. It's just kind of, it's interesting to wonder what that might be that would fill that space. um yeah but then the fact that he was saying that it doesn't have to be horror themed although those are the number one requested things yeah for pimple m that's what everyone wants yeah so i did send a list to mel of some titles that i think that would be uh excellent choices for um you know to to to be in that space i wish i had it lying around here because i would tell you Oh, yeah, here we go. Some of the things that I had mentioned was Total Recall.
    74:48
    Oh, yeah. I think a music table with Tenacious D would be fantastic. Because he's really into pinball, eh, Tenacious D? He loves it. Jackback loves pinball, no doubt about it. If you want to do another, I was trying to think of another music table whose music would require pinball, M, for a lot of things. But The Offspring. now if you're not familiar with the offspring think about crazy taxi you know the offspring oh yeah you know yeah so wouldn't that be a fun music table to to do um but anyway uh robocop i think we need again after me and jared looked at what the previous incarnation of robocop was yes please do a do pinball m robocop um kill bill yeah would make an excellent pinball m from a theme perspective yeah yeah i mean yeah um die hard yes please yippee-ki-yay multi-ball would be fantastic any number like they they'd have to actually for that franchise they would have to work on what they don't include in it because there's so much you could put in from that franchise i'd have to actually the cutting floor would be absolutely would you be wading through stuff that you had to cut out of the pinball machine. If they worked with Sony, could we get a God of War pinball machine? That would be nice and bloody.
    76:08
    Oh, yeah. Akira, that was the one that we mentioned to Mel at the point. Some of the horror things that I would love to see, I think A Nightmare on Elm Street needs something other than that Gottlieb table. Oh, yeah. Freddy, yeah.
    76:24
    Hellraiser, again, we've already got a cube in Theater of Magic. so just turn that into the Lamont configuration and then throw a Pinhead bash toy in there and you know I mean come on it's in his name Pinhead yeah it's like screaming for a pinball table I said it I don't know what would be done with that but you know clowns interestingly enough Spooky Pinball just announced what I was going to say which was Evil Dead yeah now they didn't do they're just doing Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 so Army of Darkness the much more comedic film of the batch yeah let's do that then let's do Army of Darkness because we've seen that with like you know with the Princess Bride and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre right like well and Bruce Campbell did record all new audio for Spooky now I've heard some of the audio sorry Bruce you kind of sound like you just took a paycheck on it. It's not very... All right, find it in. It kind of sounds phoned in. Truth be told, I was kind of disappointed when I heard the call-outs. But that being said, he still was willing to do it.
    77:37
    Good on him for that. No, so anyway, that was my take from Pinball M was that, oh, hey, maybe we can actually get some other titles out of that. Yeah, I'll take all those. Yeah. We moved on to, was there anything that struck you about just the content in general, the roadmap going forward it sounds like we're going to have a very similar roadmap of 2025 to 2024 other than tables yeah other than he said expect a lot more williams yeah that's right and now the williams thing is interesting because in our williams discussion we're talking about you know the how the you know the big risk they took with indiana jones and putting that at the price point of you know um way more as a single table purchase like in in australian dollar terms it was like i think 15 down here it was 15 here too but it's basically five dollars more than we normally would have expected yeah apparently that risk has paid off and they have a lot of very positive sales data to back up that that model works if there is an expensive license out there and you know he said with uh on the williams front with terminator too you got to pay arnie and you know it was interesting i remember i recall the kickstarter for um uh farsight when i had to do raise the funds for terminator 2 and i i thought you know what i bet you that's still up on the internet so it is i can't believe it's still there the internet's forever i can't believe it is either but it is and so this was back in ages ago right yeah um this is august 2013 so this would have been like kick-started in one year after money one year after pimble arcade existed yeah yeah so so they say you know in their as far as the kickstarter goes they were raising money not for the development of the table but for the licenses so when we're talking about terminator 2 this i'm going to read it directly from their um kickstarter page so here's where you come in the licenses for terminator 2 judgment day will cost $66,000 and that's just for licenses we'll cover all of the development expenses ourselves the so that is this that is the cost now up a little higher they've told you what they had to negotiate to get that and you could probably translate that to an interesting exercise and what zen probably has to do every time they're doing this as well but they said they said we've succeeded in negotiating all of the licenses we need to digitize Terminator 2 and bring it to Pimple Arcade. Unfortunately, there are several licenses involved. In addition to the Williams license, we need a license for the Terminator 2 property, the actor likenesses of the Terminator, which is Arnold. So that's, you know, nice. And that's on both the back glass and the play field, and also the right to use the active voiceovers during gameplay so those things added up are that 66 000 well that's what they advertise and then there was the conversation that i remember having with uh bobby up there at farsight uh who basically said that arnold's fee flat fee was, I believe, 60 grand.
    81:05
    Yeah, right. So that's a one-time fee that gets paid to that. And then for each table sale, a slice of the pie gets given to the license rights.
    81:17
    Yeah. So now that was, again, 10 years, almost 12 years ago. That's 12 years ago. Yeah. So if Zen is paying today's prices, I'm sure Arnold's rate has gone up a little bit. lot more but or more going back to the going back to the possibilities that you know the the facts again yeah of sales being positively strong with something like indiana jones and people seeing the value in that and going yeah i'll pay that and you know if the other interesting thing with indiana jones is that i remember um an episode where mel announced the at the time bad news that it was going to be more expensive and was trying to moderate the community expectation about that. He was saying, this table will never go on discount. Yet we have now seen that the table has been offered on discount a number of times. Which means they've reached profitability.
    82:18
    That's correct. They have reached the tipping point with the sale. That's a lot of extra five bucks that they've had to cover to get to that point. So you can kind of infer how many of these units have shifted. There is a lot of people, and how many times have we had this conversation, Jared, where people are like, I don't care. I'll spend $30 for the table.
    82:44
    Again, it's about finding that tipping point of at what point do you alienate the majority of your audience for the few that are willing to pay that point. And even though they're willing to pay that point, there's not enough of them at that price point purchasing to make it commercially viable. Exactly. So you have to find a lower price point. And I think Zen has been very smart in only so far having one table at that price point so that we know if they ever do it again that it's, hey, we know. You guys proved that you're willing to pay it once, but we're not going to just make you pay that all the time. instead we're going to hold that for if we ever need to do it again so that you understand hey we're going to make a deep dive deeper into the pocket this time but you understand the what you get is going to be produced up on screen um yeah you're going to get it so yeah that was really interesting that was quite interesting uh by the way oh yeah you're gonna say well i was just gonna say uh bonsai run has been announced as the second table for that williams volume eight pack so now earth shaker earth shaker bonsai bonsai which i believe that now is all of pat lawler's tables probably probably i believe i believe that's all of his for williams um anyhow still a lot this this made the question that we asked mel about the back glass quite relevant um yeah because i know how it i know how it works in pinball effects it's the exact same way that it worked with paranormal um you know it just shifts uh yeah The way they shift it in, I had video shared of the beta of it shifting up to the play field, and it actually looks pretty cool. I like what they did with that. But this, again, brings me back to when this comes out on ad games, I want that upper monitor to be used. I don't want it to be me playing. Static. Well, yeah, and I don't want me to be playing on the flat play field. I want to be playing on that vertical monitor. So will Zen figure that out or not? i don't i don't know i'm i don't have faith that they will i don't i don't think they will i don't think they will the only way they can do it and maintain frame rate up there because the thing is the ball moves so much faster on the table up there yeah and the physics model is well different out there so you know it is only i believe it is only a 1080 screen yeah right so that might help That might help. I mean, they would probably have to, like, kind of pause the gameplay on the lower playfield and then activate the gameplay on the back box screen to maintain frame rate with the chipset they've got. But that's my speculation on it, how they would do it. And I mean, I'd be fine with that. That doesn't bother me. As long as the switchover when the ball returns down to the bottom playfield, which happens very quickly in that game. that switch over and reactivation of the lower playfield would have to be milliseconds. Yeah. Because that's what it takes for that ball to get down to the playfield sometimes.
    86:06
    You know. But it's just for, I mean, that is what is unique about that table. And so I feel like a unique solution needs to be implemented for at games. Because I know they're not going to implement it for pinball effects again. They're not doing surround sound feedback in pinball effects which was again another disappointing thing i it drives me nuts they're not doing that as far as i know vpx 10 can utilize uh that um i don't know why it's just not on zen's priority list same reason why it's not the backlash is not on zen's priority list um you know as many times they want to tell us that it's licensors want to charge extra money for the backlash and stuff yes maybe for your zen originals but that's not going to be the case for williams package um i just i really want i want to play true and the fact that when you play the zacharia tables that you do actually get the scores up on the back glass animating and moving that's where i'm just like hey it's very possible you just have to have the desire to do it um yeah So will they ever have the desire to do it? I don't know.
    87:21
    Time will tell when it comes out. But it will be very interesting to see when it comes out how they manage it.
    87:31
    Yeah, that's really... Oh, the other thing was Pinball Royale is officially dead and buried. However, a concept for multiplayer is in the works and it will come out in 2025. Which, PK at AtGames also said that a concept for multiplayer is in the works on their end, that they have it actually working. It does require you being online.
    87:58
    Right. So I have a feeling it's streaming back and forth. When you're not playing, it also is going to import the streaming from the person that is playing. You can watch their gameplay for their ball, and then when it comes to your ball, boom, you kick in and activate again on your end. If that's how it's going to work, that's going to be amazing. Which... Even if it's a bit stuttering and a little bit choppy, that's still going to be amazing. Yes. Now, could they make it work... Oh, God.
    88:27
    Mel saying that he tried for NBA Fast Break kills me. I almost rather would not know that he tried. Yeah. You know, because that means it's on their radar and they want to make it happen.
    88:42
    Hopefully it's still on there. It sounds like they got close. which you know they i mean they they they managed it with fifa and world cup i think that something and that was a like one that was that was a beast elated to be really hard to get yeah so but again if you could get me not only a i'd be pleased as punch if you can get me mbfs break the only one that i'm like harping on getting after that is literally roller games um yeah but if you can get the NBA fast break and then you bring in the multiplayer aspect, oh my god, if you can get me Link Machines, come on. That'd be sweet. That would be amazing. Yeah. That is having played that once amazing. The only way you should play that game is Link. It is incredible to play.
    89:30
    Yeah. Alright, we have blathered on plenty long enough. It's a long episode. But that is often the case when we're reflecting on stuff and also the at-game stuff took ages yeah sorry folks you know whatever it had to be said um but that being the tale uh we are now dipping into the holiday season uh so realistically i think we have one more in us for the year probably before we all have to go and have a break over the christmas period um because there's not really going to be very much news happening no no um but of course if We might be able to do a bit more on Williams, maybe, over the holidays. Yeah, I think once that announcement for that third table comes out, we'll have things to say regarding that. I know that the Charlie Brown Christmas is coming out for ad games at the beginning of December, so I'll be able to comment on that. And who knows what else is going on, other than everything that Jared likes talking about the most.
    90:36
    Stuff and things. Lots of stuff and things. Right. So until then, folks, again, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. And we'll catch you all next time. Bye bye.