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Double the Bart

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·50m 43s·analyzed·Mar 7, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.026

TL;DR

Health struggles and Pinball Arcade's hidden Bart discovery dominate a rambling episode.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss personal health challenges they've faced during the week, including Chris's motorcycle accident and illness, and a detailed account of their friend Leroy's harrowing hospital stay for epilepsy treatment. They shift to discussing Pinball Arcade's digitization process, specifically discovering hidden Bart artwork beneath the playfield assembly in Cactus Canyon, and then diverge into an extended conversation about video games, particularly Rise of the Tomb Raider and the Uncharted series.

Key Claims

  • Cactus Canyon in Pinball Arcade has a static image of Bart's head visible underneath the Bart assembly when viewed from directly above in Pro Mode exploration

    high confidence · Chris discovered this while exploring Cactus Canyon with the new Pro Mode table exploration feature

  • Pinball Arcade deliberately leaves large assemblies on the playfield during digitization photography to save time, knowing they'll be covered by 3D models during gameplay

    medium confidence · Jared explains the efficiency reasoning behind not completely stripping assemblies during the digitization process

  • Pinball Arcade's QA team uses spare time to make cosmetic improvements and bug fixes to existing tables, particularly on tournament tables and tables with visible wear like El Fuego and Party Monsters

    medium confidence · Jared mentions conversation with Flipper Floppy about QA working on cosmetic fixes during schedule gaps

  • Leroy (Pinball Arcade forum member and friend of the show) was admitted to hospital for 8-9 days for epilepsy mapping study where he was not allowed to sleep

    high confidence · Chris provides detailed account of Leroy's medical experience including attempted seizure induction and pneumonia complications

Notable Quotes

  • “So he went on his laptop, looked up whatever, you know, seizure-inducing imagery or whatever, put the little trigger button in his hand. So if he was having a big one, he automatically clenches his fist, and then doctors would come rushing in and start watching.”

    Chris Frebus @ N/A — Illustrates Leroy's determination to find the cause of his seizures despite ethical limits placed by medical staff

  • “There's two Barts. There's double the Bart.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Humorous reference to discovering both the 3D Bart assembly and hidden static image artwork

  • “I don't like rushing into the middle of the battlefield and just like, you know, spraying everywhere. That to me is not fun and it causes me way too much stress while playing.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Describes personal gaming preference for stealth/exploration over direct combat

  • “Well, it turns out that while he was doing this, his doctor was watching his brainwaves, and all of a sudden his brainwaves were going off the map in funky directions.”

    Chris Frebus @ N/A — Medical breakthrough moment where doctors detected abnormal brain activity during Leroy's self-induced seizure attempt

  • “It's not quite as frustrating as the frustrating parts of Tomb Raider in the past, like bumping into walls, working out what thing you need to... You're like a blind person feeling the wall.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Describes improvement in modern Tomb Raider game design with Survival Instinct feature versus older versions

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonLeroypersonBlockade PodcastorganizationPinball ArcadeproductCactus CanyongameWizard Amusement.comcompanyFlipper FloppypersonNormanpersonEl Fuegogame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Arcade QA team actively working to improve and maintain existing tables during schedule gaps, prioritizing cosmetic enhancements and bug fixes on problematic tables

    medium · Jared mentions conversation with Flipper Floppy: 'when they got gaps in schedules they do try and go back in and just the two QA guys get back through and see what they can do with some of the tables'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Pinball Arcade development team consciously leaves large assemblies on playfields during digitization photography to save time, relying on 3D models to cover them during gameplay

    medium · Jared explains: 'when they're quickly trying to remember that Cactus Canyon was in a time when they were busily trying to get out a number of tables. And for them to actually drop the assembly out and then take the photo would have taken just that much longer to do.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Early Pinball Arcade tables (Season 1-2) contain multiple digitization shortcuts and hidden unfinished assets that only become visible in Pro Mode exploration, indicating rushed production timeline

    medium · Chris notes: 'There's lots of stuff that needs to be revisited on the season one and season two tables where they were releasing tables at the time. That was just terrible.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.152

0:00
Thank you. This is a Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization
0:44
You are listening to The Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, my co-host, Jared Morgan. Yeah, Chris, we're finally here. Finally here. You've had a hell of a week, haven't you? I've had a crappy week. Yes, it's been lay shit. I've had well, Zachary's been sick in hospital for the last week and just as he was getting over that I got sick as well so I've been sick and then last week I low-sided the bike Hooray! And for those of you who don't know, that means I stacked the bike This is why they have training wheelchair Well you'd think it would be a problem with mine because mine's got three wheels on it oh it does yeah it does but um this one unfortunately the rear tire hit the sand and not the front two tires oh i know what kind of bike you have okay yeah piaggio mp3 you'll think might be thinking of a spider but no it's not a spider it's a piaggio mp3 i'm thinking more than look i couldn't tell you the name yeah uh it's normally it's a relatively good bike but uh yeah it didn't it just couldn't handle sand no bike can really escape sand it's uh it's a losing battle so yes that low side of me it was only a low speed crash i was about 25 kilometers an hour so not that fast and um i just um it low-sided found a bit of good tarmac then flipped me off high side of me um and i was trying to run it off you know do that Oh, I could do this. I could keep up. Then tumble. And then stacked it. Yeah. So I gave it a good go. But I just couldn't quite beat the laws of physics, unfortunately. Yeah, I don't think anybody is able to beat those yet.
2:49
They try, but, you know. They try. Yeah. That's what makes for good YouTube videos. Yeah, that's right.
Party Monsters
game
Rise of the Tomb Raiderproduct
Uncharted seriesproduct
Kazaniyeperson
2:57
So, yes, I'm still croaky as anything. So you probably hear that today. And the good news is that there weren't really any major injuries. I didn't break anything or anything like that. So it was just a sore knee and a sore back. The back is now cleared up pretty well, so I'm fine there. And the knee, I'm just going back to the doctor today to have a chat. It might be ultrasounds just to make sure that there's no super bad damage. It's getting better, but I don't know. Over here we have this thing called workplace health and safety and work cover. So if you're on your way to work or directly on your way to work or directly on your way home from work, you're still covered under workplace agreement for injuries.
3:45
Excuse me. So because I was on my way to work, I might be eligible for this stuff. But I don't think I'm going to need it, honestly, because I don't think I really injured myself that badly.
3:58
So, yeah, normally they pay for your medical stuff like physio and stuff like that or any sort of pockets that you might get.
4:07
But, yeah, I don't know if I'll need it. I'll have to see. I'll see what the ultrasound say. But, yeah, that's my week. Pretty – Well, let me tell you about a friend of our show who has been having a year so a friend of our show and also he's a member of the pimple arcade fan forum his name is leroy and leroy suffers from seizures so yeah and from what he's told me it it varies from having just mild seizures throughout the day to now and then having not... He doesn't... He didn't call him the grand mal. I don't think he's... I'm guessing that there's different types of epileptic seizure and stuff like that. Yeah, my dad suffered from epilepsy when he was younger. So, yeah, we know a little bit about it. Yeah.
5:07
The kind that he has knocks him unconscious when it's a big one. Very disoriented. It's what? And they also make you very disoriented, apparently. It's also made him have a bad memory.
5:27
He just can't recall things, mainly about his past. Like he has a friend who's been a childhood friend. And the memories that he has of the childhood friend are basically the stories that have been told to him by the childhood friend. So it's like, that's how we remember. He's like, I don't even remember for myself. I just know the story now.
5:51
Right. So anyway, the seizures have made it so that he is not able to work. Yeah. And he can't hold a job.
6:05
It's also to the point that, you know, he can't drive and he even has problems going to certain stores because of the lighting. it'll start giving him you know he can start feeling it coming and then he just has to leave that's really weird yeah and unfortunately the doctor that he used to have didn't ever bother with proper documentation to this so it wasn't like he was getting he's not getting any disability or anything like that despite the fact that he can't work, right? That sucks, man. So I'm not going to go into massive details or anything about what happened a year ago. Suffice it to say, his whole world crumbled apart, and his wife, who was obviously supporting him, left,
7:02
and therefore the man had no source of income and can't get a job. He just went to crap. and everything really went to crap and the seizures started getting worse and it's like i said just a bit of year of misery well recently uh he wound up getting a hold of a new doctor and the new doctor was like hey we're going to we're going to get you on permanent disability we're going to right we're gonna we gotta study this and see what's see what's going on so this is what i was going to what i wanted to bring up because it was like the craziest week for him doing a medical study in a hospital he goes into the hospital and basically they're going to try and induce one of these big seizures because they need to because they need to map his mind they need to find out is it happening you know in general in his mind or is it just in the frontal lobe because there are certain procedures that they can do based off that.
8:04
And he said some of the tests that they were doing to him, it was just physically hurting him. But he was like, no, we need to get me to this point. We need to get me to this point.
8:14
And unfortunately, the doctors wound up stopping it at one point and said, we can't ethically do this to you anymore because it's torture. Oh, wow. So even though he was like, keep on going, keep on going, they're like, we can't anymore. We have to stop. They were literally... If we keep on doing this. They literally had a strobe light that they were flashing on because strobes bring it on, right? Yes. And this is what they were... And basically, he just kept on going, hit me more, hit me more. And they're like, we can't do this anymore. So they were... Yeah. This is wrong. This is so wrong. On top of that, the poor dude, one day into the hospital, winds up getting pneumonia while there. because he's got a host of medical medical issues that have uh you know they as with anything they crop up you're perfectly fine and then as soon as one collapses that just chain reactions everything else right so exactly so they eventually they were going to discharge him and they're like hold on never mind we're going to keep you a little bit longer we've got another test and this is the best part so the literal prescription from the hospital was oh and this entire time this entire trial that he was there not allowed to sleep so he was there a total of eight days nine days eight or nine days not allowed to sleep he'd get he said he would basically able to get maybe two or three hours um where he could where he could rest but otherwise it was nope we need you awake and so on this this final bit of trial they had him playing video games watching a particular Pokemon cartoon that I guess induced 700 seizures in Japan when it first aired.
10:08
That sounds about right. I forget what one of the other things was, but then the final thing was, and drink alcohol. So they got him sloppy drunk, had him playing video games, all these things trying to induce it. What he said, the funny thing is that the alcohol helps reduce seizures for him.
10:29
So that wasn't a good thing. So instead, they gave him two cups of coffee, which I guess sends him through the roof.
10:35
It still wasn't inducing it, though. And so the doctors were like, ah, we don't know what to do. We don't know what to do. So they left him to his own devices. So he was like, damn it, if they're not going to do it to me, I'm going to do it to myself. So he went on his laptop, looked up whatever, you know, seizure inducing imagery or whatever,
10:57
put the little trigger button in his hand for if he was having a big one, he automatically, you know, clenched his fist and then doctors would come rushing in and start watching this.
11:08
And he started doing it to himself. Right. And he's doing any, and he said he could feel it coming. It was like right on the version. Just, you know, almost there. Right. Yeah. Oh yeah. He's still in pure agony, right? He's got to be a beauty. Click. And so he never got quite to that point because then the nurses or somebody, the doctors, came in and were like, what the heck are you doing? And it turns out that while he was doing this, his doctor was watching his brainwaves, and all of a sudden his brainwaves were going off the map in funky directions. It's like, what the heck is going on? I've got to go check this out. So they at least did determine that he's got to, general over his brain action.
11:50
It wasn't targeted to a particular area of the brain. No. Which, then of course, it turned out that the medication he'd been on for years was completely the wrong medication. Well, the fact that he was still getting seizures probably would indicate that, yeah. Well, and the fact that his doctor wasn't keeping actual good records for him to use. Yeah. That was crap. So, meanwhile, the poor guy, he's like, I don't want to go on disability. He's like, I want to work. But he's been trying for a year to get work and nobody will hire him because nobody's doing work from home. So I'll put this out to our listeners. If anybody is interested in somebody that wants to work from home and has a good mind for he's self-taught on all sorts of computer programs I mean we talking coding kind of programs and doing animation and stuff like that Oh Yeah So he's really a skilled dude. Oh, no, he's very talented. It's just he doesn't have the degree to go along with that. And then the fact that he can't go out and interview, it has to be all via work at home. But yeah, if anybody's looking for that kind of thing, hit us up. We'd love to pass along the info, and I'd love to help him out in any way possible, because I'm telling you, if you think you've had...
13:12
Like nobody's business. This dude has been just... I'm telling you, if you heard the whole story of his past year, you'd want to shoot yourself.
13:23
It's diabolical. Yeah. And then the worst part is so he loves pinball, right? And what happens in pinball all the time? flashing lights flashing lights what the hell right and he says he told me that he said because he was at the arcade expo too um his uh his buddy took him drove him down there and so i saw him there and i i was talking to him and he goes yeah i'll be playing he goes next thing i know the ball drain and i'll be like well how did that happen he says because he has these micro time lapses that just like just you know a second will disappear from him and then that that's all the time it takes from you know for the ball to go from the top of the field to the drain right it's pretty much like a it's pretty much like a frame drop a couple of frame drops in when he's playing digital pinball but in real life yeah i said i said he's lagging yeah he needs to get some more ram i think It's not like I'm having a cackle with the background there. No, my wife is hacking up a lung. She's not well. She's doing the messes and sickness and unhealth. Good. I thought that was just me. Well, it turns out, speaking of bad weeks,
14:45
it turns out she's allergic to pineapple juice. We didn't know this. But when you went for pizza? Do you have pineapple pizzas every day? We do. She had actually had a pineapple ice cream with pineapple on it. No problem. Two days later, give her a cup of pineapple juice, and within an hour, it's like bad news.
15:10
And that's, of course, triggered, like we say, chain reaction. So it's triggered allergies, which then nasal drip, which causes coughing, all sorts of wonderful. All the fun stuff. How very bizarre. All the fun stuff, yes. So this is the health update episode of the blockade podcast.
15:30
We've never done a health blockade. We don't. We usually leave that to Don and Jeff at the Pinball Podcast. They always do health updates.
15:39
So they always do health updates on their show. Poor old Jeff. He always has something wrong with him. Yeah.
15:46
So, yeah. But it's all right. It's our turn now. It's our turn. Yeah. You've been playing much pinball this week?
15:54
Let me think. Oh, yeah, well, I've been playing a fair bit of pinball arcade, actually. What have you been playing?
16:02
Oh, I've been playing, I've been going back through some of the tables, some of the older tables, just having a look around them because I decided to invest in Pro Mode on a couple of seasons. And I thought, oh, well, the first thing you're going to do when you get Pro Mode, not open the door, but actually use the table explore feature to see what's going on. And you know how we were talking about Cactus Canyon last week and the things that really do need to be tweaked? Well, I thought, well, I'll have a look around Cactus Canyon. And I found that when I did the table exploration mode, where Bart is, if you go over the top of Bart, you'll actually see like a static image of his head on the play field underneath him. Oh, no. Because, of course, if you're playing the game, the aspect ratio of the game, you can't see it. Because it's... Right. It's... What they would have done is they would have taken the camera and just hovered over that part of the play field with Bart assembly there, taking a shot of it. It would have been all flat. And then they would have gone, right, well, that's where Bart goes, obviously. So we'll put the Bart figurine over that and all good. But yeah, in pro mode, you can see under the skirt, essentially. You can see some of the stuff that they've done. And, you know, that's something that I wouldn't even raise as a bug because that doesn't affect gameplay at all. It's just a bit of art that's not supposed to be there.
17:20
So in our Blab session here, we've got a couple of guys from the forum that are listening on us. And just as you say that about, you know, start talking about Cactus Canyon, one of the guys all of a sudden I see is, you know, he's still in here, Kazania actually, all of a sudden I get the Steam notification that he's gone into Pinball Arcade. I'm like, hey, guess you just want to have a look and see what you're talking about. Oh, well, I think I checked that.
17:48
Oh, yeah. So I think those older tables, I think we see a little bit of that because of the way that they've changed the way they digitize, I think. Now what I think they do is when they digitize tables, they take a lot of stuff off. Yes. So there's no, I'd imagine there'd be no shadows cast from the camera when they actually take it. So big assemblies like Bart would really throw off the light when it's being taken. So I'd imagine they'd strip that down at least a bit. I don't know if you guys saw, but on YouTube, they actually showed a stripped-down video of Rescue 9-11, which will be the next table. Or at least the beginnings of the stripped-down video. Yeah, that's just the very start where they're just taking the bits off the table. And, yeah, we actually get a cameo from Norman in that video, which is kind of cool. So, good day, Norman. And you could tell it was on his lunch break because he had his lunch bag in his hand and was like, hey, let me come in and check out what's going on in here. Oh, hey, look at that. Yo, yo, yo, take that part off. Okay, bye. There's a thing there. You're going to undo that thing and then drop the cable through the play field and then you can get there simply. I can't imagine what he was saying. But yeah, that was pretty cool to see. The whole time I was watching that video, what was going through my mind was, so how does he remember where all that goes? And I know that obviously off camera, you couldn't see it. He was writing something and there's probably a way that they put the parts in and stuff like that, but I was just kind of like, hey, he's still calm. He's like, taking everything off.
19:21
I reckon if they were smart about it, they'd actually have some sort of like playfield size board and then have it sort of like with just grids on it. So you could just basically go, all right, this part, dump it into that grid, and then that part, the scripts go there. And you could almost pretty much do it like that, and that would be a really easy way of working out what parts go where. If you're doing it for 60 tables, which, you know, they're pretty good at doing it by now. So the question from the Pina Gallery is, and this image of Bart is not on the real table. No, there's no image of Bart on the actual table. No, this is – The stand-up. Yeah. The toy. If you go to the back of the play field and you go right over Bart and you look down like actually through what would be right down at a 90-degree angle onto the playfield, you'll see the BART assembly is there in 3D and then directly underneath that, you'll see that there's like a picture of BART underneath the BART assembly. So it's sort of like there's two BARTs, there's double the BART. The reason why they do it is because it takes a lot of effort to strip out that piece of assembly completely from the playfield.
20:37
So when they're quickly trying to remember that Cape Cascadia was in a time when they were busily trying to get out a number of tables.
20:47
And for them to actually drop the assembly out and then take the photo would have taken just that much longer to do. So they probably just left it in, realizing that they'd be putting a big assembly over the top and no one would actually see the art. I've seen it with slingshot stand-up posts as well that sometimes they haven't quite got around to putting the art in for in the early betas. And you'll see the actual static image of the star posts for the slingshots and stuff where there should be like 3D model posts. And they just go, oh, yeah, we just need to put those in. And they just dump them in. You can't even see them. But when you go over the play field in pro mode and you go into explore, what you see is you do actually see some irregularities like that in other places. So because of the perspective of the table and the way that they realign the images, when they put a post in line with the image that they capture with the camera, when you go over the table you'll still see sometimes the post sort of sticking out behind the post the actual 3d post but you can't see it of course when you're playing the game because it's all just hidden behind actual 3d assets so yeah it's interesting to see how they sort of get around some of these things because completely depopulating the play field of everything like you know stand-up posts and and targets and everything would just be so time-consuming to do. They just wouldn't do it, probably. It'd just be too hard to do. Yep, welcome back.
22:28
My computer. Yeah, it's alright. You're back now. Yeah, nothing like crapping out right in the middle of a sentence, too.
22:38
Yeah, yeah. So what were you talking about? The thing you find weird about... Was it Cactus Canyon? I forget what you're going with. We could just drop it. and just move on. Let's just drop it because I have no clue where I was going with that. No, me neither. I was just having a chat while you were away just to Xenia about, you know, he managed to find it as well. Oh, okay. It was on PC too. And he was just wondering why they would have done that. And I just clarified that, well, you know, no one's ever going to see it when they're playing the game. Yeah. So it's much easier for them to do that than it would be to actually go and drop that assembly out of the play field then take the photo. So it's just, it's fine. They know that they're going to be able to work around it. So they know exactly what they can and can't leave on the play field, which is pretty smart, really. Yeah. It does worry me about the shortcuts that were taken early on, though.
23:32
There's lots of stuff that needs to be revisited on the season one and season two tables where they were releasing to it at the time. That was just terrible. The question becomes is, do they have clean assets that they could go back and use, Or is it a case of, no, we need to go back and re-strip the table and re-photograph everything to get it so that stuff isn't there? Because they were doing a lot of modification, like on Genie. Their Genie is beat up.
24:02
Yeah. I mean, there's huge swaths of graphics that are not. That's why they had to retouch the word bonus on it, because it was just great. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, there's huge amounts of artwork that they are reproducing themselves, you know, creating themselves as opposed to just taking a photo of the actual physical machine that they have.
24:22
So I wonder in cases, you know, back in the day, was it just like, oh, yeah, we'll just photograph from the top down and now we're just going to digitally erase us anyway. And then they didn't digitally erase it or, you know, whatever. Right, right. yeah so um you know it's and you're right it's the kind of thing that during while you're playing the game you're never going to notice it yeah um but if you're looking at it a lot if you if you've got a table exploration mode it's like oh hey yeah like you say look on the skirt you're seeing a you're seeing things you shouldn't be seeing yeah that's right they are looking at going back um through i was having a chat with um uh flippy floppy the other day and he said when they got gaps in schedules they do try and go back in and just the two QE guys get back through and see what they can do with some of the tables. And I think they had a go at some of the a bit of the draw order stuff and stuff with all the tournament tables recently Just a few minor bug fixes with those because they had a little bit of spare time and they were just able to slot it in. And I think the stuff that they try and do when they've got spare time is more like cosmetic fixes. So they want to try and get rid of some tables like El Fire and the Party Monsters have really bad table grime on them, on the wear points. so they go try and go back through and get those touched up and and um removed and make them look a little bit better so it's it's stuff that comes down to needing an art pass they're a little bit limited to but i think there's some stuff they can do themselves um and they they try and do it wherever possible so they they just chip away the bug list and see what they can get done so it's good yeah so uh i despite uh having zero table goals on champion pub um when we started table of the week this last week i played very little of champion pub i've i've opened up the wizard goals as about as far as i've gotten because uh hey shocker shockers a game actually came out that has stolen my attention away from pinball arcade which i fully expected it to anyway and i'm happy that it did because now and then I need a distraction.
26:40
You always need variety. I always need, yeah. Yeah, so I've been playing the new Tomb Raider game, Rise of the Tomb Raider, which is phenomenal.
26:51
I am such a huge fan of this type of game, which is that stealthy exploration. I'm not a melee fighter in any kind of games that, you know, even games that are the core of it. I'm more but well let me go find a hidey hole and just pop off shots or you know i don't i don't like rushing into the middle of the battlefield and just like you know spraying everywhere that that to me is not fun and it causes me way too much stress while playing um which i don't like being stressed while playing a game i mean i don't mind tension but i don't like uh just that ill feeling of just like oh god what am i doing you know and the seat of your pants kind of kind of playing um I remember playing the first couple of Tomb Raiders and you're just getting chased by things and having to strafe around them and cap them with little pistols. Yeah, when you think about it, those very early Tomb Raider games, it was, okay, here's your puzzle and here's your action bit. And here's your puzzle and here's your action bit. And actually, you could go back even further to the Prince of Persia back in the old Apple II days, you know, when that was on there and, you know, it was that, hey, solve this puzzle and yeah, you're going to have a little bit of a, you know, some very, I mean, that was a side scroller back then. It was. So it's kind of a little action bit. Right, right. And then I was trying to think, I don't know if there was really a true puzzle game in the vein of Tomb Raider before Tomb Raider. In my mind, the history of this kind of game went from Prince of Persia to those initial Tomb Raiders. I mean, and, you know, Lara Croft was basically just a female Indiana Jones, which everybody was always saying about it. That's right. And then Prince of Persia went, hey, wait a second, you're stealing our thunder. And also they came out with their fully 3D modeled game, and it was less about action and more about, way more about puzzling. And it was like, it was parkour, you know, bouncing around. That was a lot of fun.
29:03
That's really diabolical puzzles in that. And then came Uncharted, which I love Uncharted. And this is kind of what got me in this whole fix is because the new Uncharted 4 is coming out on PS4. I do not own a PS4. So therefore, I will not be able to play what is arguably my favorite series until I get one. Uncharted 2 is fantastic. Probably my favorite game playing experience that I've ever had. Just the opening of that game was so phenomenal. I don't know if you've ever I don't know. Did you have a PS3 that you were able to play on? No, I stopped at PS3. So you never got to experience it. the opening of that game, not only does it introduce all the game mechanics that you need, which I always like when they kind of nurse you through the first, you know, just kind of like, hey, this is how you do this, this, rather than put the instruction in the game. Yeah, I hate that. Onboarding experience is a great way to do games. It's pretty much how they're all doing it now. But it was this purely cinematic experience.
30:22
I mean, it was as good as so many action movies that I loved, just this opening thing. I was like, yeah, I mean, totally set the tone. Whole game played out that way. So I absolutely loved, loved the Uncharted series. And then all of a sudden they came out two years ago, maybe three years ago, the reboot of Tomb Raider. And I fell all over in love with that because they did a really good job of the puzzles. The puzzles weren't so diabolical, which was kind of like, oh, man, I really do want to think about this some. But they did a really good job of mixing the action and the puzzles at the same time. Sometimes you have to figure out the puzzle while doing an action bit. Oh, that was hard. Yeah.
31:07
It can be a little bit difficult, but it was pretty cool. And I've replayed that maybe three times since on the PC. I don't usually replay games that much. So, I mean, that really speaks something to it. and so now here I am playing this newest one, and I'm only a third of the way through the game, and I'm one of these that, especially with Tomb Raider games, where it's like I want every single secret.
31:37
You want to catch them all. I want to catch them all. And what's brilliant about this game, though, is that you push a button. They call it survival instinct, instinct and basically it highlights where anything that you can open or grab is in the region oh that's good yeah so it's not quite frustrating parts of the of tomb raider in the past like bumping into walls working out what thing you need to right body yeah right he drives you know wait you're like you're like a blind person feeling the wall just you know okay move over two steps push move over two steps push yeah none of that is there anymore and good and finding all the treasures it no it doesn't show you every single treasure when you're first there because as you discover certain treasures it updates your map and then your map all of a sudden reveals new treasures so you go back to the levels again well this is what i love about this particular version that wasn't the same case they had a survival instinct in in the other Tomb Raider, the reboot, but this one, the sequel,
32:41
it... A, the map I'm on right now is ginormous. It is huge. And so you're kind of solving regional puzzles, or clear regions, but you're always kind of able to come back to the central hub. And so because of that, as the map opens up, it's not like you're having to, you know, oh, well, let me reboot, or let me reload the game to this other area so that I can go do that. It's more or less just like, oh, well, I'm going to do a little bit more exploring, a little bit more exploring. Now, you can completely ignore all this and just go story-based, which is nice, too. But I'm having a fun time just hunting animals and discovering mineshafts and stuff like that. And the other thing that's cool about it, and this is where Uncharted always kind of annoyed me, was you'd be exploring the area, being really careful. You know, okay, I'm going to try and find every secret. And then all of a sudden, you would hit one of those cinematic moments, you know, trigger one, and the whole world collapses behind you, and now you can't revisit that level. Oh, great. And you'd be like, ugh. It's locked you off, yeah. Right, it's locked you off. And this is not locking you off on anything. It's like... Because the cinematic is delivered by the engine, and you can just go back.
33:52
Well, but what it is, is like, even though maybe a building is collapsing or something like that, the treasures that you needed to find are still accessible. It's not that it's, ah, it's now collapsed around the treasure so you can no longer get the treasure. You're still able to get into this stuff and find these things. And so that's what I'm really loving about it.
34:14
That's cool. That sounds like they've really done a lot of thinking back through the last couple of episodes of Tomb Raider and gone, yeah, we could do better there. And they've done it, which is great. Yeah.
34:27
What makes me laugh, though, is it got me thinking about the plight of video game movies. And there's obviously all sorts of different genres that have been attacked with this. But when you think about this action genre, Tomb Raider actually had two movies done. Both of them were terrible.
34:50
Prince of Persia had a movie done. It was terrible. They've been trying to do an Uncharted movie for a couple of years. They haven't cracked that nut, haven't made it and it was like well what is it why why is why is the problem what is what is and and i kind of realized that i was like it's because there's usually ammo and stuff just randomly lying around i mean who leaves this stuff just lying around you know hidden in a crate or in a bush it just doesn't make any sense right but as you play the game that's kind of part of the fun of it right he's coming across me he's like oh cool ammo dump nice you know and then the other thing is around that they can probably work around that by you know having lots of enemies lying around with guns on them and stuff like that if they were doing a movie that could right but then cinematically are you really going to show the person each time they run by an enemy picking up or grabbing down and be like oh look i got a bolt you know you're not going to do that and then the other thing that is kind of plays into this whole why they don't work aspect is that again that exploration that you go through,
35:54
you don't mind spending a half an hour searching for something or sitting up there in a tree hunting animals.
36:03
That's part of the enjoyment of the game, whereas in a movie, obviously, you're not going to be able to... You won't get that sense of enjoyment because they have to keep on keeping on, right? Right. They've got to keep on pushing and pushing and pushing. I think it's that you as a person are investing your own emotions into the character that you're playing and kind of building up the story in your own mind, as opposed to, I think, if you just watched one of these games played straight through, it makes me wonder, well, I wonder how involved I would be. I think that it's all about interactivity. That's what the game's, that's the idea of the game. That's the principal reason why a game is a very different form of entertainment than a movie. Yeah. So, you know, I think you probably know in your head why movies about games don't succeed, because you are not directly involved in controlling the storyline and therefore it's just another action movie so let's say let's say unless you're a massive fan of the franchise um it's not going to translate so well i think there's also a little bit of the believability aspect too you know you think about these games where you're hanging from a ledge rock climbing you're making these spectacular leaps that any real person their arms would have given out minutes ago. There's no way they would have been able to continually do this and take this abuse. Whereas a game, it's just that's how you travel. That's par for the course. That's what you're allowed to do. It made me think, oh, well, you can obviously play it the other route and make commentary on it and laugh at the movie. They have the character doing it and be like, oh, look at how strong my hands are. I can do all this, this, this. And then I realized, oh, they did that. It was called Last Action Hero.
37:46
Yeah, I loved that movie, though. Did you really? I loved Last Action Hero. It was so terribly bad. It was good. I loved it. I was going to say, there's moments in it that are genius, and then there too many moments though that are usually mostly involving the kid It the governor just taking the piss out of himself all the time I think that right Right Very good at self in that movie is excellent Yeah Yeah. The pinball is good too. The pinball really captures that as well. The self-deprecation or the being very bad. Just, just the craziness of that movie. Like it's, yeah, it's full of crazy. That game. See, there's a movie where, you know how in a Zen pinball on a couple of tables, like their Avengers table, They have different colored or different balls that do different, you know, if that ball is on the table, then obviously scoring becomes a different way. Basically, they're taking the Doctor Who, but like Doctor's concept and applied it to a colored ball, basically. Right, right. And in Last Action Hero, because they had the one, the bad guy, he always had the switchable eyeballs and he put a different eyeball in the head. That's what they should have done. That table has had, you know, oh, hey, look, there's a smiley face. No, look, there's the target ball, you know, rolling around. I don't know. They'd have to put a chip inside the ball or something like that to figure it out. They did that with one ball in Twilight Zone, making it non-metallic. But that's the only ball they'd done it with at the time because they didn't have the other technology then. But yeah, they could do it. If someone wants to do a remake of Last Action Hero digitally, that would be what you'd do.
39:18
Well, there you go. If Farsight winds up, because Farsight has one more Sony table. and pretty much everybody's kind of assuming it's either going to be Last Action Hero or it's going to be Johnny Mnemonic I'm leaning towards I hope it's Johnny Mnemonic, I don't want Last Action Hero because you know I think Last Action Hero will be I don't, not really huge fan of it mostly because I can never get that bloody claw assembly like to drop the ball where I want it to drop the hand assembly and usually they're the first thing to break on the table as well because they're pretty shoddy they're badly engineered um so yeah if that's dead then it's a really boring game basically you're just shooting loops and ramps and yeah and waiting for the dolphin basically but if if i'll say then yeah if farsight does wind up doing last action hero there you go guys there's what your ball pack is do something you know you're you're now diving into that territory with dr who where you're able to muck around with the license. Why not muck around a little bit and make these custom balls that then have a little scoring effect on the table? I'm going to be really interested to see how they do Doctor Who Regenerated, because that sounds like basically a complete game rewrite.
40:40
Well, there's been an update. We've been updated on the fan form that they got their initial response back from the BBC. They submitted their proposal for everything that they wanted to do, and the voice work that they would need done and everything like that. And BBC came back to them and basically said, keep on working, guys. We like what you're doing. So that's really awesome that they didn't come back with, no, you need to cut this. No, you need to cut that. It was more just like, yep, we're good. Keep on going. So yeah, I'll be interested to see. I hope that they pull out all the stops on this and do something awesome.
41:17
Yep. I think they have an opportunity to do it but let's hope the first uh couple of let's hope that the the reskin they did on haunted house was just a practice run and they wouldn't knock it out of the park interestingly enough though they said that it's because of that bbc approached them oh really that they did the the ghostbusters retheme interesting because of the ghostbusters that got bbc's attention so that when farsight approached them regarding doing Doctor Who, the BBC was like, well, you know how you did that reskin? What do you think? We'd be interested in doing that. You should do that for us. Again, that was on the forum. Yeah, that was on the forum where somebody was complaining about the reskin and just going, oh god, I hope it's a lot better than Ghostbusters, which I think we all kind of feel that way. And then one of the guys, I can't remember which guy from Farsight, was like, well, before you rag on it too much, that's the reason why we have that's the reason why we're doing this one. while we're getting the opportunity.
42:19
We're still going to rag on it, though, because it was pretty crap. It's good that you gave me the opportunity. Am I ragging on it because it's the Haunted House table, which I loathe, or just because... I will say this. The improvement on it is that they put in multi-ball, and they solved that stupid right-hand flipper problem of the ball just dropping down in between the two flippers.
42:43
Because they put in a little gate there, right? so two of my complaints regarding that table were taken care of um because i need multi-ball and b i hate that that double flipper action so yeah um and and obviously once they got caught for using the ghostbuster song when they weren't allowed to and had to change the music out that really kind of kills the table too um it does yeah yeah so as i said lessons learned on that table i think will be very, very valuable for this one. So I think it's good that they made their mistakes on that one and now have a chance to really apply what they've learned doing the re-theme and also changing the rule set as well.
43:28
It's going to be interesting how they implement that because everything's ROM-driven on that game. So they're going to have to do some pretty wild scripting to make it work. or they're going to have to write ROM in basically assembly or whatever they used to use for pinball code, for pinball ROM. Well, the other interesting thing is that they're actually working with the licensor on this to see the standards of the license, what the BBC wants out of them.
44:03
Is it going to be a situation where, hey, here's our product, and the BBC goes, no, we want it more. You know, really dive into that, you know, and it'd be good if there's a lot of, you know, push and pull to make this something really unique and fun. You know, hopefully the brain trust, the brainstorming that goes on with it is really pushing the envelope. I'm looking forward to it. What I'd like to see is actually Doctor Who Regenerated be better than Doctor Who, the original table. It's a tall order.
44:39
Yeah, I'd like to see, like, it's possible they could do it if they really pull out all the stops, where you actually want to play Regenerator more than you want to play the original.
44:50
So that will be pretty cool if they could pull that off. I'll tip my hat most definitely if they could pull that off. That would be pretty awesome.
44:59
Hey, we're going to wrap things up here. We do want to encourage everybody to check out the website that is now live. Jared is still tinkering with it, but, uh, and it's not really, not really.
45:12
It is what it is now. It is what it is. Yeah. Anyway, it's done. It'll be the site. Check it out at blockade pinball.com. Um, uh, we do have, uh,
45:28
I was going to say, you'll notice that we'll start to put less and less information in all the other places you used to get the information from. So, um, where we're encouraging you strongly, to go over to Black Eyed Pinball and get your episode summaries and timings and links and stuff like that. And the other cool thing is that there is a discussion forum that you guys can contribute to and talk about there. Episodes. So to those people that do not wish to go to Pinball Arcade fans and join in discussions there, you can have your discussions right there on our website.
46:02
That's right. We don't mind. Maybe. we can still moderate it we can still moderate it yes we can yeah uh but yeah it'd be good to get sort of everyone like we still want to like cross post over to people like eight fans because that was like a lot of our listeners come from so it makes sense for us to do that but at the same time we don't want to be duplicating information so we'll announce the new episodes put a link to the the website and come over and um have some fun over there. You can still comment on the post in the forum if you want. It's just that there'll be a couple of places you can do it now. Come over and try Disqus, which is the commenting backbone on the website. You can log in with Google, a number of different authentication methods.
46:51
Google, Twitter, Facebook. Yeah, there's heaps of different ways you can log in and you don't even need to set up an account with Disqus. So just come in, connect and have a chat, test it out, see what you think. Feel free also to follow us, the Blockade Podcast, at Blockade.
47:08
We keep on coming flirting dangerously close to having 100 followers. I know that's pittance compared to many, many, many, many other Twitter feeds, but I really want to cross that 100 threshold, and every time we gain a couple, all of a sudden we'll lose one. So we are dangerously close, so please go ahead and give us a follow so we can cross that magic 100. Or you can follow me exactly you can also follow myself at shut your traps you can follow jared at jared morgues um man don't forget about our t-shirts t-shirts yeah that is represent.com forward slash blockade dash shirts and that campaign just keeps running so when the campaign ends you'll get your shirt you don't have to wait for months or whatever it just uh what's it like weekly now every seven Yep, it's weekly. So if you order your shirt within a week, it'll then trigger that and start the process of being made and shipped. Yep. Now, I'm just wondering, because when I ordered the shirts for me down here, the shipping was prohibitive. And I'm just wondering if there's any Australian listeners on the podcast. I'm just wondering if you wanted to do a bulk order and get a whole lot of shirts, like say I would order a whole stack and we can get the shipping down to a lot less, would that interest you guys in getting shirts? So it would be pay up front for the shirt, I order them, and then I get them shipped locally, and then we just ship them domestically for like $10 or something like that. So it would save a lot of money in shipping. So if anyone's interested in that, tweet me at Jared Morgs or send me a PM or an email or something. Reach out to me and we'll see what we can do.
49:03
There we go. That's the business end of our podcast. Obviously, we didn't front load it that way because you guys would turn off right away.
49:12
Hey, join us next week, won't you? We'll have more discussions of pinball, snacks, movies, but mostly pinball. Mostly pinball. mostly pinball unless we can't think of anything about pinball and then you know it's fair game for anything i want to talk about or me yeah random stuff yeah hopefully jared will have a much better week this week and uh won't try and kill himself because there's enough things in australia that want to kill him already that's right with that we shall bid adieu we'll talk to y'all again next week bye-bye see you later guys WizardAmusement.com The West Coast leader in classic pinball. Makers of custom pinball shooter rods and buyer specifications. You can swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table. Installs in less than 5 minutes with no custom tools. Even if you don't own a table, it looks great as a pinball memento to admire. Prices start at $39, but mention Blockkick Podcast to receive 10% off your order. wizardamusement.com sales, restoration, customization don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that BlackAid is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some pinball