Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Grimm Tales and RetroPlay Aftermath

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 19m·analyzed·Jul 24, 2022
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

BPAC event recap, operator economics crisis, and VPX licensing debate.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss their experiences at Brisbane Pinball Arcade Collective's BPAC 2022 event (70+ machines over 8 days), operator profitability challenges, and community backlash from their recent episode featuring RetroPlay cabinet builder David. They also analyze VPX/digital pinball licensing issues, fair use doctrine, and the competitive relationship between free VPX tables and commercial offerings like Pinball FX.

Key Claims

  • Toy Story 4 pinball costs $19,000 AUD; Jared values Guns N' Roses at ~$18,000 AUD over it

    high confidence · Jared directly comparing machines at BPAC 2022; specific pricing quoted

  • Most pinball operators cannot achieve payback within 1 year; expected ROI window is 8 years

    high confidence · Midwest arcade operator's stated business model; Chris reports this as generalized industry practice

  • Pinball performs significantly better in bar/barcade settings vs. standalone arcades

    medium confidence · Multiple operator anecdotes; operator explicitly stated this dynamic

  • Melbourne pinball pricing is $2.50/play vs. Brisbane's $1/play, reducing repeat business

    high confidence · BPAC attendees from Melbourne directly compared pricing to Jared

  • VPX digital tables are in direct competition with Zen Pinball FX commercial offerings

    high confidence · Chris states multiple instances of players rejecting Zen tables in favor of free VPX alternatives

  • Haggis Pinball released Fathoms with color LCD/LED DMD (not traditional DMD)

    medium confidence · Jared observed the machine at BPAC; technical specs noted but not independently verified

  • Jared's homebrew pinball machines have been featured in nearly every BPAC competition and stream

    high confidence · Jared's direct participation; machines confirmed as novel/rarely-played by American competitors present

  • Brisbane Masters tournament ran 12+ hours (9 AM warmup to ~12 AM finish)

    high confidence · Tournament director Jason Lambert posted results; timeline explicitly stated

Notable Quotes

  • “Got to play the game. It's not worth $19,000 Australian, but it's nice. For that money, I'd much rather have a Guns N' Roses for like $1,000 less.”

    Jared Morgan @ early — Direct critique of Toy Story 4 value proposition despite licensed theme appeal

  • “If you're not operating a mixed business now with an arcade, your days are numbered. Or, and this is the unfortunate flip side, you need to switch to entirely redemption.”

    Chris Freebus @ mid — Stark assessment of pinball operator business viability without diversification

  • “My busiest days are when I run tournaments. But the problem with the tournaments is that the guys that come to them are all people that own machines of their own at home. And so then they don't come for the other three weeks.”

    [Midwest arcade operator, reported by Chris] @ mid — Reveals tournament dependency trap; no sustainable casual player base

  • “You guys, you don't know how lucky you are up here, having dollar games still up here. Like, $2.50 down in Melbourne for a game now.”

    [Melbourne visitor at BPAC, reported by Jared] @ mid-late — Pricing pressure differential between Australian regions affecting play frequency

  • “Does the VPX community have any VPin manufacturer that they actually like and support? Because by the sounds of some of the comments we were getting, the answer is no.”

    Chris Freebus @ late — Rhetorical challenge to VPX community's critical stance on all cabinet builders

  • “Well, are you selling your intellectual property? Have you copyrighted your intellectual property? Or are you merely angry that somebody made it so that they don't have to visit all these websites in order to download this stuff that is freely available to anybody?”

    Jared Morgan @ late — Direct pushback on VPX developer complaints about RetroPlay's distribution model

  • “These free tables, digital tables, are in direct competition with Zen. You can hide behind fair use all you want, but the truth is you're still directly in competition.”

Entities

Jared MorganpersonChris FreebuspersonBPAC 2022 / Unleash the BeasteventHaggis PinballcompanyYabula Pinball ClubeventDavid (RetroPlay)personZen Pinball / Pinball FXcompanyFarSight StudioscompanyJason Lambert

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball operator economics fundamentally broken: 8-year ROI window unsustainable for arcade operators; new machines at $15,000+ AUD requiring $2-2.50/play pricing that depresses casual play frequency

    high · Midwest operator case study showing top earner (Addams Family) earning only $1,200/year; multiple operator anecdotes; pricing comparison (Brisbane $1 vs Melbourne $2.50)

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade Podcast received substantial negative backlash (~highest engagement ever) for featuring RetroPlay cabinet builder David; VPX community perceives preloading of community tables as IP theft despite free availability

    high · Chris states 'barraged with how dare yous'; episode generated most comments/interaction in podcast history; multiple lengthy comments defending author control

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Blockade hosts defensive/pragmatic about VPX controversy but open to platform debate; acknowledge licensing concerns while questioning VPX community's consistency on IP control

    high · Chris/Jared extensively discuss fair use implications; offer platform for debate; note lack of universal VPX community consensus on cabinet builders

  • ?

    competitive_signal: VPX players actively rejecting licensed Zen Pinball FX tables in favor of free VPX alternatives; players stating Zen tables are 'utter crap' compared to VPX recreations

    high · Chris: 'We have heard multiple times...people go, eh, it's utter crap. I'll just stick to VPX. Well, that's competition, isn't it?'

  • ?

    event_signal: BPAC 2022 'Unleash the Beast' 8-day festival featured 70+ machines ranging from 50-year-old EM to Toy Story 4; notable inclusion of Haggis Fathoms and homebrew machines; Brisbane Masters tournament extended 12+ hours

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.240

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world it's jared morgan yeah everyone i hope you're doing well how you going chris i'm doing good we're doing a little uh take two after some little computer issues, but we're back and running. Yeah, I'm doing awesome. How about yourself? Oh, yeah. I'm doing real good, but my fingers are tied, Chris. You know why? Why's that? Well, because I've been playing pinball nonstop all week, pretty much. That's right. You've been playing a little pinball festival of sorts. That's right. It's a BPAC 2022, Unleash the Beast, it's called, and it's been running now for um eight days this is the final day uh and that's been running for and it has been an absolute blast has been 70 pinball machines over in one venue alone um that's glorious seeing that it was oh it was it's just amazing from all different eras too like we're talking about we've had some ems there we had some ems on the floor playable including one that was 50 years old. So one with a ball elevator instead of a solenoid. Oh, okay. Yeah.
1:29
So everything from that era all the way up to Toy Story 4. Wow. All the way to new school. Look at that. Real new school, yeah.
1:42
Got to play the game. It's not worth $19,000 Australian, but it's nice. For that money, I'd much rather have a Guns and Roses for like $1,000 less, to be perfectly honest, which is a real shame because the theme is great. We all love Toy Story, but I'm not getting it from the game. Although, that being said, I haven't had a lot of time to get on it because it's been non-stop played and very hard to actually get a flip on it. But I did manage to get a couple early on in the show.
2:14
So at least I did get to play a little bit. But yeah, there's like, you know, my two System 80s there plus two more system 80s, all running Pascal boards, which is a pretty good advertisement for Pascal over there in France, for Flip.

Chris Freebus @ late — Explicit statement of competitive dynamics between unlicensed VPX and commercial Pinball FX

  • “I surmise that the only reason why those VPX tables are getting away with it is because it's not a big enough dent to cause Scientific Games to perk up their ears.”

    Chris Freebus @ late — Analysis of why copyright enforcement hasn't targeted VPX community (licensing holder inattention)

    • person
    Scientific Gamescompany
    Midwest arcade operator (unnamed)person
    Flipped (bar)organization
    iPlay (FEC)organization
    Netherworld Arcadeorganization
    VP Cabscompany
    This Week in Pinball (TWIP)organization

    high · Jared detailed participation and timeline; machines confirmed present; tournament director posted results at midnight+

  • ?

    licensing_signal: VPX community operates in legal gray zone using fair use doctrine while producing digital tables that directly compete with licensed Zen Pinball FX offerings; IP enforcement appears passive due to Scientific Games' competing casino interests

    high · Chris/Jared quote TWIP VPX developer article on fair use strategy; explicit statement that VPX tables represent direct competition with Zen; analysis of Scientific Games' enforcement inattention

  • $

    market_signal: Regional pricing pressure in Australia: Melbourne pinball costs $2.50/play vs Brisbane $1, significantly impacting repeat business and cash flow

    high · Melbourne BPAC visitors explicitly told Brisbane attendees 'you don't know how lucky you are'; Jared acknowledged this as demand suppression factor

  • ?

    operational_signal: Pinball success correlates with bar/beverage service integration; standalone arcades struggle unless adopting heavy redemption; tournament-only venues create unsustainable dependency without casual play base

    high · Midwest operator explicit: 'pinball performs much better in bars...detrimental if no bar'; tournament attendees are home machine owners with no repeat business; Flipped bar model praised vs iPlay redemption focus

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jared owns homebrew pinball machines that are gaining significant attention at BPAC; multiple purchase offers received; considering retention vs. sale for scarcity premium

    high · Jared: 'Someone has said I would really like to buy those off you...probably if I wanted to sell them I could get two sales pretty quickly'; considering $5,500+ scarcity premium

  • $

    market_signal: New Australian pinball machine pricing ($15,000-$19,000+ AUD) creates unsustainable operator economics; players making rational decisions to avoid machines that cost $2.50/play

    high · Jared explicit pricing: Toy Story 4 at $19,000 AUD; Guns N' Roses ~$18,000 AUD; Melbourne pricing impact on play frequency

  • ?

    technology_signal: Haggis Pinball using color LCD/LED DMD instead of traditional plasma/LED DMD on Fathoms; noted as bright/sharp visual upgrade

    medium · Jared observed at BPAC: 'color LCD or LED DMD...geez, oh, that would be so much fun to play'; described as sharp and bright

    • 2:29
    And various games, like there's a future spa there, really, really, it's players condition future spa, but plays really nice. So who cares what it looks like, right? Right.
    2:40
    But yeah, so many different, so many tables to mention. They even have one of the brand new Haggis pinball fathoms there as well. Oh, did you get to play with that? Yeah. I know whenever I walked up to it I couldn't get the start so I don't know what was going on there so yeah there was like a couple of 90s that really nice jackpot there with a color DMV but it wasn't like a screen it was actually a color LCD or LED DMD. Oh, wow. Yeah, geez, it was sharp. So bright.
    3:20
    And they had like, all they needed was PinBot and they could have had the Trifecta because there was a brighter PinBot there as well. Was it a 2.0 brighter PinBot or regular? Oh, no, it wasn't, unfortunately.
    3:34
    I would have loved it to be a 2.0. Someone really needs to buy one and get a 2.0 conversion kit and bring it along because geez oh that would be so much fun to play yeah um but yeah my games uh have not missed a beat they have been featured in i think nearly every single competition that's been run at broodhog they've featured on the b-pack stream several times um being played and because no one has ever i was right no one has ever played these even some american folks that are over. We've got Stephen Bowden and Eshika Lefkoff and all these folks have flown in for the points, basically.
    4:14
    Got to get them IPA points. Oh, yeah. Definitely yesterday because it was Masters, Brisbane Pinball Masters yesterday. Okay. And they didn't finish. I got a post from the tournament director, Jason Lambert.
    4:26
    He posted six hours ago. So that was like at least 12 a.m. that that's when the competition finished. Jeez. After a whole day. They started at 10. No.
    4:40
    No. You can warm up from 9 starting at 10. So that's so much more. This is why I don't go into those tournaments, Chris. I was going to say, it's like going into a poker tournament or something. It becomes an endurance factor more than just how well you play. Well, that's true. I sort of did... One of the formats was over at another venue.
    5:05
    This was on a Wednesday here, and it was over at a place called Yabula Pinball Club, which actually operates out of a conference setup. And they have their own collection of pins. So it was 70 pins at Brewdog, plus these pinball machines over at Yabula. I think we had a total of 20 machines over there, ranging from 90s, mostly 90s top tier, 90s DMDs. We had, I think there's two Jersey Jacks there, there's a Daldin and Wonka. There's also a bank of American pinball pins there because the distributor supplied all the machines there.
    5:49
    Plus, you know, there's various other machines there as well from different areas. We've got like a Getaway and even Black Rose there. There's even a Street Fighter 2 that I leave there, which is, yeah, no one wants to play that. No, not so much.
    6:07
    That's one of those you walk by it and you go, oh, maybe I'll put a quarter in it. And you put your quarter in and then you play one ball and you go, maybe I'll just leave the other two balls. Yeah, that's right, unfortunately. Like, it's good theme integration in that one, but it's just a boring game. But the funny thing is I'd rather play an early 80s Soul State than that, even though it's got more features on it, which is saying a lot. Yeah.
    6:33
    So yeah, that Yabula Pinball Club, we started at 10 o'clock and we finished at 8 p.m. But it was a match play event, which means that you get randomly paired with four other players on a random machine, and you just play that game. you play you know each player does their balls yeah um you record the the winners in order and then you wait for the round to finish and of course you know we had good players there so luckily the the conference venue is really well set up they they got these amazing couches that you can just vegetate on while you're waiting for the round to finish and there was beer there and uh there was some good food places outside that you could just bring your food in and eat So it was a pretty chilled out affair, and that's my sort of competition. Like, you know, that or flip frenzies, where you just basically play back-to-back pinball until you can't play it anymore, which is just great. So the important question then is, seeing as how you're saying that your machines have been featured and have been performing well, have you gotten any offers yet? um i've been someone has said i would really like to buy those off you um in fact i think probably if i wanted to sell them i could get two uh two sales for them um pretty quickly um but given the reaction to these games i'm sort of going should i right should i actually keep them so that I have control over them and can put them in the competition next year so people can play them again next year.
    8:17
    Because I've seen some games on the floor at BrewDog. They were there last year and they're there this year. And they're just as fun to play. And I'm just concerned that if I sell these two titles, that's the last people are ever going to see them. Right. so maybe it's a matter of you hold on to them let some more people get a chance to play them and then uh see who knows maybe by then the uh you know the people are a little more desperate and uh kick up the price well look obviously if i get an offer i can't refuse then i will not refuse the offer right but um i have to you know these these are not ten thousand dollar games but look if someone to pay that money for them, by all means, they hit me up. But you know, I've been pretty public in telling people how much they owe me. They owe me at least five and a half grand and I'm not selling them for that, given their scarcity. So yeah, if people want them, they have to pay a scarcity premium for them. Interesting. so yeah I'm willing to part with him but I'm not giving him away so I happened to watch a video just within the last two weeks since we last recorded and it was from a an arcade owner his perspective on pinball machines and he's based in the Midwest I don't know exactly where I want to say maybe like Wisconsin or something like that but he was going through what his pins earned. Now, this is an arcade that also features video games too, so it's not just a pinball arcade only, but it's also a mix. It's, yeah. Yeah, and he was talking about how he was just like, they are not profitable in the least.
    10:17
    He was mentioning how his top earner was Adam's family and that he'd only earned like $1,200 over the year on that. And his second place was like Ghostbusters. And that had earned him like just shy of $1,000. And he goes, well, obviously, you know, when you think about how much these machines cost,
    10:44
    he's like, it's going to take forever for Ghostbusters to be worth it. And isn't it sad that a 90s machine is out earning it? And I was kind of like, well, I mean, We're talking about a really spectacular game that's out earning it and stuff. But what was interesting about his talk about operations, and he wasn't mentioning about maintenance. He wasn't talking about that. And he was saying how he really loves pinball.
    11:11
    But he said from an operations standpoint, you want to be able to earn back your machine's cost within a year. And these are going to take eight years. And that's really brutal. He says the flip side is that usually these pinball, the people that buy these machines, the new ones, that half the time the profit is in reselling it. Yes, absolutely. So it's like they make their profit, and then they sell it for virtually what they paid for initially, and there's where your profit is. he also was saying that since he's not a barcade or I shouldn't say barcade as in the sense of barcade brand but you know an arcade with a bar inside of it he says that's detrimental to him and what he was saying was that pinball performs much better in bars way better than if the bar had had a video game in it as opposed to the flip side which is you have no bar. The video games do really well. The pinball doesn't. And he goes, it's this weird dynamic. He also said that there was another arcade,
    12:22
    I wouldn't say necessarily in the area, but close enough to semi-colic competition, that buys all the brand new games. And he goes, I simply can't compete with them. He goes, they have the market cornered on that. I was like, isn't that interesting things to talk about? And then he was even saying about how he's talked to other pinball operators who their numbers are spectacular. And so he was like, I don't know, is it a regional thing? Is it, you know, the kind of location that you put it into? Is it your clientele? He goes, my busiest days are when I run tournaments. But he says the problem with the tournaments is that the guys that come to them are all people that own machines of their own at home. And so then they don't come for the other three weeks that he's not running a tournament. yeah so as far as a an attractive um proposition for the location yeah there's there's no repeat business from it right it's different i i really think that if you're not operating a mixed business now with an arcade your your days are numbered um you or and this is the unfortunate flip side of you need to switch to entirely redemption to get people into the door um i saw it when i went up to um a regional town here in queensland called toowoomba and visited a pinball bar um called flipped great little bar it's got a couple of beers on tap they have a diner attached you can get some basic food got a bank of about 12 pinballs including a guns and roses new guns of Roses from JJP. A whole lot of classic games up there.
    14:05
    They had a mixture of people in there. They had a birthday party going. They had just casual people like me and my mate up there just wanting to go and check it out. And then you walk into this other more traditional family entertainment centre called iPlay. And it's just wall to wall of rubbish. There's probably if I was to count the number of actual games games not redemption games that they had there we would be talking one they had a like a maximum tune or whatever it's called the midnight v whatever it's called driving game they had a pretty clapped out mario kart arcade um they had one pinball machine which was a a stern kiss um it's filthy yeah absolutely filthy you could make the ramp shots you couldn't make the lock shot i reported it um to like in a review and got a like a the typical response back from them like there's a third care like it's just it's gambling for kids these places yeah like it's it's a casino for kids and oh i saw just the most abhorrent behavior there of this family they were one of those coin pushers and they were just pumping pumping money the kids were the adults were i was disgusted at what i saw i really was i hadn't felt that gross in a venue like that for a while yeah and it just made me so uncomfortable to see just the outright gambling that was happening in this arcade it was horrible horrible to see i will also say that another factor with pinball in a lot of places if your place isn't dedicated to pinball. If you just happen to be having a couple of pinball machines. And what this guy was saying with his arcade, he goes, there is a non-tangible element with having pinball in his arcade. And that is, he said, pinball does drive business.
    16:09
    He says, people throw a quarter in the pinball machine and then go spend a whole bunch of time on the arcade machines and then come back to the pinball. He goes, it kind of draws people but it doesn't draw them to play the pinball. And he said the second factor that goes into that is he's had a lot of people, and he goes, even adults, they see the license, they walk up to it, and he says license pins do much better than non-licensed.
    16:33
    But he says they walk up to it, they put the quarter in, and then they sit there and they'll come to him and be like, hey, the machine ripped me off because they don't even know that you're supposed to push the start button. I see that all the time as well. Yeah, and then once they do push the start button, they have no clue what to do because he was like, there's all these mechanical things and obviously the lights. And if you don't, because nobody wants to read the apron, which I agree, I never read the apron.
    16:57
    You know, it's absolutely true, right? I spent $20 US on instruction cards for Force 2 and Pink Panther. Yeah. And I still had people going, no, I didn't even know there was a multiball on Pink Panther. Read the instruction card. It's written right there on how you get multiball. Come on, instructions are for suckers. We don't want to read those. We've got no time for those. Having said that, I never read the Zen instructions. Sorry to the Zen designers who take up the time writing those. I never do. Well, you know what, too? Instruction cards, it was one thing in the 90s when most of the rules could fit on the instruction card. But you look at a modern instruction card, and it's like it's barely scratching the surface. It's hardly telling you anything.
    17:39
    Really, they just need to have a QR code on there that you link off to and go to the long-form rule sheet. There should be two QR codes, one for the, I just want to flip this and sort of get a little bit of a way into it and say no, I'd like to stack modes and become like a pinball wizard. The other thing I'll say is that a lot of these arcades that do have, you know, maybe three pinball machines, odds are they're, yeah, like you said, a dirty mess, maybe a broken flipper, rubbers that aren't bouncy, they're not maintained, therefore the game's not fun, therefore nobody's playing it, and yet the operator will be like, oh, see, people don't like pinball. It's like, no, people want well-maintained running machines. They don't want to play a broken machine. It'd be the same thing of walking up to an old Street Fighter 2 and two of the buttons don't work. Well, a lot of fun that's going to be. Well, exactly right. Or the screen is so burned in you can barely tell what's what. What's going on on the screen. Yeah, exactly. Do you know that the whole... I was going down a tangent there about maintenance and stuff like that. I've forgotten what it was as you were I've completely forgotten but that's why I think that an arcade that's doing nothing but brand new machines is going to do better because the person walking in knows they're going to be playing a machine that plays like it should as opposed to walking into an arcade that has two 1980s tables and one mid-90s table and you just kind of immediately go something tells me these are not going to be well maintained Yeah, that's right. And operators, you talk to people like Jimmy and Ben who run Netherworld, and they get the new tables in because number one, that's what the customers want. They want new tables, but also they work for the most part until a node board dies in one of the sterns. But for the most part, they work. They don't cause you too much trouble. All you need to do is do the regular maintenance on them, like changing, you know, flipper mechanics occasionally just to keep the flippers well tuned. But for the most part, you don't have board problems. You don't have things going down. The gains are pretty stable. And you know this got a hand to CERN They are getting the licenses that people want to play at the moment So again the curb appeal of the pinball machine is there and people want to put money in it But this is the other thing too. I think the cost per play of pinball is another big factor. So I was talking to people at BPAC this year that come down from Melbourne in Australia and they're saying, look, you guys, you don't know how lucky you are up here. having dollar games still up here. Like, put a dollar in, you get a credit. Like, it's $2.50 down in Melbourne for a game now. $2.50. That's rough. So, and he was going to look, you know, a dollar, you have no problem just throwing the money in. And you'll probably get, you know, you'll probably get people doing multiple plays. But you put $2.50 as that opening price for a game, and you think twice about putting your money into that. So, this is another factor about, you know, operators going, oh, geez, I wonder why Pinball isn't making any money. And look, I get that, you know, Pinball machines now are at least $15,000 to buy new in Australia. You do have to raise your price, and that's totally fair to expect that, but $2 is probably the right price if you want to actually... I've seen Pinball's price at $2 in, like, the larger family entertainment centres, and I think even that Kiss game that was clapped out in rubbish up at iPlay, that was I think $2 on Swipe so you know it's funny because you know back in my arcade days the 90s obviously $2 gave you 5 games on the pinball machine that's how many credits that was worth yeah that's right yeah so alright let's shift gears here let's go to one of the topics that was on our title card there so we apparently stepped in it.
    21:54
    Oh yeah, we did. We probably received the most comments and the most interaction on Blackade video ever with our last episode. Which was sad because that was one episode that I wasn't there for the live chat on.
    22:10
    Yeah. Yeah, we're talking about we had David from Retro Played come on here. and the we were barraged with how dare yous and how could you possibly have this pariah on your show look folks as we've stated many times as we stated in that show we are not involved with the vpx community we don't know what's going on in the vpx community we don't know who your enemies are all we know is what attracted our attention um 90 of what we were talking about was his machines yeah i don't and here's my question that kind of goes out uh does the vpx community has a problem with his machines and what his builds are um does the vpx community have any uh vpin manufacturer that they actually like and support?
    23:13
    Because by the sounds of some of the comments we were getting, the answer is no. There's always this... I read in the comments, like the comments, one of the comments says, and you did have to read through the comments because some of them were very long.
    23:28
    But if you did read the comments, one person said that, look, they don't have any problem with David's cabinet builds. they do have a problem with them putting the VPN tables software preloaded on there that was their point that they were making so I don't think anyone in the VPX community has an issue with cabinet builders building cabinets for people there's a lot of people out there in the community that would prefer people to do the work themselves And, you know, one person made the point that if you build your own cabinet, you can upgrade it and incrementally improve it as you go on, which is a valid point. But I'll say this, I don't have time to do that. So if I would like to incrementally improve, like I'm flat out actually getting around to doing my real Pymor machines and getting those service. Yeah. Australian dollar prices aside. So for me building a cabinet from scratch, I mean, Zen did it recently on their string, right? They built one. Yeah. And it took them a long time. So if you don't have the time to do that, then this is where these companies come in. They just get you a cabinet that's built, it's got good hardware in it, it's got all the interface boards in it that are already readily available that you'd be using anyhow. And your job's done. You plug it in and you turn it on and off you go. Yeah.
    25:02
    So anyway, for people wondering how dare we, well, that's why we dared. Because to us, we've had, you know, we also had, I'm forgetting his name. I won't say Greg, but I'm not sure if that's it, from VP Cabs on also. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it would be ages ago. Ages ago. But, you know, we're willing to talk to, and we've, you know, we've talked to Arcuda. Not that anything's come of it in terms of a machine. No. But, you know, we're happy to talk to these cabinet builders.
    25:34
    As far as the other comments, and you touched upon it, Jared, had to do with preloading these with tables that are sourced from the community. And, yes, that is where there is for sure a problem. I don't agree with being able to buy a hard drive that just happens to have all these tables on them, because we all know that's the old, oh, you're buying a flash drive, and it just happens to have all these movies on it, too. Oops. Yeah, that's right.
    26:11
    That's definitely a shady practice right there. But that wasn't necessarily what the comments were talking about either. The comments did not like the idea of David's store and how it was making it easy to download all of these things. They felt that he was taking some of their intellectual property.
    26:36
    Which, again, there's where I just kind of went, well, are you selling your intellectual property? Have you copyrighted your intellectual property? or are you merely angry that somebody made it so that they don't have to visit all these websites in order to download this stuff that is free to anybody, you know, freely available, I should say, to anybody to grab?
    27:03
    We did ask, we sent a message to David just to ask, and he did say that authors and stuff are credited within his store. so at least author credit is going there but then the comment was yes but some of these authors only upload to specific sites to which again I go well why is that is there something about these sites that the author specifically only wanted to be there how were they profiting I think it was an issue of control they want to be able to control how these files are actually obtained, it's hosted, and then made available to people. To what extent? Again, I'm curious about. Now, we did comment that, hey, if anybody wants to come and talk about this, we'll entertain that. We did have a response. It's just been slammed busy. Haven't had a chance to respond to that. Haven't had a chance to set up an episode where we can do that. and we're still interested in doing exactly that. I'll also point out there's a really good article that just got posted up on This Week in Pinball from some VPX developers that breaks down exactly how and what goes into making one of these tables.
    28:27
    Look, it's a lot of slog work. There's no doubt about it. A lot of effort goes into it, and I think everybody appreciates that effort that goes into it. but it does come off interesting just in terms of, um, when it comes to fair use, let's put it to you that way. Uh, being able to use licensed copyrighted material, IPS that do not belong to them simply because they're stating, well, we're not profiting off of them.
    28:59
    Um, yeah, you're not profiting off of them necessarily, but that doesn't mean you have ownership over them. either, as far as I know. No. So I wanted to specifically read something here that they posted within that Twitch, or Twitch, that Twip article.
    29:23
    So for instance, this is, they're talking about how they actually contacted one of the developers of Total Nuclear Annihilation and got his permission. and got many files sent to them to recreate TNA as a digital file, which is, that's the appropriate way to go about things, to secure permission from the IP, which is fantastic. But then I'll quote this directly. It says, however, we try to make this work for everyone and stick to fair use doctrine as close as possible.
    30:00
    Fair use doctrine is a whole other subject. um and as you guys know we love talking licensing here we've had many many many many many discussions with many many different people um we feel we have a decent grasp on it but obviously we don't know the legal ins and outs um no because we are not lawyers no but we've reached out to some of the people that we've contacted in the past about licensing just you know we feel we understand certain things. Anyway, continuing. For example, we don't recreate games that are still in production by the manufacturer.
    30:35
    Okay. So in other words, they're not trying to compete directly with Stern or JGP or Spooky as soon as the table comes out. They're going to wait until they've put it in the vault, stopped making it, and then they're going to come out with their recreation.
    30:50
    And we're convinced that playing a good recreation is like a gateway drug. Now you really want to play the real thing. Look, me and Jaren can attest to this. Absolutely. Neither of us owned a machine until we were playing Pinball Arcade. Yeah. Totally got us wanting to have our own machines. Yes, it can be a gateway drug, for sure. For sure. Yeah.
    31:15
    The assertion is backed by dozens of community managers who've gotten to pinball on their PC and now on one or multiple real machines. There are also commercial studios producing digital pinball games, such as Zen with their pinball effects series. We have a good relationship with them. So do we.
    31:31
    For example, they are supporting virtual pinball players by providing features for our cabinets and such as portrait view. Yes, absolutely they are. And the support goes both ways. In the past, we've relicensed the pin name source code when possible to allow for its commercial usage. Now, the assumption there is that it's basically saying that this has been done for Zen. Jared, I think you agree with me our assertion is that was what was done for Farsight we know for a fact that Farsight did engage with the Pinmain designers and maintainers to actually get their engine license in a way they could use it commercially the license that was originally attached to the Pinmain did not allow them to do that and so they broke the deal to do that. So that's true, but I don't know of any such agreement with Zen. Right. So it's kind of implied, but I don't know exactly if that is the case or not. If somebody absolutely 100% knows this to be truth, then feel free to message us and let us know that so that we can include that in our thought processes here.
    32:48
    But when it comes to IPs, folks, there's a reason why everybody's so skittish about all this and that's because it's you are using an ip that you don't have permission to use um and when it comes to digital pinball the amount of money that farsight paid the amount of money that zen is currently paying to license all the Williams and Bally tables is not chump change in the least. And I hate to say it, but these free tables, digital tables, are in direct competition with Zen. Now, you may say, no, that's not true, that's not true.
    33:32
    We have heard multiple times when we talk about a new table that's coming out for pinball effects that is a Williams or Bally table. And people go, eh, it's utter crap. I'll just stick to VPX. Well, that's competition, isn't it? And you can hide behind fair use all you want, but the truth is you're still directly in competition.
    33:56
    And I surmise that the only reason why those VPX tables are getting away with it is because it's not a big enough dent to cause scientific games to perk up their ears and go, hey, wait a second, because they've got all their casino business that they're running also. You know what I mean? That's right. It's a little bit like if you're talking about people going against using a license and not using the license and not paying for it. It's a little bit like, I imagine, if you use a shopping analogy, someone stealing a roll of Lifesavers from a shop versus someone taking the cash register and walking out the shop with it. it's still technically classed as you know taking IPs that aren't theirs and using them but it's not a big enough deal to go and pursue I can even state this with regards to there was a it was this fabled screening I believe it was the actor Topher Grace re-edited all three Star Wars prequels into one movie into a two and a half hour long movie. Everybody that saw it raved, said it was amazing. Such a great condensation or condensing of everything. Made them all enjoyable. That thing is not available anywhere. He has kept it under lock and key. He will only, he'll do free screenings for friends and stuff like that. But he even said, he basically was like, yeah, I let Lucasfilm know about it and they let me know in no uncertain terms that that thing better not ever see the light of day beyond who he shows it to. So it better not be passed around and screened and all of a sudden be widely available on the internet.
    35:55
    Yeah. Otherwise it will be provenance. Yeah. Yes. So that's what I relate this all to in terms of the IP with these tables. and a lot of these VPX authors, they create their own original table, so they're not doing a Williams or a Bally rip-off.
    36:17
    Those are the ones that seem to be quite available through, like when we were entertaining the idea of, like we were saying, it's hard to get tables for VPX, and one of the commenters in the YouTube said, look, it's not you install Peanut Popper, and you can download the games directly from Peanut Popper, but, and again, I have not done this, so I can't equivocally say this is the case, but I would imagine those are not Belly Williams tables. Those are recreations of EMs,
    36:51
    own creations that table developers have made themselves, you know, with a mixture of arguably material that could be considered copyrighted. Well, and I was just going to say, one of the original tables that I remember playing was a Wallace and Gromit table. It was fantastic. It had sound clips.
    37:14
    The artwork was fantastic. But he didn't own the Wallace and Gromit IP. No. And I doubt that he'd gotten permission to use it.
    37:24
    So that's where it ultimately comes down to. Hey, if you want to create your own IP and copyright that, then I feel that you have every claim in the world to say, hey, I don't want my material being distributed where I didn't say it. And you have every right to do that because you created it. Well, now you know how the original IP holders feel.
    37:44
    And even though these people are saying within the VPX community that they have reached out and contacted a certain IP, something tells me they've not reached out to any of the major studios and asked for their permission with movie licenses. Something tells me they have not reached out to Scientific Games. Um, and why do I know that? Because Zen has an exclusive license on all things, Williams and Bally.
    38:06
    So, yeah, you know, I'm pretty sure those aren't available to you. Yeah. So that's why it's, it's a little weird to me and Jared to be inundated with how dare yous when we can turn the finger right around and be like, well, how dare you?
    38:25
    Um, yeah, you know, where do you, you're, claiming fair use doctrine, but on the other hand, you also know that you're skirting a very razor thin margin of what you can get away with and what you can't.
    38:41
    And fair use really isn't a loophole. It's only fair use until you get caught, I think is the rule. So let's hope that never happens, because circling back to the original introductory parts of this thing, but the work that the VPX community does is quite incredible. Oh, it's amazing. The creations and the hard work that people put into not only the table recreations, but let's not forget the actual engine that powers this thing. Oh, yeah. Again, read that Twip article, and it's mind-blowing the amount of hours you know are spent doing this. It really is. It's staggering. And I know community-led projects like this are only possible because of the passion of the community that's behind them. So we're not suggesting at all that, you know, that shouldn't be considered. It's just that when we're talking about, you know, the issues of licensing, that's where it gets a little bit prickly. And I think we both feel the same way.
    39:47
    Look, the argument of, look, we preserving pinball history for machines that are very hard to come by have long since been you know dustbin that people haven seen in years and years and years Look I fully understand and I love that sentiment I really do
    40:08
    We all say Zen can't produce tables fast enough. Farsight couldn't produce tables fast enough. We love, you know, because we've seen the VPX community where virtually every table already has been recreated in one form or another.
    40:23
    It's a little bit hard to take that step back and go, well, now we're back to only having 20 available, you know, when it first started.
    40:31
    But that's where there is that factor of you kind of have to respect, again, those IPs. So, I don't know. It's a weird discussion. It's one that we were worried about as soon as those comments started flowing in. We were like, uh-oh, what have we done? But again, you've got to cuss a little bit of slack.
    40:58
    We don't know your community. So that's why we dared. Again, you want to communicate to us who in the cabinet world we should be talking to instead? Let us know. who is it that is a champion you know championed by the VBX community that is doing it right by you guys which commercial pinball cabinet manufacturer is doing the right thing tell us and we'll talk to them all we were pointing out was this was something that finally got us interested in VBX to solve the problem that we felt we were having yeah and that's like purely from and this is a classic example of, you know, folks like us who were, you know, from the VPX side of things, quite naive coming into it going, wow, this is a problem that we've already felt. We always felt was a problem. We don't know anything else, um, about the matter. So this solves a problem. Let's talk about it. Yeah. You know, that was the whole point of that thing. The fact that it evolved into something else was in itself good in the fact that it's it's the conversation we had in that video and the discord that we had sometimes it was pretty heated but like once we got down to me asking the right question about so help us understand what's going on here we started to get some really good discord going on in the comments there so i thank people who took a step back and and talked about this more rationally with us in in the comments because that was really interesting and then i just wonder if this if this article on twit was a result in part of that to sort of shine a light more on what the vpx community actually does and how they bring tables to life yeah yeah um so i mean that's that's great i'm very i'm sure it's not the reason why that article exists but well i know that obviously i've written articles for uh this week in pinball also and uh I let Jeff know there that, cause he had asked me to write something about VPX and I just said straight out, I go, I don't know anything about it. Um, you don't want me writing an article about it cause it'll be completely naive and simplistic and exactly the kind of article I hate. So I'm glad somebody else finally stepped up and wrote exactly that kind of thing. Um, and hopefully we didn't just like kick the hornet's nest again. Cause that's not our intention. Oh, I'm sure we did. It's not our intention. We basically want to point out that there's a whole other side to it community that is an elephant in the room that you all know about. So consider that too.
    43:49
    Yeah. I'm sure we're going to get comments, but whatever. Yeah, we'll work on having some people actually come on and maybe we can have a sane discussion. We don't want to be – we like to play devil's advocate now and then. but we also don't want to be just like those guys.
    44:07
    So, hey, let's shift gears here. We're going to go into a little bit of a let's play, shall we? Let's play. Let's play a thing. So Zen came out with a new original table, and I think me and Jared both agree that it's tickling the sensibilities that we've been asking Zen to do for some time. Oh, yeah. It's got a lot of boxes ticked in this particular one. Yeah. So let's dive right into this thing. We're going to be playing Grim Tales.
    44:45
    Yeah, this is a brand new table by one of the new developers. Yes, this is Zoltan Pazopetaki. Another Zoltan. I can't say Zoltan anymore. I looked it up. Apparently Zoltan is a very popular name.
    45:08
    Wait, what's going on? Why is this? Unknown Air? Oh, my goodness. Let's try this again. Airwarp. It looks like Airwarp. I noticed all your tables are breaking out. Hold on, Jared. I'm going to get out of this real quick because apparently something has happened. Your internet is gone. well you know I had this all set up for quite a while here and we were talking about stuff it's all our fault normally we do playthroughs as the only point in the show but there was a little bit of other stuff we need to talk about in the show I'm gonna ignore the man behind the curtain I'm gonna put me up on screen just so you can feel my struggle the struggle is real trying to get things set up right yeah let's get this thing up and running properly uh that was kind of funny yeah probably timed out with with oh yeah yeah you probably would have yeah now the grim tales they've they've done a good job we could talk about the high points in it and then show the high points but you know there's informative insert lighting there's call outs about shots now finally this the first time asking for yeah it's even even in the dmd or the video screen i should say um yeah it's telling you in spine print what ramps to shoot for yeah and it's always there on the screen so you never go oh gee what what do i need to shoot for right it's there and it's just it's meant that this game i think out of all the zine originals is by far my favorite no wow um it's by far it beats anything else out there because it actually feels like a real commercial machine there we go now it's gonna run hey look at that I'm so thankful look the playfield view right they put playfield art up they got a back glass going on it's like thank you look at that looks like a machine that you would actually see in the arcade yes and I know that they've been doing that recently with their stuff and it's just one of those things I've got to keep on plotting before that.
    47:22
    Because they don't have to, technically. But the fact that there's a room for this, I still really wish they'd apply the same room to all the Bellyloons tables. I really wish we had just the room, not the
    47:35
    the Williams casino. Right. But anyhow, here we are. There we are. So we've got a... I did notice one thing this time. the Grim Tales like very thoughtful doesn't really influence some things it actually obscures the explainer a little bit right if we look at it because I was trying to see who the designer was and it blocks the designer yeah it's like close the book but hey you go over here at least you can see the additional artwork and the character artist that's right you need to be able to close the book and move it elsewhere you know what would be really good is if oh no I guess it wouldn't work that way but I mean you could have the book open up to the left of the table but then it sort of breaks the illusion of the book being integrated as part of the life on the glass yeah it would be good to maybe I don't know make the book transparent if you zoom in close enough or something like that or at least close at some point or just put the table designer information somewhere else right so speaking of I'm just going to call him Pazzo because again, this now marks the third Zoltan that Zen has or has had as a designer. We can't keep calling everyone John because there's too many Johns.
    49:01
    But I was, before I could tell who this was, I was like, this feels like a deep table. I was going to say I thought it was deep, because then I saw DEP and the high school table and I thought oh, it's a deep table, because it feels like one. Yeah, it's got that very bouncy feel, the ball is very wild, the layout feels kind of similar to the kind of things that he does. It's totally a medieval madness, that's for sure. It's got a little medieval, for sure. Big fan layout, basically.
    49:33
    Even the drop target, the pop-up area is in the same position as Medieval Madness and Attack of the Mars. You've got a big bash toy in the middle. That being said, the upper play field with those flippers is nothing of the sort.
    49:49
    Well, no, that's true. But, you know, I really like the layout of the game. I love the theme integration in this. Yeah, right there we've got a little bit with the little Theater of Magic mirror action.
    50:07
    Yeah, that's exactly what I thought when I saw it. How are you hitting this shot, Jared? Because I suck. Oh, rubbish. Rubbish. Added. Absolutely terrible. There needs to be more of a warning or an audio cue for when that ball is going to release. Yeah. That's exactly right. Because it needs to be... Is there... I forget. Is there like a mechanical sort of eject noise that happens when that... It is, but it's not... It's like there's still a pause after it.
    50:37
    I'm having a really hard time getting the timing on it. One thing that Belly Williams tables do good, look at the strobing flasher. It goes bling bling bling bling bling. And then it's, you know, I hit it, but it's such a narrow window for hitting. I'm gonna try something else, see if I get that shot up again. And that is, I'm gonna change the view. Hmm, okay. So... And that's pretty far away. So you wanna see if, like, changing your view is what where it zooms in? Because it worked on... what table did that work on? I want to say Mandalorian, but I don't think that was the one I was thinking of. Okay, hold on.
    51:15
    See if this works. View 1. That won't work very well. Nope, it didn't. View 1 won't work. It'll need to be like view 4 or view 5 that zooms in and follows the ball around. Oh no, why are the balls aren't visible? Because there's one of your inner mode where the witches enchant the ball and like play tricks on you to try and make you lose the ball. That didn't work. I'll say this. It's a lot better playing this particular tape with ball trails on for that very reason. Because you can at least see the shadow of the ball like zooming around the playfield. You can track it. So that's a bit of a hack I found when playing this game. Yeah, ball trails can be useful. I hate ball drills though yeah well I hate not being able to see the ball more true so like you know that's one of the things I turn off instantly in theater of magic yeah but see in theater of magic it's a false mode whereas this it's obviously integrated in yeah it's designed to be part of the game theater of magic I always felt was like why would I dare hamper my play for false difficulty yeah which wasn't in the original game or wasn't intended to be the original game So you'll notice the flashing light right there to the left of the castle. That there would be basically your mode start. Yeah, which was a little bit hard to work out initially, but you get... you find out pretty quickly. I'll just say I'm like... have not played this game hardly at all, so... Yeah, there's not been many world record attempts here when I've been playing this. But one thing I really, really enjoy with this game is when you get into multiple, which is incredibly fun, by the way. The multiple in this game is a blast to play. But when you're going for, like, double jackpot and super jackpot, you get to use the upper playfield flippers to do that, and there's some massive points available in those two rounds. So when you're going for double jackpot, you use the upper left flipper there to shoot just behind the castle, and it goes to that upper right flipper there which you probably wouldn't even realise was there until you start flipping it because it doesn't really stand out but once you're there you go oh that flipper then leads you into a super jackpot shot and it's incredibly satisfying when you nail it for the first time so yeah the way they've done those upper two flippers they're limited use but when you using it feels really good to flip it up there. So I quite like that feature. That's impossible! I've got a timer going on. I might destroy the rose bushes. Where are the rose bushes? Oh those are the rose bushes. Yeah they're too flashing white. Yeah I'll get them. Not those two. Oh. Not those two. I'm looking. It's a really tight shot up there. That's one. Yeah, yeah, it's real tight. I love the spinners and they sort of make butterflies as well. Like it's just, they've really gone... This is a good example, I think, of using the digital effects in the game to really enhance the gameplay. Like, we're not talking about characters jumping around the screen like a lot of Belly Williams ones. This is really tight integration. Um, and just subtle things. Like a really good shot. Um, really... ah, that'd be right. Um, yeah. I really like around the back there where you see the the mirror. All the like the fireflies flying around instead of like, yeah, you know, just flitting around. It's like, it really does feel like an enchanted forest. Really nice use of lighting. It feels like a really nice... Yeah.
    55:15
    Let's have a look at the... The inserts are very noticeable. Like right now we see Sleeping Beauty is flashing. That's impossible!
    55:24
    Which, you know, rather than just generic graphic images or whatever, it's like I appreciate being able to read what it is that I'm playing in. Yeah.
    55:34
    No! Oh man, I only had one rose bush to smash left. Is that game over? Nope, I still got more. So by the looks of it, the tale continues, even after... It does, yeah. So you continue where you left off, so you don't die immediately like you often do in the actual games in the arcade, which is good. I think it's good that you also don't get trapped in mode hell as well, great purgatory. So sometimes in these games where you continue your mode, or the ball, you've got to finish the mode in order to progress, but unless you do, nothing else is available on the table. Like you can't go for multi-ball, you can't do anything, you just do the mode or do nothing. Having done that though in Dreams Tales, you can actually do other things with shot. So now you can lock the ball in the castle, it's blinking, see how it's like a really nice apparent flash just in the castle gate. Yeah. So there we go. There you go. One of seven balls. Holy crap. One of seven balls. So you basically got to complete all seven modes to get the wizard mode, I think. And see how there's now a ball floating in the castle? It's actually locked up in there. Oh, yeah. Hovering in one of the windows. So that's basically indicating how many modes you've completed. Now, I don't know if you need to complete the modes all together to actually get an achievement or progress towards a wizard mode, but I have a feeling that because they let you continue ball-to-ball, you actually do. So you need to shoot the shots, complete all the lit shots, and then qualify in Castle to actually get one of those modes. So I'll just point out there, right there, I was not sure where to shoot, and it said shoot the left orb, and I was like, thank you, I don't know exactly what that did for me, but it was like, that's the kind of call-out that I like. Because I literally was starting to, I was looking around the table going, well, I see a flashing thing, you know, to a captured ball there at the gingerbread house, I'm not sure what that's doing, I'm not quite sure exactly how to be able to start a new mode,
    57:48
    but... You know what I think it is? I think it actually, if you haven't shot a required shot for a certain amount of seconds, that's when you get a shoot here prompt. Oh, okay. So I actually think it's actually after a certain number of seconds that the game tries to help you out.
    58:09
    Which is good for a theme like this, because this is obviously another theme that is going to be aimed at all ages. which you can tell by the music and the sound effects and stuff that it's not meant to be totally evil grim fairy tales yeah that's right, let's be serious grim tales are not the most pleasant tales they're pretty dark like the real ones the ones that aren't Disney-fied they're hardcore so it's good that they went for the softer approach to make it a little bit more accessible As you can see there, the geometry is such that it's like a real table. Ooh, that was close! Right? You really shat past that one! Oh, nice. Just the tip. Alright, where am I heading now? The castle. There we go. I'm getting better. Just in this limited amount of time.
    59:14
    Yeah, that's right. So... The player's gone, there we go. And this is the other thing I like... Ow! Yes! Those slingshots are brutal. They are. They're very, very tight slingshots, which again, makes the ball feel wild and makes it quite hard. Now, we're playing on the classic mode at the moment. It'd be interesting to play as an arcade with rewind and all the different power-ups and see... Oh, right. ...what that's like. Because I often find that you play it on the classic mode and it's a bit of a different feel. But I haven't done that yet. I had the Giltlings from the Wolf I might see the Giltlings Oh hey that new I haven seen this mode That cool It like a duck mode We do like the paper cutouts in games It paper cutouts mode There's got to be a wolf.
    60:05
    Yeah, so I'm wondering if it's don't hit the wolf. Or hit the wolf. Or do you have to... Well, it's saying hit the goats on the screen. Hit the goats, Chris. Chris, hit the goats. Okay, I'm trying. Give me a break.
    60:21
    See, I can't... as everyone will know, I don't get any sound, so I'm just basically... Just make my own noise. It's good. Adding value to the show, because I can't hear it. Oh, now I get to hit the wolf. Oh, nice shot. The goatlings let in the wolf, locked the wolf. And there you go, castle's open again. Get it in there. Get it in there! If I can hit this dead center shot that... well that did something. Oh that's a different kind of ball. Well fair enough. I mean you needed that anyhow so why not do it now. Nice use of the dead bounce. There we go. Oh there we go. Look now you've got two balls in the castle. Hooray!
    61:14
    That's good. Now what? Now how do you qualify mode? Do you have to shoot the captive ball to get the money? I don't know I
    61:22
    Hit it one time and it didn't do anything for me. I Think you've got to hit that captive ball to realize the mode
    61:30
    It's a healthy good thing. It's a brutal shot to try and do but right now I'm gonna go for that blinking
    61:36
    Yeah, shoot the flashing shot You can do it Okay, you're gonna shoot that two more times. No you did you go It tells you. Seven more to destroy the castle gate.
    61:52
    There you go. Shoot the mirror. Now you can shoot. Crystal multiball. I was saying something about shooting the mirror. Oh, hello.
    62:04
    Yeah, you got crystal multiball. Like, it does what it says in the box. See? Way to drain. Everyone to the clubhouse.
    62:16
    Is that what we're calling it? Oh, look. That's what it's called, yeah. Everyone to the clubhouse. That's where all the balls trade at once. Apparently I've got two balls locked. I need to lock this third one again, I imagine.
    62:28
    Oh, look. It's the dragon. Flying around. Look at him. She's flying around really quick. Yeah, she is. She's really zooming around. I'm going to try and get that ramp and see why it's flashing like crazy.
    62:41
    Oh, good juggle. Did I get a shoot and shot? Oh, you missed it. Yeah, you gotta trap up on the... No. Yeah, okay. Well, so much for that. Yeah, derp. We missed everything! We did miss everything. That was ugly. So what I do with that, again, obviously,
    63:01
    the best thing you can do here is try and trap up and get your balls down to two balls. So you trap up on the left, shoot... Sorry, trap up on the right and shoot with the left up that ramp. and then down and... So yeah, the idea is to shoot it when it's flashing like you did, like you tried to do, but then when it's up top, you've got to shoot the flashing shot to get double jackpot. And then that carries it over to the left upper flipper, where you can have an attempt at super jackpot. Did I say double before? I meant double, then super. So yeah, and you can keep doing that over and over again if you trap up and jog your balls, which is what I was doing on a game on the press release version. I think I got about 150 million on the thing. But of course that won't reflect in any of the scoreboards because they did that on the press version.
    63:54
    But I know what to do now, so I'll just have to do it again. Now, see you hit the gingerbread house and now your mode start? No, the mode start was already lit. Oh, right, I didn't see that. It was already lit. I'm sure someone in the comments probably could more easily tell us how to... God forbid we look at the rules Oh who has time to look at the rules There was no fun in that As we were just saying Yeah all the Zim rules Curse you Flakay Shakes angry fists There we go That's not what I got to hit these orbits Oh hang on there's T-A-L-E So there's L-E Stand up. Yeah, there's the A. T-A-L-E. So that's what we use to light the demoted stand up targets. Yeah, quit telling me to hurry. I'm trying to...
    64:50
    Oh my god. Oh yeah, you get a loop. That's totally what it is. So look for the other... wherever the T target is. I don't think I, um... did well for Rapunzel there.
    65:05
    Rapunzel, Rapunzel did not look down her hand for you. Yeah, definitely there's A-L-E, so that must be a T target floating around, that's how you light the mode, I think. Oh, so it'd be the other stand up on the other side. Yeah, that's right. Right next to the A. Oh, okay, is it one to the very left there? I just can't quite see it. Instead of the... Shoot left orbit. And then I shoot a ramp instead. Shoot the desktop. Alright, tail's lit and there it goes, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's how you light your, um... your mode. Was it captive ball? No, it was the, uh, hitting the T, because I already had the A, the L, and the E done. I can't see the T. Could you, um... Where is the T target? Oh, it's right there I see yeah yeah it's right next to it yeah right I couldn't see because it wasn't lit up so there's like two there's a group of two stand-up targets ta and then le to the left of each ramp and that's what you get to start there you go you learned something today who needs the rules well and again there are certain things that should be fairly obvious if you know a little bit about pinball you should be able to figure things out you would and that's the thing that's good about this game, like, it does conform to pinball lore in the fact that it's, you know, easy to light things, and you shouldn't really have to, to play a game, you shouldn't have to first consult the rules first, you should be able to just go and, oh, I actually got a nice shot, oh, oh, see, there's the timing issue again, right, like, oh, there's a breaky light so you want to flick it yeah but at least like there is a there is a strobing light but you know think of how belly williams uh tables do that like on white water for example when it's in we go to the whirlpool and it goes to that eject hole down there the flippers it's like and it like ascends to the point where you know as soon as it hits that crescendo that's when it's going to eject so this would be the only point that i could say um for zen designers moving forward put those sort of cues in the game as well. So, there's a consistent noise, or there's a consistent tone, or there's like, you know, on three bings, like bing, bing, bing, eject, you know, like bing, bing, bing, eject, so you can time it right.
    67:37
    That would be a real handy addition. So I wanted to show Brad a pinbot since that's the other new thing that's been out recently. We didn't get a chance to do this. Yeah. This thing looks gorgeous.
    67:51
    Doesn't it? Especially when you compare it to the Pinball Arcade version, which had a lot of low-res textures on it.
    68:00
    The integration that Zen did with the enhanced visuals is spot-on. Yeah. Really nice. I love that ride over there. I would love to see a bigger version of that model. Well, I'll just point this out. I have the Williams enhancement turned off in terms of zooming in. So it does actually zoom in on her. Yeah. If you have that on. I just don't like that effect. Yeah, it breaks the illusion. It does.
    68:34
    But see that feed from that right loop? Do that feed again and trap the ball. For the right loop? The right loop. You know, where the white flashing 25k is. Oh, the 25k. Okay, I'll try that. Yeah, the one that lights the jackpot. Alright. Basically.
    68:50
    I'll get there, don't worry. Third time's a charm. Now, trap. See how it returns to there? Yeah. And it, like, it comes with dead stock. Yeah. Never seen any table do that in real life. Like, it never comes and drops right back there. Oh, that does do it. Just an interesting, like, it falls into a pocket almost. It's literally like there's a magnet there. and it stops it which is not how the real table functions put my nerd glasses on and say it's not how it really happened well not on any of the tables that I've played including the one at the pack that I've played recently it does not feed back to that point yeah because it really does it feel like it's just like gluing itself like you don't even need to catch it you just have a good strong shot in there and it'll go back straight there just above the heel of the flipper you can shoot it so reliably so that's that needs to be made more wild the other thing that I find interesting is that when you shoot it up through the spinner and it comes back down that bit, that gate that's supposed to make the ball fall back into the correct position it's really dead there's no bounce to it at all and the ball normally when it comes down back through that thing it'll hit that bit of spring metal and bounce back up sort of more towards the spinner and it's just not doing that at the moment. It feels like there's no there's just no sort of spring to it. It's like it did a dead sort of thing to it. So yeah, that's definitely not how the original play is. I verified that literally this week. So like what it just did right there where it just kind of hit. It flops. Yeah, it should It should have some spring on the return. Like, the ball hits up against that. It's actually a one-way gate, so it should actually be dealing with the spring on the way through there. So that's the other point. Other critique I have of the tuning piece. Just those two things. And back to there. Ah! Ooh, lost it. Lost it. Yep.
    71:06
    So, yeah. Other than that, though... The only other grape, and I'll see if I can get it, is that floating apple there to the right. I get why the apple is there, but thematically, I don't like it.
    71:24
    Yeah. I would have rather had the atom in the chalice kind of thing. And if I can get it to go over there, you'll hear the oddest sound. It does not belong. It's the same sound that you get when Deep throws his golf club. in No Good Gophers. Yeah. What shot do I need to do to make it go there, Jared? I forgot. You've got to shoot the left ramp and get it through the pinbot lane and then from the pinbot lane get it through the right-hand entry and that'll go boing-oing-oing-oing for you. All right. Let's see if we can get there. The sound effect that you want.
    72:04
    Go on. There we go. There we are. Listen. Bam! That's just terrible. That's not within theme of the game. Not at all. Any other noise. Like even someone biting the apple. Right? Just something. But that just... That's just... That's like my only gripe of the entire thing. Otherwise, I think they did a... Literally every other enhancement is amazing in this game. But that... Honestly, put that apple... It doesn't even need to be there. No, and that's the weirdest thing. You're right. It's completely superfluous and doesn't need to be there and doesn't add anything. In fact, it detracts from what is an amazing, well-done, nicely- I mean, you've got a floating space shuttle right there.
    72:50
    Yeah, you don't need another thing right there. No. The space shuttle's fine. Yeah. I put so much time into this game when it came out on Pinball Arcade. Oh, yeah. It's just- The thing that's interesting is you- It doesn't hand out the billionaire shots that often when I've been playing it. Like, sometimes in the Pimble I paid version, you'll get a guaranteed billionaire. Oh, yeah.
    73:17
    First time round, because the ROM resets each time. But I have a feeling that whatever they've got the ROM set to here, it doesn't... I think the percentage of getting a billionaire shot is low. I will say, if there's one thing I miss from TPA, it's the eyeball balls, because I always played with those, and it just cracked me up to have her have those lock in.
    73:41
    Yeah. That is good. Oh, crap. Oh! Just let that settle for a bit. Alright. You'll notice, folks, I don't nudge.
    73:57
    No, I don't really nudge either. I am not a nudger. I've never been. I've never even been in real life. I just, I don't know. It's an art that I never mastered.
    74:11
    Yeah, it's all about the trick. See that? That's like... Oh! Yep, that one. Oh, you did. I saw that happening. There's no way you can escape that one. Nope. That was going down. It was predetermined. Yep, it was. Toasty, toasty, toasty. Goodbye. That's the game, right? Yep. Do I get initials? I get initials, yay! Oh, I should say, at least the initials work again. Last time I played this, the initials didn't work. Yeah, you could only put in one, and then this would just go over. So I fixed that, which is good.
    74:50
    But anyway, I wanted to show this off just in case people hadn't seen it yet, because it was really good. The other thing I really love about this... So the other thing I really love about the Bright Up Pinbot and all the alphanumeric tables is that you don't get any drop frames from the Alpha Numeric display like you did on Farsight's recreations. Like Farsight, when they had all theirs, they were like, because the way they were animating the Alpha Numeric display, they had to animate each segment separately. It was a massive performance hit on their engine. And so they were dropping animation frames everywhere in it to try and make it work and be more performant. But there's no such sacrifice in this. the alphanumeric actual, it looks like glass like the alphanumeric displays actually have that feeling of a glass display it's just really nice, it's very authentic, really really good So we'll see what tricks Zen has coming up for us now after the Grimm table, it's nice, I mean I love getting these tables a month, it's great It's really good, yeah I mean not only does it give us something to talk about but it's also really fun and you know it keeps the platform fresh uh you know we keep and the quality on these has been really nice um yeah we haven't seen a drop in quality for each of these releases it's only been an improvement in the standard so yeah that's pretty good and so obviously we're seeing uh you know these new designers come in i think we've gotten four now for new designers.
    76:27
    Nazmel had stated they're looking to have a total of 12 up and running. So, if this is any indication of the talent pool that they're pulling from, you know, everybody's been putting in nice stuff so far. Real nice stuff. Yeah.
    76:43
    We'll see. Do we know what, do we know what's next? Is it a Williams table on the horizon? I don't remember if they've seen past July for what the next stuff is.
    76:59
    I would say that the next Pinball show will probably tell us something new and shiny. Yeah, but I mean, we haven't gotten a roadmap, is what I'm saying. We knew that before it was, oh, there's going to be a Zen Original, two Williams, the Zen Original, which I think we're at right now. Beyond that, I don't think we've gotten a further roadmap. I know that... Pinball This 45B sent me a link to an image, I guess one of the, it's a collectible in the game or whatever, but it was over roller skating. He's like, roller games? I'm like, we can hope, but I have no idea.
    77:32
    And I wouldn't think that it would be available now as an option. I don't know. We'll see. Interesting. Yes, yes, yes.
    77:43
    So, again, folks, we'll look forward to reading what the comments are. Be nice, please. Yeah. But you can send those comments, obviously, to our Twitter handle there, at Blockade, or you can email us blahblahblockade at gmail.com.
    78:03
    Trying to think where we're going from here. Oh, I know what I wanted to say also. If you do enjoy what we were just doing here, where we had discussion, followed by a little bit of gameplay, let us know, so that we can maybe do more gameplay. It's easy enough to set up, and I can do more. Or if you just want exclusively gameplay, now and then, you know. I'll just say, dedicated let's play episode without us wrapping on about rubbish. Well, we're still going to wrap it on about rubbish, but it'll be during gameplay. Exactly. Or maybe you guys want to throw out a challenge to me. Jared's not the one that's going to be playing because it's got to be running on my computer. Yes, you want to throw out a challenge if you want us to play live in a tournament now that those are up. Maybe we can do that.
    78:49
    Like I said, let us know and we'll cater to that kind of thing. Again, if there's a point total you want us to do, if there's a mode you want to see, if there's, you know, whatever, we're open to that kind of experience and throwing that up on here. And it doesn't have to be limited to Pinball FX either. If there's something in Zachariah, I can bring that up also.
    79:12
    Or, you know, if there's a game that, you know, is new and you'd like us to see if we can do a review on it, let us know we'll see if we can contact the developer and get a key right similar to what we did with Gravatar there and with yeah Rollers of the Realm reunion so yeah that's right until then that's all we've got for this week next time Jared what are we talking about stuff and things probably sure why not alright folks until then bye bye
    79:48
    Thank you.