This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. Hey, you know what? Yeah, come here, kid. You, yeah, come to my van. I got some candy. While you're in there, you can watch the Blockade Podcast with your host, Shut Your Trap, that'd be me, a.k.a. Chris Frebus, and Jared Morgan. Hello, and do not want your candy. It's good candy, though. I don't care. I don't want your bread and candy. There's no razor blades in it, I swear. Oh, that's always a good thing. Positive. Safety candy. When candy goes bad. Hello everybody and welcome to another week of nonsense that is usually pinball related that oftentimes not. Yeah, just case in point. Exactly, exactly. It makes me think about the other day on set. All of a sudden, there was these heart-shaped boxes with chocolates inside of them. And I was like, it's not Valentine's Day. And then I went, something tells me the craft service lady went to the store and got some discount chocolate. Clever craft services lady. Right? Some chocolate went on clearance, and she went, yeah, I think I can scoop this up, and it'll get eaten. And sure enough, it got eaten really fast. who can't say no to free chocolate i mean seriously and and lucky for me because i didn't get there until uh most of the boxes were empty but uh people left dark chocolate and i like some dark chocolate that's the best that's the mvp of chocolate right there like that is the best especially when you're talking about these uh you know seize candy like boxes um i don't you know milk chocolate is fine but i don't really care for it when it's got stuff jammed inside of it you don't like those but the dark chocolate oh good flavors yep it's like anything with dark chocolate whatever's inside it is even better it's like making a toasted sandwich or a jaffle you know it turns boring cheese and ham into something amazing when you heat it up it's the same with black chocolate dark chocolate yeah it's amazing how many people absolutely can't stand dark chocolate and i don't understand why they can't stand it but they're lost my game That's all I can say. Your game, both in the mouth and in the waist. Everywhere in this world. Exactly. So, we have a bit of a correction to make, and this is where we say thank you to our listeners, because sometimes me and Jared like to spout off about things that we know absolutely nothing about. And then people come back to that show, actually. Yes, yes. It is a prime feature of the show. And then people go, So, you know, it's nice and all that you're talking straight out of your butt. I'm almost finished. So, Jared, please inform the fine listeners what we made an error in and what the correction is. Okay. So, in the last podcast we did, well, actually, it wasn't even the last one. It was Blackout 88, all about Arcuda and the back glass mod. we're talking about um uh the quote unquote what we call it the the camera mod thingy so technically in the show and um we had some feedback about that first of all the feedback was you're wrong and secondly they actually helped us understand why so the feedback the first piece of feedback we got was from vfp coder and he actually says the name which is no x camera mod. Thank you VFP Coda for that. In the show we suggested that the camera mod didn't really support DMD support or true DMD support for cabinets but he or she, VFP Coda clarifies that in fact with the current version of the mod the DMD is actually movable and resizable and can be placed on any monitor available inside the cabinet. But it does go to mention that the back glass is just a static PNG. So any sort of cool, flashy back glasses at this stage is not possible with NoX. But it sounds like you've got something pretty close to it if you actually use NoX on Steam. So that's pretty cool. Okay. The other one was Silver Balls, regular listener, Hi, Silver Balls. he actually says that using Freezy's DMD text and no X's board you can actually use a real DMD as well so you can get it it just takes a little bit of hand configuring your system to do it but it's possible so that's pretty exciting for those homebrew cabinet modders now Silverball also adds that ProPimble also can be used with three screens or a real DMD if you want as well. They've also got the, this is on Steam, they've also got the advantage of providing a messaging interface, which allows all the game events to work with a real pinball hardware. So things like plungers and tilt mechanisms, like digital tilt and stuff like that. So it all integrates really nicely. That's really cool. But what Silverball notes is that the one big letdown from the final pro pinball release was that the cab view isn't really a proper render. so what he means by that it's actually a software adjusted view of one of the other renders and the result of that because it's an adjusted view is that the upper play field is really really blurred what he hopes is that they'll actually release a real render at some point because he makes a note of backing the game at a high tier but he also notes that if they end up only providing, they being Pope Pinball only provide a good cab render for a cuda uh that will likely annoy he uses another word for that um a lot of people um and uh thanks for the show feedback mate you also quite enjoyed that that episode so that was good so thanks for that mate um and that is it as far as show feedback goes from the forum did you see anything on twitter or anything mate no i didn't um i was just going to comment that does make sense regarding uh pro pinball with uh that adjusted view because one of the key differences between pro pinball and pinball arcade and zen pinball is that whereas the latter two are rendering 3d images uh pro pinball used wasn't it static images um pre-rendering pre-rendering right and therefore if you try to do an alternate view and the pre-render didn't exist, then, yeah, it would be all jacked up. Yeah, right. It's got to be a specific render, which is interesting from the Arcuda perspective because they're basically going to have to do a completely separate rendering run. And I know that in the past, when we were actually waiting for ProPimball to come out, it was pretty much the main reason why the delays were happening because rendering was just taking so long on the hardware they had. So it's going to be interesting to see when Cuda actually decides to officially release this onto the platform. I mean, we really don't even know how much the platform is going to cost. So I think it is pretty early days yet. So I think they're lining everything up. And when they get things done, they'll actually talk about it more. So there you go, folks. Call us on our BS and we'll respond in kind. and deliver you more BS this episode more than likely that you can comment on next time just keep the circle flowing hey let's let's pivot here and go a little geek on the TV front here Jared and that is there's been some Doctor Who news oh is there what's going on there is so it turns out that Peter Capaldi was on some radio show I believe, and just casually was like, oh yeah, well this is my last season. Oh, and we'll win. Right, exactly. The show host was kind of like, wait, can we back up and touch upon this a little bit more? So yeah, so Capaldi's and it's not surprising because it seems like virtually all the Doctors have only done three seasons. I don't know if anybody's gone longer with the modern era. So, anyway, this has gotten people going into mad speculation as to who the next doctor will probably be. And so, obviously, there's all sorts of names being bandied about. But this is what caught my attention, Jared. Your company, Labrokes. Yeah. Apparently, you can bet on this. There's a market, isn't there? There is. And the current trend is that they're actually going to cast their first female as a doctor, and that being the actress Tilla Swinton. And the odds are currently, as provided by your company, I believe, 7 to 2. Okay. That seems kind of strong. We don't really do fractional odds, which is what those are. because Labricks UK being in Robert Englunds, they always do fractional odds rather than decimal odds, which is what most of the other, what we're used to in that sort of thing. But the 7-2 scene is pretty good. I was kind of thinking that when you were actually talking about it, then going, you know, it's probably about time that they looked at doing a female doctor, you know, or something like that, or maybe, I don't know, even a black doctor. Well, it's going with somebody like Tilda Swinton, who is very androgynous in her look, very quirky. Also, as soon as I heard it, I just kind of went, wow, that's a good fit. Yeah, absolutely. Perfect fit. It's very interesting. Not only that, but because of the way she looks, you could kind of play with gender swapping left and right. Oh, really? Interesting. Well, I mean, because there's been, I'm trying to think what movie. I think it was Snowpiercer that she was in, that she was playing a guy. Oh, really? Or is it? I might be wrong on that, but there was one movie I know that she played a guy. If you've ever seen Constantine, she's the Archangel Gabriel, I believe. Oh, right. Right. Okay. So it's really kind of an interesting thought to just kind of put somebody that's very gender neutral in their appearance. and let the doctor play off of that. And that way, I don't know, it kind of opened up some storylines, I believe. That is very interesting indeed. Of course, it would piss the hell out of Trump, and he'd probably ban it from being aired in America. But, you know. Yeah. But, you know, you can mouth-breath the second case about him. Exactly. So, yeah, I thought that was an interesting little piece of geek news that popped up this week. Very interesting. Back to some pinball. So this week, Farsight dropped on us the next table, that being Cactus Jacks. Yeah. And to all of you that were screaming, hey, there are still some good Gottliebs out there. One of them is Cactus Jacks. To you, I say, F off. Well, I was going to say what you were doing. Only about five minutes of listening to polka music was more than enough for me and going, so there's like two shots on this table? We? Yeah, what is it? That left sort of ramp that curls around, which is like fun for the first five shots. You go, oh, that's cool. It's like invert. Cool. And then you've got the other big ramp, which is basically like the – I'll continue with this thread and then go back to that one later. I'll park that. So, yeah, the other ramp, which just leads up to the top and drops through the holes again. And is it just me, or is the bonus multiplier lights completely and utterly a mindfrak to you? No, I figured them out. I figured them out. Yeah, I just went off and put their options in the wrong. Let's just start this. Lest we think that we're bagging on Fireside, apart from their choice of the table, we can bag on that all we want. but as is par for the course these days with Farsight they're handling the graphics on these tables wonderfully it's a very vibrant looking table it looks really good the saturation is great yeah the dancing characters on it look great so no really good job on their part but let's bag on a Gottlieb premiere shall we because we love doing that so okay For those that aren't aware, with Cactus Jack in the center of the play field, there is a whole bunch of rings of colored lights to do a wonderful dancey light show, which Gottlieb seems to think would be the end-all be-all. Because they've done blinky light shows on Going Nuts and blinky light shows on Class of 1812. And you've just got to go, great, so you know how to sequence lights. now make them do something interesting. So with these lights in the center of the play field, what they are really is the multiplier lights, is what I finally figured out. So when you get two times the multiplier, the outer ring is lit completely. When you get three times, then the next ring in until you finally get the center to glow. Okay. Not that I've gotten that far, but once I figured out that, oh, hey, I just got three-time multiplier, and now that ring is lit up great. What I wished it had done is, because there's all... I don't know, Guy, how many insert lights do you think that is? Probably 20? Just for the outer ring? Yeah. It'd be a big matrix, a sub-matrix board, I think. Yeah. I wish what they had done was that you have to build up all those lights all the way around. Once you build them up all the way around, boom, now you go into the next level. kind of a light sequencing version of drop targets almost I don't know I was really kind of disappointed that it was just like really that's it that's a blinky light show great a lot of play field real estate just to take up with that like I also don't like the fact that you launch the ball and pretty much immediately can get multiball there's no challenge to getting multiball nope, pretty much just punch into that hole and you're done lighting multiball is just a shoot through the left orbit so you hit the target just above the right of the rollover lanes and that lights your multiball again it's about as hard to relight as space shuttle's multiball like lock two balls and you're done so yeah it's even easier and then there's just the I don't know which is worse the music or the shout out guy the Mexican shout out guy using air quotes yeah it's pretty just terrible I could see I was going to say I could see a lot of references in that game flowing over into Cube or Wizard just everywhere so yeah that one mystery curtain level on Cubo Wizard is directly yeah and then there's I think there were a couple other callouts here and there and I'm even looking at that ramp that right ramp and it's almost in the same position as Cubo Wizard if you look at it like it's geometrically almost the same so yeah you might as well call it Cactus Jacks 2 which is cool It kind of funny because when I was first playing a visual pinball and just downloading tables left and right, I downloaded both Cactus Jacks and Cactus Canyon. so you can see why I was a little bit confused when I downloaded it I was like okay Cactus Canyon, Cactus Jax I was like one of these is good one of these I don't like and I remember that I started playing Cactus Canyon or Cactus Jax and going okay this is whatever and then I'd play Cactus Canyon and go like oh yeah yeah yeah this is the one I like and then you know a couple of weeks would pass by and I'd be playing all sorts of other tables and then I'd come back oh wait which one is the one that I'd like to get it because I hadn't played either of them in the arcade ever at that point. Cactus something or other? Yeah, cactus. Which cactus is it that's enjoyable and which cactus blows? It only takes about 30 seconds to figure it out. You just load it and you realize which one it is. I do like it. I was going to say, I do like it on mobile how fast I've actually instead of putting the HUD underneath the alphanumerics on mobile, they've actually put it down the right-hand side. So it actually uses all this upper real estate that's just not used anyhow and gives you a bit more real estate at the top. And that was really good. I like that. And on mobile, for probably the first time since I think it might have been Hurricane where, oh, no, it might have been some of the EMs where they implemented lights, like GI effects. Yeah. Well, they've actually put GI effects in for this table. And I've got to say, it completely, it makes the table look quite good when they trigger. I don't know how they would have done it, but there might just be a layer that turns on and off, but it looks really effective. So, yeah, really nice job on that. Again, the quality of the conversion of this table and the tech they put into it, it really actually does make it probably one of the more, I guess, better realized versions of the original. Not necessarily from a desirability perspective, but from an implementation perspective. I think it's really quite solid. God, if only Farsight could have done the first two seasons of Nothing But Gottliebs and worked out all the kinks so that then we get the benefit of all those awesome season one and two tables realized the way they should be realized instead of the way that we're stuck with them I really wish they could just go back and go you know what, it's time to do lessons learned on all those ones, but we've already discussed this multiple times and there's pretty low likelihood that's ever going to happen. Yeah. Because I doubt that the Farsight employees are sitting there going, hey, what do you say we boot up some Season 1 and play it? And then they go, oh, no, that's not very good. Yeah, exactly. They're always looking like I reckon they never in their Twitch streams go back through an old table, which is weird, isn't it? Because you would think that it might be worthwhile them doing like a weekly Twitch. where they go and do a playthrough of some of the older tables and actually show them off and actually, you know, just do like a weekly promo, basically, and keep the viewers on Twitch and watching the stream. So, I don't know. It seems interesting. Yeah, yeah. What else was I going to say? Oh, you know what I was going to say was this is now the second to last table for this season of Farsight. And I guess in the Twitch stream, they did say that the next table will be a Bally or Williams. People tried to press them on if it's a DMD table or an Alphanumeric, and they were shy about that. They, I guess, mentioned people have been wanting Johnny Mnemonic, and I'm not sure what Demolition Man or not, and then they said, hey, what do you people think about Congo? after we were talking about it last week right it would have gone well gee, Black Eyed said that it was a terrible game so we should totally do that one so anyway I thought that was, it was like I haven't gotten the newsletter yet, usually we would have had the newsletter so that we could take guesses we'll have the newsletter probably tomorrow when they, or maybe next week when they officially release on mobile. Right. Because it's still in the final beta test. I think we're up to like a V5 of the beta in Android at the moment, which is a long beta. Oh. Yeah. Normally it's like V3 max and then it's out, but this is like V5. Huh, interesting. There's been another beta going on as well, which has been interesting. and that's the on Android at least the Stern Pinball Oh okay I have to say that there's compared to the version that was originally released compared to the version now there's been a fair bit of fixing going on There has, there's still some fixing to go on Yes there definitely is but the fact is it's actually playable now on K1 Tegra devices which is kind of nice in the beta and controller support seems to be implemented slightly which is good for example on Mustang you couldn't actually select the songs and the modes separately on the table you still can't unfortunately with the touch screen and I think the reason for that is that they're actually going to have to think about a way to allow both flippers to be accessed when the ball is in the plunger lane which is actually never been a problem before on pimple tables with the current button mapping and touch mapping so it's a new challenge that they're going to have to overcome and they are having a we're trying to work out the best way to do it in the beta at the moment but there's it's already a pretty overloaded sort of touch interface anyhow so it might only be that we allow flip a button action in certain zones during the ball when the ball's in the shoot lane It's going to take some experimentation, but if you play with a controller, everything works as it should. So, hot tip, play with a controller. I was messing around with it a bit this week, and one of the unfortunate things that I noticed, and this is where it's like, you guys still got to fix that. I was playing with the ambient room light. Oh, yeah. which when normally when I play a TPA, I have the ambient room light down to about 20%. Right. I don't like it pitch black because too much of the table goes dark. I do like to be able to identify some things. I mean, yes, it's pretty for a light show, but it does not make for fun playing at 20%. The lights really show off, but you can still see what you need to see. Yes. With Stern pinball app, I have the ambient light all the way to zero, and it looks as if I have it set to more like 30%, 30%, 35%. Oh, right. Okay. So that really bums me out that you can't make the room go black, basically. Hmm. Because some of those light shows on the later tables, boy, they are impressive. Exactly. Based off of my experience of playing Last Action Hero a couple months back in the dark and just how blazingly blinding that table was with its flashers, I want to try and recreate that experience. And you can't do that as of yet. So it'd be nice if they could still tweak their lighting some more, make it so you can go darker. I also some tables they got it down some tables they don't they have an issue sometimes where they just make the inserts too hot it blows out the text basically that is written on them and if you turn down the brightness of the lights to the point that you can read the text then all of a sudden you lose the flasher effects that would cause the blinding. So I really wish they would... They'd almost have to do it on a case-by-case basis, I think. Because some lights look good and then other lights on the table don't look good. My go-to one that always has been an issue in TPA has been No Good Gophers. The sand trap light, which is unreadable at any lighting level. You can turn the lights all the way off and it's still unreadable. they never did a good job on the text on that and once they throw an insert light underneath it it blows out and you can't read it I found the same on I think it's Safecracker, the lock light which traditionally would be a green light but on Safecracker it's actually an orange light with white text on it and I was playing it, I just decided to do a random table pick and it came up today, before the show and I couldn't, if I didn't know what it was and I hadn't been paying attention to what that insert was, I couldn't tell what it was at all. It's just this big yellow light. So it's funny because I was switching between, say, something like Cactus Jacks and then I switched to Safecracker and I could see the quality difference in the images. It was quite apparent to see just the difference in playfield capture quality. And back in the day, I actually thought that Safecracker was actually a pretty excellent realization of the game. But looking back at it now, even in that era and that season, which I think was five, for memory, or four? I think it was five. Wait, because we're in season six right now. Yeah, I think it might have been four. I think it was 4. I think it was the end of 4. Because 4 was when the quality really started to get dialed up a bit as far as capture goes. And yeah, it was pretty good back then. I was pretty happy as a fan of the game to get that quality. But yeah, compared to Season 6, even now it looks aged. So it's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And then something like with Cactus Jacks, I was noticing at the very top of the play field where there's the rollovers, there is like a piece of plastic over the top of that, a clear piece of plastic. Yeah. Well, it's obscuring the ability to tell if those lanes are lit or not. Oh, really? Yeah. It's not on Android. I can play it fine on Android. Yeah, so it's one of those things where it's like, hey guys, pump up the volume on those lights up there so we can actually tell if they're lit or not. But see, again, they're doing an entire lighting pass for the entire play field without, I don't think, ever looking at it in-game and going, okay, this light's too hot, this light needs to come, you know, be brought down again. So yeah, that's the kind of thing that they need to do. Speaking of lights that got fixed, we mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Big Shots had a lighting pass they fixed a lot of the issues on that or it was in the show notes it was in the newsletter is what you pointed out that they'd that's right they did a pass on it so I went and I took a look oh yeah big improvement so the main thing that I always noticed was when you would if you lit the 8 ball it was always dim until you lit about half of the other balls, and then all of a sudden would go to full strength. Also, the lights had a color kind of casting onto the ball, so if the ball passed over it, the light glowed on top of the ball, which was physically impossible. So that's been corrected. all the lights now shine nice and bright with the way they should so yeah they did a really nice pass on big shots improved it much much and you think about it it's such a simple table there's not much to fix on it so it was nice to see they got the proper fix going on there you really got to do it with those with the EM tables in particular where it's all about I guess the art and the play field and how the lights interact with the ball. You don't get distracted by any other bells and whistles. It's just you, the ball, and the play field. So it's going to be spot on at all times. Right. Right. Yeah. So there was one other thing that I was going to mention about Farsight, I believe. Unfortunately, it's escaping me. So it'll come to me. I'm sure of that. Just not at the moment. No. And now Jared will dance. Oh. yes I will I've been running up I'm on my no one can see anything useless time for more tea what else was I going to mention oh yeah I was going to say I'm highly disappointed nobody wanted to contribute to our game of last week which was what movies were worse than the tables that then wound up getting the license for. Hmm. No good. No good. What's wrong with you people? You're not helping out. It's a fun game. It's a fun game to play because let's be serious. There's plenty of Dutter East and what's the other one? Sega and got leave in there that are pretty borderline or way better than the movie in some case. Or the TV show. Like, come on. Baywatch. That's a great pin compared to the TV show. I've never played it very much, and people do rave about it. And the missions are just about as deep as the plot lines in each of the shows. So, you know, really, it's a fantastic remake of the game. It's awesome. And then there's things like RoboCop, which is an absolute terrible table and a brilliant movie. Exactly right. So, you know, we'll invite you guys again to do it. Get on there, get in there, and submit your list. You can do it on the forum or send us an email. Probably not on Twitter because it's a bit tough. A bit tough on Twitter. Yeah. Go back to the previous episode. Yeah, tvtourist.org and do a little search for pinball there, and it'll probably come up with a list of all the licensed pinball tables. Or if you want to be slack, you can go to the previous episode on blackapinball.com and look at the show notes because I put it in there. Exactly. Hey, we have a listener. His name is Graham West, and he has provided me and Jared with a whole host of show ideas. Sorry, Graham, that we don't get to your whole gigantic list. We'll see what works with us, what doesn't, and what strikes our fancy when we want to hit upon it. He had a whole list of things to do for Valentine's Day, actually. all about kind of Valentine's, the pinball, you might say, how you fall in love with it. But one of the things that he mentioned was, how do you deal with your spouse and your pinball addiction? So my wife wound up, and I'm kind of, me and Jared were having a conversation after show about this. My wife overheard it. And so after we got off the air, she was like, well, hey, let me tell you. as somebody that has to deal with you with pinball addiction. And it was kind of interesting. Jared, you can tell me if your wife is of a similar mindset, but my wife goes, A, I know where you are. You're playing pinball. B there a lot worse things you can spend your money on You could be gambling all your money away You could be going to the bar and drinking your money away She like it just pinball It safe and harmless and for the most part, I do it here at home. So there's that. There is that, yeah. Exactly. For the most part, it's on the computer and that's easy enough to deal with other than times when she's like, can I please use the computer? No, I'm playing. I'm doing very important research very important exactly one of the things that became me and Jared have a hard time commenting on is what about the footprint with only a table not in Jared's world his is mobile my footprint is my size 12 basically that's my footprint and and and for myself you know with the firepower that i own it's it's out in the garage um so it's not in pieces yes it's not an obtrusive footprint um as much as i would i don't know i keep them i always look around the house going where could one go where could one go and and it was the point that i brought up with my wife i said you know some of these people's houses that they go over to, you walk in the front door and their living room is just machines. There's no couch. There's no tables. It's just pinball machines. And that can be a little disconcerting, no doubt. Yeah. When you don't have a – because other guys, they have a room that is – it looks like an arcade. It's set up. It's decorated. It's separate. It's like their bar. It's like their bar except it's their pool room essentially. but it's a pinball room. Exactly. I don't know. I think, I think if you ever having a hard time convincing your significant other, uh, to understand your pinball addiction, you know, maybe that's something you can take an angle on. It's like, yeah, well, you know, for the most part, I'm here. Exactly. There's worse things I could be doing. That's how you started off with. There's worse things I could be doing. Yeah, exactly. Oh, my, my wife just pointed out, uh, it also keeps me out of her hair. That's true. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, the other things from my perspective, it's pretty low-key because most of the time I'm just sitting in front of the TV on my tablet playing the odd game of pinball when I feel like it. Right. I intermingle between the other things that I do as well. And really the only other bit of pinball thing that I do regularly is the show. So that's only like an hour or so a week and that's fine. the biggest investment which takes me away from home is the tournament yes, which you just had one oh yes, we did, we went to the new venue which is this the one and only barcade here in Brisbane called Netherworld Arcade what these guys did is they took over this really dodgy old sort of what we call an old man's bar here all the old old codgers just propping up bar and it was grungy. The guys would show up and wait for the bar to open at 6am and promptly sit down and don't leave until midnight. Yeah. It just was really grotty, which the suburb that it's in is just an outer city room suburb called Fortitude Valley. And it is, generally speaking, a pretty dodgy suburb. Anyhow, not dodgy that you're going to get killed, but it's got this real grungy feel to it. but this place is fantastic. They just basically, they've kept sort of like the, the main configuration of the bar, but they put all these craft brews on the taps and they've got brewed sodas as well, instead of like post-mix. So you can have like a, a brewed ginger beer and it's all that really nice stuff. And it comes with, unfortunately the, the prices of the beer is high because they're craft. So normally at the previous place we were at, at Greenslows, it was a bowls club and a lawn bowls club. And it was the classic 1970s prices for beer. Right. So it was great. But this place is like, you know, $9 for a schooner of beer. It's expensive. But it's sort of one of those things of quality over quantity. and it's really nice. How's prices on their tables then? Good. A dollar a play. Okay. So there you go. Which is fine and it's really clever how they've actually done it. Yeah. The bar itself doesn't own any of the pinballs. They're all from hobbyist operators around Brisbane and they have like a network of them and all they do is they bring their pinball machine from their home, put it on site. Netherworld have a big box full of coin mechs, which accept both dollar coins and the Netherworld tokens, which I tweeted out, if anyone wants to see them. They're very cool. They've got the Netherworld demon on one side, and on the other side they have a for amusement only, no booze value on them. They've really, really good branding on the tokens. And apparently one of the co-owners said that they've been turning up in tip jars all over Brisbane. So good marketing, very clever. So, yeah, basically the tokens are about the similar weight to a 50-euro coin. So they're able to use all the pinball machines that generally come over here or European machines, and they all come with coin mechs in them, and most of them are 50-euro mechs. So normally they just get chucked in the bin, but all the operators that have a big pile of these, Netherworld just grabbed them, and they've made their tokens exactly the same weight, or very close to it so that the mix will take it. And it's such a great way of reusing it. So the people drop off their tables. Netherworld obviously profits from them, but they're also kicking some money back to the operators, yeah? Or the owners. Absolutely. Yeah. It's basically just a good old profit share arrangement. I don't know what the percentage is, but some of the guys that are at the league have – we're owners of the tables, and they say, oh, yeah, they look after us okay. so yeah I guess it's good for the bar because they get to like bring people in and they will buy food and drink and the guys who just had tables languishing in their home collections actually get to put them outside and pay for a bit of spare parts. I was going to say that's the key right there it's like hey why not generate a little revenue for yourself and then you can go buy a new pen and put another one on site. Exactly. And people have been commenting just how great the rotation is on the tables. And talking to one of the owners, he said, yeah, that's not really by choice. It's the fact that these tables are getting hammered so much that we physically have to get them out of here and get another one in so they can be shopped. Because they're getting that much play. They're getting thousands and thousands of plays. Wow. These tables. And since they were open in January, some of the tables have got thousands of plays on them already. So it is super popular. The arcade is so popular. I think for Brisbane Pinball Club, we had the highest tournament attendance ever, which was close to 50 people playing. And I got there about probably about five. And the great thing is you just go through, and whenever one of the tournament tables is free, you just get on it, play your games, and then you've got to, because of the new IFPA rules, you have to physically have someone to cite the score. right on the dnd and then verify your score that's some of the new rules they have all these dudes just roving around basically tournament people roving around so you never have to wait long um and then you can you know choose to sort of just you know play a couple have a drink have a bit of food and then do it all or do all in one hit basically and get them over and done with and just relax for the rest of the night and just catch up with people and uh that's what i chose to do i thought i know i'll just get stuck in play my games um and then have some dinner and get it done. I did pretty well. Pick three tables that you want to highlight for us. Okay. Well, obviously the first one is a brand new Batman 66. Ah. The entry-level version of that, which is the premium, because there is no pro for that table. The entry-level one, the playfield is, those of you who have been following Batman 66 will already know that the playfield pretty much is the same as Black Knight with a few minor alterations. The left-hand side is a little bit, I guess, shallower because if you remember Black Knight, there's this sort of a weird crane mechanism on the left-hand side that sort of adds about an extra 10 centimetres to the left-hand side of the playfield. Well, that's all stripped back in this. There's none of that. So the game itself, very early code. It's playing, I likened it to basically a System 11 table at the moment for the rule set. very easy to get things started on you pretty much shoot the holes and shoot the flashing lights and that's about all you do and you get scores the feature of the table is I wouldn't say so much the crane the crane's okay but we've seen that before it's the same crane that was in Dark Night but the other feature is the rotating playfield up the top so there's actually three sides to the playfield one of them's a telephone that you hit and it's got a magnet in front of the rotating play field that grabs the ball. There's another one that has a spinning disc in it, a little bit like Austin Powers spinning disc, if you've ever played that game. But without Austin Powers on the top. And the third one is... I'm trying to remember. I think it's... I can't really remember what it is. It's like some sort of locking mechanism. and you know it's fine the upper playfield seems to be okay at the moment it's fun to hit it I think once they get better code it'll be much more deeply integrated into the game that'll be good the ramps though are tight like you really have to shoot for the ramps to get them particularly the one at the top left which is all the way up the back of the playfield like long way up and for some reason the left loop always seems to be a bit janky like I've tried to shoot it and the ball just rattles around it's sort of like it's really really tight it's almost like they've had to cram in the ramp and the left loop into that area because of the rotating play field and it just seems to rattle around in there all the time so you definitely have to dial yourself in to that shot when you're playing the game so that was that one if you looked at jared's twitter feed where he was posting pictures uh the reason why he's been able to make the comparison to the dark knight so easily is because they have that table right next to batman 66 yeah they're side by side it was very interesting to see in fact i got a lot of retweets from stern for that photo um and uh that got a fair bit of traction on twitter so check that out if you want to have a look. Both machines, of course, present really well. The Batman 66's new screen, definitely a nice addition to pinball. I think that's the perfect size screen for me. Yeah. Just big enough, right? It's really good, yeah. But it's funny because it's such early code. When you go into status report, it still has the old style DMD, but in the middle of the screen. With the proper filter and everything over it, so it still looks like dots, but it's still the old style DMD, which is funny. Right. So the second one that was worth pointing out was Ghostbusters Pro. Now, when Ghostbusters Pro and Premium came out, I was really disappointed about the feature disparity between the two. The fact that it has a subterranean lock and it has all these cool features on it, metal ramps. But, I don't know, not having actually played the Premium and only having played the Pro, it's still a really fun game. like uh the the only thing that's a bit weird is the uh there's a left ramp and a right ramp the left ramp is pretty much the same shot angle as it is on the premium and it just basically feeds around to the right flipper but there's a another ramp that's on the um pro only and that's the one that feeds the uh containment lock which would normally be a subterranean in sort of subway playfield lock. Okay. So that one's weird. You shoot the ramp and it sort of shoots up the ramp, bashes into the side of the left ramp, which it sort of feeds onto, goes all the way up to the top of the left ramp and then just sort of dribbles back down again and then gets diverted into the containment lock, which is basically just a metal diverter on the ramp that drops into the lock area. Okay. you can really tell they went, how are we going to cheap this out? And put it onto the pro so we don't have to do all that elaborate stuff. And if your table's clean and it's shooting well, that feed takes a while and it's just dead time. So that's a bit of a pain. But I will say this, that the light show on this game is intense. The containment lock multiball is by far, I think probably one of the best light shows. I've ever seen on pinball. It's basically, because all the flashes and everything, it color changes. So it can flash whatever color you want. And what it does is all the red inserts in the game light up and basically all the flashes are glowing red. And every time the siren goes like, they just like flash and pulse. And it's a level, the sound is a level above the rest of the play field because it's a multiball. and it just like the first time I'd have it I went oh this is fantastic I've got to get this multiball again I have to get this multiball again when I play it it's such a cool mode to see I end up getting on my first play ever on that game 400 million which is pretty reasonable then subsequent games not so well on but still okay but yeah it's a fun game so definitely Batman 66 and Ghostbusters are the pick of the bunch at the moment for me the other cool thing that the site does is that every week they put a game on free play that you can just walk up to, play no charge, no worries, you can just walk into the place, not spend a cent on booze or food and just go and play pinball which is really cool last week was Twilight Zone and I think this week is Tron, which is the other one that was really nice. Okay. A fully Tron LE on location is very rare to see these days because they're so collectible. So this one was, I've actually played this one in the collector's collection where he lives and it was good to see it actually in the arcade, the one with full EL wire on the ramps, it had the shaker motor in it. He even put in under cabinet lighting, LED strips, which just look amazing. and the play field was really good condition. He's got all Cliffy protectors on the holes and everything, so everything's really sharp on it. And it was playing really well. Brutal game, but playing really well. So yeah, those were the highlights. Nice. And how far away? What kind of a drive is this for you? For me, it is basically a couple of suburbs away from where I work. So if I was sneaky, I could go for a long lunch there. and pack a couple of games and have a beer and then get the train back. So it's much better, much better than the Gold Coast, which, albeit has a lot bigger collection of new sterns, may as well be in Sydney as far as getting to it easily. Right. So, yeah, this Netherworld is like a little oasis of pinball on the inner north. It's fantastic. You know, I read an article where, of course, the guy was an arcade operator and he was refuting a statement that was made on Kotaku by one of their writers in Japan that the arcade scene is dead, essentially. And this guy was like, it's not dead. I have this many machines and it's lively and everything. I did what I rarely do, which is just make a comment. Because every comment session is rife with ill. But there was only three other comments, so I was like, okay, this isn't Troll Central or whatever. But I kind of made the statement of the arcade scene is dead from the standpoint of I have an 11 boy who has no clue about arcades doesn know where an arcade is and has no desire to go to an arcade Although you can call a Chuck E. Cheese an arcade, no, it's not. That's not an arcade. And you cannot call a bowling alley that has three machines in it an arcade. I'm talking about what used to exist, which was in every single mall there was an arcade. And usually, maybe not in every single town, but every third town, there was a dedicated arcade that kids could go to after school and go playing. Whereas today, it's an event. You've got to drive to go find one of these. I live in Southern California. I'm nine miles as the crow flies from Disneyland, and if I want to go play pinball, I have to drive 30 miles into Los Angeles to find an arcade that has a significant amount of pins, and that's going to Pins and Needles. Yeah, right. and I there might be I know there's a a barcade that has pinball but again that's catering to the adult audience there's nothing for the you know the kids to go to and play you know that was the similar to what an arcade is you know what I grew up with in the 80s and the 90s so it's that's where I say no the arcade scene is dead you know there's definitely pockets and availability of it coming back but it's the FEC or the Family Entertainment Center that we once knew and once spent all our money and really is a dying breed. Well, and the other thing is, I'm sorry, but redemption games are not arcade games. No, they're not. They're really not. That's a different kind of... When I think arcade games, I'm thinking of video games. Now, one of the problems is that most of the video games, that I used to think about, well, that's what's being put out on your 99-cent phone apps. That's right. That's what those are. So now what do you wind up with? You wind up with these eight-bank racing games or these gargantuan games that they put into Dave & Buster's. And the thing is that they're costing three to five bucks to play. So again, there's a cost factor. It's not the, hey, I've got a couple quarters in my pocket. Let's put them in. And today, I understand, it wouldn't be a couple quarters. It would be, you know, I've got five bucks. Let me spend that on some tables and stuff. That's right. So, yeah, it's a different thing. I found myself at a laser tag place last weekend that my son was playing at. And lo and behold, they had a T2 machine. I was like, great. So let me go play this. Now, they had a whole bunch of other games, but they were all redemption games, basically. So I'm sitting there playing T2, and the next thing I know, I've got three or four kids looking at me, watching me play pinball. What is this thing? Right. And one of them said exactly what I thought they would say, which was, so do you earn tickets with this? And I looked at them, and I went, hell no. Nope. You do this surely for the fun of doing it. Oh. Yeah. No, he didn't walk away. He actually watched a little bit longer. But you realize that this is one of those cases where it's like, what is this foreign thing? And it makes you wonder when they walk by one of these, if they've never seen somebody play a pinball machine, they've got to wonder, how do you win tickets out of, I don't understand, what is it you do? Yeah, exactly. Whereas it used to be just an innate language that we understood. you know it's like oh pinball yeah we go there because we want to play pinball exactly that's interesting but the cool thing that the world do is that you know it's a really good point you raise about you know arcades or barcades not really being something that kids can go to and a lot of the time that's because of liquor licensing laws in the state and certainly in queensland um minors have to be accompanied by an adult if they're on premise during liquor licensed hours but Net-A-Wall are smart, they've got around that legally what they do is on Saturdays and Sundays they open up, I think it's Saturdays at least, maybe Sundays as well but they open up the doors at about 9 o'clock in the morning and then close them at 11.30 before the 12 o'clock with the license comes into effect and during that time you and your kids can go there and there's discounts on tokens and you can play for 2 or 3 hours there and they serve sodas over the bar and stuff like that and kid friendly food so you can actually take your kids to what is basically an arcade it's just not accessible to them all the time but at least these guys are smart enough to go yeah you know what there is a market out there for mums and dads who actually want to take their kids along let's actually make it possible and I do think this is where the advantage why there has been an uptick of interest in pinball, why there's this idea that it might have a small resurgence, obviously not the heights of what it used to be, but why you're starting to see these things pop up, and that is because it is so inherently different in physical form than it is in digital form. It's a machine. That's all there is to it. It is a very tactile, and that makes a huge difference. And so I think that if you can just educate kids as to what this thing is, that they'll take to it. Obviously, you don't have to educate the adults about it. So I like the idea of what you're saying, that they are opening at least hours that kids can come in and freely play these things. You've actually got to let the kids fall in love with it, just the same way as we did when we were little or younger. And the fact is that most of the places out there, the kids would never fall in love with it because they're set too hard and they're designed to eat the money. And if you're new to pinball, I remember when I was like 12 or 13 trying to play, I'd have a dollar maximum or maybe $2, and it would not last long for me. But it was still like, you know what? I still enjoy this. When you put it up against something like I could spend $2 and play two games of pinball, maybe like three if it was like $2 with bonus, or I could go and pump $2 into a ticket machine and run away with a few lollies at the end of it. Right. Well, you know, it's a tough sell, right? Yeah. So, yeah, you can see why kids gravitate to the other types of amusement. So there's everybody's mission. adopt a kid and mentor them in pinball. Show them how your misplaced youth has turned you into the person that you are today. See, if I was of the mind of what I'm preaching to do, I should have, when these kids were standing around, be like, here you want to go and have them have a ball. But you know what? I was so just like, oh my God, I found a pinball machine. I'm going to play this. So, you know. Yeah, it's pretty good. you're basically like a 14 year old teenager that had all the dollars lined up on the machine going no man I want this now don't look at me like that this machine is mine mine yeah totally so yeah if you're in the Brisbane region I would thoroughly recommend getting onto Netherworld Arcade they've actually got a on the food front just quickly because you know we do like to talk about food here on the blog page they actually have a vegan menu and And before you go, the vegan menu can be carnivorized. Pretty much every single thing on the menu you can add pulled pork to or some sort of slow-cooked meat. Well, that sounds more like it's a vegetarian menu, not a vegan menu. Yeah, it is. Well, no, it's vegan. If it was vegan, they wouldn't be serving any kind of meat in the place. I think it's, well, I think everything's prepared separately and it's all isolated and all that sort of stuff. I don't know, man. If you're Morrissey, he's going to come in and be like, Oi, none of that in there. No meats. No meats on the table. There are no orcs here. I don't know if you've ever heard of what Morrissey does at his concert venues that he goes to. Obviously, Morrissey is a ginormous vegan of epic proportions. why else would he name one of his albums Meat is Murder but he has somehow more clout than even Paul McCartney when it comes to this stuff in that if he goes to a concert venue they are not allowed to serve any meat whatsoever at the venue so all their kiosks that are from burger joints and stuff those are closed down You cannot buy any of that. All you can buy is vegan food and stuff. Now, it goes even worse is that none of the employees are allowed to be seen eating things like a hot dog or whatever on the premises when he is there. When he goes to a talk show, same rules apply. All the craft service, all the catering that the crew eats, nope, cannot have any meat whatsoever. otherwise he will walk. He won't do the show. Wow. What a prima donna. Right? That's what I can say. Dude, don't enforce your beliefs on other people. Apparently, Paul McCartney has tried similar things. Obviously, Paul is a huge proponent of veganism too. You would think if anybody has the clout, it's McCartney. Nope, he's not been able to pull off what Morrissey has been able to pull off. Crazy. It'd be crazy, man. On that note, let me tell you about the pizza I ate the other day. We've gone full in the snack territory. Wow, we haven't done this in a while. So at Little Caesars Pizza, they have what they call the Smokehouse Pizza. And this is a, instead of marinara sauce, it's got barbecue sauce, cheese, and then it was pulled pork, brisket, and bacon. Oh, yeah. And then the crust is sprinkled with the best I can describe it. It's the same stuff that's on your barbecue chips. And now the reason why I say it was not pizza was because it tastes like a barbecue sandwich and does not satisfy the pizza urge in the least. It's like, you know, there's a distinct taste to pizza. This tastes nothing like pizza. It tastes everything like a barbecue sandwich. So it's good. Yeah. It just, it's, not pizza. Yes, it comes on a round piece of bread and there's melted cheese on it, but that's about the same. Wow. That sounds so good, though. I would love that. That's all it was on it. Meat. Meat. Wow. That sounds great. Look me in the next time I'm over there. For those of you in America, because I doubt that Little Caesars has flown across the pond there. Pizza pizza. It's worth the try. It's pretty good, as opposed to their loaded cheesy bits, which were nasty beyond belief. We've done some unholy things to pizza over here in Australia. We've put... You know how I think it was Domino's had the concept of stuffed crust pizza? I'm sure you had those, right? We've done unholy things to our pizza over here. We have actually done stuffed crust hot dogs in the rim of the pizza. The red Savoy sausages that you so, like, hate that you had when you were over here in Australia, they were in the crust of the pizza. But it doesn't stop there. We actually had meat pie stuffed crust pizzas. So imagine a pizza and then around it these little round meat pies. sort of around where every joint is in the pizza. That is the ungodly creation that we had. So it was the most horrific thing I think I've ever seen. And I don't think they solved very much of it at all. But it was just, stop the nightmares now. It was some sort of Cthulhu of a pizza. And it was just horrible. So, yes, we need to learn some things about pizza here. I think the only time I've taken a bite of pizza and put it back down was there's this, I think it's called CC's. It's like a pizza buffet, if you will. So instead of most buffets where they bring out different things on various occasions, this is just there's 20 different flavors of pizza out. And as they disappear, then they replace them with another thing of the same item. But anyway, they had a peanut butter and jelly pizza. oh and I went why not try that you just pull a slice and you put it on your plate like a buffet so I was like yeah I'm going to try a piece of this it was so nasty it just that sounds terrible like I said I took one bite and was like I think I may be putting that one to the side now on the flip side that's where I got introduced to macaroni and cheese on top of pizza good Oh, right. I would never think to put that stuff on top of the pizza. Well, instead of putting a red sauce down, they put basically an Alfredo sauce. Ah. So it's Alfredo sauce with basically Kraft macaroni and cheese on top. No, it's pretty good. Okay. Yum. Again, the things you'll try when you're at a pizza buffet, as opposed to if you're ordering it yourself. Why risk it? What's the risk? Except I don't eat it at a buffet. that's fine. You can put anything on a pizza and people will probably eat it. Okay. Well, you know what, Jared? I think we have flown so far off the handle on this episode. We should probably wrap it up. Yeah, we probably should. We probably should. Okay, so folks, here's the deal. If you want to torment Jared or I on Twitter, you may do so. Myself, I am at ShutYourTraps. Jared is at JaredMorris. If you have anything that you want to talk about related to the show, please give us a tweet at Blockade. Give us a follow, too. Then you can also, if you feel like writing long form, which I tend to do, and it's what makes Twitter very difficult for me, drop us an email. We are blahblahblockade at gmail.com. Why don't you visit our website, blockadepinball.com. There you will find all of our past episodes. Jared is so kind to break them down into show timing so you can fast forward to your favorite parts, know what's in them. Plus, they'll also post links to the things that we talk about in the show. Makes it easy to click and not have to remember what the heck is going on. As for what we're going to do next time, God only knows. So tune in. It remains to be seen. Yes. Whatever happens, we'll talk about it. Exactly. As it happens, we talk. That's why we do this on a weekly basis now as opposed to when we used to do it on a monthly basis and we'd be like, but I bet I gotta save that. Yeah, exactly. It's good. It is good. Alrighty. On that note, folks, thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time on The Blockhead. Arrogoi. Hey, did you eat that candy? No? No? Ah! Bop me. WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter runs. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 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 Blockade is delivered to. You can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening, play some pinball. you