BlahCade Pinball Podcast this is the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world is jared morgan hello everybody i had my arm poised to wave to everyone yeah it's it's been it's been a gap or how long has it been i'm forgetting it's been all right cool hi welcome back you might remember us from well it's been one of those things folks where uh my schedule went flipped upside down and suddenly i was working way late nights and uh just being exhausted and not having any thought about pinball and doing content and then when it would align that me and jared could actually do something it was like oh but no i'm going to go do something with my family that weekend or whatever else popped up um so yeah it's uh we have an excuse it's not necessarily the greatest but yeah well you know life happens and uh what are you gonna do right um but that's okay we've got all manner of uh things to talk about today uh everything from what the heck is zen doing with netflix to uh jared i think there is a new aspect to vr that you might want to investigate uh we'll go into that we have new pinball platform to discuss um as well as brand new game from Zen to discuss. Yes. A lot's happened in a month. A lot's happened in a month. Now, during that month, some of you may have noticed that I started a new series. I've been calling it Clueless About EM Repair, because I started diving into my target alpha and seeing what I could learn about it. So if you feel like watching me fumble about without a clue what I'm doing on an electromechanical pinball machine uh please check out the series maybe you have some uh clues that you can tip me into um the fun thing about that jared is that it's motivating me to tackle my other machines finally to actually finally rip the band-aid off and and fix the other ones it's less about ripping the band-aid off and more about um properly fixing what the band-aid didn't right okay yeah so i understand no yes i'm getting a lot of confidence with just tinkering uh with target alpha um again it's it's not got really anything major wrong with it at all um no so as you said gameplay is kind of made it work again which is classic em right yeah yeah literally that's been my my go-to method of fixing is wait have i played it today well let me go play it and see if everything's still okay and it's amazing how many things have like wow that wasn't working before and now it is they've just ungummed themselves with a bit of hammering by solenoids it's funny because that's where the term percussive maintenance comes from right it's that it's the hammering of solenoids that free up things that should be free yeah so there you go um and then after i get done uh doing the the stuff that's camera worthy on this I'm going to dive into 8-Ball Deluxe. And if that makes me feel good about myself, then the Firepower. Because the Firepower is the biggest hurdle, right? It's basically depopulated playfield. It's completely... It's not just depopulated on top either. It ain't got no wiring harness on the bottom. You've got wiring looms everywhere. And that scares me to no end. As long as you haven't bundled up the wires and sort of crumpled them into a big mess, they're just going to retain their memory, and you'll just have to restable them down. Just lay them out and restate them. In theory, that should work, because I literally slid it off onto a big piece of cardboard, and it's lived on there ever since. It'll be fine. But that was like six years ago. As long as you haven't moved it, it'll be fine. It's like it's been in stasis for six years. Has it really been six years? I remember us talking about this a while ago. It might be longer. Probably. look the the thing is is and this is what the dangerous part for me is when i start watching pinball videos of repair and everybody makes it look so damn easy yeah it's not and you go yes that's the way you're supposed to do it but then you realize they have oodles of experience and they're not just plunking themselves deeper into the hole they know how to climb out of it um they've got a ladder yeah yeah i've been i've been watching and again the worst kind of channel for me to watch um high-end pin it's no don't watch those channels chris it's this guy in south carolina who does high-end pinball restoration um and he's been doing two whirlwinds now you all may know that whirlwind is one of my absolute favorite machines ever it's oh yeah it It and a Roller Games are the games that taught me how to play pinball. And he's doing, he did two of these. The series is now done. So if you want to look it up, look it up. It's now finished. But he's done two whirlwinds side by side. One, back to out-of-the-box factory. The other, he's doing the Total Chaos mod. Oh, yes, right. But he's kind of funny. He really doesn't like the Total Chaos mod. He's like, it's unnecessary. Don't care for it. Don't like the color scheme they put on the back glass. Do I want a DMD on this machine? Eh. And so he decided, and you can tell that he's a painter. Right. And so he came up with a paint scheme for this cabinet that is gorgeous, used 27 stencils. 27. And he got them all perfectly flat in the end. And he says the cabinet feels like plastic now. is freaking amazing um and you're just watching his process and what he's going through and going yes yes yes and i was just watching him watching him rewire it and he's talking oh yeah so i've got the lamp loom and i've got the solenoid loom and i've got the wiring loom and they're all separate and he's putting them you know and when he just solders and cuts he just clip clip solder i'm just like so he's separated all the three primary looms from the the original loom yes and he's separated them out into individual because he wants to elevate it off the back of the plate off the back of the the play field so that you have easier access to things so that things aren't melting or getting in the way so he has his own i don't know if he 3d printed them or what he has his own like elevation stick stand off things yeah he wound up just plain rewiring part of the table um okay i'm sticking he he opens up his his whole shop is set up for pinball it's it's stupid he opens up his drawer to just reach in for parts that he needs and he's you know it's like oh i need new um stand-up targets opens up the drawer this one's good enough for this table you know he's just got like this pile of he's just got parts everywhere he sounds like he's like a professional oh yes i looked up his prices oh his restoration prices yeah yeah if you have to ask you can't afford so just labor all right what's his labor rate price of labor is between 6,500 and 9,000 dollars just for labor what is that for like a full restore that's for a full restore wow so you're paying the cost of a pinball machine for his labor and honestly and that's and and again that's not including anything else that's just for this time that's just the time So he's going to build you a new cabinet more than likely. Right. He's going to restore that playfield or get a new playfield. He doesn't do, he doesn't really do painting of the playfield so much. No touch-ups. No, but he is, he, he's about to do a twilight zone and he ordered a playfield. Holy crap. He was ripping into the playfield manufacturer. Oh yeah. because he goes through it with a fine-tooth comb and it's either perfect or not good for him yeah right it was like this is this is fine or no yeah so there's a lot of by the yeah there's a lot of shortcuts happening out there with playfield yeah like remakes at the moment i mean i i'm figuring by the time he's done with all the parts and his labor you're probably looking at a close to $20,000. I was going to say, that sounds like about $20,000. US. So you could pretty much go walk up to your local Stern dealer and buy a brand new in-box latest release game. Actually, probably, well, I'm talking about Australian dollars here because that's how much they are. Yeah, $20,000 will get you a brand new machine in-box. But it sounds like that that's essentially what you're also getting when you go through him. A brand new machine in-box, pretty much. Pretty much. So he just started a new series that I'm about to start watching, because now I'm addicted. He's doing a Gottlieb Rocky. Oh yeah, I know that one. And he already said there are certain parts on this that are unobtainium. So I'm very curious to see when it's unobtainium how he restores and what he does to bring it up to spec. But anyway. It's funny. I've yeah don't yeah those are very expensive journeys to go down uh so this is why you like when you're doing a restoration coming back to you know the you know coming back to the ground from the 50,000 foot high up in the sky view that you just looked at in that video it's all about choosing what you do and what you spend your money on yeah so i've said this before on the show but for me it is mechanics and boards uh if i if i'm going to spend any money it's on buying new everything that actually matters to how the game works people literally don't if they're if you want people to be able to play your games on location and have fun with them they don't care what the play field looks like i'm being deadly serious if the game plays like it's new that's what they care about yeah like and i've learned this for the this is the i've got my fourth game very close to being repaired i'm ready to go it's a timeline got leave timeline so that will be four star series 80s got leaves that i'll have in my garage all right um by the time this one's finished and the i did a bit of extra work on this one with the play field i essentially kind of repainted the entire playfield myself um because reasons because i started and i went uh i guess i have to keep on doing this and i yes yes jared i do so i did end up doing the whole playfield and it's definitely not you know old mate pro restores like level great but I'm telling you, it looks pretty good. And then you whack on top of that brand new plastics. Well, not brand new plastics, but you know, flipper bats, posts and stuff like that. And you're getting the thing back to pretty close to what it was. Unfortunately, speaking of Unobtainium, the Playfield Protectors, or what we often call plastics, but that's the actual name, Playfield Protectors, the things that go over the voids. unobtain him so i can't get them but what they're what some people have found is that they can actually get them if they have the originals they can take them along to someone who can actually refabricate them for them so yeah at an expense but uh so this brings us into an interesting uh angle my buddy who helped uh well he did most of the work um for helping me build the append sim cab because he had a cnc machine and um he's got a laser cutter and and stuff like that he's on the verge of buying an inkjet printer that can print four by four in other words you could put an entire playfield on there and he could print directly on it onto the playfield onto the playing field um as he put it though you need the you need one-to-one graphics otherwise it's going to look pixeled on there also it needs to be like full resolution graphics full resolution but he's also thinking about going with a smaller version printer in which then i asked him wait what can you print on and he goes I can print on anything and I go you can print on plastic and he goes yes and I went oh so you can print on playfield plastics for Texas Inc can you because he already cut me out of Lexan for Able Deluxe the in lane guide that goes to the flipper you have to still adjust it's still not quite right but he already did that he did another playfield part on it Um, so yeah, it's like, there's people out there that can now do this sort of thing. Um, if you can provide the art, they can provide a clean version of plastic. It's pretty wild. Yeah. What I'm quickly realizing too, uh, as I'm going on all these pinball part websites, yeah I'm less interested in fixing how a machine works and more interested in hey what mods can I put to on the machine and like for instance I have a box here what's in the box I don't know I have not opened the box yet let's unboxing video this box comes to us from Comet Pinball Comet Pinball makes LED lights Oh, you got a box of LEDs? Well, what I did was because I'm thinking about putting LEDs onto Target Alpha but I don't know how they're going to look so I bought this fun pack which is a sampler pack of their LEDs It's actually a really good way of trying out LEDs in a game So what do we got here? We have frosted sunlight bayonet. A flex green bayonet. A little flexi-tab up there. Oh yeah, they're good for getting angles in weird places. Natural white bayonet. And a red bayonet. And warm white frosted. And a clear non-ghosting pink wedge. so yeah it's i think it's 20 different lights for 10 bucks um and then and you can actually try them in the game see which ones actually look right then order 50 of them or 100 100 is what i'm gonna need um 100 and then because of buying this you get a uh basically they'll pay for shipping on your next order all right so there's another thing you can do as well and this will probably be the last thing we talk about before we actually talk about digital stuff yeah is that there are there's a company or companies i should say that will actually sell you led printed circuit board replacements for your under playfield insert lights and they're essentially an LED with two surface-mount diodes on this bit of circuit board. And what you do is you take your old socket out you put this board in and you wire the original wires to it And it just attaches It even has like a little screw hole Isn it called like Pinsicle or something like that It's like a popsicle. Was it? Yopsicles. Yopsicles. Yopsicles, yes. Yeah, I saw that. And look, if you are faced looking down the barrel of having to replace a fair few sockets because they die on Gottliebs like really badly, you can do it like this. And, honestly, if I didn't have a whole toolbox full of sockets, because I still do from all the restores I did, I would just be buying a couple of sheets of these and just rewiring them all. Because they've, like, depending on which one you buy, they actually have a, they've done them so they have about the same glow and color as an original bulb, like an incandescent. so they've they've done it really tastefully and they will last for 10 000 hours you won't have to replace one of these for decades yeah um and i would absolutely do it um i think it's great and um i was strongly considering it for timeline but i have some really weird um the tic-tac-toe matrix and timeline is like it has a little divider in each lens so there's a left-hand side of the light and a right-hand side of the light i just don't think these the obstacle or these sticks would actually work so well. So I've kept sockets for those. Yeah, there's going to be a Titan rubber order coming soon too. Oh, well, I have to place these. I'm going to go with that too. All right, yeah, let's go into the digital world. New pinball platform, Jared. Yeah. This kind of snuck up on me. I didn't even realize that there was an original version of this. uh slot shots ultimate that's a pinball by a company uh by a studio by the name of pinblend studios um little small studio i've emailed them and talked to kind of found out their history a little bit um they're using uh something from tropical studios called pinball creator for unity which is software that anybody can download and then use it to create Pinball. It's pretty cool. Pinball and Studios has gone a little bit deeper into this. They put a slot machine element into this. Yeah. There's how many tables? Is it nine or more? I think there's a little bit more than nine. Maybe a little bit more than nine. Yeah. some of them are from the original version some are new uh upgrades um anyway something for all to uh check out i know the full retail on steam is uh 20 bucks uh however we have three codes that we can give away so if this is something interesting to you that you want to check out and want to get a code for, please email us. Just ask for SlotshotsUltimate so that we know what you're talking about. If we get, hopefully we get more than three emails sent to us, we'll just make a drawing out of it and then pass those codes along. But you can email us at blahblahblockade at gmail.com. That's B-L-A-H, three times, cade at gmail.com. I'll make sure that we put that in the notes here for this too but that way you guys can get a chance to check it out see throw some support behind somebody new doing pinball we'll probably come with an actual review next time of the game itself but it's certainly worth taking a look at and entries close on the 25th of February 2024 just in case you're watching this after the fact and you go geez I like a code yeah they close on the 25th of february 2024 there you go at some point uh all right now jared you know greg from spacey's arcade i do know greg from space's arcade he's a good egg he has a good egg uh greg he just had something happen to him he did a video about a vr arcade that you could walk up to the machines in the arcade and play them. Oh, that sounds cool. It apparently hit the YouTube algorithm jackpot, and he said he suddenly had 100,000 views in one week, gained 1,000 subscribers in that time. It just blew up. It's that one time where you get it. So something was right. Whatever that was, I bet you he's going, geez, what was that? So I can redo that again. So interestingly enough, he has been doing a lot of VR content. Because that's what the machine wants. That's what the machine wants. Now, he had previously touched upon that Pawdog mod for doing... VR and anything. Yeah, Epic Games. VR and anything Unreal. Yeah. But he also does VPX in VR And he says it's incredibly easy To get set up And I think it's the only way He's playing digital pinball now So I just wanted to point that out to you Jared, because He's got videos on how to set it up I see And it doesn't seem like It takes a lot of oomph From your computer to get it going Now That's interesting. He actually did two videos for me that he then published publicly. Because, as you all know, I'm getting one of these Legends Pinball 4K machines. Yes. And the idea is that then I'm going to hook up a computer so I can go OTG and just play my Zen games that way. But, look, if I'm going to have a computer hooked up to this thing, yes, I'm going to want to know how to have VPX running on it. Yes. The last time I touched VPX, as we've discussed this before, was VP8. And things have only gotten more complicated since then. When I say complicated, it's not like there's installers and all that, but it's the sheer amount of things that now have to be installed because people are doing these animated backglasses and they've got their own media kits that are going in with these things. and there's just a lot more going on. And so I asked Greg to kind of do a brief introduction. Like, I'm a noob. How do I do this sort of thing? To which he made the video and then he went, why did I do that? I realize why I've never done one before. It's a pain in the butt. Right. So if you want, go to Species Arcade on YouTube. Look up visual pinball. Start here. that's video number one and then that's followed up by get all your vpx tables here that's the really cool video well i mean the other one is very informative but the cool video is in terms of it sends you to a site visual-pinball-spreadsheet-web.app i know long that's that's that's good yeah what's genius about it is it organizes you look up the table it tells you various magnet sites to go to get the table it tells you which version has what features on it in terms of wow support um you know dmd doesn't support lights does it have uh doff does it have the cool physics, all that. And then it also tells you where you can go to look to find the ROMs. So none of this is hosted by this. It's just a link site that sends you in the proper direction so that you can get all the pieces that you actually need. It sounds like it's a specific and bespoke search engine just for that one very specific thing. Yes. And that's kind of cool. Yeah. That is, and we've said this before, this is the main problem of, like, sure, you can get it installed. And, yes, it's not easy, but it's possible if you know what you're doing and you're guided by someone like Greg from Spaces. But then it's like, well, okay, I've got this thing. How do I get the content? because the way you used to be able to get it before, like the content designers and teams now, are less public about sharing the file. They have very specific sites that they upload their stuff to that they make sure is not commercialized, that they make sure does not have connection to the ROM site or the ROM site does not have connection to the table site. it's going to be very segregated in order for them to not get in trouble and not risk crossing the grey line that is VPX and tables and stuff. But this is even for the non-recreation tables. These are new ones that the community set up. Yeah, ground-up builds. So, like I said, because the ground-up builds, they all of a sudden have these things called putpacks and there's all this other stuff to include. media to download or it's like they even have they got permission from the designer of TNA Nuclear Annihilation to recreate the table and then but they were like but it's nothing without the music so then they have a link to where you can purchase the music to be able to put it into the game so So, you know, the community is getting support here and there from various designers also. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool to see that, you know, you certainly won't see it from Stern as well. They're Stern. But I think there are some, you know, people like Spooky and, you know, in this case, Scott Denisey, who, you know, designed the whole thing with TNA. Yeah. And, you know, they're going, well, why wouldn't we embrace this and actually make this possible? And I think that's, if we're going to see more commercial entities do digital pinball, that's the approach that the community needs to take. And I think VPX in this arena are really, and the community as a whole, are really setting the pace for how that can work and demonstrated exactly what, you know, can be possible if everyone just works together and gets the job done. so I think it's kind of inspiring what they've been able to do and you know what maybe I could actually install it and give it a go in my infinite spare time that I have that's the problem at the moment right yes so I do have a confession I haven't been playing digital him ball hardly at all I have my reasons reason number one is having the actual machine out in the garage and it just calls to me to go bat around on it and work on it. It's new and exciting, right? Yeah. It's the honeymoon phase of pinball ownership. It really is. Yeah. It's amazing how, because of that, I dusted off the 8-Ball Deluxe, even though I knew it had some problems. I was like, but how bad are the problems? I've been batting away on that. Like I said, this whole thing has made me want to dive in. It's really invigorating your passion for actual real pinball again, hasn't it? It is. And, of course, it triggers that addiction where you're like, well, three is nice. I can fit six machines in my garage, Chris. You know that? Yeah. It's a six-garage pinball hall. But I found out that if I don't park my car in there, I can actually fit 12, you know? Right? So, you know, there's options. Right. But honestly, in anticipation of getting the Legends Pinball Cab, I've kind of been holding off on playing digital because I want to... I don't want to do an immediate compare and contrast. I want to experience it as, say, a new customer that is new to digital pinball would experience it as. Yeah, maybe a new customer who this might be through the game Legends 4K their first experience with digital pinball. Yeah, exactly. Now, obviously, I can't rewind the clock and pretend that I've never played Adam's Family. But I can at least almost forget what it looks like in pin effects right now so that I can see what it looks and plays like on Legends. And then I will go ahead and boot up the pin effects, and then I can start doing the actual compare and contrast. But I just want to see from a, you walk up to it, you start playing it, is it fun aspect, does it work like that? You know, how is that? So that's why I've kind of just not been playing anything, just in anticipation so that I can come at it with a little fresher perspective. Yeah. I haven't been playing a lot of digital pinball, probably until maybe a week or so ago because it's it's been a chaotic chaotic month and i've i've had some interesting games in the garage that have been shuffled around due to reasons um one of my games is with someone at the moment i've got one of theirs so i've got like a you a Corvette and a Paragon in my garage at the moment. And I'm telling you, I am hammering the Paragon. Absolutely hammering it. There's something very special about getting that game up to 5x and getting a big bonus count, and the musical treat that you get from doing that makes you want to do it every single time. I think we're going to have to have you put up Pinball Arcade and do a compare and contrast. I don't have pinball arcade on PC it was only on mobile and I I mean yeah I did a little bit of work on this Paragon just for the person who owns it there was a bit of GI problems where it was able to rectify just loose sockets and bulbs that were a bit dirty and stuff like that so I fixed that up easy also found an issue where the game, if you machine gun the flippers you know rapidly flip the flippers all together it would have tripped the fuse and i went i wonder why that is but i realized that there's a bit of play in each of the flipper assemblies so i think the coils are running at full power if you rapidly flip and it just popped the fuse and also the fuse was a fast blow not a slow blow so i put a slow blow in there and tried to pop it again and i couldn't so i think i've kind of fixed it but i convinced the guy the i'm basically gonna do it for him for free, plus parts, to rebuild all of his flippers. Because this game is going to go to BPAC and if this thing has new flippers on it, it's going to play amazingly. And that thing is a wide, wide body. But you know what's weird? It is a square, but you know what's actually weird? It's the same width as my Gottlieb games, but my Gottlieb games are longer. Huh. Yeah. So my super wide body is like Star Race. Yeah. It's both wide and long. Wow. Yeah. So the big playfields, like when you stand in front of Paragon, I've got like about six inches more play field, I think, to play with on the length. And the width is the same. So the Gottlieb ones are big, which is why they're so heavy to move. Yeah. But everyone loves them because it's like so much more. Like that six inches makes a massive difference to gameplay. But Paragon is a delightful game. It really is. So there you go. There are reasons why we haven't been playing much digital pinball. But New Table just dropped. We have done some recently. Yes. Yeah, and New Table just dropped. So Zen has put out System Shock. now it a pinball m release yes that if you purchase on pinball m you also get the toned down version for pinball effects on every platform except for steam that's right now on steam it's not available at all in pinball effects yet yeah um now according to the discord channel initially it was an issue with Valve not letting them do it in terms of buy here play here everybody else Epic Games, Sony, Xbox Nintendo all said yes but Valve didn't since then Valve has said yes we will so Zen did the correct thing which is not putting it out also on pin effects because you know what would happen people would buy it there and then once it became free would complain of hey but i already paid now it's crossed by i need a refi baba no so right now they just put it in pin effects or in pinball m let's play it in pinball m if you're on steam and then yeah eventually it's going to become available um in pin effects and you'll get that as a cross-buy entitlement. I would be very interested, for those people who do have access to it on PC through Epic Games, what are the differences between the two? So if you're on Epic and you're in the comments, tell us what it looks like. And I will read back when it's not 2 a.m. in the morning when this premieres and see what you guys reckon. Because honestly, I'm looking at the game, And I'm going, the only thing that could really take away from it is the speech. Because the speech has a disturbing tone to it, which is of the aesthetic of the game. But they could only tone that down a little bit, I think. I'm going to say right now, having had a look at it on Steam, there are guts all over the play field. Spilling out of people. I guarantee that's gone. There's blood splatter on the ramps. I guarantee that's gone. I haven't come across, because I haven't played it enough to even notice, I haven't come across if there's any language. I haven't actually completed a mode or anything to see what malevolent feature might happen to those animated figures on the play field to know if there's, again, ultra-violence happening there. but I mean I can quickly pick out what things are going to be stripped for the toned down version. Yeah. Visually. No, no. Look, I think for this one, I don't think I'll be playing it in pinball effects. When it comes out, I'm quite happy to stick to pinball M for it. I think this particular game would like, it's, it's interesting to like use the comparison between, um, uh, WoTeg and WoTeg director's cut, um, in pinball M. Yeah. Um, because yeah, I'm not paying the one in pinball effects anymore, unless I have to, for whatever reason. I wasn't playing it in pinball effects to begin with, but I have played it in pinball M. Yeah. Cause of that damn music. Yeah, that's right. That, that is, yeah, the, the having the music switch out is one of the main reasons why the pinball effects version is very much dead to me uh and the pinball m reigns supreme um so yeah i think system shock works really well in pinball m um so yeah i don't really anticipate myself playing it too much on um pinball effects for steam when eventually valve um does the needful and lets them release it yeah um have you had a few goes a few plays on it yet yeah i really Dick Hamill yesterday, actually, before the show. I wanted to give it a really good go. Correct me if I'm wrong. Is this a Zoltan table? No, I can't tell you that. I didn't actually look at the design on that, so not bad. I don't usually like his tables. The few plays that I've had, I'm like, this is pretty cool. It's got a really ridiculously cool ramp at the back left playfield. Yeah, that is quite the assembly. It actually gives me there's two things it gives me. It gives me pinball circus vibes. Like the fact that you have to elevate up literally three levels of the play field. And then you get taken to the digital breakout game when you reach the top of it. And that's like really well realized and it works really well. And the synthwave vibe that's on that is just absolutely on point. I want to get up there all the time. It's a feature that when you walk up to that kind of machine in real life, you're like, ooh, I want to get my ball up there. Yeah, I want to see what that does because it's got stuff on each level. It's not just like I don't want to actually just shoot the balls up each of the consecutive ramps and do it. On that first level, you've got a mechanism that actually allows you to activate lock. So you've got to shoot the mechanism that's to the right of the ramp, and that actually opens up lock so you can get multiball. So you've got to get up there to do it. Like, you've really got to get that shot dialed in. But the other thing that I noted immediately when I played the game, it's like, ah, nice nod to Stern's Godzilla, with the magnet that grabs the ball and flings it like that. Like, that is a really nice digital recreation of the action that that special omnidirectional magnet has in Godzilla, which is, like, one of the coolest playfield features, the fact that it can grab the ball and go yeet and just whip it around and go up the other thing it's so cool so when i saw that i went oh nice nice homage there very good a bit of an interesting table choice too just system shock where did that come from um yeah i vaguely remember it from you know years back and i know it since has been remade um i never played the original game so the The story is all new to me. I've never played it at all. But I do remember the cover art. And it's just kind of one of those that you're like, where did this come from that Zen went, yeah, that's what we're going to do. That's the franchise that we're going to hit here. Right? Yeah. I do agree. It's come out of nowhere, really. But it's a really good fit for pinball, I think. Like, it feels really good. Like, really good. So, yeah, not knowing the tropes in the game. This one is actually one of those tales where you don't really need to have knowledge of the game, the original game, I think, to get the most out of it. I think, and, you know, walking up to the game, I deliberately went, no, not reading the instructions. The first, like, I'd not read the instructions since opening the game. And I was able to find my way around. Yeah, which is good. work out what i need to do yeah it's it's got everything that we've been asking for in design like walk up playability um i think the the the shots you need to make are well called out on the play field um the skill shots really interesting i took me a while to work out yeah i like that i took me a little while again because it's the fun of experimenting and not reading the instructions right you're like it took me a while to work out oh there's a segment that you need to actually target on the planet. You've got to try and get the ball to stop at the segment. It's like, that's a really cool mechanic. I like that a lot. So there's plenty of luck in this table, honestly. It's a really solid release, I think. I had to do a bit of dousing the fires in terms of it, and this was on Facebook. But people that are, you know, go no williams again and and so i went to the comments and i was just like uh look there's going to be 15 releases this year um of those there's going to be williams released and then i had to do the whole explanation of before williams even came to zen they had their fan base that fan base didn't want williams coming to them so they're still trying to appease and and you know after i explained the whole situation a lot of people were just like oh, okay, well, I just want more Williams. I'm like, yeah, no, I understand you want more Williams, but... We all want more Williams, let's be frank. Right. But the thing is, when all they do is release Williams, then people go, well, I want a Zen original. So... Yeah, you can never please everyone. That's the thing. No. You really can't. I will also point out that right now, Zen has most of their catalog on sale. Yeah, at the time of recording, they're offering steep discounts. In fact, there was one person who actually I saw on one of the Steam forums was going, you know, oh, yeah, I thought, well, what's, you know, it was big discounts. I thought I'd go and buy it. And then they continued to have a big rant about why they hate it. And it was like, okay, whatever. well i'm amazed that there's still people that are doing the fx3 is so much better yeah i don't know how they're making that claim like it's i don't know yeah and i get it some people have really been having issues with the game running smoothly but on on older hardware yeah it's like a it's not older hardware i'm only running on a 1060 ti it runs perfectly fine on mine but here's what if you dial down the graphic settings no my graphic settings are up but here's what i'm not doing i'm not trying to make it run at 120 frames i'm working it at 60 just the way that zen designed it to play yeah right yeah um i think it's the people that are trying to run it at like 144 and 120 yeah that it wasn't i think well i think if you run it at 120 and you're running it at the proper hertz yeah like where it's paired up then it is fine it's when you have a mismatch of monitor to yeah that's where the frame rate starts like getting wonky and the physics start going wonky um correct so i've got my my sony flat screen that i run the computer on in the lounge room, maxes out at 120 hertz. Yeah. And I've got, it's set to 120 frames per second. The monitor to 120 hertz. I've had no issues. So yeah, I got to make it match. There's no doubt about it. My video card works harder on PenFX than it ever did. Without a doubt. Yeah. On FX3. There's no doubt. I don't deny that in the least. But graphically, I don't, I'm not going, oh, why is it ugly? I'm not seeing it. I just, I don't, I'm not there. So I don't understand. You're just seeing it's like NVIDIA Reflex and stuff like that now in there as well, which is designed to actually help people with older hardware get a good experience. So, you know, they're doing, I think they're at the stage now where they've sort of, they're looking at quality of life stuff now. Yeah. Because the platform is essentially, I'd like to say, stable. They worked it out, and it's now a baseline specification. The foundation's right, basically. Yeah. So the foundations are set. Now it's just a matter of finding performance tuning and that sort of stuff. So the whole re-engineering from the PX Engine to Unreal, I think is now we could pretty much put a pin in that and say it's done from a broad strokes perspective. Now it's just a matter of going, right, now we have the new platforms there. Let's build on top of that now and refine it and performance improve it and go from there. They just did an update. I downloaded it yesterday, and I read the patch notes. There's a lot of bug fixes. Apparently, they finally fixed the Atoms family issue with Thing Hand. Oh, nice. So it's worth looking at the patch notes and seeing what they did, because there's a lot of tables that they touched and worked on and fixed some of that. I think they're going to continue to try and get the performance better. That's just going to kind of be behind the scenes action. Well, this is going to be, they need to, because let's be frank, they're releasing this year on core platforms that require performance to be the best it can be. So VR, whether they choose to go with a native quest free headset experience or whether they do Air Link through PC, whatever option they choose there, their platform needs to be on point with that. Yeah. And, you know, we're seeing other platforms emerging. Like, we know that... I think they're looking at doing mobile this year as well. And, you know, that's going to really take some performance tuning to get right, you know. Probably mobile. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right, Because there's a mobile thing out now, right? There is, actually. So, out of nowhere, like, no hint, no announcement. It just suddenly was there. Zen has teamed up with Netflix for Netflix gaming, much in the same way that they did with Apple Arcade, in that if you have a subscription to Netflix, you have access to this new game that they have called Pinball Masters. Pinball Masters plays on your mobile device. I'm sure it will play on your PC as well. I haven't tried it on the PC. I've only played it on my mobile device. It has eight tables in it currently. that being Adam's Family Godzilla Kong Godzilla vs. Kong Curse of the Mummy Wrath of the Elder Gods Pinball Noir and Grim Tales so all tables that weren't in Apple Arcade to the best of my knowledge you're correct yeah so it's kind of funny you know if you have those two subscription services you've got a whole host of digital pinball on your phone if you want. Yeah. But yeah, it's kind of like, okay, interesting. Now, if you start putting two and two together, you know that Texas Chainsaw Massacre got a beta test on Xbox for Pinball M and Netflix has their own Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Oh. So, yes. Obviously, a partnership had to have been, a licensing agreement had to have been struck. I would not be surprised if you see Texas Chainsaw Massacre pop up on this Pinball Masters relatively soon. I think that there's two, because there's two, there's actually a physical version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That's Spooky, yeah. Spooky's done, but that is the original movie and not the Netflix series. Right. So you're correct. I think you might be onto something there, Chris. I reckon there might be probably a toned-down version of that game coming into the Netflix platform. It would make perfect sense. Now, this is a really interesting point that you've just brought up, Ryan. These are the cross-licensing deals that we're seeing a lot of at the moment. So you buy this, you get that. Well, this is the case. you buy a Netflix subscription, you get this for free. It's included. Yeah But I talking more about the content in the game Oh okay You know what I saying Like so you know this deal was obviously struck and I think your call out there is correct And by striking this deal they said oh, by the way, here's a nice little license you can have a play around with as well, as part of the package. They wouldn't have done it for free, obviously. Like, there is no charity when it comes to this sort of thing. But it would have been, you get this, and if you do this for us, we also will allow you to do this really nice property as well. so it makes me wonder how is this going to affect um other table streams coming out in 2024 like is it going to be are we going to start seeing the larger package deals like i have to i have to think the whole star trek next generation and then magically seeing all these three star trek tables coming out it's like how how did that happen i would pretty much think that there was like like do do they do this in licensing i don't know maybe you can speak to it like i would have to believe that when it comes to these much larger licenses that are you know call me your triple a licenses yeah um the studios don't want to just sell a small chunk. The only way you're going to grab their attention is by going, we want a whole bunch. Yeah, we want to really do this and not just go, oh, this one thing is kind of like we need a license to be able to do it. Right. It's more, it's purchase in bulk and now we're talking. Now, because now we feel like there's, it's good for both of us. Instead of only having one thing to talk about, we going to have multiple conversations of things to talk about um yeah so i mean you can only imagine with as many original properties that netflix has um what that could potentially mean for zen if i mean the obvious goes but i think that it also goes for all these other studios too that again much like what you said with Star Trek I have a feeling that if we see certain other licenses that Zen goes after that it's going to be a larger buy there's going to be some Zen original stuff coming with some of these I have to think that I don't know what other Williams are coming this year but if there's a license associated with them I think there's going to be a license plus some leverage. Right, it's that whole thing that we thought was going to happen with Indy, where we thought we'd get a couple of Indiana Jones tables. But I think you're right. I think it's going to be an extension. If they're going to buy a license and go for all the legal... Why not go all in? Yeah, go for all the legal hassles. Why not go that... Once you're already in it, it's not but a couple more steps to go fully into it and get more. And just look what they were able to do with those Star Trek tables. They've got license actor likenesses on there and all sorts of stuff that, on brand new bespoke tables, it's like, that wouldn't have been easy to negotiate. No. We know how hard actor licenses and all that sort of stuff. And even if they're using sound-alikes, they're good sound-alikes on these. So it's like, yeah, that's interesting. Very interesting, actually. Yeah. so the question is how does pinball masters play well yeah how's it if you played zen in mobile platform before that's how it plays right it's there's a bit of a disconnect no doubt it you're playing with a bb it doesn't have that funk that feel um i will also say that, and I really noticed this on the Godzilla table, because they are wide-body, you feel like you are miles away. It's like a pinball game for ants. It is. And then you pop in Adam's family, which is a standard body, and it's how it should be. You feel like you're much closer. So, yeah, these wide bodies... Aren't translating well. You're too far away. You can't read a single insert because it's microscopic. Yep. So, and it's easy to lose the ball in all the effects and lighting that are on them. I think you really need to play with ball trails on. You do. In mobile, for sure. I mean, that's what that's there for. People don't realize that ball trails on actually is an accessibility feature. Thinly veiled is just a regular game feature. It's there for people who have eye-tracking problems. So it's really important. Turn it on. You'll enjoy the game more if you're having trouble tracing the ball. The lighting? I mean, I'll put it to you this way. It's mobile. The GI lights go off, and there's like this pie wedge of light that flashes across the table. It's not – there's no fall-off. It's not this wonderful glow. So it's more like a ping, bern, ping, bern, you know, simulating what the light would be. But again, it's a mobile game. If you are going to download this for free again because you were already paying for Netflix, and you're going to complain because this is the only thing that I play on, you've got issues. Well, that's not really an excuse, really, is it? No. so you can you know you can have your opinion you can be disappointed about it but you also have to be realistic about what it actually is but you can guarantee this they will be going having a looking at what is going on in this Netflix mobile platform and learning lessons for when they actually do a full mobile release of pinball effects later on sometime exactly same as i learned for apple arcade i'm sure the lessons i learned from apple arcade they applied to this and eventually there's going to be that mobile app where you can pay and buy your to buy dlc just like you can on pc like it's yep it will be a thing so this is this is the first iteration of probably a couple of iterations before they actually do full blown pinball effects mobile. I would think at the moment. So stay tuned. This is the beginning. So you're at ground zero if you're playing it on mobile right now. Yeah. I mean, am I going to tell you, oh, you need to play this, so go get yourself a Netflix subscription? No. No. But look, if you've got one already. So check it out if you do. Right. and check it out and give feedback, right? Yeah. So that's the way it will improve. If you are a concerned citizen and you have a problem with it, tell someone about it. Just don't sit on it. Yep. Any other business we should cover there, Jared? I don't put you on the spot. No. I think we've got... Oh, what about the quest lines that they just released in PimbleFX? Do you know, I didn't even look at it. Do you know about it? I did. I actually did. And they are awesome. Like, it's basically Pinball M, but sanitized for Pinball FX. Oh, so those extra things that are in Pinball M, those extra challenges are now in Pinball FX. Already came over. You bet. They're already in there. That does remind me, there is something that popped up for cabinet mode users. Yeah. They now have NOS support, which is, for those of you that don't know, It's what allows solenoids and flashers on people's visual pinball cabinets to fire. So now it's going to be a question of, are they going to also include the surround sound feedback kit support? Yeah. So that was a big question we had, wasn't it, with the whole AtGamesLegend 4K and the fact that on the go, it didn't really actually have any interaction with the solenoids built in. And so it seems to me as though, well, now you've got that. If you've got a pinball effects PC, you can actually set that up, I would imagine, and tap into the things, maybe. Well, DoF is different than SSF. DoF is actually powering lighting and true solenoids. Surround sound is powering those haptic speaker dilly-bobs. So am I under the wrong assumption that there's actually actuators or like in the – There's no solenoids. I'm getting confused with the arcade one-up. Arcade one-up had solenoids, yeah. Yeah, it actually had actuators. If I have to guess, and this is purely a guess, we're not going to get surround sound feedback support in pinball effects until they have it ready for all the tables. Right. Why are they going to be making it ready for all the tables? Because they're coding it into whatever they wind up porting into the At Game Legends version. That's right. So there's a very slow rollout right now of machines or of tables, because I think Zen just plain wants the tables in people's hands before they offer the games that they can purchase for them, because what's the point of announcing something you can't even play it yet, right? Correct. So I have a feeling that by the time, what is it, I think the Attack from Mars will be the final, I think that was the last one announced, a cabinet. I think by the time that comes out, the Zen will finally roll out a whole mess of tables that you can download. Yeah, I think so. I think once they've gone through and coded, again, you code it for there, you've already then coded it for your PIN effects. Yeah. And it would have, like, if we're looking at the exclusivity sort of stuff that, you know, these platforms love to have, that would have been out at Games First and then eventually, at some point, it gets rolled back into Core because Pinball FX still is the Core platform. And this is like, we see it, right? It strengthens this notion because we've now seen those Pinball FX custom mode features appear back in the Core platform again, right? Yeah. So it will come back to the mothership eventually, I think. On top of that, we know that the deal with AtGames is not exclusive. No. Zen can partner with anybody else that they want. And the software is not AtGames, the software. It's Zen's software. That's right. So Zen is the software partner. Correct. And AtGames are the hardware partner. so there's probably nuances in the contract obviously about what they can and can't do and they will probably if they've been smart have exclusivity periods but at the end of the day it's Zen's software and they are offering it to under contract to AtGames so I guess this is a good way of summing everything up here for those of you that are wondering because you care so much where is my 4K ledger's pinball um so i was told that if i paid for the pre-install of the surround sound feedback kit that i would still have gotten it at the end of january um turns out that wasn't true and they only took people's money that pre-ordered the surround sound feedback kit last weekend. Wow, okay. And I was told because I was getting it installed, don't pay that one because that would just have them... I would have to pay shipping on something that's going to be pre-installed. Right. I only got the notice yesterday to pay for the surround sound feedback kit in the full pre-install. And now that I've paid that, now they can actually ship it to me. so what was supposed to be initially end of january and they had even told me oh yeah if you do the surround sound feedback kit you won't get until the end of february and i was like no i don't want that just send it to me and then they're like no we can get to you sooner i was like yes do that and no it's going to come to you in february whatever right whatever at this point i'm just kind of like yeah it'll turn up at some point exactly you know whatever so that's that's where i'm at on that um and yes i'll be doing a whole video on unboxing and setting up that uh especially considering that i've seen some people's stuff get damaged in shipping thanks to fedex being very terrible with the shipping wow yeah well let's hope that's not you i hope not yeah i don't want to go through that whole rigmarole but no that would not be fun uh so be on the lookout for that i know that we're eventually going to get to some actual gameplay videos eventually we'll get there folks um give us time um jared you gonna do any uh videos on the projects you're working on uh i've on well i have done some videos um of things i've discovered along the way um i haven't been uploading them through the channel so i've been putting it off my own YouTube and just things I've found in servicing the timeline pinball machine. So if you want to see some random videos of me talking about tech stuff, just come over to my own channel and have a look there. Chris is focusing all of his repair stuff on the Blycade channel, but my stuff's weird enough that I don't really think it's going to fit in so well with this channel. weird and short enough that it's like just two minute videos of things that I've just found and I want to tell someone about it so yeah come and nerd out with me over on my channel of nose ones and go for some actually well produced content from Chris on this channel well produced is a a friendly gesture there shot and edited on an iPhone well look hey at least it's got a title card mine doesn't have that I do I do gotta say if you if anybody out there has advice for me in my repairs as I'm going forward let me know if you have a place for parts that you trust beyond the obvious ones please let me know I mean literally me going with Comet Lights just I kept on reading everybody saying that they're the best that they've had no hassles with any of their stuff so I was like might as well try the sampler pack so you know we'll find out i'll believe me there'll be a video on that too um uh yeah if you have any parts for the machines that i'm working on that you just feel like sending my way please do i'll take those donations um you can donate on paypal to us too we you know we always are looking for the funds to continue doing things in this channel um if you have games he wants to try out if you have uh controllers any of that manner contact us give us a chat anything pinball we we like that so tell us about it like if you if you're making something cool and it relates to pinball tell us about it because we you know we don't just stick to digital here we go off off that's off the script and just do cool stuff that comes our way as well so and we don't know no we don't know no like we we thought about it it's too hard to do that just send us a coffee occasionally we'll be happy with that all right Through PayPal. Thank you. So that's it for this go-around. Definitely stay tuned to the channel because there is other content that pops up. What we'll talk about next time is anybody guesses but Jared's. It's stuff and things, mostly things. The usual. All right. So until then, folks, thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time. See you later.