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Pinball FX has 14 new tables!

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 3m·analyzed·Nov 26, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Zen announces 14 new Pinball FX tables including Star Trek, Peanuts, and card game adaptations releasing December 7th.

Summary

Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan discuss major Pinball FX announcements from a surprise Pinball Bites episode, including 14 new tables across Star Trek (3 Zen tables + Next Generation on cabinet), Charlie Brown Christmas, card game adaptations, and remastered charity versions of Epic Quest and Excalibur. They also cover AtGames 4K cabinet improvements (centered coin door, lit topper, speaker grill graphics) and upcoming themed collector's edition cabinets (Snoopy, Dinosaur Dynasty), plus VP Cabs' continued evolution with VR/3D capabilities.

Key Claims

  • Zen is releasing three new Star Trek tables (Kelvin, Discovery, and another series) plus Next Generation on the cabinet

    high confidence · Chris states Zen confirmed three Star Trek tables, with Next Generation later announced through internal sources, mentioned by YouTubers in tight with AtGames

  • AtGames 4K cabinet improvements include centered coin door, lit topper, speaker grill graphics, and updated Addams Family backglass

    high confidence · Chris presents detailed photos and confirms these changes were made without delaying production per builder discussions with AtGames

  • Zen took at least 9 months from licensing to table completion, making three simultaneous Star Trek tables remarkable given recent Star Trek release (August/within 3 months)

    medium confidence · Jared establishes 9-month minimum development timeline, then calculates that Star Trek tables released within 3 months of original license announcement, suggesting long pre-production

  • 15 collector's edition themed AtGames cabinets are confirmed from Zen, with Snoopy and Dinosaur Dynasty already announced

    high confidence · Chris confirms from Mel that there will be 15 different Zen-themed collector's edition machines named 'Collector's Edition'

  • Star Trek tables will be sold as a pack for Pinball FX customers, likely priced $15-$20 due to licensing and actor likenesses

    medium confidence · Chris and Jared estimate based on standard pack pricing ($5/table) and licensing complexity; not officially confirmed

  • Charlie Brown Christmas table is releasing December 7th and may also appear on the Peanuts cabinet

    high confidence · Chris announces December 7th release; speculation that it will be bundled with Snoopy cabinet similar to Next Generation on Star Trek cabinet

  • VP Cabs has maintained the same $8,000+ price point for their main machine over 5-6 years while adding VR/3D, 46-inch frameless monitor, solenoids, shaker motor, and custom plunger tech

    high confidence · Chris references interview from 5-6 years ago and confirms current website pricing is still 'just north of eight grand' with extensive feature additions

Notable Quotes

  • “So it turns out that on the AtGames Star Trek cabinet, you're getting these three Star Trek games. But then it was announced like the day after that, 'Oh, and Next Generation will be included too.'”

    Chris Frebus @ N/A — Highlights surprise announcements and the evolving cabinet specifications; indicates flexibility in adding content post-announcement

  • “They've got three new tables coming out... Kelvin version of Star Trek... Discovery... and the recent TV series. So that's three different tables coming out. So that's three different designers probably.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Establishes the scale of Zen's simultaneous design effort; implies multiple teams working in parallel on Star Trek IP

  • “Clearly, when they were talking to Paramount, or I should say, CBS—CBS handles a lot of the... they were like, 'Can we do things?' and they were like, 'Yes, please.' And they went, 'Okay.'”

    Chris Frebus @ N/A — Suggests generous IP licensing from CBS, enabling multiple table versions from single property

  • “So it's like, well, that's interesting. And those three will be sold as a pack as well for Pinball FX customers... They're three Star Trek tables. They'll be like a pack deal.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Indicates Zen's monetization strategy for bundled licensed content

  • “It takes them from start of licensing and everything to finish at least nine months per table. So when did Star Trek release?”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Establishes baseline development timeline; suggests Zen had Star Trek in pre-production for extended period

  • “You've got the Snoopy table, which is one table. Well, no, well, potentially we'll get we'll get into why I say potentially... I'd rather have a themed cabinet with maybe one property owner, or one with like four included natively running tables.”

    Jared Morgan @ N/A — Highlights value proposition comparison between single-game and multi-game themed cabinets

  • “VP Cabs... they only sell two machines now, Jared. They're still selling the Vertigo. It's stacked out. And then they're selling their main machine with the bells and whistles.”

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen StudioscompanyAtGamescompanyStar Trek Pinball (Zen)gameCharlie Brown ChristmasgamePeanuts CabinetproductDinosaur DynastygameMelpersonVP Cabscompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: AtGames positioning collector's edition cabinets as premium differentiated product tier with 15 planned themed variants, suggesting cabinet market segmentation strategy

    high · Mel confirmed 15 collector's edition machines; Snoopy and Dinosaur Dynasty already announced as distinct product line

  • ?

    event_signal: Zen implementing charitable monetization for Charity Pack (Epic Quest/Excalibur remaster) with proceeds to Project Pinball (US) and Budapest Pinball Museum (Europe/APAC)

    high · Chris announces specific charities and regions; Jared calls it 'shut up and take my money' easy purchase, indicating strong community positive reception

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Zen and AtGames pursuing heavily graphic-rich cabinet art direction for home centerpiece appeal, while podcast hosts prefer minimalist design approach; suggests manufacturer and enthusiast aesthetic preferences diverging

    medium · Chris and Jared critique cabinet art busyness; Chris explains manufacturer reasoning (home centerpiece marketing) vs their preference for simplicity

  • $

    market_signal: Zen demonstrating aggressive IP licensing expansion strategy beyond traditional pinball IP (card games, TV franchises, movie properties) to diversify Pinball FX catalog

    high · Single announcement includes Star Trek, Peanuts, Gloomhaven, Exploding Kittens, Terraforming Mars — shows rapid diversification across entertainment/gaming IP

  • $

    market_signal: VP Cabs maintained $8,000+ pricing over 5-6 years while significantly expanding features (VR, 3D, larger monitor, custom tech), indicating virtual pinball cabinet market willingness to pay for feature enhancement

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.191

0:00
This is the Blockade Pimple Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Traffic. Joining me, as always, halfway across the world, is Jared Morgan. hi there everybody it's been a while remember us yeah yeah you might remember us from about two months ago it feels like two months ago it does doesn't it um yeah to say the least uh you know it's the busy season uh yeah it's busy all right yeah especially for for myself my schedule suddenly uh just got like all over the map and uh made it impossible to do some recordings so this is literally the first opportunity that jared and my schedule have uh lined up lined up yeah i know it's it's been uh yeah it's busy chaos the last why is it that always at the last quarter of a year they just everyone goes oh yeah things we need to do them all now everything i don't know why it happens but it's a christmas spirit eh it's just it just gets crazy um we have an absolute ton of stuff to talk about but before we talk about that mountain yeah something that i've been meaning to talk about uh if we had lined up and uh it was kind of interesting and jared was like why are you doing this so i started um re-listening to our earliest podcasts that are available uh to me on spotify um basically we're talking about like episode 10 or 12 i think was the first one that's posted those are the ones that we have episodes for the other ones are lost to the eons um probably for the best well they're not completely lost because i know that um i have been sent links to them existing elsewhere and i have listened to the very first episodes and going oh well i'm glad those are those are lost um yes but it was it's been kind of fascinating listening to some of them i'm not listening to all of them i just kind of them doing highlights um but in those early conversations it cracks me up jared was exclusively on android and was way in the weeds on his tech talk i was deep in the android land like i obsessed about android tech back then i was running custom roms and really trying to push the Android platform as a gaming platform, as a consumer gaming platform, so hard with all the digital pinball games we were playing on it. It was ridiculous. And then the other thing was, and I think this was a byproduct of what we were using to do our recordings and the fact that we didn't have video while we were doing the recordings. But my God, did I just step all over Jared's voice.
3:13

  • Pinball Bites announcement was surprising and unannounced until the night before release, indicating Zen works quickly during holidays

    high confidence · Chris notes the episode was a complete surprise; Jared confirms it was finished the night before and released with short notice

    • Chris Frebus @ N/A — Shows consolidation in VP cabinet market; indicates focused product strategy

    Brad Baker
    person
    CBScompany
    Epic Questgame
    Excaliburgame
    Gloomhavengame
    Exploding Kittensgame
    Terraforming Marsgame
    Project Pinballorganization
    Budapest Pinball Museumorganization
    Snoopy Cabinetproduct
    Addams Family (AtGames 4K)game
    Star Trek Next Generationgame
    Pinball Bitesproduct

    high · Chris references old interview pricing and confirms current website shows same price point despite extensive feature additions

  • ?

    announcement: Zen announced 14 new tables including three Star Trek versions, Charlie Brown Christmas, four card game adaptations, and remastered classics, with most releasing December 7

    high · Chris and Jared detail specific table names, release dates, and platforms from Pinball Bites announcement

  • ?

    product_strategy: Nintendo Switch versions of December 7 releases delayed to late December due to platform release windows or optimization needs

    medium · Chris notes all platforms except Switch getting December 7 release; speculates optimization or Nintendo release window constraints

  • ?

    product_strategy: AtGames 4K cabinet received multiple UX improvements post-Pinball Expo feedback: centered coin door, lit topper, speaker grill graphics, improved Addams Family backglass

    high · Chris documents detailed improvements with photos and confirms builders stated improvements would not delay production

  • ?

    product_concern: AtGames 4K cabinet plunger design remains unappealing to hosts despite other improvements; potential community desire for aftermarket modification solutions

    medium · Chris and Jared express dissatisfaction with plunger aesthetics; Chris suggests exploring Wizard Amusements plunger kits or Hall sensor swaps as solutions

  • ?

    licensing_signal: CBS approved generous multi-table Star Trek licensing for Zen, enabling simultaneous development of Kelvin, Discovery, standard series, and Next Generation versions

    high · Chris states CBS was receptive to Zen's licensing requests; multiple table versions from single IP indicates expansive licensing grant

    • Oh yeah, I was constantly stomped. The reason, it's not because Chris is a bad egg, it's just because it's the delay. The delay in the round trip of the audio was so bad that, and I think the recording technology is like microphones and speakers and stuff, it would just clobber my audio so you couldn't even hear me talk if it wasn't like cross-channel like we have now. If I recall, also, it would auto-fade a voice in favor of what it thought was the main voice. Yeah. It was Google Hangouts. Very early days of... Remember Google Hangouts? It's now Google Meet. But yeah, Google Hangouts was a thing back there. It was really primitive compared to what we have today, I think. Well, when I stopped feeling bad about it was we were, I started listening to just our interviews and was listening to the interview that we had with Bobby Bob-omb.
    4:14
    Oh, yeah. And she also was stepping over, so then I was like, maybe it's not just me. Yeah. Always, always the last to be heard down here in Australia, but whatever. We made it through. and uh yeah it is an interesting um it's interesting to see how the show has evolved from those early early days to what it is it is but on the same hand what's interesting is a lot of uh what we talked about and what we theorized about uh still holds water today um our interviews this is why i was listening to the interviews our interviews with the farsight team in particular are quite interesting in terms of what things that they were planning,
    5:00
    things that never came to fruition, things that we knew would never come to fruition as soon as they uttered it out of their mouths, because then we also would do, and we still do this to an extent, we'd have an interview, and then the very next episode was us breaking down the interview. Our reactions. Yeah. Our reactions. Yeah. That's our favorite thing to do after an interview. And there was one interview where afterwards we were just like mocking it. No chance. Well, I don't remember. So apparently a Farsight employee who only lasted a few days after his post had posted some stuff that was, I guess, scathing. And unfortunately, we decided to take the high road and not talk about what was there.
    5:46
    Unfortunately. what was being talked about um and then we had mike lindsey come on and answer well when i say come on not on the show but uh into the forums and answer a lot of the questions that people had and the overarching answer for everything was yes we would like to that's in our plans and we just started mocking that. And there's nothing better than hearing, if you guys remember Bonzo, he was our German friend that was on the show a lot. Hearing him mock it was just an extra touch of an extra touch. Yes. Yeah, that was amazing. Yeah. So anyway, I just wanted to let everybody know that, yeah, those episodes are still out there. They're worth a listen. I'm still kind of filtering through some of them and I'm dying to get to the Farsight Loses the Williams License episode. I remember that interview. That was a rough one to do with Mike. We had to be really careful about how we framed that one. Yeah.
    7:00
    But if you're one of those that has just discovered us and is looking to go back, start with the interviews. Watch those or listen to those. I think those hold the best because my god we were trying different formats we were on a weekly only going a half an hour we had different themes for all four weeks you can see how quickly that all falls apart yeah that became pretty hard to maintain but the thing with you won't find any references to these episodes on the website because they're just too far back in time and our show works if you're new to us our show works more like a um a news show really um so having archived episodes on the site that far back really doesn't serve serve the audience well so you'll have to go back through your favorite podcast gap and just do a search normally we had interview in the title of each one yes um and some of those interviews are actually up on some of the more recent interviews are more up identified on the um blackheadpinball.com site but those really early ones aren't so you'll have to go and just do a bit of hunting yeah for a while also uh for a long while we were just being cheeky with their show titles and they literally tell you nothing about what the other they were meaningless yeah which is as you can see we've changed that now so it's actually helpful for us to actually work out when stuff was done we weren't the quickest learners um All right. Hey, why don't we dive right in and talk about some stuff? Let's go older news first and filter up from there. So let's talk AtGames 4K cabinet, because after the pinball show where they had a bunch of these cabinets on display and people actually got to take a look at them, only a handful of people apparently got to play them because they weren't optimized yet but after getting some feedback and everything there was a kind of a consensus of really the coin doors offset and what your topper doesn't light up well that's kind of lame and then those that had some on-hands experience said that the adam's family table was not optimized yet while the other, call it the, all the tables that had been previously available for ad games, those were running just fine. Yeah. But since then, there's been some changes to the old Atoms family.
    9:42
    And that comes in the shape of, let me get into this here. There we go. So, they added some things. A, they got rid of the iGames logo at the top, replaced it with the Addams Family. Now, truth be told, I'm not exactly loving it, because it seems like a lot of graphics mixing with the Backglass graphics. I would have just actually preferred if it was just the name Addams Family on a black or background but it's better than the 4K pinball across the top yeah that's definitely true but yeah like having a little marquee logo up the top there would have been quite nice just on black yeah they also added graphics to the speaker grills okay and then look at that. So that's the back plate for the connections. That's what we've been asking for a while. That's very nice. Yeah.
    10:57
    And then like I said, the coin door is now centered with the maker's plate in the middle there. Which is just a much better placement for that. Looks so much better. Yeah. Good call on them doing that. And then... How come it doesn't show me the top? Oh, there it is. There it is. The topper is now lit.
    11:17
    Nice. See, that's a bit more premium, right? Yeah. That's a little bit more shinier. Turns out that now I caught this on somebody's YouTube. They were saying that Foxconn, I believe, is the one making the machine.
    11:35
    Okay. Foxconn would be the processor, I think. Oh, okay. Well, anyway, they kept on mentioning them, But the builders in general, I guess, had already been having discussions with AtGames, and centering up this stuff wasn't going to set production back at all. And adding in these little quality of life wasn't going to set production back at all. And so that's why they went ahead and went, yay, let's do that. Do it. The only thing now that I wish, that plunger. I'm not a fan of the plunger. it just would you prefer just would you prefer like more traditional looking plunger tip on it a plunger end yeah 100 just like a round like a round ball one or just a black handle black with a spring on the outside i don't know just that recoil looking i just want a traditional plunger that's all it's what yeah what arcade one up did on theirs was all you needed um And they're readily available as well. So I will be curious to know if that's moddable.
    12:45
    If it's just a hall sensor, you could probably put whatever hall sensor you want in there if you really want to. It's just whether the mount will handle the... You might have to route out the cabinet or something if you want to put it in. Well, I mean, it's a bespoke mechanism that's in there for the guidings. But I mean on the exterior, if I can just change out the pull, the look of the hole oh like just put a yeah like just swap the handle yeah you know go to wizardofmumans.com I heard a lot of that in our podcast when we were getting advertised with them oh yeah we did plug them a fair bit yes just wondering if one of his pole knobs would just fit right over the top of that or even checking yeah if anyone has like one of the older 4ks if they can actually unscrew the actual knob end of it that would be really interesting to explore. Other things that got announced with AtGames, though, was hey, look at that, they're making a Snoopy cabinet. It's like, uh, what? Right? Well, so this falls into the collector's edition cabinets that were mentioned. So this is the first one that's going to be coming from Zen.
    14:00
    I like the look of this cabinet but it's a lot of yellow look it is a lot of yellow but it is definitely of the theme and i like how they've actually see this is a really good example of a it's it's still got graphics around the the back box but it's sort of a little bit less with the back box yeah they're actually quite starkly different and really on brand as well for peanuts yeah so this is like fine for me and then the one that threw us for a loop um hold on i gotta bring it up dinosaur dynasty yeah this is what that one's one of the um the magic pixel table pixel table yes um that was completely unexpected and made me go wait a second are then what isn't possible then like what is possible what are these 15 i thought the 15 tables were only going to be zen and then there's this other skin on it um have confirmation from mel yes there will be 15 different zen skewed collector's edition machines and they are they are named collector's edition so if you are looking for those when you're buying that's what you'll be looking for this is a standard edition 4kp right so um so i would expect therefore we're going to see a a bunch of different at games version cabs coming as well as zen version cabs I honestly would not be surprised in the least if we see a Dr Seuss themed cab
    16:02
    Yep. And probably a Taito cab. Oh, yeah. I would not surprise me in the least to see any of those. Yep. Those are obvious. I reckon we'll absolutely see those standard editions coming out. Yes. And then, well, okay. so we're going to cross into the bulk of what we were talking about here uh the latest pinball bites edition came out which was a complete surprise to me that it was on the way yeah and it turns out it kind of wasn't announced previously they literally had finished it putting the episode together the night before so it was uh let's get this out it you know turns out that Zen's also busy during the holidays. Yeah. Wow. Anyway, this is an understatement. They made a whole slew of table announcements. But the first one that we're going to touch upon comes into what's coming from now at games also, which is Star Trek pinball.
    17:05
    Yeah. Look at that. Yeah. Which I'm sure a lot of people are going to want to get their hands on this. You don't like Addams Family? Star Trek, there's a lot of Trekkie. Okay. That's Star Trek Discovery, right? Okay. So on the – no, this is Star Trek Kelvin.
    17:30
    So that's Chris Pine right there in the middle. Yeah, that's what I'm looking at. It's like that's licensed properties all over this. Yes. And what threw everybody is, because isn't that what's on the side of the Stern pinball cabinet? Yeah, it looks, I'm going. So a lot of people lost their minds because, now it's not currently in here.
    17:52
    Can I make this bigger? Yes, I can make this bigger. The initial play field that they had on here was Stern's Star Trek. Really? before, because this apparently popped up on the AtGames site the day before Pinball Bites came out. Oh, okay. And so they had Stern Pinball, Stern Star Trek on the play field, and then, of course, Stern Star Trek also has that image on the side of the machine. And everybody went, wait a second, we're getting, now, of course, all these images in the fine print on the bottom says images are strictly placeholders and might change come you know time um but of course everyone was like no that's that's
    18:42
    what it is and i was like i i popped on some messages i was like i guarantee that the artwork is going to change as soon as um the announcement the announcement comes out sure enough i just looked and that's now an image from zen uh of their version of star trek um yeah now just to see what the other side of that cabinet looks like look at that completely different artwork on the other side that's really odd it is really odd like do you want the left side to display or the right side to display yeah uh okay i mean i definitely like the right side way way better i do too all right just just slap that on both sides for me please and that would look amazing they did not need to go different graphics in the unless that is maybe that's like an alternative art package you could choose maybe they're like you could get this one or you can get the black one and they're showing both variants maybe because it is i maybe i don't know and i'm i would love to know uh how much of this is zen doing the design and how much of it is at games doing the design uh with graphics um i i i honestly don't know but i know that i would prefer i i i like cabinet art to be simple yeah i don't like to be stenciled art is preferable great yeah so having just a full-blown photo on there i'm not really that big of a photoshop stuff no i'm not really hugely into it yeah so you know the even the adams family one which let me bring that up real quick and just do get the image up here um it's there's a lot going on there with the grain yeah there's a lot of grain and i prefer the original uh cab which was black cab with just adam's family written on it yep um now i don't mind the back box having graphics on it like you mean the um the rosas is the back box yes yeah i mean that's good that i'm fine with because it's a much smaller visual, smaller footprint, but your entire machine, that's where I prefer simple. You know, it's interesting, right? If we think about cabinets in the arcade and cabinets for home use, what you're going to see a lot of the time is in the arcades, they're all side by side and you can't see the artwork really anyhow. But for those ones that are at home, I think the reason why they do what they do is because they know it's going to be a centerpiece of a room. so they don't really want to go simple i think they actually want to go more graphically rich because it's going to be like a talking point but i do agree less is more yeah um it can be a talking point it doesn't need to scream at you right um all that being said my initial thought when cabinets were announced with a zen i figured it was all going to be williams cabinets so the peanuts one really yeah me too that really threw me a surprise and then made me go oh if you guys do an aliens cabinet i'm gonna be really jonesing for that yeah i could see you just honestly i wouldn't buy a new cabinet but i would maybe pay for a wrap that was pre-done i don't though that would be um that would be pretty amazing yeah yeah because i my thought was that oh hey now you can do whirlwind and actually put a blower fan up top um which that would be still really hope that they do do that if if they make a whirlwind table that would be
    22:47
    definitely making a whirlwind table put a topper put one of those pc fans in it like even sell it as a mod. Sell it as an extra. You've got to pay for extra for it. People would absolutely buy extra for that.
    23:04
    100%. So it's interesting though with all these cabinets, looking at these and what AdGames is doing with it, seeing what the price points are going to be, and then going back to the podcast, I listened to our interview with Brad Baker, who runs VP Cabs. and I haven't been to their website in a while so if you go to virtualpinball.com that's their website they only sell two machines now Jared they're still selling the Vertigo it's trucked out oh yeah and then they're selling their main machine and the bells and whistles and what they've got going on these things is like holy smokes why would you buy another company's machine?
    23:55
    Really? So what are we talking about here? So now they've got it so you can do Anaglyph 3D. They've got it. What? Yes. They've got it so that you can plug in your VR headset and use the cab as a controller.
    24:09
    Right. They've got eight solenoids, shaker motor. They do have a fan. It's weird. It comes up from underneath the coin door and blows up at you for God knows what reason. But anyway, it's there.
    24:26
    It's a 46-inch monitor now. They no longer, the monitors that they buy now are frameless, so they're not having to take off the frame. They can just fit it directly in. um and the but the price is still the same price as when we interviewed him all those years ago so it's still just north of eight grand um okay so it seems to me that there is a lot of oh they've got their own plunger tech now they've got an actual plumb bob that works for tilt um wow okay i i really you got to go to the website but the vertigo machine that thing is crazy now it's got cup holders on it it's really yeah it it it's come a long way from the first time that that it was out there um because that interview was like at least five or six years ago now yeah yeah it was a while ago um i can uh i wonder if i could bring it up real quick let's see just to give you an idea i could i could just put something in the in the notes if you like for that why is it telling me that it's 4.0 forbidden 4.0 4.0 forbidden oh I got that the other day I got that when I was trying to help out someone on pinball effects with the champion edition cabinets that yeah someone was trying to work out whether they could upgrade to Windows 10 I was literally just looking at the website though so sometimes it has to do with my ad blocker too or my you meant my ad blocker but my vpn right um and i'm not going to turn that right mid-session because that'll cost there'll be chaos that will break everything yeah i'll put a link i'll put a link in the show notes but yeah check it out absolutely uh okay so let's dive back into then pinball bites um and we'll start with the star direct stuff so complete utter shock and surprise and yet it's something that we've been asking for for years or hoping for i should say for years is that yeah if you paid for the license let's have some originals also from that same license this is what we hoped they would do with like indiana jones um yeah star trek yeah zen they've got three new tables coming out they've got the kelvin version of star trek so that's you know the movies that uh with chris pine um that we know of so that alternate timeline they've got discovery which is based off the tv show and they've got the recent tv series that's also based off the tv show yeah so how would they have narrowed down the material to include in the shows from like ds9 that's so many episodes to comb through how how would they have made that call like that is i'm more impressed by unfathomable you realize how long they've had to been working on this oh it'd have to be like at least nine months we already we already established that it takes them from start of licensing and everything to finish at least nine months yeah per table so when did star trek release i can't recall uh didn't it just release a couple like less than six months ago definitely three months ago if that yeah comment in the comments if you can help us remember yeah but yeah it's not it was definitely late like last quarter well no the last quarter like you know quarter i think it's been within the past three months yeah um yeah august you're probably right august around there yeah um but anyway so for three tables what's that so it's Three different tables coming out. So that's three different designers probably. Yeah, it is. Who are being tasked with this. Yeah, that's quite incredible. And getting all those assets. Who knows what voice assets they got, but getting all those assets, all those licenses. So clearly when they were talking to Paramount, or I should say CBS. CBS handles a lot of the... That's CBS now, yeah, with Star Trek.
    28:48
    Clearly they were like, can we do things? and they were like, yes, please, and they went, okay. Just imagine the glint in Zin's eye when CBS came back and was like, oh, yeah, no, that'd be good if you could do some other properties. They went, yeah.
    29:06
    So it turns out that on the AtGames Star Trek cabinet, you're getting these three Star Trek games, but then it was announced like the day after that, oh, and Next Generation will be included too.
    29:20
    okay i could see that cabinet selling pretty well i would imagine yeah interestingly they have not posted on the website that next generation is included um i think that came through from some internal sources or something um again this is i watched a few videos of the youtubers that are in tight with at games and actually have communications with them and they the ones that were mentioning this so um depending on how much you trust them and what information that comes out of them but still i was like that's a pretty that's a pretty solid table right there um pretty solid i mean just think about it like if you look at the value prop right you've got the snoopy table which is one table well no well potentially we'll get we'll get into why i say potentially all right go back okay so you know you look at it you go well you know what would but I'd rather have a themed cabinet with maybe one property owner or one with like four included natively running tables. That are on the same theme, you mean? Same theme, yeah. So it's like, well, that's interesting. And those three will be sold as a pack as well for PimbleFX customers, from what I understand as well. They're three Star Trek tables. They'll be like a pack deal. So you can probably expect them to be $9.99 US. I would imagine. There's a going rate for a free pack?
    30:53
    Honestly, I bet it's going to be $15. You reckon it's going to be a premium pack? There's licensing involved. Yeah, I'm thinking basically call it $5 a table, which would still be a bargain because normally a licensed table, they'd be charging $10.
    31:07
    Oh, true. Yeah, actually. I think $15 at the low, $20 at the high. I don't think they'll go $20. I mean because we are dealing with actor likenesses here too and potentially voices or definitely good sound alikes well hopefully there's not the main theme in there better be I think they'd be mad not to if they've got actor licenses CBS is probably gone here you go anyway so there's your Trek news since you just mentioned it Snoopy well it turns out that we getting a Charlie Brown Christmas table Oh yeah that right Yeah that right That new as well Hey Complete surprise and like what
    31:57
    Hey, look at that. And it follows the actual movie? The TV show. Oh, the TV show. Right, yeah. Because I know there's actually, there was some sort of TV thing. Jared, are you telling me you did not grow up with a Charlie Brown Christmas airing on the TV every holiday season? I don't. recall i think it might be a u.s thing it's a u.s thing for sure it was yeah we're talking it's a so we would get you knew okay you knew things were getting real because all of a sudden there'd be a night special that would be it's the great pumpkin charlie brown oh so we would get that special and then the halloween special and then yes halloween special and then come december we got a charlie brown christmas um and this is where you get the linus christmas tree or the excuse me, the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, which is the very limp, barely any branches, one ornament pulls the whole thing over Christmas tree. That's from the special. But then usually paired on the same night as they would air that, they would also air the Rankin Bass stop motion animation, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special.
    33:05
    Wow. I don't know if you are familiar with those either. Rankin Bass, that name does ring a bell, but I don't think... late 60s stop motion animation wow um yeah rankin bass rings a bell but i don't think that aired very much down here in australia it was annual holiday tradition everybody pull up it's finally coming on the air and we'd all sit down and watch it that night that was like it's appointment television it is as traditional as die hard at christmas yeah um don't forget lethal weapons a Christmas movie too. It absolutely is. Yes. Yep. Both are equally watchable over Christmas. So there you go. So Charlie Brown Christmas I would be gobsmacked if that doesn't find its way onto the penis cabinet also. If they're going to throw Star Trek Next Generation on to the Star Trek one I would think they're going to throw this one on too.
    34:02
    Absolutely. You're right. That would be a twofer for sure. And it does make me think so does that mean we're going to get a Great Pumpkin table next Halloween? maybe please that'd be cool i think they'd be mad not to if they've been talking to the licensors already for that like it's gonna be a it's gonna be a three for sure okay now because you haven't already decided to fork over some money to zen they want all of your money so also okay everything i'm saying right now releases december 7th yep so also on december 7th um a lot the we have the card game uh pack is what i'm going to call it so gloomhaven exploding kittens and terraforming mars those are all releasing on the uh on the 7th uh and when i say releasing uh everybody but the switch is getting these switch is getting everything late december they didn't have because probably release windows and nintendo being difficult and just or they're up or they're optimizing yeah not to say yes that's what i would have to say with that um but wait you say i want more pinball on that date okay they also are doing remastered versions of Epic Quest and Excalibur. They're calling this the charity pack because your purchase of these, depending on where you are in the world, your purchase will see the monies going towards a charity. Here in the United States, I don't have the names of the charity in front of me, but it's basically a charity that puts pinball machines. Project Pinball. It's what? It's Project Pinball. Puts pinball machines into children's hospitals. Yeah, really, really great charity. and then uh for europe it's going to uh the budapest pinball museum uh in fact in fact for apac as well it's also going to the budapest pinball museum um and that's going to go towards charities that budapest pinball museum sponsors yeah so shut up and take my money that's an easy purchase that one um just for epic quest excalibur is kind of a yeah well sure whatever table but epic quest the thing about us yeah it is and excalibur while it may not sound exciting i'm really interested to see what that's going to look like with unreal 4 attached to it it's going to look beautiful it already did look really pretty as a table but boy that lighting i reckon it's going to be pretty pretty good so i know what you're thinking but that's only nine tables to fill up my time on only nine tables that's only nine tables can't we have more sure but wait there's more because on november 30th pinball m drops yeah and they went ahead and announced the final table in uh the launch of that which is the thing which looks freaking awesome um the fact that they put a spider head uh roaming across the table i'm like perfect um and and i don't i doubt that they paid for the voice likenesses but whoever they got sounded like kurt russell sounded a lot like kurt russell so i'm happy about that um now those all come out november 30th or the yeah for the game it sounds like you can buy tables individually but they're also doing what they call the death save pack that'll discount all the tables in one go um they didn't mention a price for that we'll find out obviously very soon because as of this recording that's five days away um yeah impending release yeah pending release um and akosh is all about the thing pinball uh apparently that's now his he he ranked it as whitewater bobs burger and the thing pinball being his favorite machines that zen has done big calls yeah so um can't wait to play this one yeah and i think it's already i think you could always get a you can already get a demo of the thing I think I should look and see and I haven't either because it's well because I've been slammed um what yeah um so there you should actually try it out 14 tables in the span of one week yeah so so you can safely tuck yourself away away from the family over Christmas and just play pinball for the entire time which is probably what I'm going to be doing because I'm having three weeks off over christmas um two of those weeks will be just me oh and one of those weeks will be just the kidlets not so kidlet anymore right you know actual tweens and teens now because that's because that happened um mine's now an adult so yeah yeah um time much is on right yeah but yes it's gonna be it's gonna be i might even you'll notice that i have not been streaming at all because i just i just i just haven't been um haven't felt the motivation to do it but this will get me back in front of the camera again doing a bit of streaming and there's seriously something for everybody here you know everything yeah that's from those horror tables all the way to charlie brown which i guess that's part of what makes sense of having pinball m separated from yeah from the rest of this um but like when you see the stuff that's coming out in pinball m And the stuff that they're releasing almost in parallel in the FX platform, there's no way those two can coexist at all. So, yeah, Pinball M really unlocks a lot of possibilities for the studio. Now, let's talk about something that Pinball, one of the features that's in Pinball M that I saw that my head exploded. One of the challenge modes is called the Shiver Challenge, which is lights off except for gi lighting on the machine i'm like oh hell yeah can we please put that on the williams machines but it's dark man like if you're playing that in it's literally turning off all the lights and only letting the illumination from the actual lights that are on the table which as we've said before zen doesn't put a lot of gi lighting on their table um so it's going to be dark and I think the ball glows as well. What's that? I think the ball, I think they put a glowing ball on it as well. But if you put that mode of lighting into a Williams machine,
    40:58
    like Attack from Mars, that would look unbelievable. I would be playing Attack from Mars in that mode and Circus Voltaire in that mode permanently. Oh, geez, those tables. Yeah. They would just look amazing. Yep. Well, you know, Pimble M, that's what they're doing. they're doing all these tests in the wild so yeah make sure you tell them that you like this and you want to see it in the game because they are they are closely listening to the feedback i can tell you um so yeah be vocal about the things that you love in pinball m because that will get into the main game i did ask in the reddit chat after the show whether or not um cabinet mode is going to be in pinball m they did say it is um i also asked if pretty amazing i didn't think they would actually do cabinet mode for the m but yeah that's great i also asked if backglasses specifically animated backglasses are going to be making their way since they're you know partnering with ad games um uh didn't get a response about that that's something that zen really needs to get on though is you got to provide the backlash don't make people scour the internet so they have a proper back glass for any of these things it should just be part of it and it should be animated um yep so yeah absolutely all right now that's all the tables that they announced as if that wasn't enough they also are adding a whole bunch of quality of life features to pinball effects yeah so let's start with the first one control remapping yes please yes should make all the cabinet owners much much happier because obviously you'll be able to map to whatever buttons that you want that are on your cab and not have to use an adjoining key or something like that to get it working right um so that's fantastic what i'm really hoping this also means is that we'll get that ability to do a second flipper oh they they have to do it and i posted that question lena said he'll ask the developers and get back to us on that.
    43:08
    Whether or not he gets back to us is a whole other story. Again, that was in Reddit. I posted that on Reddit.
    43:16
    Put it this way. It's the start of that possibility, right? The fact that we can remap now is going to make a massive quality of life difference to a lot of people. For people who actually have accessibility issues with the control scheme that's currently there. yeah like that's really really important so yeah good on them for actually getting around and actually doing that you know next quality of life feature is quick play and they said there's two features to this uh let's start with the second feature that they announced which was um challenge or single play uh quick start i am guessing it's a randomizer is that what sound like to you jared yeah i got that impression as well yeah so you push quick play and it just pops up a table and you start playing it's not you selecting anything so you don't have to think i want to play this table give me a mode well i don't even think it's necessarily play it i think it's literally play me something and then up pops oh so it's like the they said it's from it's like roulette you own yes let's roulette all right that's that's actually great because i've got decision paralysis now in the game like i cycle through the list i go i end up just going back to williams because I don't even know what to play. Yeah. So this is great. The first part that they said with this is that they call it continue, and it will be continuation of your, and they said saved game, but all I'm imagining, what it basically means is it's not going to go back to the menu screen every single time. It's game finishes, you want to start it back up again, boom, right back into the table you're playing. Now, the big question is. I hope that's Williams. that's Williams are those Williams ROMs going to carry over specifically with Dr. Dude your progression on the Dude-O-Meter with Adam's family and ThingFlip learning will it have learned and you're not losing that learning every single time will is there anything else out there that has a progressive oh Vault Mode on Safecracker that's a massive one right and there are a lot of System 11 games which we know are going to be coming on the way that have that progressive mode, progressive jackpots and stuff like that.
    45:43
    So we've talked about that. I do have an observation though and this is outside of the announcements but it's more of what wasn't announced and that is Williams. What's happening with Williams? We didn't hear a single, yeah, no Williams table announced. Not a single property was announced in that big batch of updates. I thought for sure we'd be finishing off with a licensed table. Like another big name license, yeah. But it's all silent on the Williams front, and I don't know what's happening.
    46:19
    I'm not concerned yet, but I'm noting it. I'm noting it, though. I honestly think you know what I reckon is going to happen though I think it's let's see if our thoughts align on this Williams will be filler things like they've got a commitment list from a bunch of license holders where they need to fulfill the slots and potentially you know we know that there has been a staff reduction in the recent round of redundancies and stuff through Embracer so they might actually be going well we have commitments we need to hit here. We don't necessarily have commitments with Belly Williams that we need to pump out. So maybe we just have to focus on getting those licenses out for our commitment roadmap. You're definitely on to something right there. They only have a limited time agreement for those licenses. I'm sure those license holders, once the contract is signed, they want to see their product being pumped out. Without a doubt. There's no timeframe for the Williams.
    47:24
    But what I was going to say was I think it has to do with the reduction in staff and that, yeah, they probably pulled people off the Williams tables to work on the Xen Originals. Because where do they just pull three developers from for those three Star Trek tables They don just come out of thin air right So yeah I reckon that And it would track because we haven really seen a lot of Williams releases in the last nine months and nine months is how long it would take them to do a licensed table property for those Star Trek tables. So that does line up a bit. So, yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it? It does, it does. All right, moving on with the quality of life things. they said local leaderboards for pc will be back i also didn't know they were missing it's like okay sure i mean i some people really care about this and i think it actually comes down to those folks who are doing cabinet play well and that's it's cabinet play and it allows them to do offline play yes that's true as well so i think that's what that i mean it's great it brings it back to parity with fx3 doesn't it and i mean that's what they're looking at doing as far as future parity goes they're slowly getting there um we also have system achievements uh are going to be back they are going to be available for all of these december release tables so they're not going back cataloging just yet but for all they will go forward and then they said that they aim to expand that which i can only attest would be for the back catalog that's already out on PindleFX. Yeah, I think they're going to just quality of life patch those every time. Which again, there's your parody, because they were already in existence for FX3.
    49:14
    Which is leads us into our final quality of life thing, which is physics and difficulty modes for the tables.
    49:26
    Specifically, your normal mode is going to be using the fx3 physics and then your challenge mode will be using your pinball effects physics um this has a lot of people asking what was the point of switching to pinball effects and i think it's that they got so much flack from a lot of people saying that they preferred the way fx3 played um that this gives them well fine we'll let you play with fx3 physics but we're going to still say that these are just like there was the pro physics the pro physics are now the the pinball effects physics i'm going to be very curious and i don't know the answer to this what are the default physics going to be i would think that they're going to default to fx because they will be mad if they didn't uh it would be my call uh why would you default to an older physics model by default i agree i think they will be doing effects should be um what would be interesting is if they let you uh determine which tables get which physics because i think where yeah where the pinball effects physics shine is on the williams tables yeah for sure on the zen originals were designed for those physics, and I think maybe what we used to call the Williams physics, but now the pinball effects physics, those might be breaking or making some of those tables not function the way that they were supposed to. So, yeah. Basically, what they said was, again, these are going to be available for the tables releasing in December going forward.
    51:15
    So, not necessarily what has already been released on PenFX. Because I think a lot of the PenFX tables are only PenFX available, right?
    51:27
    Am I not mistaken about that? Yeah. Yes, actually. All the Pinball Effects ones are all the ones that release in Early Access. In the Jurassic Park, those were FX3 there, but like your for getting gearbox tables those were all pin effects yes correct so um oh and then finally the announcement was tables that are going to be on switch are all going to just be fx3 physics so i can only imagine that that's helping optimize the play on the switch probably probably less data points they need to implement to do that physics which is probably good yeah because there's again a lot of people have been saying that uh fx3 ran just fine on the switch and pin effects is chugging on the switch so i think that's just engine related i don't think that's physics related um that's just unreal engine 4 being a bit of a resource hog okay um physics i don't think are going to really play into that but i think perhaps playing on a a handheld console um with the fact that this thing is running a tegra processor like on the switch tablet which i was using back in 2010 like seriously on android it's the same pretty much same architecture it's ancient so yeah uh it's a yeah it's a bit of a hard ass to get to run on tech that's 10 years past where it needs to be yeah so there it is folks wow that's so much so much yeah i am very curious to see where we go forward how much of again what happens in pinball m winds up coming into pinball effects um clearly they're listening to uh feedback from people which is why we're getting things like the fx3 physics back into this um so it'll be interesting seeing where they go forward uh how much of this that uh is reactionary versus was already on the boards and planned but the bigger thing is again we're still seeing the impacts and and of what this staff reduction is and how that's going to affect um the fact that also we're getting 14 tables dumped on us if you had told me this just a month ago i've been like but didn't you just have staff reduced so if it was that much of an issue they would have been stringing these things along to pad what's happening next year.
    54:33
    That's right. They would have been feathering the timeline a bit to just release these over time to give them a chance to regroup again. But no, no. Here's 14 things.
    54:45
    Enjoy! Wow. You know, to everybody that was complaining that Pinball M didn't come out in time for Halloween, hey, I'd rather have a solid working game than one that needed patches going after. Somebody was even talking about how come we don't do this? How come they didn't do early access? I'm like, because they learned their lesson?
    55:07
    Because none of you treated early access like it was early access and instead treated it like it was the alpha or the green, what do you call it when it's gold? General availability version? Yeah, I don't know. The locked version of the game? The locked version? Anyway.
    55:24
    Yeah. So it's like, yeah, better they hold on to it and make sure that it's working how it was designed then. And clearly state that it's beta. It's beta. Like, yeah, things will change, you know. But the thing is that early access beta, they are both the same thing. Yeah. Like, you know, but they just have different names. Interestingly, they also have up for free early access their new Galaxy Mini Golf. Mini Golf Galaxy. i played it yeah um and uh it sounds like they're going to use the pinball model for this which is you know that's your free game and then they'll sell different worlds after that that's exactly early access version of things is going to be uh just this work it all out um but yeah you know it's kind of fun to have a uh a creator mode so you can create your own courses some people like I'm on that discord. Like the, honestly, I'll say from the outset, the game isn't for me. I don't really enjoy it. Not really. Yeah. But I still downloaded it and I gave it a go and it's polished already. Like I played some mini golf games before. Um, and it's got a pretty high pedigree already. Um, so I can only imagine that this thing is going to become a very strong contender in this particular genre. Um, yeah, it's, and I'm not just saying that because it's a Zen product. It actually feels really good to play.
    56:54
    So, yeah, if you haven't checked it out, just give it a go. Like, the demo's free, and you can get access to a fair bit of content in there already for free, enough that you can definitely make a decision whether it's for you or not. Oh, okay. So, yeah, you can give it a really good go. Three-star everything, because it's got, like, the one-star, two-star, three-star treatment thing in the game. Really, really good mechanic.
    57:22
    So three-star everything and see if it's for you. It won't cost you a cent. Alright. Jared's semi-seal of approval.
    57:31
    Yeah, I know. I love the game, it's just not for me. But yeah, heaps of other people are really digging it and they're already getting really good feedback on their Discord about all the things that people would like to see in it. So yeah, definitely high engagement from the people who are playing it over there. Okay. Apparently, you all really enjoyed our top 10 video. It's gotten a fair amount of views for us. The entire list of all the creators that made their top five got posted over on This Week in Pinball. there was i don't know 30 some 40 different creators that made their own videos in their own lists um fortunately we weren't the only ones that uh played outside the rules where we just talked digital pinball there was one that talked only about um handmade creation pinball so re-theming of what's that homebrews homebrews that's it homebrews and then another person they did their top five worst machines ever which is hilarious yeah because truth be told after i started reading the list and seeing the same titles over and over again you just start glossing over what everybody has to say which is for sure of our reasoning for doing the digital absolutely um but that was a fun so interestingly uh i was trawling back through the several hundred unread emails that I have. Probably not that bad, but it feels like it sometimes. And This Week in Pinball have been taken over by Kineticist. So Kineticist is the group of folk who run a couple of pinball podcasts and actually invite us to do it. But Twip is now part of the Kineticist family. Oh, okay. Yeah, so that was something that just slid in, which is why I was going, oh like i got on board into this new mailing list thing through twitter i went what's going on here and and then i trolled back through oh okay they they partnered up with the they they've joined the kinetesis family yeah um so that makes sense so yeah that's just a bit of like you know the machinations of content creators for you yeah uh which may or may not interest you probably not interest you. So who knows, maybe we'll have to come up with some more lists and do short... Listicles! Listicles. Little short episodes of that nature.
    60:05
    So tell us what you want. Tell us what you want to focus on in a digital pinball space. In the comments or to our different feedback forums which are blahblahblackade at gmail.com or you can hit us up on the Twitters or X as it's known now.
    60:25
    and uh i will never call it x sorry you see that little birdie at the bottom of our screen that birdie stays it's not going to become an x yeah it's staying there branding be damned so yeah come and have a chat and uh or leave comments in the youtube um after this episode and let us know what you want to see don't forget about the discord channel for you oh yeah that's right come and join us on discord link to join that is in the show notes and come along and have a chat. It's low volume, and you can come out and hang out with Digital Pinheads on there. Yeah. It's good. So there you go. In the works, we're planning on having an interview with Anna, the designer at Zen.
    61:11
    We're also trying to work to see if we can schedule something with Mel like we typically do in December. So hopefully that will come together. and if there's anybody else that you want us to interview or uh think would be a good interview that we could actually get you know don't go sitting there saying you know steve richie be nice yeah yeah yeah i'd love to talk to pat lawler would pat lawler want to talk to us hell no so no um yeah go for the things that are actual gets or maybe you already have a connection and you can forward our information to them and see if they want to come talk to us. We're more than happy to talk to people and considering our track record of some of the people that we've talked to, you know that.
    61:58
    So not saying names, but until then I, I have a strange feeling that we might have to do some kind of reaction to all these tables that pop up. So expect an episode that delves into that next, but then it's december and you know all that's our office to win another episode is but we'll get we'll get something in in december i guarantee that something yeah there will be there will be something coming in december just don't hold us to a date we'll we'll catch up again in december but it'll be sometime when things line up look we appreciate your patience with our erratic schedule of releases um and i say the appreciation because when i do look at the stats our subscriber compared to viewer is most of our subscribers are our viewers so we uh that's that's good yeah it's really cool that's that's much better for us than just random people picking up our and then not subscribing so we definitely appreciate uh that shows us that you our viewer are loyal and uh value what we have to say and we appreciate any and all feedback you guys have so until such time as uh you see us again uh we'll of course be brewing up something along the line of jared and stuff and things for you until then catch y'all later bye-bye bye-bye