this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i'm your host chris frebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jerry morgan hello howdy How's it all going today? I thought I was all set and ready to go for this here podcast, and then it turns out that I wasn't. Yeah, you deleted it. You sent to Trash a thing that we were going to be talking about today. Yeah, so a little last-minute panic here is me getting all set up, so I apologize for those of you that were actually wanting to view this. You had to wait just a slight touch. So it happens. It's fine. This is fine. It happens. Hello to everyone. If you're watching us at the moment, is there anyone watching us at the moment? I've got three people that are apparently watching us at the moment. Well, that's good. Hello. We have such a large viewership numbers. It's incredible. Our live viewership is not that hot, but we actually get a few, we don't pull in like what numbers people that get paid on YouTube get paid, you know, obviously, but no, it's a happy number for us. Let's put it that way. It's a number that we don't mind at all. Yeah. It's fine for us. One for us. Um, Hey, we've got some, uh, we got plenty of pinball to talk about today. So let's, let's start talking. First things first, Stern went and, uh, dropped something that I don't think any of us were expecting, uh, which is they announced a new black night table. Yeah. It's looks pretty good. It's pretty good. It sounds pretty, Sounds pretty good. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's nothing like having Scott Ian from Anthrax do the music for you. Is that who's done it? Yes. Oh, wow. It sounds really nice. It's Black Knight 2000 with a really nice modern sort of semi-heavy metal twist to it. Right. Really great. Which, I mean, many people consider Black Knight 2000 to have the best pinball soundtrack. Oh, yeah. I respectfully disagree because it's clearly roller games. If you listen to the two of them side by side, there's a lot in common between the two of them. There's a reason because it seems like, I think we talked about this in a couple of episodes, like very early on when we're doing the blockade, but the way that they were using those Yamaha chips is that they seem to agree upon a soundscape for each year that they were producing tables. So they say, oh, oh, we want to have the bass sounding like this, and this is our instrument for the year. And then we'll have organs and stuff sounding like this. And it was very consistent across all the tables that were released in that year. And then what they do at the end of the year is that they throw out that sound palette and try and re-engineer the sounds and push that Yamaha chip more and more and more to try and get it to output different stuff and do really cool stuff. And that's why they always used to say they're basically getting the motorboat to 80 miles an hour because that chip is – it was a stereo chip, but they were using it in – they were basically cutting the stereo function of it down to mono and then doubling the output of it. So they were using the extra channel to do extra sounds and actually get that ship to do things that it really wasn't architected to do, but they did it safely in a production way. It was very fascinating if you ever want to listen to how they did that System 11 sound. See, I was just thinking it was because Steve Ritchie, in reading about this new Black Knight, what is it called again? Black Knight something Rage, right? Swords of Rage. Swords of Rage. There we go. Yes. I just remember because it says Rage. Rage. Those are the letters that you need to highlight. No, Steve was saying that he is the one that did the initial composing of the Black Knight 2000 theme, and then they handed it off to somebody else. And so I thought, oh, well, maybe he did the same thing for Roller Games because that's one of his tables also. So maybe he composed the theme for that and then handed it off, and that's why maybe the two sound somewhat similar. but anyway actually I think the head to head pinball guys did an interview with one of the sound engineers from Williams in a episode about 8 or 9 episodes back I think his name was Steve Kordek maybe and he basically went into detail about what he did and how they actually did the sounds on things like fishtails and how they it was a discussion which is really worth listening to if you haven't actually listened to it but it's a sound about how they how they built a sound landscape in games like Fishtails like you don't really see that in games of today like the games that Stern have for example don't have this sort of layered sound approach that all the older Belly Williams games did so you know when you shoot the ramp on Fishtails you get that you know that ascending sound, and then when it hits the exit switch, it actually has a different sound playing. All those sort of like little tricks and like the buildup of the sound, like the escalating sound as you're actually getting higher and higher to get the monster fish. That's sort of excitement building sound that was in those games in the past, which makes them subtly the reason why people like them so much. It's just not in games of today. They don't do that anymore. So it was a really interesting interview to see how they actually crafted the excitement in the game, not so much on the play field. Of course, play field layout is important, but it was actually the sound and how it worked in the game that made it exciting. Interesting side note, when I'm playing one of those games that has those accelerating excitement kind of sounds, and I'm failing repeatedly to get there, I just mute the game. because honestly I know it's affecting my trigger response. Yeah, right. Because you're not getting it and it makes you feel bad. Well, it's that. I mean, the classic example that I think the first time I became aware of what true sound design can do was in the movie Aliens and the motion tracker. Now, they have the motion tracker in Alien, but in Aliens, they specifically made the whoop, whoop, whoop and they timed it to a heartbeat so that when the aliens are getting closer, the heartbeat accelerates and that cues you visually to also start feeling a racing of the pulse as you're watching it. Genius. That's why I say those sound cues in the pinball game they will start making your pulse race a little bit more. And then I don't have to feel that and then it's amazing how often that works for me, that I'll just suddenly be able to hit the shots. Oh, okay, great. You know, if I'm not hearing the countdown timer, you want to hurry up mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, back to Black Knight. Sword of Rage. What I referred to in my tweets about it is Black Knight 2019. Because it's easier to say Black Knight 2K19. So it's interesting. it is a modern update of it but there are some things that don't exist in the old table that exist here now let's talk about just the premium and the LE version yeah because the pros we'll get to that we'll get to that Jared don't jump the boat I haven't actually seen the comparison have they got that up on stern I don't know if they have it up on stern I saw it on IGN I believe oh okay But anyway, for the upper playfield, what they did was they made it Lexan so you can see through it. Because underneath the playfield, there's pop bumpers and there's an actual rear area to the playfield. It's not just that you're either on the upper playfield or on your lower playfield with a little horseshoe U-turn. There's actual stuff back there for your ball to bounce around on and do its business. So they did this Lexan playfield up there so you can see through it. And my initial thought was, ooh, that thing's going to get scratched up. Which then they made a point of saying how easy it is to remove, clean, and replace if need be. That it's literally a three-minute procedure. So I thought, okay, that's interesting. Well, that's very similar to the way that the upper play field worked on both Black Knight and Black Knight 2000. It was actually on a hinge system. So you undo a couple of key screws and the whole thing just tilts up. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's really nice. um the also changed what it is that is oh i mean like on the regular black knight that's where the pop bumpers are and like i said now pop bumpers are below so all there is up there really is the flipper and the ramp that you're trying to hit for locking balls yeah lock ramp system yeah that lock mechanism is interesting isn't i've seen that in a game before and it's not a real life game. It's a Zen game. What is it? I don't think I've examined the lock mechanism enough to know what game are you referring to in Zen. I think it's one of the I think it might be that Might of the First Order table that has that sort of horizontal locking system. That diagonal locking system where you sort of kick the balls up into there and it drops in. It looks really similar to that. You get an idea from Diddy. From what I've seen, I haven't seen a super, super tight shot of it, but it really does. It looks quite a lot like that. I'm just flicking through the pictures now to see if there's a closer look at it. Now, of course, the main thing that they did was they threw a black knight right in the middle of the playfield. Yeah. In one hand, again, there's two lanes on either side of him. In one hand, blocking the lane is, it looks like a spinning mace, if you will. Yeah, a mace. that can block the lane. Now, I don't know if that is an actual spinner or if it is mechanically moved. No, no, it's basically a spinner. It is a true spinner, okay. I've seen the video play, and the ball's hit it and spins around. Okay, in the other hand, he's got a shield. That, I do believe, is mechanical. You bash the shield, the shield will raise up, or block the ball for how you're going. Yep, correct. And apparently they've done all sorts of lighting fun with the Black Knight's helmet. Oh, cool. And, you know, so there's LED lights in there, so it'll change based off of, like, what he's speaking or whatever. I don't know, different eye colors that are going on. Very cool. And what I laughed about at the announcement, they're like, finally, we'll get to find out all about the Black Knight's backstory and all the stuff that's going on. I'm like, I never even questioned the Black Knight. that there was a story for Black Knight. But apparently there is now. I love the fact that in the design choices of this table, I don't know who's done the art, but they've seriously taken some cues from the old table. I love the fact that the MagnaSave-like text is exactly the same as it was on the, I think it was the first Black Knight. So if you have a look at the MagnaSave text, it's almost the same. or if it's not almost the same, it's taking huge homage from the old table to get that right. And interestingly, the MagnaSave is using the old center stern button that they love to use so much and not an additional flipper switch. Yes. So you are going to have to completely take your hand off the flipper. Yeah, and smash it. It'll be like playing Family Feud or something like that. Hand on the deck, you got the answer. Exactly right. Well, I think people are pretty used to that now with the way Stern do their lockdown buttons. So that motion that you're going to get people to do, I think they'll be fine with that. Yeah. Yeah. Makes me wonder, whoever designed Black Rose, because that has the exact same fire mechanism. I wonder if whoever it was that did the first Throne Table that had that, if they're the same designer. Fun quiz. Go search for it, people. Go Google. Yeah. Let's see what you find out. So beyond that, I mean, it seems like it's fairly faithful, not just a reskin. Like I said, they've updated it a little bit here and there. Then there's the pro version, and I do have to question, can you still call it Black Knight when there is no upper play field? I wouldn't think so. I can only see pictures of the LE and the Jesus that look good. if i was to buy a pinball machine yeah i think it might be this one really i've never been a fan of black knight so it doesn't really uh grab me much the thing is that it it would be fine as long as they um have taken the reliance off that one shot which is what i also tweeted about when i saw the thing it's like it it needs to be like the whole you know shoot the ramp to get it back up to the upper play field and then if it drains basically do that again over and over and over again that's what made black knight that's what i think made black knight a little bit not great yeah but if they've if they've rebalanced that and the upper play field is almost like the like what you're striving to get to not what you can just hit all the time like if you need to do stuff down the bottom to actually get up to the upper play from it's like a special thing then that actually makes more sense and i think that will be exciting yeah the pro version basically has um a couple of different habit trails going on and uh because nothing is going to get kicked up to the to the upper play field i have no idea how it locks the balls i wasn't able to to devise that based off the limited pictures that i saw from that and obviously now shooting into that back area for pop bumpers is much more important or whatever. But I just really kind of went, oh, guy. Already, one of the things I think I don't care about Black Knight for much is it's essentially a half playfield game. I've never been much of a fan of tables that are that kind of layout. I like a much longer throw to my games. Now you don't even have an upper playfield. You've got a back area essentially it's shooting in orbit and seeing where the ball bounces and then waiting for it to drop back down. I don't know how that'll fly. But hey, there's been times before where the Pro version actually wound up being like Game of Thrones. Yeah, Game of Thrones. The Pro version is pretty dang cool compared to the Premium. Yeah. But I think really the upper play field on any Black Knight game is kind of like the standard. well that's the trademark of it it was the first of its kind to be like that you know that locking mechanism up there is not going to feel the same as a virtual lock because you can guarantee that's how they do it without the upper playfield up there it's just not going to feel right it's not going to be black knight I still can't find screenshots of the pro you'll find them eventually and then you'll post them I don't actually want to see the pro because I know that I'll just be disappointed and angry so I'm not going to look for it I just want to basically the only version available, the only version that really should be available is the premium. That's basically should be the only entry level one. That's what, well, that's my opinion. I agree. I agree on this particular table. Absolutely. Okay. Enough of that. We're going to, we're going to go talk about some Zacharia pinball right now. And then we've got a couple of other topics after that, that are more frivolous in nature, if you will. So stick around for those folks. But right now, let's talk about Zachariah. I actually titled this episode based off of our question of how do you pronounce it. Is it Zachariah or Zacharia? Yeah. That's why the episode is called It's Leviosa, not Leviosa. All right. Okay. That's good to know. For those of you that know the Harry Potter reference there. So with the Zachary at Pinball, there's a couple of things that we're going to touch on. First off, we've had a go at it for now a good solid week. And the thing that I wanted to most check out was what is campaign mode? Did you happen to sample that, Jared? No, I've had a shocking week at work this week. Well this week coming up is my holiday week because Zachary has had his leg surgery to straighten up his legs So I had to get a lot of work done I was working till like 12 a in the morning for a couple of nights I had no time to do anything apart from work this week Good times. Yes, but I'm going to make up for that this week when I'm looking after Zach and being at home and not doing very much at all. All right. Well, campaign mode is, for anybody that's played story mode, which story mode is included for free with the app. Or I shouldn't say the app. I'm going to say the app, but I don't mean that. I mean on the Steam version. I think everyone refers to games now as apps. As apps, yeah. But this is what we're talking about. I'm not talking about any mobile version. I'm purely talking about Steam. Steam. And the way story mode works is basically they go year by year through each and every single table, and they give you a particular target that you need to hit. It's not a score target. It'll be specifically hit this pop bomber three times or hit this drop target. Once you've met that goal, then you get to play the next table. And it just goes table by table through those. So it's kind of an interesting way of getting a quick sample of all the tables, except for it's not so quick when you consider how many tables that there are. Yeah, that's right. There's a lot in there now. There's a lot in there. And as you progress farther, they throw in another goal. So it'll be like, okay, oh, you hit the 10 pop bumpers? Great, now you also need to hit this drop target. And so kind of do that. What's fun about it is they also throw in the – I've got to say, this is one of the most fun modes that Zen has, which is you have to roll the ball over inserts to take out the lights. Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember you talking about this. Yeah, and it's really kind of fun because you just see lights go out, and then when there was only a few left, you know that's what you're targeting for and stuff. So it's kind of an interesting way of going about that. Campaign mode is similar in that when you play a table, it asks you to, again, do a task. Yeah. Where it wildly is different is when you start off, you've got little tiny short flippers, There's a little tiny ball. You only have so many, they call it a flipper battery. So there's an energy bar on your flippers. So if you just hold the flipper up, energy bar goes, and when it hits zero, game over. You're done with that match. There's also a timer on the tables that I think is only like 25 seconds. So there's all these little parameters that go on, right? Now, the first three tables, I launched the ball, and I met the goal without ever flipping once. All right. That's how easy those were, right? Yeah. But then it starts getting progressively more difficult, and you need more and more control of the ball. And believe me, smaller ball, different physics with how it bounces around. So as you're going through all these, you're earning coins, and you can spend these coins to make your flipper longer, make the ball bigger, give you more flipper time, instead of the ball draining and it being game over now you have another ball that you can plunge how many nudges do you get trying to think what else do they throw in there how many tasks do you have to do can you reduce how many tasks you have to do each time you can increase the timer so there's all these things you can spend your coin to help you pass that particular table and they have it kind of in a it looks like a bracket system where it'll be like you beat this table that opens up these four tables now you got to beat these four tables because they branch to a separate string of tables that you need to go through and there's just all these campaign levels to go through and it'll basically is going to run you through the entire gamut of tables I mean it is a massive I start scrolling on to see how far this map goes and this map goes a long, long, long, long way. Yeah. The fun of it is it really captures that just one more aspect because again, each match is only going to be 30 to 40 seconds long, or at least that's how long it is for me right now. And so you'll be bashing around. You're like, oh, I finally got those drop targets. Oh, now I got to hit the pumper. Oh, I ran out of time. Okay, I got to do that a little more efficiently, a little quicker. And it seems easy, but some of these tables, my god, I spent like 20 minutes trying to get past them because some of them are not easy. And again, it comes down to they're really not easy when the physics are different than what you were used to. The first things I upgraded are getting myself the proper flipper length and getting myself the proper ball size just so that I had a fighting chance on any of these. I think that would probably make a difference. Yeah, it kind of messes with your head otherwise. It's interesting to play through it that way. Is it different enough from story mode? I mean, yes and no. I can't remember how much campaign mode costs. I don't think it costs any more than $5. It might be like $2.99. I don't know. It's more of one of those things of, hey, if you're looking for a different way of playing Zachariah, then give it a shot. Give it a shot, spend the money. If you really enjoyed playing story mode, certainly give it a shot, because you'll enjoy it equally the same, because now there's a little bit of strategy involved in how you do this. If you're the kind of person that finds all the daily tasks and challenges of Zen Pinball in the mobile app really frustrating, you're going to hate it. Yes. So, you know, go accordingly. The other thing that I took a look at was the art editor. So the art editor, what it does is it gives you a play field with. So you don't get to design the play field, right? It is one of their tables just basically devoid of artwork. so it's a white wood if you will with insert lights and the flippers are already placed, ramps are already placed, bumpers are already placed. But now what you can go through is you can do all the art yourself. Apply the art anywhere you want. Do you want the art on the playfield? Great. You put it on the playfield. Do you want different art up on the slingshots? Great. You put art on the slingshots. You can enlarge them, reverse them, shrink them, all manner. And there is like the first table that you get. I want to say is that like Wild Rapids or something. I can't remember what the name of it is. But it's Cowboys and Indians themed. Surfing the Rapids. It's Frontier themed. So all the art that is there is all various Frontier stuff that you can place. You can also I believe change the shape of the inserts. Shape of the inserts. Okay. I think maybe it is either that or just the decal that would go around the insert. That's probably more likely than that. There's all sorts of text that you can put all over the play field. I mean, there is a ton of customization. And so it's kind of fun because you can then create your own look to it. Yep. The bummer of it is you have to play the table and score points. And those points are what you can then buy all the individual art pieces with. Oh, okay. So they've turned it into a game. It's not just a straight-up go in and edit the art kind of situation. I don't know how I feel about that because I also don't know – because I barely had time to really delve into this. Yeah. I don't know if this is the only table. I don't suspect it is. I think that you can, there's other tables that you'll get to do this with. What would be interesting is if you're able to do it with absolutely every single table design. But if that's the case, you're going to be having to play every single one of these tables to death to earn enough points to buy all the art to then go. I mean, Hey, if you, like I said, if you're into building your own kind of, you know, when you play these games and you get to build your own avatar and, and you like to buy all the different skins and clothing options and weapons and all that stuff, this is probably right up your alley. Yeah, yeah. But I just kind of thought, well, if you're paying the money for the art editor, why isn't it just there ready for you as opposed to turning it into a game? Which, I don't know, Zacharia has a different approach than everybody else. All their modes are different than what other pinball companies have done. Yeah, there's some really unique stuff in their offering. Like that rollover, the inserts thing, no one has even thought of doing that. So that's very, very different and cool at the same time. Yeah. So, you know, like I said, it holds some interest. I don't know whether that's necessarily for me because I'm not going to spend a lot of time putting art on a play field. I just, I don't know. that's too tedious for me to do, but the functionality of what is there, there's a ton that you're able to do to make it your own. Now, unfortunately, how you navigate through, are you going to rotate the art or which art piece are you selecting? Are you enlarging, shrinking, all that? You're basically using the menu system that is throughout the entire game. If you go into options and you see that whole menu down across the bottom and all the different options, you're dealing with that. And I've discovered what my problem with their UI is. And that is when you back out, it's constantly asking, are you sure? And the thing that it's highlighting is no. So you're always having to back out. And this is just throughout the game in general. You back out, it goes boom. Now you got to use the joystick to select your thing. press and it goes are you sure and it's highlighting no so you can't just push the button you gotta slap it over one more time and push yes so you're constantly it's never just a simple button pushes you know it's not just back back back back back and you're back to the main menu it's always back push a joystick back push joystick and and where where the the boxes that'll get highlighted and this is throughout all the menus even when selecting tables or whatever the box is getting highlighted, it's never on the last thing that you selected. It'll always go to a default position. So you seemingly were always having to... You spend a lot of time scrolling and kind of going... In the editor, it kind of is off-putting because it's difficult to tell, wait, am I in selection mode or am I in menu mode? I'm not sure which am I... And so I made a couple of a couple of times where I was messing with it going, why is nothing happening? And realizing, oh, I don't have the art piece selected. I have this mode selected that I'm supposed to be fussing about with. So, there's that kind of thing. But those are the two modes that I tried basically this week. With campaign mode, I was given a lot of the EM tables. And, yeah, folks, if you're not playing Zachary a pinball and you're an EM fan, you're doing it wrong. Yeah. Because they've got a ton of EMS. And they're seriously good. They really, for me, I was saying this last episode, they embody EMS really well. They're nuts. Some of the designs are absolutely on crack. And that's exactly how some of the early EMS were. I was going to say, that's not far off of what those were. So I wasn't aware of this, but they have the game out on the Switch. So I was like, okay, let me download and see what it looks like on the Switch. Because, again, the game came out on Xbox One last week. And I was told that it's basically the exact same thing on that as what's on the Switch. So I thought, well, hey, at least I can check it out on the Switch and see what's what. As soon as the game loaded up, it threw me an offer. hey would you like 27 retro tables for one dollar uh you went uh the retro tables are these ems one buck folks one dollar one dollar far out that's pretty good to all of a sudden have 27 tables then in front of you um if you're especially if you're an em fan especially if you're an em fan that would be an insta buy for me like that would be uh yeah sure where's the button the switch isn't mine so it's not an instant buy for me but if it was um but uh yeah no that and and i checked out can you put it into vertical mode and play flip grip yes you can rotate the screen you gotta go through some steps in order to lock the camera because otherwise the camera will still bang about okay you got to go and put into cabinet mode and lock the camera and kind of play with the perspective to give you a slight bit of perspective a little bit but once you got it, you're going to have your traditional pinball setup, which is nice. That's real nice. Also, the rumble on the Switch is way better than the rumble on Steam. Oh, really? It was weird. I was like, I wonder how come I'm feeling any rumble? I was like, this is odd. Normally, I always have rumble on until I win. I checked, and sure enough, the rumble was turned off. I was like, oh, let's turn that back on. I go to play. It rumbles as the ball is rolling. oh it's not when the ball makes contact it's a constant rumble as the ball is rolling around which i then immediately turned rumble back off whereas on the switch it was only when it was making contact with with things and that's very similar to how zen have done this i've got to hand it to zen like there if you're using an xbox controller which is my experience um and you're using the if you've got vibration on on the tables like the williams tables it's so good like when you hit pop bumpers that's pretty much one of the only times that it actually pulses yeah and vibrates and that's how it should be because that's when you get most of the vibration on the table whereas i think i tried it on pimble arcade and everything like no matter what you're hitting is just a long vibration and that's it like it's not like a little short pulses which is why they had to correct it for uh harley davidson because your controller was basically rumbling non-stop and battery was getting drained like crazy yeah it's just that it yeah i'd turn it off on on old pimple arcade like it was just like bye that's a silly feature like if you know if you're not going to bother implementing the feature properly don't put it in at all right but the one on the one on zen is is perfect it's exactly what you expect right and i'm really pleased that it sounds like they've done the same thing with um with zachary because it actually does make the game more immersive. It's really good when it's done right. I'm just noticing here, thanks to our YouTube watchers, that campaign mode on Steam, at least in British Pound, is $2.09. So, yes, probably $2.99 US. That's pretty good. That's probably about $15 Australian, so that's normal. Slight exaggeration, but, you know. Yeah, probably slight. Probably maybe a couple of bucks. No, we got 40% on everything at the moment because of our exchange rate. So it would be like probably five, which is still good value. I do got to say, the Zachary Pinball looked really good on the Switch. Yeah. I know what they're doing. They basically came out with the Steam version, the PC version, and they're just porting that, everything over as much as they can. It's essentially their baseline development version that they then export, which I think is good. And if they optimize the game properly, then it's not going to have an issue porting over to anything. That's right. You know, the more I see the Switch, the more there's some really interesting titles on it that aren't just the regular sort of Nintendo standards. There's some very interesting pinball-style RPG things coming out, which I think Zen tweeted about last week that looks really, really interesting. And all the big names are on there now Before it was a bit of a ghost town for pinball You didn really have a lot of choice on the platform but now you've got Williams Pinball on there. You've got Zen Pinball on there. You've got Zacharia now. You've got... I don't know the other titles. I think Yoku's Island Express is on there. Yeah, Yoku's is on there. That's a great game. Then there's other ones on there that are actually exclusive to Switch, too. which I think is this particular one that Zim was talking about last week was one of the ones that isn't actually on any other platform. So it's sort of – and they're not as expensive as they were. So I'm wondering if I should just maybe accidentally go and find one of those. Oops, look what fell into the cart, honey. Yeah. And I don't know how this Flipgrip got ordered, but there it is. because if you're going to be playing pinball on the Switch, you need to just be getting the flip grip because you're not going to be... Can you actually buy them, though? Because they were only a quarter of a... I thought it had gone to... Retail now. Retail. I mean, not in stores, but I thought that you could order it online. I don't know. I could be wrong. You would, though. Absolutely correct because it's the only way to play pinball. I mean, if you're going to be playing... On the go. On your go, on the go, and you have the Switch, you're not going to want to play in landscape. You're going to want to play in portrait, and then you're going to want the flip grip to slide it into and go to town. And there's a whole bunch of – that's the other thing. It's not just pinball that's taking advantage of that. It's all these old-school – Shoot-em-ups and stuff. Shoot-em-ups. They're using that. I would be in that like nothing else. I love a good shmup. You know me. Yeah. I would be all over that. Well, I just discovered – So if you have the subscription to the Switch, it's kind of like having your PSN subscription or Xbox Live subscription. But they have what they call the NES arcade, and it's just included. And you go to that, and it's all these old NES games that you can just play. And I was going through it, and I was like, oh, look, they've got Excitebike. And oh, look, they've got Donkey Kong. Oh, look, they've got not Super Mario Brothers, just Mario Brothers, which is that old the just the platform with things spitting spitting beasties out and you having to bump them from underneath and getting rid of them and clearing the level one of those style things and I was all getting excited about this and my son was just like yeah those games all suck and so I was like what are you talking about and he goes well they're super hard and I'm like he's like yeah welcome to the 80s mate these were games meant to suck your quarters up it's not meant to spend a half an hour on we've actually got I think Netherworld actually has Mario Brothers on the floor like it's it's an proper arcade game that was ported and it's it's a little bit like Donkey Kong in the way I've seen it and it looks like it would be hard as nuts like I would it would be designed to suck your quarters like you may as well just connect your bank account up it is especially when you get ice levels and so you can't stop on a dime you slide yeah oh wow yep yep classic 80s quarter sucker. The funny thing is, here's how long it's been since I played and how used to now I am with Mario. There was a turtle, and I was like, oh, okay, and I went and I jumped on top of the turtle and I died. I'm like, what the heck? It's because you have to bop them from underneath to flip them over, and then you have to knock them. You don't jump on them to flip them over, but that's how we're programmed today to know. Yeah, that's right. And isn't that interesting that that's like instinctive? Like, that's, oh, I see a turtle, I have to jump on it. Instead of going, hang on, I've got to do something else? Like, it's that sort of interesting how game mechanics in the game... I see a turtle. I need to jump on it to turn it upside down, the meanest thing you can possibly do to a turtle. Yeah. Basically, you're the biggest a-hole ever, you know, in the game. Hey, you know, I saw on the subject of Switch, I've seen a number of times now on Instagram, I get this, I've subscribed to this, I follow this channel, It's called Promo Pinball. And they've got this, basically it's a pin cab, but it is for Switch. So you've basically got this stand. It's like a freestanding thing that's designed to take a flat screen. And a flat screen, you just buy the flat screen. It comes in a flat pack. And you buy this thing, you slot the screen into it, and then you put your Switch in. It's even got little connectors for the Switch controllers. So they become your flippers. And you're playing all the pinball games on Switch. Basically like a massive flip grip is what this thing is. Yeah. And it looks really interesting. And I think it's like a, I forget what it is. It could be a Brazilian company that makes it. But it looks really nice. Like it's very well put together. And it's not that expensive. I think you buy your own screen for it, and they just send you the wood. Yeah, because the screen's the most expensive part of the whole deal. Exactly. But it looks really slick. I think if you were a Switch player, and you wanted to have a bit of a pinball cabinet experience at home, this would be a thing. I'll link it in the show notes, and you can have a look. There you go. Okay, trying to think of other Zachariah pieces that we can throw out here. ah, I have word that the mobile app should be coming in 2019, and it's not just Android. It'll also be a brand-new iOS app. Ah. Completely revamping even what's on iOS. Again, they're going to make it match what they've been doing currently with all the other systems. Because iOS was ahead of Android in the features that it offered. Like, I remember they had a bit of the stuff that was speaking to Steam. Not Switch. Steam. And yeah, there was some elements in there. But it's good to see that everything will sort of be baselined and on parity. So they're working on the mobile right now. They also just this week got approval to make games for PlayStation 4. So once they get done with the mobile app, then they'll go on to making the PS4 app. So I know that was a lot of questions people had with, hey, what about the PS4? Speaking of questions, though, I actually have a list of questions. Ah, because we did put out questions on the forum, didn't we? We did. So I'm going to run through these really quickly, and you can hear the answers. So question number one. Zachary Pinball has come to Xbox. Are all the tables from Steam going to be on Xbox? The answer. Of course, all the new tables will be released for Xbox, too. The initial version will include all tables which have been released until Pool Champion 2018. Number two, will there be any bundles or packs on Xbox? Yes, there will be seven bundles in total, four remake table packs, one EM table pack, one SS, Salt State table pack, one retro table pack, and one campaign DLC. The remake pack includes five remake tables per pack. The Salt State pack has all 27 tables. The EM pack has 14 tables. The retro pack has 22 tables. That's a lot of tables. That is a lot of tables. Three, what will be the price of a single pinball table? On the Xbox, there is no possibility to buy standalone tables. You have to buy them in a bundle. And honestly, I think that's kind of the way everybody's going because, as Farsight found out, individual tables then cost more for them to do the upkeep and store maintenance on over time. Yeah, it's punishing, especially on console. I remember I forget who it was at the time one of the dudes they were saying they have to upload this manifest file it's like a spreadsheet and they and it's basically every single possible combination of sales that you can do every single SKU that you offer that you have to put up separately as an item it would just be yeah no thank you that would be a nope from me Will Time Machine still be free on Xbox? No, but on Xbox, the Space Shuttle sold state table will be free. Ah, there you go. Number five, what will be the prices of the bundles on DLC? Campaign mode DLC is $2.99. Oh, see, if I had, I'd have read my own notes here. Campaign mode, $2.99. Remake tables with five remake tables per DLC is $4.99. Retro table pack is $1.99. The solid state table pack is $14.99, and the EM table pack is $9.99. Wow, there you go. There you go. When is the release date of Zachary Pinball on Xbox? April 3, 2019. Can Zachary Pinball run on any Xbox One variant? Zachary Pinball can run on any Xbox One variant without problems. Will all game modes from Steam be available on Xbox? At release, not. All game modes will be available, but they might be added later. Campaign mode and story mode will be there at release. Story mode is free and campaign mode can be purchased. Now the Xbox development is done on Zachary Pinball. Is it going to be released on any other platform? And we just touched upon that. Yeah, mobile, and they just got approved for PS4. Are there differences on the Xbox version? In other words, if you have an Xbox Pro or, wait, Xbox One S? I forget what they call their supermodel. retro tables are let's see retro tables are not unlocked when you have the original version of the table wait a second I read that all wrong are there other differences on the Xbox version the retro tables are not unlocked when you have the original version of the table retro tables can only be unlocked by purchasing the retro table pack see I what I need to go down here was down to this other thing because I was reading that as any plans to take advantage of the Xbox One X's extra processing power over the vanilla Xbox One, and it's currently no plans at the moment with this. So there's not going to be high-def versions available. The thing is, the graphics are pretty crisp anyhow. From what I've seen in playing on Steam, everything is really crisp anyhow. I don't know. A few more. Will there be any trials before purchase? Xbox version has a free table, and each table has a score limited play. And I noticed on the Switch they have a monthly table that's score limited and you can play on it for a very long time. It's a very high score limit. It's a generous... Any plans on adding new Stars Phoenix is slightly different than the normal Stars Phoenix. No plan at the moment. We also have no plans on adding tables which are re-skinned. This will only make the game more expensive and increase the chance for players to pick up the game that are not familiar with Mr. Pinball. right okay any plans to attempt to require the mr game techno play licenses uh yes we will try to get mr game techno play licenses sometime in the future any plans to acquire a new license in general no not at the moment and that is it for all of the questions all right well some good open answers there i like that um particularly about you know plans for the future like it's it's often risky to say hey yes we'd like to go for certain table brands because then you know other people with more money can just go oh that's nice we'll also lock those down right like godzilla with the whole spooky pinball and stern thing yeah so well good on them for being transparent i think that's pretty much what we expect from magic pixel anyhow they are very open studio so thanks for answering the questions fellas All righty. Let's move on away from them and into some general subject action, which is I have more data from my experiences with the Zen Pinball app. And it's been quite interesting. I'm now 11 days in. And basically what I've come to see, the important stuff, Zen Coins. I'm earning on average 7 per day so basically every 14 days I'll have 100 Zen coins that means in a month and a half I'll have 300 Zen coins problem is if they're doing their every 6 to 8 week release and they release 6 weeks from the first time I'll have just unlocked maxed out and been able to afford the max out on 3 tables when a new pack drops if it goes to the eight weeks, I'll have an extra hundred coins. Right. So that's going to be really tight in terms of what you can earn. And that's me earning with all four challenges unlocked. So basic advanced pro and premium. Interestingly enough, I rarely get coins out of premium. Interesting. Yes. so I get coins in all the other levels here and there and sometimes I get phantom coins it'll be weird like I'm tracking my coins and then I'll look at what my coin count is and it'll be a couple higher and I didn't level up and I'm like where the heck did those coins come from so hmm okay I don't know it might be and I'm not 100% on this but okay so there's a bug in the game and I wish that somebody from Zen would respond to it. When you watch the video, if you ever watch a video that allows you to interact with the video, so in other words, kind of play the game while it's advertising for you. Yeah. On iOS, I don't know if it's this way on Android, but iOS, it'll crash the game every single time. I didn't find that. I did that on one of the ones accidentally and touched the screen. I always never did it because I thought that would actually just start loading the game. Even if you don't touch the screen though, If you just wait it out for the 30 seconds and wait for the little X to appear on the corner, you push the X, it goes back to the Zen pinball and just freezes. And eventually the game has to reset. No, that's not doing that on Android. It's an iOS feature. Yay. And it didn't used to be that way. So I don't know when this became a thing, but it's possible that you're still earning the reward. You're just not seeing the reward being given to you. I've also had, and this is in the premium version, and it happens every single time you do the five-star reward and every single time you do the 15-star reward. So you have three cards across the top, two on the bottom. It always eliminates the upper right card. It does not give you a card to flip. I don't know if you're, again, if it's just not there, but you're still earning whatever it is, just not seeing it or not. So that might be where these phantom coins are coming from. But like I said, on average, I'm doing seven coins per day. So I know that when you tap your loot box, when it starts shaking and glowing at you, as soon as you tap it on Android, your ticket count and your token count goes up automatically before you even flip the cards. So flipping the cards is just more of a visual presentation to show you that this is what you ordered. So it's crediting you your awards before you've even flipped. Okay. So, yeah. It's probably doing that as well on iOS, I'd say. All righty. Well, that kind of maybe answers that. The other thing that is of interest since I started this, you know, again, I started, I didn't have any table parts for the three new tables, which is Theater of Magic, Champion Pub, or Safecracker. I now have every single one of them upgraded to three stars. I'm working on my four stars. I've got 55 out of 100 for Theater of Magic, 24 out of 100 for Champion Pub, 44 out of 100 for Safecracker That's all just with playing the challenges once? Once per cycle so one day not recycling at all And when you say playing your challenges do you mean completing the challenges? No! I am completing the basic and advanced challenges every single time I'm doing all 15, all the way up to 15 stars on those. Yeah. Pro tables. I am for the most part, making it all the way to the 15 stars, unless it happens to be something like one ball party zone, which I hate. I hate one ball party zone. Um, premium tables. I rarely am completing the 15 stars. Those are your restarting. What's that? Are you restarting? Cause you got to pay to restart those Don you They on the premiums like you do it it 25 tickets per game on premium So what you saying is you not actually just going oh I just doing It sounds to me like it's sort of like you're doing the challenges, but what you're really doing is you're playing about 30 games. Oh, yeah. No, no. So let's talk about this for a second. People have asked, hey, should I buy the premium pack? It's 200 coins. And then I'll have the premium challenge every day. Folks, it's brutal. It is. It has. Indeed. And I've been tracking all the points that you need for every single level. It has, without a doubt, the highest point requirements needed. Sometimes the five-star requirement, I'm lucky to get past. Right. And then I just kind of like go, do I even want to try for the 10-star? Or do I, you know, it's going to chew through your ticket collection. There's no doubt about it. So again, I was tracking how many tickets I had earned, how many tickets I could potentially earn if I did do the completion. Because the 10-star reward, you're talking about getting anywhere from 60 to 100 tickets by completing a 10-star. Okay. So that's a pretty good ticket. I mean, it's throwing a fair number at you. But when you're paying $25 per play, that's only valid for four plays, and then you're now back into the hole. And that's not on top of Pro Challenge, which is costing you 15 tickets per play. Yeah, right. So before, I always complete basic and advanced before I even start pro and premium. Because you get your tickets up. Because I'll see my tickets, and I'll look at my ticket count, and I'll go, okay, you can spend about this many tickets. and then it's just like, why continue? Because it's not going to be worth it. And again, I'm rarely getting coins, if at all. I'm taking a quick look. Okay, there has been occasion when I've gotten a coin out of premium, but it's pretty rare. Yeah, they're not dropping all the time. No, they're not dropping all the time. You're kind of suspect. fixed like you know even what the five star reward in premium kind of sucks it tends to be it tends to be here's two ball trails you know like one flip is a ball trail another flip is a ball trail and then you get a ticket drop of of like 60 tickets right or it'll be here's a ball here's a flipper and some tickets ah the 10 star reward tends to give you and it's pretty consistent five table parts. Okay. So if you're looking for table parts, that's where the big cash out is. Yeah, that's the big payout. I don't have enough data on the 15-star reward because I've literally completed it twice. It's that hard. It's that hard. Right. Sometimes, and I'm tracking what the point totals are that you need to get 15 stars. Half the time, that's all I'm trying to get is to the point that I'm at 14 stars so I can see what the 15 star reward is just so that I know with no intention of actually completing it because I probably only have three seconds left to begin with. Yeah. You know, and the kind of challenges that you're having to do, it's survival, five minutes, five minutes, survival, survival, five minutes, five minutes, five minutes, five minutes, and one ball. Jeez. So a lot of, of five minute, challenges, which to me are the worst. Yeah, they're hard. They're brutal. Especially on some tables. Certain tables, they take a while to get the build-up going. But other tables, they're very small, chunky, consistent things. As you get to the higher challenge, a five-minute challenge, it's a nightmare. You're like, oh great, I ought to hit jackpots as soon as I can. Otherwise, I'm never going to complete this challenge. And I know certainly it's like that on Safecracker. Like, if you're trying to do daily challenges, it's pretty much go into the board game, pray that you get landing on the dog or the alarm or something, and then start shooting. Oh, yeah, get out of the board game. I just dealt with that today. It was basic survival on Safecracker. And as soon as I got into the board game, I'm like, come on, dog, get me out of this thing. oh the guard wants a bribe too bad i'm not braving you you know yeah exactly bailing me out because it's like it's amazing like just how long it takes to get through some of those dice rolls yeah like especially when you're exiting the the first like the the more of the um each of the entrances and you're going around to the actual circle like it's just like oh yeah atm and then guard is chasing you then guard rolls that eats like 10 or 15 seconds it's like come on and you're just pounding the button, pounding your screen, going stop, fast stop, fast stop, fast stop all the time. For me, one ball party zone is a nightmare. Hate it. Five minute getaway, hate it. Oh yeah, that sucks as well. Five minute getaway is just, I can do five minute survival, I mean not five minute survival, I can do survival on getaway. One ball getaway is kind of brutal also. Yeah, it's not fun. No, but survival I can do, but five minute is just like, oh, you've got to be kidding me. You've got to basically get up to supercharger and pray that you don't brick everything like I was doing. You get up to supercharger and it just drains. The ball kicks out and it automatically drains and automatically drains because you can't get control of the ball. I've been at Fishtail. I can do the 5 and 10 star challenges pretty easy. It's the 15 star that just... So close! So close! I've been trying different methods, different scoring ways. How to get... I just keep on shooting the long cast long cast, long cast, long cast that doesn't work on 15 stars it doesn't you can't do it fast enough you just cannot collect fast enough well then you do your the way I would do it is you do your long cast give that to rock the boat and then start smashing that rock the boat over and over again which is fine unless it's a one ball because then you want no part of that center ball if you're doing a one ball true but if you're doing one ball then you've got all the time in the world to shoot long cast so true the other there are some ways around it the other lucrative thing that a lot of people don't realize that is in video mode if you nail enough boats you get bs not eb yes big school yes that pays off um real big time if you can get it so you'll get 20 million points just for nothing um if you can get that award junkyard five minute is also scary because junkyard doesn't have any giant totals ever. No. It's all about crane multiball is a good one to get. Just crane multiball and that'll get you going. It'll get you going, but it doesn't again, crane multiball, each hit you're getting maybe 250,000 points. It's pretty weak. Regular multiball, getting super jackpots, that seems to be about the only way that I know how to get huge. And if you can stack it with like Mamushka, then you're golden. That's like the ideal. It's like, activate Mamushka, activate multiball and you're like, yes! I'm going to be nice and let people in on a technique that I found with Mamushka, which I think some people might have already found, but you do realize that if you get Mamushka, you don't flip. You just let it drain and you let it keep on hitting that spinner in the shooter lane and you let it drain and then you keep on hitting the spinner. Like if you're on a five ball, like like yeah all you do is you get mamushka and you don't touch the flippers and you just let it do it next time and see what happens i'm gonna try that yeah i shouldn't have told you now that my none of my colossal score and it doesn't matter if you're in um multiball or not uh no in fact it's better if you're not in multiball because it will just keep spinning and kicking out balls the timer will remain at 20 seconds. Because basically your ball hasn't contacted any switch on the playfield except for the spinner. And it will just keep going. I've actually been in a tournament and I go, come on, Mamushka, Mamushka, yes! And I just go, I go, right, I'm sitting back, I don't even need to touch the game. I put the phone down, wait for the tournament to finish, and I've won by default. Does that work in real life, do you think? I don't think so. Probably not because it's counting as a ball drain. It'll eventually count as a ball drain. It will eventually, yes. In our modes where it's just unlimited balls, then it doesn't matter. Yeah, that's right. So that is, yes, a dirty strategy. It's only there as a way of ensuring what time machine year you're going to get because it's normally consistent. If you're playing a tournament, I think Mamushka is the thing that you get. I get that. Night 2000 or whatever it is. Night Mission, which is like the quickest hurry up you've ever seen. If you don't hit the shot like right away, Night Mission's over. See you later. You know, move your car. It's brutally difficult. Yeah, it's like my least favorite mode on my least favorite pinball machine. It's the most lucrative point mode on that particular machine. Creature from the Black Lagoon, but it's my least favorite mode. So that will be probably something that gets taken out of the game now that I've actually exposed it. So, surprise! But yeah, next time you get it, try it out. You'll win. Should I expose it in the basic challenge of Safecracker doing survival that you need to get to the 10 star, you need 450,000 points to get to the 450. Yes, to get to 15 star, you need 450,000 points. Which makes 15-star mode easier than 10-star mode because it's survival. So you're racking through the survival point. You need less points per level of survival in 15-star to advance it than you do in 10-star. So 15-star is actually easier. Go figure. Okay. Hey, look, folks, if you want to play along with the gathering data game that I've been doing and contribute your data to the greater cause, especially the point totals that are needed for each of the star levels. So five star, 10 star, 15 star. Hit me up with an email on our email, which would be blockade at Gmail dot com. or you can message me in Steam. Just search ShutYourTrap. You can also message me on Twitter at ShutYourTraps. Send me your email and then I'll send you the forms that I have and then you can start collecting data for yourself seeing how things... I'll send you all the numbers that I have and you can kind of compare and see if the game's playing screwy with you or not. Make sure you also go and buy a t-shirt, damn it. Those are at RedBubble.com and search blockade make sure you follow the show on twitter at blockade and the website as well which is blockade pinball.com slash episodes there you will find show notes and uh brief and show notes now but as well as links and videos or pictures whatever jared feels like throwing up on there what it's not so much that they're not so much uh uh reduced they're just coarse show notes. They're not fine show notes. They're fine in the information they provide, but they're standard definition. They're not ultra high def. I tell you what, since I've got that feedback, I had to do the podcast literally yesterday. It was just, oh, find basically the area in the podcast where we talk about new things and then just skip two minutes at a time until I get to the next one. There's the next index point. Good. What are we talking about in there, put a couple of links in and stuff, and then, yeah, get it uploaded. It takes a lot less time. And I don't really think people mind that much. Okay. And now because you stuck around long enough in the show to hear this, and you didn't just turn us off the second you heard me start doing the socials. So it's a touch of a rant, but not much of a rant. But let's just say there are some things going on in the Digital Pinball Fans Forum this week. I'm not going to express who the individual was I'm not going to express what the thread was but to say that things got a little heated is about correct but it's mainly this folks if you're going to come onto the forum and you're going to make an argument and people throw heaps and heaps of evidence both factual and theoretical at you at some point go, Hey, you know what? You guys might be right. Yeah. Your counter argument of, uh, no, uh, doesn't work. So it was interesting. My, my frame of mind when I first saw it was, Oh, let's be helpful. And then when I saw the responses to that, it was just a troll, aren't you? Okay, fine. I'm going to slap you, you know, slap you down. And then when their responses kept on going, it was, okay, this has gone back around to just being silly, and I think we're just going to leave this here for posterity's sake so that everybody can laugh. Yeah. Point and laugh. Point and laugh. Point and laugh at the silly person with silly ideas. I'm just saying, if you're going to come and interact on the forum, we welcome debate, we welcome discussion, but there's got to be some give and take, folks. Yeah. I mean, that's what forums are for. They're for airing a new idea or a new way of thinking but if that new idea or new way of thinking is proven through discussion and discourse to be invalid then keeping on talking about that idea is probably just going to get a whole lot of a lot of hate directed your direction because no one likes no one likes to listen to someone whining on about the same thing over and over again that's why i just go i don't have any effort to exert on this reading i'm going to be unfollowing it and let other people feed the troll so yeah unfortunately i was that guy because every single time i was like okay i'm done that's it and then i read a statement i'd be like no but my god i've got something to say about you know and then i jumped yeah you are your own worst enemy chris i know yes as a friend of mine says never post in a comment section and i'm like but it's our forum and i'm a moderator i need to comment he's like never comment on comments i'm like all right you know i'm i'm i am a forum member and i'm also a moderator and there's no way i was into that discussion no way no i can see that there was just no way that this person was going to change their mind and when it gets like that the easiest way to deal with a thread is just to let it wither and die yeah and i recommend everyone let it wither and die and the person with the empty thoughts will no longer have an avenue to air them. So starve it of oxygen just like you do any organism. But I like getting the last word in. And on that note, all right, folks. Hey, we really appreciate you spending time with us and listening. We welcome any and all feedback. And hey, go play some pinball because at the moment, there's plenty and it's all over the place. In all manner, free, pay, mobile, whatever console device you choose. Do you like 2D pinball? Do you like 3D pinball? Do you like... Well, I don't think you can find crappy Atari 2600 pinball anymore, but there you go. It's all out there. Go have some fun. And if you can come across a real table, play one of those too. Until next time when we talk about stuff, which we don't know until we've happened, bye bye bye bye wizardamusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods easy to install, totally unique mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order wizardamusement.com sales, restoration, customization don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how Now stop listening and play some Pinball.