Journalist Tool

Kineticist

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

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Poll Results for the Best of New in Pinball FX

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 51m·analyzed·Jul 9, 2023
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Blockade poll ranks best new Pinball FX tables; Haggis announces limited Centaur remake.

Summary

Chris Frevis and Jared Morgan conduct a community poll on the best new Pinball FX tables released on Switch, discussing poll results across multiple categories ("let me try one more time," hardest, easiest, best rules, theme integration, and callouts). They also review Haggis Pinball's announcement of a Centaur remake in two editions (Oblivion at $25k AUD, Beast at $15k AUD), both limited production runs with new code and cosmetic enhancements.

Key Claims

  • Pinball FX Switch version released with 26-27 new tables, all new to FX (not in FX3)

    high confidence · Chris and Jared confirm Switch release with new table count; these are Early Access releases still being optimized

  • Haggis Pinball Centaur Oblivion Edition limited to 50 machines at $25k AUD (~$21k USD); Beast Edition limited to 250 machines at $15k AUD

    high confidence · Chris presents official specs from Haggis announcement with pricing and production limits

  • Haggis Centaur features new 2.0 code with new modes, callouts, music, and multiball (Oblivion version gets extra multiball)

    high confidence · Hosts cite new code features as distinction between editions

  • Samurai's Vengeance won 'best let me try one more time' category on both Twitter (46%) and Reddit (47%)

    high confidence · Explicit poll results stated by Chris

  • Curse of the Mummy won 'best rules' category on Twitter (37%) and Reddit (61%)

    high confidence · Explicit poll results from community voting

  • Samurai's Vengeance won 'best theme and gameplay integration' unanimously: Twitter 64%, Reddit 63%, plus both hosts' votes

    high confidence · Chris declares unanimous consensus; Jared concurs despite narrow personal preference for Snoopy

  • Blockade podcast experienced a 6% drop in subscriber count over 30 days

    high confidence · Jared explicitly mentions analytics drop and requests community feedback on content strategy

  • Haggis plans to show Centaur prototype at BPAC (Brisbane Pinball Arcade event) in a couple of weeks

    medium confidence · Jared speculates based on Haggis being Australia-based and table being ready; framed as question, not confirmation

Notable Quotes

  • “It is a thing of beauty. Sexy, sexy, sexy Centaur.”

    Jared Morgan @ early discussion of Haggis announcement — Enthusiastic first impression of Centaur remake; establishes positive tone for the machine

  • “I just am amazed. Okay, so said 50 of the Oblivion version. They're only making 250 of this one. It just seems... yeah, low.”

    Chris Frevis @ production limit discussion — Skepticism about low production numbers; raises questions about market demand and manufacturer capacity

  • “I don't like mini-playfields in general, but that particular one is not a fun shot. If it was a fun shot, I think that would flip the scale for me on this table.”

    Jared Morgan @ Samurai's Vengeance discussion — Identifies specific design complaint that impacts table ranking; suggests what could improve the game

  • “It's hard but it feels fair. And I think that's the difference with sometimes with some of these tables that are hard but they're just not nice.”

    Jared Morgan @ Brothers in Arms analysis — Articulates key design principle: difficulty should feel earned, not punitive

  • “You don't feel cheaped out by the table. It's hard but it feels fair.”

    Jared Morgan @ hardest table category discussion — Emphasis on fairness as critical design element for challenging games

  • “World War Z is definitely one that, if you, like, have a chance to buy it on sale, definitely buy it on sale. It's great. In fact, all of these tables here, buy them on sale because they are really good.”

    Jared Morgan @ World War Z evaluation — Practical buying advice balanced with caveats about minor design issues

  • “For that reason, it was My Little Pony for me... a good table to tell people to start out with when they're first starting with Pinball FX.”

    Chris Frevis @ easiest table category — Establishes My Little Pony as onboarding game for new FX players; accessibility distinction

Entities

Chris FrevispersonJared MorganpersonHaggis PinballcompanyPinball FXproductCentaurgameSamurai's VengeancegameCurse of the MummygameBrothers in ArmsgameWorld War Zgame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade podcast community poll generates differential voting patterns between Twitter and Reddit audiences, suggesting different user bases with varying preferences

    high · Hosts note Twitter and Reddit crowds have different opinions on same games; example: Mandalorian and World War Z tie on Twitter but Mandalorian leads on Reddit

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong community consensus on specific Pinball FX tables through multi-platform polling (Twitter and Reddit show similar preferences for top picks)

    high · Samurai's Vengeance wins both platforms on 'best theme integration' (63-64%); Curse of the Mummy dominates 'best rules' on Reddit (61%)

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Pinball FX viewed as accessible entry point for new players; multiple tables explicitly mentioned as good onboarding experiences

    medium · Chris identifies My Little Pony, Snoopy, Dragons as tables for teaching new FX players; accessibility as explicit design criterion

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Godzilla vs. Kong callouts controversy: podcast-style commentary draw criticism from community despite being noted as thematic strength

    medium · Chris notes 'many of you absolutely positively hate the podcast call-outs' on Godzilla; frames as controversy requiring explanation

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Design fairness matters more than pure difficulty; players prefer challenging games that feel earned rather than punitive

    high · Jared: 'It's hard but it feels fair... you don't feel cheaped out by the table.' This principle applied to Brothers in Arms vs. World War Z evaluation

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.335

0:00
This is the Blockade Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frevis, aka Shachitrap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, is Jared Morgan.
0:22
Hey there, everyone. How's it going? So it's been a little bit of a spell Some things have transpired since we were last on And one of those things kind of inspired what our show is going to be about today And that being the Switch version of Pinaflex getting released And then getting, I believe, what is it, 26, 27 tables?
0:45
Yes, that's right And pretty much the 26th or whatever it is that were released as part of Early Access and I think that's about it for now because they're still trying to optimize that thing. Yeah. There you go. But yeah, I think everything that they're releasing on that is all the stuff that's new to pin effects that wasn't in Pinball FX 3 previously. Yeah. So that's kind of inspired what we're going to be doing a little bit in just a few minutes here where we're doing what Jared and I consider the best of the tables that are released. We conducted a poll on Twitter and on Reddit, and then me and Jared have our own opinions, so I think we're in for a lively discussion today. Should be a lot of fun. Should be a good one, yeah. We haven't done one of these for a while. When I mentioned this idea to you, Chris, you went, oh, well, what episode did we do that in? And I couldn't find one on record. I know that we've sort of covered one. I think we've done this sort of like a bit of a quick and dirty poll. We've just gone, hey, what's the top ten tables out of this new bunch? But we haven't gone to this much. I don't know that we ever did a public poll.
2:04
I think it was more you and I just going, hey, here's our pick for what we think is the... And really, I think it was a finger in the air. But this time around, there's been some... We've all gone through and invested a fair bit of time in actually making this list. Yeah. So, from our perspective, and from the vote from Twitter and Reddit as well, this should be a pretty good resource for anyone coming into the platform. Yep. So, yeah, let's dive in, because it's big. Yeah, it is big. Now, before we hit that, I don't know, today we actually planned the show? Yeah, yes, we do. So, we're going to talk one thing about brand spanking new real pinball in one moment, And then at the backside of the episode, we're going to talk about three things that Jaren and I want most to be added into the Pinball FX platform. So that'll be coming up at the end of the show for those of you that like to skip around. And I know that's the case because I can see the stats of how many minutes you all watch. Yeah, I've been watching. On the subject of statistics, it's been very interesting.

“I'm not a topper person. We saw that with the remake of Monster Bash as well. It had a little plasma disc in the top left-hand corner of the playfield. Doesn't really do much.”

Jared Morgan @ Centaur Oblivion Edition features — Critical assessment of cosmetic topper feature; suggests minimal gameplay value

  • “I just realized what is lacking. The infinity lights.”

    Chris Frevis @ Centaur design analysis — Identifies missing design element from original table that would enhance the remake

  • “I'm going to save them until the end of this because they don't relate to easiest in a good way. There's other aspects.”

    Jared Morgan @ Curse of the Mummy discussion — Hints at controversy/criticism about specific table to be addressed in later segment

    • Mandaloriangame
    My Little Ponygame
    Snoopygame
    Grim Fandangogame
    Godzilla vs. Konggame
    Dragonsgame
    Blockade Pinball Podcastorganization
    Twitterorganization
    Redditorganization
    BPACevent
    PinballWiz45Bperson
    Fathomgame
    Monster Bashgame
  • ?

    licensing_signal: Zen Studios' Pinball FX now includes diverse IP portfolio (Star Wars analogs, My Little Pony, Godzilla, etc.) with varying theme integration success

    medium · Multiple licensed IPs appear in poll results with different quality assessments; theme integration category shows Samurai's Vengeance and Snoopy as exemplary

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Haggis production runs remain low (50-250 units) despite successful Fathom remake, suggesting capacity or market constraints

    medium · Chris expresses surprise at low numbers; Jared compares to Spooky's early limited runs, suggesting manufacturer scaling challenges

  • ?

    announcement: Haggis Pinball officially announces Centaur remake in two editions with specified production limits and pricing

    high · Official specs presented: Oblivion Edition (50 units, $25k AUD) and Beast Edition (250 units, $15k AUD) with new 2.0 code

  • ?

    product_strategy: Haggis Centaur remake includes cosmetic upgrades (colored playfield, colored plastics, black balls, transparent pop-up bodies) and code improvements (new 2.0 modes)

    high · Detailed feature breakdown of Oblivion vs. Beast editions; transparency mechanics and LED integration highlighted as visual improvements

  • ?

    product_concern: Mini-playfield mechanics criticized as poor design choice; specific examples (Samurai's Vengeance Zen Garden, World War Z chainsaw) noted as mode jail traps

    high · Both hosts criticize mini-playfield difficulty and accessibility; Jared suggests angle fix for chainsaw flipper would resolve World War Z issue

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Podcast subscriber base declining slightly (6% drop) despite content strategy changes and increased video uploads from Switch version

    high · Jared reports analytics drop and directly requests community feedback on content changes and preferences

  • ?

    technology_signal: Missing design elements on Centaur remake (infinity lights, chrome hardware options) suggest potential trade-offs between accessibility and authenticity

    medium · Chris identifies missing infinity lights as major omission; discusses chrome vs. black powder coat debate; questions if chrome options available on Oblivion edition

    • 3:16
    I've been, with all the video uploads I've been doing from Switch. Twitch, not Twitch. Too many itches.
    3:25
    So what I've been noticing is over the last 30 days, we had just a slight drop in subscriber count. Yes, I noticed that too. So there was around six drop in subscriber count, which really, in the grand scheme of things, isn't a statistic that is really concerning that much. certainly not for a large a larger channel we're not a larger channel so we tend to notice these things but this is a good chance for those of you who are podcast listeners and those of you who are like like to watch videos um what do you think about the new way that i'm managing all the videos and stuff like is there stuff you want to want me to change do you want me to upload videos that only meet certain criteria. Like, if you are one of the people who stops subscribing, which you probably won't be watching this if you were, but still,
    4:24
    if you dropped off and then maybe came back on, why'd you do that? Because the analytics tell us one thing, but it's not the actual behaviour of subscribers that it tells us. So it'd be interesting to sort of get a bit of a temperature read on this. Now they'll be doing it for, like, you know, two months or so.
    4:41
    Just, you know, what do you think of it? And what would you like to see? because I'm only doing this for you all. So we're not getting any money from this. I just want to share Pinball and do that sort of stuff. So, like, if you want something changed, tell us. And the good thing about it is that by doing these videos, Chris, we actually got this question asked that we're about to dive into today, which is good because it actually, it's more of a frequent dialogue with all the subscribers. And I'm really enjoying this. I do read the comments and I do respond to them when I'm on there. So keep those comments coming. I really do enjoy reading them.
    5:21
    All right. All that being said, what we were talking about initially with real pinball coming, Haggis Pinball, who's out of Australia, their last table they made was a remake of Fathom. Fathom, yeah. Valley classic there. And they just announced what their newest table is going to be, and it is Centaur. Look at that beauty. Look at it.
    5:44
    It is a thing of beauty. Sexy, sexy, sexy Santar. Now, the version that I have up here right now is they're coming in two versions. This is the Orblivion edition, which, among other things, it has, let me bring up some of these. It has all the things. Sometimes you almost want to say it has too many things. But we're going to get this into a... Wait, are you not going to let me magnify?
    6:15
    Oh, I hate it when it does that. Let's try this one. You know, sometimes it lets me magnify the picture. Anyway, look. See if you can open it and you tab. I tried that. It's what it does. Oh, wait a second. That's what it does. It helps if I know where the right button is. There we go. Okay. There you go. Look at that. So this is a full color play field. Yeah. They colored in some things. You can get the original one. Yeah, if you buy this edition, you can get the original, too. Yeah, or... It's your choice. But some of the things they changed here, they put video screens down here in the apron, which is interesting. Which is standard for all the Haggis pins. They do it on... On Fathom, too.
    7:00
    What is it? Fathom, and yeah, it seems to be what they do. Okay. Other things to note, the... black drop targets for orbs, as well as over here for... I forget what these are called.
    7:16
    What these targets are on the side. Do you remember what they are? The targets on the side. I can't see them. On the right-hand side, there are four drop targets.
    7:28
    Oh, yeah. I forget what those are. Anyway, those are also black, and it looks like the word orbs is written in a shiny chrome.
    7:35
    Yes, they do look like they've been chromed. And then if you look over at the Queen's Chamber on the left-hand side, it's a black pinball. You get black pinballs with this thing, which is kind of wild.
    7:45
    That's going to be really interesting to play it at night. Imagine if you got opted for the black playfield with black pinballs. That would be something else at night, wouldn't it? Here's the color playfield without the lights on, so you can really get a sense of how much color got put in.
    8:04
    These tables don't have exactly a wide side apron for doing mirror blades, but they managed to squeeze something in there. They did, which is pretty sweet. And the other thing that, if you haven't already realized, it's the plastics are actually color as well. Yeah. And that's actually quite a difference, I have to say. The fact that they've got the sort of fluoro orange underlays on them as well really makes them pop out. Like, this, you know. I kind of wish it had real rivets.
    8:39
    Real rivets? Yes. Oh, embossed rivets and all those plastics. Look, okay, so here's the deal, folks. This is, in Australia, this is $25,000 Australian. I don't know what that converts to American. Probably closer to, like, $21,000 American. No, it'd be half, about. Seriously? How much are dollars at right now? 68 cents. I'm sorry. Which is why I'm not buying any pinball cards.
    9:04
    Like, because it's crap. So, yeah. Yeah, so... Just go back to the screen. The pop-up bodies, they're transparent.
    9:13
    Look. See? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That will mean that there's a lot of light being cast. Mm-hmm. Or they're... Yeah, they are transparent. You can see the light trail. Yeah, you can see it. They're definitely transparent. Let's see if I can zoom in on that.
    9:28
    Roop. No, go that way. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, look at that. Definitely transparent. That's pretty cool. So anyway, that's the... Yeah, there's a lot going on. Now, here's the deal. It's only limited to 50 machines that they're making. I'm like... They will sell them. They're going to sell them at a heartbeat. They will sell them. But I'm like, really? Only 50? I know you guys are small, but that's like, we're innocuously small.
    9:52
    Okay, so that's the Oblivion Edition. And then they have the Beast Edition. Oh, there's also a topper with a little plasma. light anyway. I'm not a topper person. We saw that with the remake of Monster Bash as well. It had a little plasma disc in the top left-hand corner of the playfield. Doesn't really do much. No. Here is regular edition Centaur.
    10:21
    Or Beast Edition as they're calling it. This is the more traditional look to the table. Let's bring in a playfield shot here.
    10:38
    There we go. And it looks like they kept, though, the orange around the plastics. Yeah, interesting. I guess that's probably fair enough because it would have been hard to actually get. Yeah, because then they'd have to remake two sets. But this is, like, these tables are being remade. For those of you who actually own a Centaur already, these should be a direct replacement drop-in. So if Haggis is open to it you could actually order these as replacements for your things. That's the problem that I'm having with my three machines. I can't get replacement plastics for Timeline or Pink Panther. And if they were to remake those that would be the first thing I'd be asking their manufacturer. It's like, can I have more plastics please?
    11:26
    Now I've got to say, truth be told Jared I still prefer the black and white. playfield. There's something about the card style I love. But you know what?
    11:37
    If I had to choose between color and this, I would as well because of the fact that the plastics have that tinge on them. I actually think that's just enough tastefully added color that I wouldn't actually need to color playfield on this. I'll also say because let me find a lit up version. Because I don't want black balls either. That's ridiculous. I mean, they're cool, but no. But check this out. This is it lit up.
    12:08
    It looks amazing. And there's a lot of color because of the lights, because they're using the LEDs. This table, the way Bally made it, was purely that amber glow all over. Yeah. So because of all the bright colored LEDs, I think that's enough color.
    12:32
    Yeah. In fact, the lights, this is a really good example of lights actually being a feature of the table. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And you compare this to noir, right? Because they're essentially the same theme table from a black and white perspective. Guess who did it better? Yeah. It was Belly. because this is the whole idea about putting... It's got the whole package, doesn't it? It's got informative inserts and it's got the black and white colour scheme, but the lights, the actual insert lights are the things that pop out and actually make the play field thematically correct. And I think this is what they missed in Noir. And we're going to be talking about our feelings about all that later on. But, yes. I mean look at it you get a topper as well with this one so it's like for an extra 10 grand what are your you get black balls you get mirror blades and stuff on the outside the back glass is mirrored on the one but you know what I mean if I was getting the 25 I don't know if it's an option I think Haggis probably would do this is do you get the option to actually have chromed side rails and chrome lockdown and chrome um uh coin door because i don't like the coin door on the $25,000 one it's it's not original belly hold on let me uh let me bring that up you know that's it doesn't like it's chrome i want chrome on a pinball machine particularly on something like this which is like really lacking a lot of shine and bling um it's got to be chrome everything like oh yeah it's the it's that black it's black it's just black everything no see powder coat no unless that's a black i don't know i think it well it's definitely a powder coat around the edge the only outer that's not you know the shiny chrome uh is it black chrome it kind of looks like it because look at the legs too yeah it kind of had chrome legs okay hold on So there's that. Let's look at the Beast Edition and see the diff.
    14:55
    Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's no doubt about it that that thing's chrome. Yeah, that's definitely chrome. Everything's chrome. And I would do that. Black chrome is nice. And honestly, they would have had to do black chrome processing for the balls. So they would have done well. we'll just do it for everything I guess but no not for me no so honestly for me the $15,000 one would be fine I just have to find $15,000 now so right all I can say is this is one of those tables that I've said before that I would love for Zen to do and I don't know if this throws a monkey wrench in their ability to do this if they would work with Haggis to maybe, oh, the other thing, 2.0 code.
    15:47
    Yeah, brand new code. New code, new modes, new callouts, new music, new multiball, but that is only in the deluxe version. The oblivion version, you get an extra multiball in that.
    16:04
    And way back when, when we were talking about Visual Pinball 7, And I mentioned there was Packdude had done his version of Centaur, and he created an alternate rule set thing that I loved the crap out of because it made the balls change colors, and you could add in your own MP3 music at the start of multiballs. I had the Burly Brawl from Matrix play, and it just always got me excited. So I think this is a table ripe for making changes to in the code. so it's definitely something that I would love for Zen to you know, bring to us, and this is about the earliest of the ballets that I think I want Zen touching this is from 81 or 80, I think 81 same year as 8 Ball Deluxe, I know that was the other thing people were theorizing that Haggis was making they seem to be firmly anchored in the 80s belly era for all the recreations, and I'm okay with that because there's a lot of top quality games in that era i just am amazed okay so said 50 of the oblivion aversion they're only making 250 of this one it just seems yeah low i don't know if it's low you know spooky spooky started out like this as well like their runs on their earlier games were incredibly low and um i don't know i think maybe it's just a uh their ability to scale like they have had some problems producing their tables in the past. And I think they've just, they've realized their limits and they know what they can actually produce now. We, I wonder, I just wonder if they will be showing a prototype of this at BPAC in a couple of weeks. Because they're here in Australia, they would clearly have this table built already. Yeah. So will we see this at BPAC this year? and if we do you can guarantee I'll be taking some photos of it and having a play I've played Centaur quite a few times the machines are typically beat to crap there's a really nice restored one over at one of the pinball clubs they go to it's a brand new playfield swap and new everything that's what I'm like with all new electronics and machining at a... Modern mechs. Modern mechs, a diamond-coated playfield. God, I can imagine what Suntar would play like. It would be... Fast, is the word. I just realized what is lacking.
    18:46
    The infinity lights. Oh, yeah. That's right. Particularly in the mirrored black, the mirrored back glass version. That's like, that's a massive thing for that table. That is a definite omission, isn't it? Yeah. Interesting. Which makes me wonder if because I know another prime candidate would be for Haggis eventually would be something like Xenon.
    19:07
    Yeah. And that thing really had the Infinity Lights going. It did. Yes. All right. Anyway, so we brought that to you there. Let's dive into our pull and the origins of what we're thinking here with it. So it was suggested, you know, it's kind of the, hey, what should I buy kind of thing? You know, what should I play first? That kind of mentality. And I didn't want it to be just us going, well, this is our favorite of the batch. No, there's different reasons why we like different tables, and we constantly are bringing those to the forum here. So then it was, well, let's create some categories.
    19:49
    And so we whipped up some categories that we thought would get a good, broad coverage of the very things that we typically tend to talk about. um yep and uh yeah so then we uh we did these me and jared kind of came up with our own nominees um and then from there threw those up into the poll on twitter and up onto the poll on reddit and what's interesting is uh the twitter crowd has different opinions than the reddit crowd yeah which is interesting it is interesting so let's get into it let's get into it and we'll kind of explain a little bit more because I only have limited space to type the poll questions.
    20:29
    Yeah. Try and explain where our head was at. So the very first one is the best, let me just try one more time table.
    20:39
    Oh, I should probably bring up what the official nominees, because we have, on our list, I have a whole massive bunch.
    20:47
    Yeah. that didn't necessarily wind up in the finishing because we didn't quite get our act together in the very moment. Let me see here. Okay, so here we go.
    21:02
    Best. Let me try one more game. So the nominees we had here were Brothers in Arms, Snoopy, Mandalorian, Samurai's Vengeance, and I know Jared at the end there you threw in World War Z so that one more time kind of mentality it's you finish the game and you're like well I know I can do better this next one so you immediately start it back up again and you do that and I don't care if it's just like killing you know it's beating the snot out of you you're still just like oh but I'm so no I can do it better the next time yeah exactly and it yeah you just wanted like oh no no no that was just a bad game i'll i'll do better next time yes yeah and that is just yeah that that's where all these tables fell into as a yeah as a rule because they all are that way like um you know there's there's a lot of like a lot of them are quite well constructed in their mode structure and just they're you know it's they're accessible, but they're not too brutal, but sometimes they are as well. Yeah, that's right. They just flow well. You just need a good... You have a good time playing them. So yeah, that's sort of what we were thinking about with these ones. Alright, so the results. According to Twitter,
    22:29
    46% of you all said Samurai's Vengeance was the best. Let me try one more time. Over on Reddit, 47% of you said a Samurai's Vengeance.
    22:42
    That's right. Now, my pick happens to be Brothers in Arms. Because once I was playing it, I mean, I always kind of enjoyed it, but once I sat down to learn it, holy crap could I not stop playing it. And it's just brutalizing me every single time, but I keep on playing it. And I, although Samurai's Vengeance for me does have that aspect, there's a critical part of that table that shuns me, and that is the Zen Garden mini playfield. You don't like mini playfields. I don't like mini playfields in general, but that particular one is not a fun shot. If it was a fun shot, I think that would flip the scale for me on this table. What's your vote there, Jared? Okay, my vote is a Samurai's Vengeance on that one. I see your points with Brothers in Arms, and it is one that I have not actually invested a lot of time in. In fact, because we switched from one, like top one, to top three in this list, and I had to go scrambling to try and work out the other two. Well, I think the intention was always that we would have a bunch of nominees. I just had free time one day and was able to really pound through them, and you were busy.
    24:01
    Yeah, either streaming or life, yeah. Yes. So, yes. but I will say this like streaming has actually given me a better perspective on these tables for the record too we might at the end of this we'll go through our quick notes of what we thought of all of the new tables interesting discussion point okay so anyway I think me being the outlier here you have to give it to summarize vengeance pretty much wins on that one All right, so next, hardest in a good way table, the nominees for Brothers in Arms, Mandalorian, World War Z, and then you threw in eventually, you just didn't make it into the poll, Homeworld. Yeah, I didn't have time to put that one up in the poll. So, this one, over on Twitter, Mandalorian and World War Z both came in at 40%. Tied.
    25:05
    Tied at 40%. Yeah. Over on Reddit, Mandalorian came in at 40%. So, that's an interesting aspect. And, again, I went with Brothers in Arms. for my particular pick because I'm lucky if I can play one mode on that table. Yeah. It's mean. It's nasty. What would be your pick out of those, Jared? Yeah, I would agree with you there. I would say Brothers in Arms because it's hard, but all the shots seem reasonable. So when you're playing it, you're feeling like, no, no, that was all me. I screwed that up. it's not actually, you don't feel cheaped out by the table, it's hard but it feels fair and I think that's the difference with sometimes with some of these tables that are hard but they're just not nice. Yeah, Commando will have a mode that is just like, why is that so like, it's too quick or it's just mean World War Z in one aspect I love that even if you drain the ball you're still in the mode, but on the On the other hand, there's one mode where it's the mini play field with the chainsaw, and you're knocking down the zombies, and the final three zombies, it is an off the very tip of the chainsaw flipper flip that is just mean and nasty, and you really get like, God damn it, I'm still stuck in this mode, and I can't hit those things. So it's almost like you've stalled the table out. Yeah, you're in what they call mode jail. Yes.
    26:47
    Yeah, you really are. And, yeah, that mini playfield, that could be fixed. It could. Just by putting a little bit of angle on that chainsaw. Like, it's flat. Mm-hmm. And it just needs a little bit of rake on the flipper up there, and that would fix that problem. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I didn't get my... Like, I like it. Like, World War Z is definitely one that, if you, like, have a chance to buy it on sale, definitely buy it on sale. It's great. In fact, all of these tables here, buy them on sale because they are really good. But yeah, it's just, I don't know, there's just a few things on that table that are like not quite as well refined as Brothers in Arms for me. And I suck at Brothers in Arms, but I still like to go and play it, like you, right? Yep. Moving on to easiest in a good way. Okay, so again, the in a good way means that even though the table is easy, it's still fun way. It not just easy that you bored right Yeah that right That a very important distinction And easy also means in my opinion that the rules are understandable So the table actually might be a little more difficult but the rules and the objectives are easy concepts It just now is on you to achieve them. Yeah, that's right. So the nominees here were My Little Pony, Kung Fu Panda, and Snoopy. and the results here is that over on twitter my little pony won with 46 percent of votes over on reddit my little pony won with 58 percent of the votes so it's a strong yes to my little pony yes to my little pony um but it makes me wonder how many people have downloaded snoopy because that's my take.
    28:43
    Easiest in a good way. That's an interesting call there because Snoopy, the rules are easy to understand because it is a very well-structured table. So I'll give you the points there, but I took this when I was making my list up as easy as the rules are easy as well as it's a good table to tell people to start out with when they're first starting with digital pinball all with pinball effects. And for that reason, it was My Little Pony for me.
    29:17
    I also added in there, and this might surprise some of you, Curse of the Mummy. Curse of the Mummy, I actually added in there as well. And I also added in Dragons, because both of those tables I have given to my kids to play. Sorry, not Curse of the Mummy. Dragons, definitely.
    29:36
    And they've had fun on it, because they've understood what they needed to do. My only thing with dragons is once you start the actual mode against the dragon,
    29:48
    getting the ball to the catapult to fire the dragon is difficult. It's a late shot. It's my least favorite kind of shot that Zen loves to do, which is the tip or flip shot. Yeah, just the tip. And I started that stupid mode three times and never finished it. And that kept on happening game after game. I'm like, yes, the rest of the table is easy, but I'm getting zero progression, which is just frustrating me. That's a valid observation. So maybe that's not the easiest in a good way table. But just hear me out on Curse of the Mummy, right? He's just shoot the ramps, shoot the ramps, and then shoot the big things in the play field that come at you. That's a pretty easy mechanic to do. And, like, it's easier to get the ball up to the mini play fields and shoot around because you shoot up to the left one, the ball gets magnetized, and you get a shot on whatever you want up there. So it's pretty accessible. And it's just, you know, everything's laid out for you. You just shoot the ramp a number of times and you start things. Like, that's not a hard thing for a new person to get. I've got thoughts on money, but I'm going to save them until the end of this. That's right, because they don't relate to easiest in a good way.
    31:05
    There's other aspects. So we're all being positive unicorns and rainbows in this section, but the last section, we won't be. No. Okay, so here we go. Best rules. Now, this is really kind of hard. It's quite subjective, this question. Very subjective because a lot of it has to do with, in my opinion, rules tend to be easily identified objectives. And there is some depth, but I don't believe that depth for depth's sake is a good thing.
    31:45
    Yeah. And then there's also just that, is there a variety to, you know, when you start a mode, is there a variety to the shots? Or are all the modes essentially the same thing? Right, yeah. So that's kind of the mentality that I went in with selecting these nominees. So the nominees we have are Grim Tales, Mandalorian, Brothers in Arms, Curse of the Mummy.
    32:21
    Over on Twitter, they said Curse of the Mummy at 37%. Over on Reddit, at 61%, they said Curse of the Mummy. and my choice is grim tales which granted i have not gotten deep in that game but what i love is it has different shots that is asking you to complete for each mode um there's true variety and the shots are relatively fun that upper playfield shot is not necessarily the best I agree with you there it has timing issues it really does but other than that I like all the rest of the shots on that table so anyway my pick is Grim Tales but clearly you the voting public are all on board with Curse of the Mummy and so am I and so are you I'm all in for Curse of the Mummy in that one for the reasons already stated I'm going to question those reasons later All right. Let's move on to best theme and gameplay integration. So here we're talking about the visuals, the audio, and the actual rules. It's how well does it all work with each other?
    33:48
    Does it feel like a complete package in the end? Right. Or does it feel like multiple disparate ideas that they just kind of threw together? So the nominees here were Grim Tales, Samurai's Vengeance, Snoopy, and Mandalorian. If you guys are noticing a theme with our nominations that a lot of the same titles are being repeated, it's because they're really good tables. Yeah. There's a reason. You threw in Homeworld as another one. That's another one. I know when I was talking to PinballWiz, he was advocating hardcore for Crypt of the NecroDancer,
    34:34
    which I understand what his reasons are, but when I say everything's got to work really good and be fun, I just don't deal with that. Yeah, the key here is, I thought of that as well, but the key is best theme and gameplay integration. Therefore that game cannot win in my eyes No So This one I'm going to just call it right now It's unanimous Twitter at 64% says Samurai's Vengeance Reddit at 63% says Samurai's Vengeance I say Samurai's Vengeance Jared I really have to think about this one for a long time because there's such a minute difference between these two for me.
    35:24
    But in the end, Snoopy just edged over A Samurai's Vengeance for me in this one. Just. It was such a narrow margin. Yeah. Because the theme and gameplay in that one, the theme is absolutely on point with Snoopy. Oh, absolutely. Like, they could not have done a better job with the theming on that table. And the gameplay also stacks up. So it just got the age a little bit more with a Tamra's Vengeance, and it was tough, that one, for me. All right.
    35:58
    What we're saying is you can't go wrong with either of them. Okay, this one, this is... Really? Let's get some controversy in this one. Best call-outs and DMD use in Pinball Effect's table. Nominees were Grim Tales, Godzilla vs. Kong, and Snoopy. Now, the controversy comes in the form of Godzilla vs. Kong because many of you absolutely positively hate the podcast call-outs. And you're not entirely wrong, but hear me out for why I put this on the list. And that is the call-outs in general are super helpful. Like, they tell you when things are lit. They tell you what lanes to shoot. They tell you when a mode has started. Like, they really give you all the information, and that's the same thing with Peanuts on their DMD. Oh, my God. Like, perfect DMD integration. Really informative. And the call-outs are specific to the table. Same thing with Grim Tales. Grim Tales, as soon as that table came out, we've been talking about how great the call-outs are on that one. It really is a gold standard so far, actually, still for call-outs. So, who wins? Here we go. Twitter, at 45%, calls it Snoopy.
    37:33
    Okay. At 38%, it was a tie on Reddit between Grim Tales and Godzilla vs. Kong. Oh, okay. Right. My choice, ultimately, is Snoopy because it doesn't have the annoying call-outs.
    37:51
    True. And for me, I went with Grim Tales because it's a full package. It really is. Yeah. I truly don't think that any of these are a wrong call. Mm-mm.
    38:05
    No. Like I said, hate as much as you want on the podcasters. Yeah, I really do. What would you call the other voice? The male voice? No, the female voice that usually is... Oh, the computer voice sort of thing. The computer voice. All the computer voice call-outs are spot-on perfect. On point. Yeah, it's just the Dear Podcast drives me nuts. Again, when we talk about the table notes, I would like them to fire a couple of voice actors that they repeatedly hire. Yeah, so... Indeed. Let's move on to our next one, which is most likable with minimal amount of play time. That means you've hopped on it your first time playing it and went, ooh, that was cool. Let's play that again. That was really fun. You haven't read the rules. You haven't done anything but flip the ball around, and you're having a good time. Yeah, that's right. Classic pinball. So the nominees here were Grim Tales, World War Z, Snoopy, and Kung Fu Panda.
    39:16
    And the winner here, according to Twitter, it is Grim at 46%. And then over on Reddit, it was a tie at 35% each for Grim and Snoopy.
    39:33
    All right, okay. And then my choice there, Snoopy. Snoopy, hey? Yeah. Yeah, I was the outlier here, and I went with Kung Fu Panda.
    39:45
    You can just flip things around in that game and do things. It's not an easy game, but it's rewarding and it's easy enough. It's very accessible.
    39:54
    It is. And the theme is the least offensive out of all the DreamWorks tables, I think. Yeah. Not only that, am I wrong in thinking that the call-outs on Kung Fu Panda actually seem custom to this? Like for Pinball Machine, as opposed to Dragons and Trolls where it just sounds like they grabbed audio clips from available sources and that was it?
    40:24
    I think they are custom. Okay. They seem, if they're not custom, someone's spent a lot of time going through the Kung Fu Panda DreamWorks series and lifting audio call-outs. They're not just, like, picking from a certain list. Right. So they do feel like at least there's been some care in selecting the call-outs in this game. I think that's the big thing, right? Yeah. And that helps with the jumping right on and being able to play it aspect. Yeah, the big bash in the middle. You smack that around a bit. you start a mode. It's really nice.
    41:00
    So next up after that is the most likable after you understand it. So that's the you read the rules, you've put some time into it, you are no longer miffed as to what to play, and because of that it's become a really enjoyable table to flip around on. So in this one we have Brothers in Arms, Mandalorian, Mysterious Island and Homeworld.
    41:29
    So, there's a really broad cross-section there. That's a very broad cross-section. According to Twitter, 59% of you like Homeworld.
    41:41
    Hmm, interesting. According to Reddit, 32% of you liked Mysterious Island. Ooh. According to me, it's Brothers in Arms.
    41:53
    Ah, interesting. And here's the thing. Now, on Twitter, Homeworld, like, ran away with it. On Reddit, at 32%, it was evenly split, for the most part, between those four.
    42:12
    Right. Okay. So, I mean, there wasn't a runaway winner, per se. So what would you go with the most likely after you understand it? It's definitely Homeworld for me. I hated it when it first came out. I hated the game. But when you understand, and I'm going to ask you just quickly, why you rated this this way. But for me and for Homeworld, and I've said this on the show before, when you understand why they slow the gameplay down and why things appear to take a long time and that it's pretty much an absolute direct homage to the game, even though I have not played the game, I've watched the trailers, and I can absolutely see it in the trailers about why this game is a long, sort of like has a long feeling of achievement in it. Once you understand that and once you understand that it's really, really important to do modes in this game, then you have a really interesting change in opinion on this game, I think. And that's why Homeworld for me is most likeable after you actually change your mind about how you need to play it. That's the thing. What about Brothers in Arms for you? Why is it most likable after you understand it?
    43:34
    There's so much that I like about Brothers in Arms. I'm going to say this just straight out. One of my favorite things about Brothers in Arms is, A, it is very traditional mechanical pinball. the layout the shots there's not a lot of digital trickery going on this could be easily reproduced easily be reproduced it also follows standard pinball rules which is the in lanes down at the by the flippers once you light them they stay lit oh yes they don't do the disappearing thing that Zen loves to do. I really hate that.
    44:15
    God, I really loathe it. The upper, top of the playfield in lanes, they like your bonuses. So it follows traditional pinball tropes. Now, the modes,
    44:33
    that's not the deepest thing in the world. You can understand what needs to be done, but what you don't realize is by shooting all the loops and the different ramps repeatedly, that increases your points and increases what is possible within a mode. So, like, there's one mode called Air Raid, and it is a, God, it's a ball buster of a mode. Oh, yeah. It's Hurry Up City. And the first time I was playing, I was like, there's no way that you can do all of this in the short amount of time you've given. But then I found out that, oh, wait a second, if I keep on shooting this upper left feed, Baker, I think is what you're spelling out, each time you spell Baker, it increases your time for any of the timed modes by five seconds.
    45:26
    That can make a difference. Yeah, suddenly you've got 45 seconds to do air raid, and it seems like all the time in the world. Right. And then similarly, there's other modes that it just raises the values of what completing a mode does. And so now you start doing this balance of, well, how much prep work am I going to do on this, risking a ball drain? And this table has ball drain risk all over the place. Oh, it's a brutal table for ball drain. versus, well, let me get through the modes because I want to finish all the modes.
    46:04
    And so there's this really fine balance that goes on, and I find that just incredibly rewarding. But the pinball action is fast. The shots are satisfying. And I think that's why I don't favor Homeworld because the shots to me are a bit of a slog, and they're not particularly fun. They're just a shot. The mode start hole in that, I think if there's one thing that Zen would improve on that is just make the sequence just a little bit faster because you do spend a fair bit of time in that mode hole. Or just, you know, just recognize... Because sometimes you would shoot the ball into the spinning saucer and it would just get to the point where the ball would be, like, counted as a shot. But because it hasn't settled in the saucer, He's going to do a full revolution. Yeah. I reckon if they just made that a bit more lenient and said, no, no, the ball's in the segment. It's past this point. Then we're going to award it. It doesn't need to settle on the right edge of the saucer to actually get awarded. That might actually change some people's opinions about it. But that would be the only thing I'd change on that table. The rest of it, it can stay the way it is for me. It's actually fine.
    47:18
    Okay. So moving on here, we're going to go to best toy on Playfield. This is an interesting one here. It is. So the nominees for this were in Noir, there's the pistol mechanic toy, which I know that when that table first came out, we were raving about what a really ingenious mechanical toy. It does so much in the game. Yeah. And then on top of that. It's got multiple uses. That's for sure. Yeah, and then if I had to throw in a secondary toy on that table, it's the movie...
    47:54
    Oh, the Rototarget. The Rototarget. I think that's a really interesting design of a toy that could be put on a physical table. As long as you have a strobe shooting at it, you're going to see the animation.
    48:09
    Yeah. Well, they've already got Rototargets on all tables, so yeah, it's definitely possible. The next one, Borderlands, the ball lock. That ball lock has quite a few abilities. It's an ingenious, interesting ball lock.
    48:28
    It has functionality, I guess you would say. And then I threw in on the Reddit one also the spinning car toy. It's there. Might as well acknowledge it. and then we have money so I'm calling the pyramid the main toy but then again also the upper play field kind of is a toy I don't know that upper play fields are ever necessarily considered a toy there's toys up there so I include both of those it's the pyramid and the upper play field kind of in combination with each other the pyramid realistically it's just the theater of magic cube it is and it's that and a jump ramp and a jump yeah yeah so when we go to the votes here according to twitter 46 say curse of the money according to reddit 59 say curse of the money according to me i'm sticking with namar Jared what do you say I my two because I couldn't really do three in here I think we both went for two I did give Noir a nod begrudgingly for the pistol I know you don't like the table but it's all about the toy yeah the thing is that the only thing that brought down the rating for me it was Curse of the Mummy and it was specifically the upper left playfield because there's three things up there that you can shoot all which are kind of, there's a bash toy there's stack drop targets and there's that spinning mystery compass thing which all three of those things are fun, like I like stack drop targets and bash toys are fun too, so there's a lot going on in that upper left playfield, it's where I would spend most of my time in the game and it is where most of the points are too, if you need to the table so yeah, stay up there but the pistol in it is innovative that's for sure, but it's overused in the game everything goes there and it gets really tiresome after a while that's just fair point best only in digital pinball moments this is a fun one This could never be recreated in an actual physical machine. Yes. Yeah. This is the classic. This is the Zen value add right here. That's right. The nominees, Kong, when the entire play field flips upside down. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yep. Which, granted, they did the exact same thing in AVP, and they did the exact same thing in Infinity War. Infinity War, yeah. so it's not new but of the newer tables I mean it's certainly an only in digital moment next on the Wrath of the Elder Gods the two creatures that are on there they're just they've got such life to them and the one snatches balls you couldn't do that on a real table not convincingly yeah not without it just looking like a rubber thing that's pulsing yeah Homeworld, you know, when we first talked about it, I said it was weird, which is the salvage mode. Salvage mode is where you've got a green reticule or a square around your ball, and once you hit a ramp with a red square, now you have a red square like you're transporting that item. I said it visually looked bizarre to me.
    52:18
    Playing it a few times, I went, you know what? I kind of dig this. This is cool. It's not something that you could do with lights or something on the DMD. It's only capable of being there. Now, Jared, you also picked another mode for Homeworld with Diamond Shoals. Yeah. That didn't make it to the poll, but I'm curious to know what is that one. So Diamond Shoals is where it's basically like an asteroid video mode where your perspective of the table goes, you basically go to the diamond shelves and you've got to destroy asteroids and you're using the mothership's laser to destroy the asteroids. So what happens is your table basically flips around so you're looking at it from the back down to the front of the playfield and you see these asteroids coming towards you and you've got to shoot them with the laser and the turret doesn't move very fast. Okay. So you've got to prioritize your shots and stuff like that. And it's got really nice particle effects. You've got exploding asteroids coming at you. There's no way you could do that in real pinball. No, absolutely not. And it's really cool. It's my favorite mode. It's the one I always do first because there's good points in it too. Okay. So according to Twitter, it's a tie at 43% each, Wrath of the Elder Gods and Homeworld.
    53:41
    And then according to... Good choices there. According to Reddit, it's a tie at 29% between Kong and... Oh, we didn't talk about the last one because I like to forget about it. Star Wars collectibles.
    53:57
    Yeah, Star Wars collectibles. There's no way that could be done in real life. The slot machine of action figures can't be done in real life. I'm sure there's other aspects on that table that can't be done in real life. I just can't be bothered to find them.
    54:10
    Really, it's just the slot machine. I think everything else you could probably do, except for the massive sort of like tower, bottom left thing that sticks out beyond the glass. Yeah. You know, that's probably going to be a bit tricky at that end of the table. Anyway, so Reddit chose at 29% each Kong going upside down and Star Wars collectibles. Yeah. My own personal choice winds up being Homeworld. Jared, yours?
    54:38
    Star Wars collectibles. Okay. so wow we have zero consensus on this one yeah that's that's said yeah that's pretty much take your pick we will agree to disagree on that one although what the thing i do agree with is all those are actually really good choices for this category like yeah there there's there's a lot going on in those tables digitally yeah and for people that want their digital pinball to celebrate that digital pinball. Those are the tables to pick for sure. Exactly.
    55:15
    Moving on to our final category. I have a feeling that people didn't quite understand what I'm saying. I say that purely because of how the votes fell and where they didn't fall. So, best visually enhanced Williams table. This means not Not that Zen did a fantastic job of lighting and recreating the table. This has everything to do with visual extras that they like to put on the table Okay So our nominees for this were Whirlwind which would specifically be when you I mean you got the little van up at the top But when you start. When the storm is coming. And the storm is coming. All of a sudden there's clouds. There's rain. There's lightning. There's rocks coming out of the spinners.
    56:07
    And the lightning actually casts light on the play field. It's like an extra flash. It's really cool. So there's that on that. Twilight Zone. The door actually opens, and you see into the Twilight Zone. There's a Robbie the Robot up there. The gumball machine transforms into a glowy bit, like all the balls in there are bright white glowing. The clock turns into an old-fashioned fancy clock. Is there one other element on there? I think that's something out. Oh, the rocket ship. Oh, yeah, the rocket ship. Yeah, so if you hit the skill shot, it does a blast across. So it's got a lot of those little gadgety toys or visual enhancements on it. And then Bride of Pinbot.
    57:02
    You've got the pinbot at the very top looking over the playfield there. You've got the bride on the side whose face actually changes and she walks around. Really cool visuals. We'll not talk about the apple.
    57:18
    No. The apple remains undiscussed. Yeah, well, the apple, go away, apple. It's got the three pods representing your ball count so that when you lose a ball, one of the pods flies away.
    57:30
    Yeah, and I love the fact that even the font on those is game correct. Yes. Because I look at this sort of thing. It's very well done. Yeah. And then you've got World Cup Soccer 94.
    57:42
    So there's the spinning soccer ball. All of a sudden has the whirly wind effect. You've got the soccer dog. I'm sure he has a name, and I don't know it.
    57:52
    Striker. Yeah, Striker. He's fully animated on the table. Looks really good. They added the FIFA Cup trophy, but, like, it's not at the very corner. It doesn't really do anything at all.
    58:07
    I'm trying to think, is there anything else on World Cup that they added? I don't think so. It's the swirly stuff coming off the ball. Don't leave me.
    58:18
    So, responses here. According to Twitter, 60% of you went with Twilight Zone. Reddit, 36% of you went with Twilight Zone.
    58:30
    0% of you on both went with Bride of Pinbot. And that's where I'm going, huh, really? Nobody liked Bride?
    58:42
    And the numbers were so kind of overwhelming for Twilight Zone that I – well, I take that. On Reddit, Whirlwind was very close, really close.
    58:54
    But it just kind of made me go, are you judging it based on your, like I said, the overall presentation of the table, or were you really judging it based off of the bits that are on the table, the visual enhancements? And I say that because of my choice, which is Whirlwind.
    59:14
    Look, Twilight Zone is good. That door effect is fantastic. My issue between the two is that Twilight Zone is already such an extraordinarily busy table with all the bits and gack that Lawler put on that thing, that the visual enhancements, in my opinion, don't add to it other than the door. That's the only thing that adds anything to it.
    59:38
    Flip that over to Whirlwind. What's the thing that we're lacking with that table? It's the wind blowing on you when you actually start the storm mode. The visual enhancement that they did on the table makes me feel the storm.
    59:51
    Yeah, even though you're not feeling the wind. Even though you're not feeling it, it's there. And so for me, that's what pushed Whirlwind over the top. yeah I think for me it was almost 50-50 between Twilight Zone and Whirlwind they the enhancements are so on Twilight Zone they are just so on brand and tastefully done that it just it's all the things that people who own Twilight Zone put on the game. Yes. Customizing the gumball, it's like, they even put brand new player pianos and stuff like that in there with, you know, and lots of stuff.
    60:36
    The clock, no, they don't really customize that because it's very hard to customize. But, you know, there's just so many little digital extras on that which just extend what the mods that exist out there already in the community, and it just takes it that little bit extra bit further. And hats off to Whirlwind. The fact that the storm, when you have enhancements on it, like I said, actually adds flasher effects to the playfield that casts light on the playfield, that's amazing. That's exactly what the visual effects... That's what I expect visual effects to do in these tables. It's a great example of that. So it was really hard for me to pick between the two. No, I did find it interesting because Jared Layton, the game, threw in Adam's Family. Yeah.
    61:32
    And my thing with Adam's, there's aspects of it that I love. I like what they did with the thing box.
    61:38
    Yes. I like the animated thing hand. I absolutely, oh, I like the fog in the five-mile-a-mile. Yeah, I love the fog. That's great. Yeah. I absolutely loathe the golf club. it visually just obstructs and it slows the game down. I do. That's the reason why it's third on my list. And Twilight Zone was first, Wild Wings was second, Addams Family was third.
    62:05
    And yeah, the golf thing sucks. And the other thing that really is, again, this is my gripe with Indiana Jones and its drop targets in a enhanced mode. It's the whole delay of thing going underneath the table, popping up through the box and doing that. That not only slows down the enhance mode, but it also slows down the enhance mode off. Yeah. And that's the thing that really grinds my gears with the way that Xen has to mess around with how the game functions. They should not do that. Look, there's only one enhancement that I want for Adam's family, and that's a gold edition. Gold. Yeah. Bring that. Done. That's all I need. That's all I want. Okay. So before we go into us ripping apart or overly praising tables, we're going to go through all 29 tables that are new to PenFX. Hopefully, that's what this has done for you guys, especially you that just got this on Switch and are going, which should I buy? What should I buy? Hopefully, this helps focus in on what we think are the top ones. because I think anything that we nominated, we could get behind. Mm-hmm.
    63:22
    And then there's the other tables. Some of which, you know, they're not shabby. They're just not standouts. And some of which were just like, eh. Yeah. But before we do that, I was having a discussion with PinballWiz45B earlier today, and he got a question. And I think, Jared, you said that you actually had this question up over on the Discord channel. Correct? It's not so much that I had the question up. because I've been participating in the newly added feedback channel on the Pinball Effects Discord. So the question was, going forward, what are the top three additions to the Pinball Effects platform? Not tables, but additions to Pinball Effects that I would like to see.
    64:10
    Do you want to do this in reverse or forward order, Jared? as in like most wanted to least or least to most I can't pick that so I'm just going to go with these are the things I want changed because they all rank equally ok ok my first one is custom controller support the ability to completely map a controller however I damn well feel like it and that includes second flipper button yep That's my answer. Absolutely.
    64:45
    Well, it's pretty high up there for me too. Like, for many reasons. And the funny thing is that what I've observed in the feedback channel is then we'll be absolutely blind if they're not listening to this feedback because everybody is saying it. Anybody with a cabinet is going to say this. Yes. Anybody with a cabinet. That's right. and again, I don't have a cabinet but I built the pin sim and I built it specifically with a second flipper button to future proof myself and it works absolutely just fine with the pinball arcade so that's why I'm like, I don't want to let off I don't want to let Zen off the hook and you know for our friends over in the visual pinball scene that feature's been there for decades. Yes. So, you know, they're actually leading the way here, and Zen needs to follow. Because it is the trope. It's what you need. What's your number two? Okay, so... Oh, wait, I should ask, what's your first suggestion, unless that was one of them?
    65:59
    That definitely was one of them. Oh, okay, so let's go to your number two. All right, my number two is the two... I'll read the title of the thing that I've put in Discord, which is max tilt nudge strength can be set by the player for greater micro nudging control. Oh, interesting. So what I'd like to see is, instead of just having the distance you shove the analog stick dictate how hard your tilt is, I'd like to, because that's really hard, like when you're in the thick of a game and you go, I need to tilt, you go bang on the stick, and it just like full tilts it, right? What I'd like to do is I'd like to set a more subtle micro nudge on the tilt as my maximum tilt. So if I nudge the stick all the way to the very extent of where the stick goes, I might only want to do a 30% tilt. Got it. Right? And so because when I'm playing pinball in real life, I don't drag the table halfway across the room, which is what I would be doing if I was actually doing the tilt that Zen did. That would immediately tilt the game if you were playing that in real life, and it's not realistic. Like, just let me adjust it. And I'll go into some detail about how it might work in practice and how you could balance fairness with, like, people trying to exploit the fact that they never get a tilt warning. But I won't go into that here. But that's definitely, I would like more flying control over how I tilt in the game. Okay.
    67:30
    For me, number two, full animated back glasses. Right. Yeah. Again, we technically have it in PenFX right now. If you flip your analog stick up, you can see the back glass, and it is animated. It's doing the things that it needs to be doing. But currently, in cabinet mode, you don't have that option. Right. You have to supply your own back glass, and it's not going to be animated. I know Zen recently worked with, I forget what his name is, Freenzy or something like that, to get full DMV support put in. So that's definitely a step in the right direction. Yeah, that's wonderful. But I want it to be Zen providing the back glass and the animation.
    68:21
    And it needs to be a layer that you can bring into any pinball cabinet, and it just is part of the game. Yeah. it will make a huge difference for immersion with that game. And not just for Belly Williams tables either, for their own Zen games as well. Like, give them flashes in the areas of the game. Like, it doesn't, I don't know. I think it's, I wonder what the decision process was when Belly Williams were deciding what things to put in the back glass and what things were going to be flashes. Like, it's like, what things do you accentuate on a back glass? It's just really, it's just for the spectators, really. That's all it is to get them, to bring them in. Well, I mean, on the Bally, on your early Ballys, that's where it said what ball number you were on. That's when it said that you had an extra ball. Oh, yeah, stuff like that. That's, you know, not that they had modes, but the progressive jackpots and stuff like that. Jackpots and stuff, that's what was there.
    69:22
    Yeah, so that's sort of player-informative stuff. That's table specs. Like, they need to put that into the back glass. But I'm talking about, like, you know, you might see on Attack from Mars where, you know, all the flashes go off around the various regions of the table. That's the sort of thing I'm going, you know, like, how would you decide that on a Zen game? Like, where would you put the flashes and when would they trigger? That's an extra layer of thought that all the table designers would need to put into the game. But stuff like player numbers and progressive jackpots, that's just table stakes. You need that for the game. Yeah. All right. Moving on to, let's see, you did your number two, so I'll go on to my number three then. Okay. For me, number three is we get control of the lighting.
    70:11
    Oh, you want lighting. I want that lighting because I want to be completely in control of it. If you want to take that to the nth effect for my Bally Williams, can I have the background be my man cave that's in the game, please? Let's get rid of the Bally look that is from Pinball FX3.
    70:34
    If I spent all this time decorating my man cave, let me be able to actually look at it when I select a Bally Williams machine. But mainly it comes down to the lighting. because on certain Zen originals, like your cartoon tables, I really want to be able to dim the lights and let the lights that are on the table tell the story. Yeah, exactly.
    70:58
    Because they've actually done a really good job on the Williams Valley tables of doing the ambient lighting to the effect that I would like. Certain tables, I would love to be able to visit them darker, but nine times out of ten, and I'd probably play it exactly the way that they have it presented right now. On the originals, there's a lot of originals that I would darken the crap out of right out the gate. Oh, yeah, they're way too bright. Everything is the same contrast. Like, there's no contrast. No. So, yeah, they need shadows. You've got the Unreal Engine. Use it. It's capable of this very thing on the fly. Bread and butter is. Yeah, that's right. So, that's my number three. You?
    71:41
    Okay. So I've got one from me and also one that I'd like to actually bring up from another community member as well. I think it's an excellent idea. So for me, I'm over the Williams Casino Lounge. I don't want to have a jarring experience when I'm going between Williams and literally every other pinball table that has its own table-based environment, right? Yeah. It's time to retire. exactly. It's trying to retire it. Get rid of it.
    72:17
    You've already got the pattern in place with the pin cave. You already have literally the whole environment theme with all the other tables, but I'm actually taking it a step further. You could do two things here, right? You could take a similar approach to the originals, where the environment is on theme with the table, like the dunes and mummy, the lab stuff in Biolab. The other approach is you could do the whole Star Wars Pinball VR thing and actually just bring the experience of the table into the fan cave and then just have some tastefully done supporting animations left and right. Now, what do I think will be happening with that? I believe option two eventually is going to become how it works because of VR. I think it would make the most sense so I have a feeling that this might actually be on the cards and I think it'll be number two that actually gets the Guernsey here yeah because if I'm thinking I partly am also thinking of the eventual VR um that yeah it would just make sense that again my man cave is there I can look around I can see all those things that I got on the shelf and there's the actual table in front of me. In the lighting that I wanted, good to go. And yeah, if you wanted to throw in some of those VR elements, like the zombie reaching for you when you were playing Walking Dead,
    73:47
    it works. That's perfectly fine. And look, I'll even say it to this way. Let it be an option. if somebody wants to still play their Zen Originals with those Zen backdrops. Because when you're playing it on the desktop, maybe you really like those. It does enhance on some of those. When you're playing cabinet mode, you won't ever see that side of stuff anyway, so it doesn't matter at least. When you go into VR, it's going to be there. So why not make it a unified thing? And it really, like, honestly, decide on one path and go down that path. Because then you take away just one more thing that the table designers have to worry about and the art department needs to worry about. Like, they can either focus on full-size rendered characters or environmental things within the context of the man cave. I mean, it would then add more weight to what you decorate your man cave with. Well, not only that, but the neon sign for Williams and the neon sign for Bally, well, those could suddenly drop into place. They could be the de facto things that you have when you're playing that game. I mean, I'm just spitballing here, but if at some point Zen eventually gets one of these other pinball manufacturers, same thing, their sign suddenly appears to let you know that you're in their arcade. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. So what was the suggestion from a fan? So suggestion from the community. So community member Cub made a couple of comments, which I'll touch on briefly because I think they're all valid.
    75:38
    So the first one that they made was, if a player wins a match, show them a different result screen saying so and ask if they would like to play again or exit. it makes a matchup like this less pointless which again goes into what I was riffing off as well which was how about being able to select different play modes like one ball distance from the result screen rather than having to go back out of the table and then have to go back in yeah you know what that's pretty good because that would also play into our idea of the carry over ROM rather than having to exit the table back to the menu to restart the table. Just have it all in state. In state, insert another quarter. Bam, you're back to playing it. You might get around that problem. Unless they have to actually reset the wrong to an own state because of stuff. But, like, on their Zen Originals, even if they can't do it on Bally Williams for technical reasons, whatever, at least do it on the Zen Originals because they have full control over the game state in that. So start there, and then if it's a problem in Williams, work up to Williams. But definitely, it would be a much better experience. Just don't make me click so many times. Just give me a clear path to stay in the game.
    77:03
    I know that folks like Robo on the forum, he was deep into Fishtails at one point, and I can just only imagine how frustrating it would have been for him to have to go out of Fishtails and back into Fishtails just to start another variety of their game. So, you know, that's an easy one. You know, that's all there is for me, really. Yeah, no, that's great. So if you all want to play along, please do. Send comments on Twitter, send comments on Discord, send comments right here in this video in the comments section. What are your top three functions that you would like added to pinball effects? Not tables, but functions. but most importantly and I must emphasize this make sure you put the same feedback into the feedback channel in the pinball effects discord because they are looking at it because they're at the point now where they are kind of trying to iterate on the next bits of pinball effects I think which is why they're asking these questions so make your voice heard, put it into the feedback channel and actually explain the why behind not just say I want justify the reason. All right? Yeah.
    78:16
    All right. So, this show's running long. Should we just make it a long show, Jared? It's going to be a long show. Okay, here we go. We'll try and rip through these fast. We're not going to spend a lot of time, hopefully, on this. But this is our quick note that me and Jared had. We'd started this sheet. We were just, like, I was making, I was doing one playthrough on every single table and giving just an impression. of what I liked about it and why I didn't to help me come up with what I felt was the best and the worst kind of deal. So we're just going to go down here and see what we say. So for Mysterious Island, I said it was not intuitive, but seems like it would get better with understanding. And I've had a bit more play on it, and I feel that that is definitely the case. I'm still not getting very far in it, but I'm at least understanding what it's asking of me.
    79:09
    Yeah. So for me, I can sum this up in four points. Wasted playfield real estate, tight ramps, bricky rejects, and unclear inserts. Yeah. I don't like this table very much. Yeah. Moving on to our next one, which is Samurai's Vengeance. I just put that it's hard, but it has great theming. Definitely agree with that. I'd say great flow, beautiful theme, innovative mode battles as well. It's got a lot going for it. You also said that it was a champion pub for Zen. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's over the next page. Yeah, it is. It really is a champion pub for Zen. That upper playfield gives me real boxer vibes.
    79:49
    And it's definitely one more time, that one. Yeah. Moving on over to Wrath of the Elder Gods. My note was, no clue what is going on, and I hate the music.
    80:00
    Yeah, I'd say skillshot scoring is overpowered. There's not enough playfield DMD feedback. The outline geometry is deadly. It's really bad. The theme's great, but the music is just so off point. It's distracting. Yeah, it's very distracting. I have to turn the music off on that one. Yeah, remember when we played that on stream, on episode, and we actually turned off the music and it was actually way more enjoyable? That's a bad problem if your music is that bad.
    80:29
    Grim Tales. I put great call-outs and that it seems deep on the rules. Both very valid points. It's a glorious looking table, right? I reckon it's closest to a Jeezy Jack Pinball title. You're not wrong.
    80:45
    It is really, really close. It's the digital progression for what a JJP would be, I reckon. Callouts are great. Stackable multiballs. Plentiful multiballs.
    80:57
    And the only downside with it is that upper playfield flipper. it's difficult to dial in in a fixed landscape view. It's really hard to see. Well, that and the ball release is really long. Like, it's longer than you would expect for the ball to be released. It holds it way too long. It really does. I've had a, like, just playing it the other day on stream, I was going, oh, it's driving me nuts. Yeah. And it's not, that's not the only deal that suffers from that either. of a lot of Zems that do that ball release up there on that flipper. That upper flipper shot's never fun. Yes, Star Wars collectibles, thank you very much.
    81:37
    That's not fun either. Because it's literally ball release flipper. There's no roll into the flipper. No, there's no timing opportunity. Yeah, you need that timing of the ball actually rolling and then knowing when you can flip.
    81:51
    Okay, here we go. Curse of the Mummy. so my first impression is it's so digital in nature that it's a turn off to me I don't like the look of the table the main thing so I feel like Curse really wants to be Monster Bash it's got stackable modes kind of like Monster Bash but they're not good in my opinion and the reason for that is you have Monster Bash, and I wish Zen would do this, and Zen doesn't do this, and we've been begging them.
    82:29
    With your inserts, have four insert lights, and once you hit the ramp once, that first insert light lights. And then the second one is blinking. You hit it again, now that one lights, and the third one is blinking. So you know the progression of what you're going through. When you do a mode, everything's blinking. and you're like but i don't know what i'm supposed to target because everything's blinking and then if god help you if you stack and have multiple modes going at the same time you don't know what you're you just like well i'm just going to shoot randomly wherever i go until obviously you understand what mode is lit by what ramp and therefore that's the ramp that you're going to have to hit in order to complete the mode um but that's that's really my my major gripe with uh with mummy those two things um i just i don't care for the look that waterfall in the middle drives me bonkers um oh i hate the you build the bridge which takes forever i mean it's five shots of accidentally having it go into the the river and then you build the bridge and if you lose the ball guess what you get to start all over again so that is frustrating i will i will definitely join you in that chorus yeah now sing the praises jared okay so for me this for me I like this table So the modes when you in a multi that you can stack and you can actually earn the modes while you're in a multi-ball. You don't have to qualify them before you're in the multi-ball. That's really fun. You just shoot everything and you get all the points. It's great.
    84:00
    Both upper play fields are fun. The left one a little bit more so than the right. uh good multi balls um there's a couple opportunities to get them there's different types um the modes are fun they are just you know lots of things to shoot on the playfield very digital um the the only detriment to this table which was clarified for me in discord recently but like the the video mode is like okay they didn't have time to actually render a video mode so they They just made a DMD version of it, and it's really not great. It's like Prince of Persia from the Apple II. Yeah, it really is. They could have just not put one in, and I wouldn't have been upset about it. Because it's also excessive. Like, the very first couple of times you do it, it's really easy. Like, it's not a long video. It does get harder, though. I'm sure it gets harder, but I expect it to be... Like minecart video mode. Yes. That's my benchmark. of video modes. Precisely. I knew what I was visualizing in my head and I couldn't pronounce the words. Yes, exactly. Minecart video mode. Indiana Jones is like the pinnacle of video mode in pinball for me. It's like pretty much all the video modes in that one.
    85:18
    Indiana Jones gets video modes done right. And I think apparently though, I think with the one member of Discord pointed out that with the sound design and stuff in that video mode, I think they're deliberately going for a really retro look in that particular mode. And okay, sure, but it's jarring. And I don't like it. You know what? It's also hard to read the instructions on the bottom.
    85:47
    There's too much DMV going on. I don't know. Moving on. Pinball Noir. It's mysterious for sure. It has a super hard upper left flipper shot, which unfortunately is It's like a main key shot you need to be able to make, and it is brutal since you can't move your head to the side and eyeball where it is that you're shooting. It's really nasty.
    86:15
    Maybe in VR this one will be better. I think it might be in VR better, and it's got some really narrow shots too. So, I don't know. Those are my thoughts on that.
    86:28
    Yours is a great toys and nice theme. I'd have to say that the black and white theme on this table, it does look good, but we've already discussed how they could have made it a little bit better.
    86:39
    It takes some cues from Centaur and just makes the insert lights a little bit more varied, I think. We'll put more of them on the playfield. There's not a lot on there.
    86:48
    So for me, I don't like this table at all. I very much dislike the disappearing Frigga in Multi-Ball. I know there's a mechanic and reason why it disappears, years, but it just feels like, oh, no, we have to... It feels like a design sacrifice rather than an actual feature to make the multi-ball more fun.
    87:11
    It's multi-balls of famine in this game. You've got to have multi-balls to get the points, or there's no points.
    87:19
    The Lombard Street is what I call it because it looks like that. The Lombard Street magnet toy is just utter rubbish. It's just the worst It's a gameplay mechanic. It's not satisfying. The ball stays up there. If you screw up one of the magnets, you're basically screwed. And I think that's the problem with it, is that there's no room for error in learning how to do the toy. You mess up once, boom, you're done. Now you've got to light the whole thing over again to get another crack at it to try and learn how to do it. It's interesting, Adventureland has a similar mechanic on their Backbox toy.
    87:57
    I cannot figure out for the life of me what you're supposed to do. Because it just throws you into it and goes, go! I don't understand what the mechanics of this at all are. I've got no idea. That game, Adventureland, can die in a fire for me. I hate that game. It is just... In fact, I would take more time on Pinball Noir than have to play Adventureland. I hate that table so much. Wow. All right. Anyhow, getting back to Pinball Noir and the 10 things I hate about you, the reliance on the gun mech for feeds to literally everything, to the upper rear eject, is just, it's so boring over time. Like, just put the ball somewhere else. Don't feed it to the upper, like the back of the play field all the time. You know, that's, all right, that'll stop now. Okay, good. Move on. We've got to rip through these faster. Sky Pirates. It's just a mess and I don't care. Yeah, pretty much. It's grindy. I avoid it like a play during events. The theme I hate and the call-outs are uninformative. And interestingly, Zen has sent out a survey about this. The very table to the community. And I think it was on the, I forget where I saw it. I think it was Pinball FX. For this table in particular. so they obviously got evidence I haven't played it nearly enough to make a comment other than just I don't like it and that's not constructive so I don't feel like I should contribute because I was able to put some feedback I played it enough that I know that I don't like it and I know why so I did complete it Crypt of the Nectar Dancer I just wrote huh?
    89:45
    it's the I think you need to know the game for this one to actually get value out of it, which is why Pinball Whiz loves it so much. Which is why he loves it. But the rhythm game aspect of it is a complete failure. There's nothing fun about trying to do rhythm presses in the pinball. It's poorly realized. The shot selections are not interesting.
    90:10
    We played it, and we kind of ragged on it when we were playing it. It's just not interesting to me. No. It just does very little. To its credit, though, it's a novel idea, and I really applaud Zen for having a go at trying to do a rhythm action game in pinball. It's not an easy call.
    90:30
    So definitely, based on I haven't played the game, but I've seen enough trailers to know that the theming is very, very tightly integrated in this game.
    90:38
    But I have problems seeing the playfield characters that are actually walking around the playfield sometimes. There was one point I was going, what do I actually need to hit? Oh, there it is. Okay.
    90:50
    The inserts probably take the award for the least informative of any Xen original that's out there at the moment. It's like I don't know. Hey, look, a whole bunch of these. Yay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good. And like you say, the flips to beat model is a big miss to me. I can't work it out. It doesn't seem to make a difference. And it is a long playing table. Boy, like you're getting, well, when I was playing it, I think it was like to the order of 450 million scores on the thing. That's like a regular game on it. You don't even have to work that hard to get that.
    91:26
    Moving on to Kung Fu Panda. I said it's very forgiving. It does have a nice feeling. The callouts I mentioned seem to be custom to the game, but they lack timely info. Correct.
    91:43
    It's like, yes, they seem do that, but they're not being informative in the way that I want them to, like Grim does. My biggest gripe on this whole thing? The waterfall toy.
    91:56
    I had this toy when I was a little kid. It had some bridges that went up and down on a mechanic that you pushed a button and you moved a marble over them. And in the physical, real-world space, that was tricky to do. And you literally had to feel the mechanics. The weight of it. And then on this thing, the timing between hitting a ball rolling this way and then flipping it so that it will go the other way is so just, you've got to do it instantaneously.
    92:30
    And it is, but it's so fast that you can't really navigate where you need to go. I know they were trying to go basically for that Indiana Jones tilt field, but the ball rolls slow enough on that that you feel like you have a shot. But this one, I feel like it's just complete random go. It just mash the buttons and hope for the best, really. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, for this one, it really is a great theme. Nice open play field. It's a good introductory table for young players as well. But it's still challenging enough for more seasoned players as well, which is what I like about it. But like all these Zen pinball party tables, the DMD, it dates the table so much compared to the other ones. so yeah that's my comments on it moving on over to Dragons I just put it's so repetitive both in shots and call outs oh my god the call outs it's like there's 10 and that's it and you just hear them over and over again the four ball multi ball is too much with the short play field and the catapult shot that you have to hit too many balls. This could easily be a two-ball multi-ball and that would have been just fine. Four balls is ridiculous. I find myself wanting to drain them instantly and then getting that off the tip of your right flipper so you can hit that far left slot for the catapult it's too severe.
    94:04
    It's harder than Medieval Madness' catapult shot and that one's not easy. but that was satisfying this one's just like dumb luck half the time you send it into the slingshot so yeah I'd say for that one that center diverter mechanism is just too big on the table it takes way too much space and then all that being said long games little progress yep no further comments okay great nailed it so we move on to Trolls It has semi-informative callouts It's easy to make things happen The modes carry over from Balls Lost as far as I can tell Yeah, which is good Which is good If just visual puke to look at It really is a clown vomit theme for me this one For me it screams this is only for kids, adults do not apply for this table But you know, it's insane That's not as bad as noir So, you know, it's that. It's, truthfully, more fun to play than Noir. Yes. I will give you that.
    95:16
    Next one, which is, I'm just calling it Brothers in Arms. It's my favorite of the new Zen originals that have dropped in Pinball FX.
    95:26
    My note was, with a few code tweaks, this could be an all-time classic. Right. part of that is the mode shots are too similar. There's at least two modes that are identical. You just shoot all the things. Shoot all the things, and then you're waiting for a little thing to pop up to tell you what lane to go. A little reticule thing? A little reticule, which is not brightly lit. It should be an insert light, is what it should be, and it should be glowing bright. Instead Instead, until I knew to look for it, I didn't know to look for it. And even worse, the call-outs, they'll be like, they're flanking on the left. And I'm like, oh, it should be on the left-hand side. No, it's on the right-hand side. Sometimes it's on the left. Sometimes it's on the right. So the call-outs need to be more specific to help you. Right. They're flanking on the right, and it was on the right. Hey, that would be great. Yeah. So it's just little adjustments like that, shaking up the modes just to touch on the couple that are very similar to each other. There's others that are completely different from each other, which are great. The modes are also, though, too labor-intensive.
    96:42
    They're long. It's literally three parts, and then the finishing move. And I can't tell you how many times I've blown it on the finishing move. Yep. being there as well.
    96:56
    So those are my notes on that. I do, the other thing that I think is interesting is that risk-reward on the skill shot. Like, you, I'm sure if you really dialed in that four and a half million point skill shot, it would be super rewarding, but geez, you've got to get some time. I go for the million and a half or the two million and that's it. Yep. On the left-hand side. The left-hand side shots are generally the safest one. But like, I just really love the fact that there's, This is a pattern that we're seeing in Stern games. You've got six different ways to get a skill shot in Godzilla, or pretty much. And it's great. You can actually sometimes just go, well, I wasn't successful in that skill shot, but I ended up getting another skill shot just by accident. So it's like, eh, you know. That's a bit like sort of touch and go. One other comment with Brothers in Arms. The music. It's too somber.
    97:48
    Give me adventure army music. don't give me Private Ryan music. Yeah, that's a valid observation. I've turned off the music on it. Because it just makes you feel like you're having a downer all the time. Yeah, I want to have a downer. I want to feel adventurous. You know? Give me Guns of Navarone. Give me, you know, The Great Escape. Give me that kind of... Stirring Instrumentals is what you want. Give me Stripes. Yeah.
    98:17
    Borderlands. Look, I really want to like this table. I really do. I think the look is great and the theming is fantastic.
    98:26
    It's just the gameplay is abysmal. And there's no hint even at what to do. None. It just throws you to the wolves and expects you to figure it out. I've read the rules. I still don't understand what the hell I'm supposed to do.
    98:45
    But the theming is so good. The table looks fantastic. Like I said, I really, really want to like it. I felt kind of similar with when they did Portal. I really want to like Portal. But the gameplay is just punishing.
    99:03
    This is even more so. So it's a big swing and miss. Could it be fixed? Could it be tweaked? Possibly, but I think it would have to be major changes to the coding. they would really need to go back to drawing board on this one because the real problem that I have with it is the scattered mode start model. So it's not a shoot at one place that is clearly visible to start the modes.
    99:29
    If they just changed that one thing and made it a mode start whole, the enjoyment of that game for me would increase tenfold.
    99:40
    But because they're scattered, it's horrible. the playfield lights are poorly realized in this table as well there's not enough of them and they don't tell you what you need to shoot and they're small so you can't really see them and the call outs the call outs, clap traps call outs can well the fact that you can turn them off so that's how important they are and you don't actually lose anything in the game so yeah that's a big miss, a swing and a miss that one. Homeworld, we've talked a bunch about it so we can just rip through this. I just said it's a sleepy table and I'm literally too bored to care about making the same shot over and over again. Yeah, and I've covered that while it feels slow to begin with, once you understand that's the point, it actually can grow on you. The shots are all easy to make. It's a fan layout. It's pretty easy to get the shots. So yeah, it's not bad. Just get used to it. My Little Pony, surprisingly lots to do and easy to understand. The shots are varied and fun, but the call-outs are as annoying as hell.
    100:40
    Oh yeah, this one's a really good one for beginners. It's got a really accessible wizard mode. You can get to it pretty easily. And that's great for kids. They get that experience to have a wizard mode. And my daughter's nearly got there a couple of times. And that's really awesome for kids.
    100:58
    But yeah, the call-outs are grating. And it needs a better DMD. I reckon if they just spent some time on these Zen Pimple Party tables and made them DMD compatible, it'd make a big difference. Godzilla vs. Kong I put the callouts in DMDL are helpful that's why it learned its spot it does have a just one more time feel about it I've literally gone wait I can do this better I think the theming is great the colors are phenomenal on this table it's really that neon look neon black light kind of look is great the shots can be finicky though that left orbit shot through the pop bumper, it looks wide, man, you just rickety the hell off of it. It's very annoying.
    101:46
    And the art doesn't help with your aiming. There are no leading lines to tell you where your shot goes. Yeah, that's a really good point. That's the hallmark of pinball, is having leading lines to help you with your aiming. And there's nothing on the table to help you with that. Yeah, that's a very interesting observation. I think that's what's missing a lot of Zen tables, actually. But even if it's not inserts, it's like those sort of lane patterns that give you an indication of where you need to shoot. Yeah, they're not there. That's another design thing they can think about. For me, it's nice to have a really super wide table. The only other one is one of the Star Wars ones, which they all blend into one, for me, Star Wars tables, but there's that one with the Battle of Endor on it. But yeah, that podcast, dear listener, horrible VFX. Just get rid of it. And also, it's a bit Spellorama as well on some of the rants. You've got to shoot them a number of times to get things. I just like that. Jared hates Spellorama.
    102:50
    Moving on to just Godzilla. I said the callouts are not helpful and are constant. It won't shut up and you're like, well, tell me something interesting.
    103:00
    Everything blinks. No clue what to do, what starts or even what goals are and then please stop using that voice actor. You ruined ADP with this exact same voice actor. You're ruining this with this voice actor.
    103:18
    It's the guy and the girl. They've ruined mania table. Just stop. It's Godzilla. It deserves serious voice work. Not cheery millennials.
    103:34
    Yeah. That's all I can say. It's just like, good voice actor, just not right for the theme. No, not at all. That's the thing. Would be great for My Little Pony.
    103:45
    Yeah, or another table that's a bit more lighthearted, right? Yeah. So, yeah, the insert lights miss. Call-outs, big miss.
    103:56
    They're just repetitive and uninformative. But, like, jeez, the theming on this, Like, all the Godzilla tropes are there. Like, it's just, it's a really good thing. I mean, everything else is a disappointment, unfortunately, to me.
    104:10
    I'm sure, especially when you compare it to what Stern did. Oh, yeah, exactly. No comparison at all. Kong. I said it's a visual mess. It's hard to know where the ball is supposed to go or where it'll come out because everything's hidden by that stupid mountain. and the callouts are so random in the messaging. Just all of a sudden, the guy will be like, I don't know what that is, but I'll take it. Yeah, I don't know what that is either, so stop. Yeah, that adds zero value to the game whatsoever. You could have just cut that line and saved yourself the money for the voice callout. Yeah, also, I will like to make this request of Zen.
    104:51
    Whenever you flip a table upside down, can we leave it in the view mode that I already had it in? why does it always have to go to view one? Because that messes up my aiming. I'm used to aiming based off of how I see things, and then you do that. So can we please leave it in the view mode?
    105:11
    Yeah, agreed. And I'm very curious how this looks in the cabinet. Because it should just flip over upside down in that same – but how could you? Yeah, I don't know. It's not going to be a good one for cabinet, that one. That's not one that you would want to play on a cabinet. Yeah. Yeah, really, the inserts are just too small to see in the fixed views in this table. You can't make them out. They're just blinking light, really. There's no context on them. No. So, yeah, again, it's a bit of a miss, this one, unfortunately. And it's such a shame because that's a really good property they've got there. Like, the Godzilla and Kong properties, they could have done a lot with these, and I just think they've missed. Yeah. a lot with them. World War Z, great theme and integration. The most scary over, which means you might get stuck in one, like you said, Mojo.
    106:06
    It's easy to understand, and hard as hell to master. Oh, yeah. It is a brutal one, yeah. I totally agree with you on the theme and sound design on this. It's really, really nice. You've got to work for those scores. It's a good substitute for The Walking Dead, which hasn't made it over yet, and may not make it. But the one downside about this table is the saucer that your ball always ends up in but does nothing.
    106:32
    It's like that saucer just to the left of the left ramp or the right ramp. You know something, Jared. It selects what mode is.
    106:42
    Is that all it does? Yes. Okay, I had no idea. That's the way you change the mode. That's how you change what mode you're going to select. Okay.
    106:52
    It's still frustrating. the ball makes it in there way too much. Like, if you pick a shot and you get it in there, you've got to wait for it to eject. It's like, I hate it. Got it. Like, in the wrong place. Snoopy, great DMDN call-out. Clear shots to hit, and they are very different modes. Each mode has a completely different set of parameters that you're looking to do.
    107:16
    It's there's the theme integration is amazing, and it has completely that just one more play feel about it.
    107:26
    After Brother is in arms, Snoopy is up there at the top for what I think they've done really, really good. If you're sleeping on this one, don't. Pick it up.
    107:35
    Absolutely get it because it is really great. There's not a lot of comments I have here. It's all positive.
    107:43
    All the things you said are right. It's my favorite Zenpinball party table by far. Yeah. Garfield. It's just meh.
    107:56
    Doesn't have good shot selection. And no clear idea of how to start things. Yeah, I agree. I really like the art style in this. I love Thomas Cross Tables. I don't know what's going on in this one. Yeah, I don't know either.
    108:15
    It's a spell around all right. It's not words that you've got to spell. It's just so many repeated shots of the ramps. Horrible. pretty accessible multi-balls but really not great playfield layout on this one Mandalorian we've had many things we've talked about on this so just real quickly it's a hard table but it's inviting to have just one more feel and it's nicely themed but could use game specific call outs to be sure oh yeah absolutely mode progression is probably the hardest of all the tables in all the new ones on this one and then Star Wars collectibles I just wrote, I hate this table.
    108:53
    It's all about combo shots. This is your noir. It's all about combo shots that are completely unforgivable.
    108:59
    I have no clue what collecting the figures or the combos on the table even mean, and that's if you can select them in the first place, because the only way to select them is by hitting a combo shot that's an off-the-flipper-tip combo shot. It's just overly complicated. It's a mess. I really can't be bothered with it at all. yeah this one like there was a point where they they hadn't exported the tuning from um egs over to the the um the steam version of this table and it was it was impossible to play impossible you could not actually get any of the shots on it but once they tuned it and actually got those things fixed up and you understand again this one it's a bit like homeworld you got to understand how to play it and dial in the shots. Once you do that, you can progress in the game, and it actually is less frustrating. But it's one that you've got to put some time in on to understand. Yeah.
    109:56
    And that's it for it. We're not going to go over the belly William stuff because why? Why? Yeah, we already know what they are. We already know what they are. So hopefully that helps you in your purchasing decisions. You switch users. boy this is definitely the longest show we've ever done Jared should have split it in two oh well sorry not sorry it's fine I'll put timing notes in the show notes this one will definitely be going to audio so yeah have a look at the show notes if you want to jump around maybe we might even put some chapters in this one if you're feeling it alright that being said next time I do own a Switch, I think I will download the free tables, the three free tables, and have a look. I'm not going to be the best critic, because I don't own the FX3 tables, so I can't really do a comparison.
    110:57
    But I think it's at least worth looking, taking a look at it, so I can have some comments on what the Switch version plays like. Beyond that, I can't really tell you what we're going to be doing next time, other than the usual.
    111:10
    Stuff and things. guaranteed. There you go. Until then, folks, thanks for sticking around and listening to what we have to say. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. See you later.