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Indiana Jones and the Costs of Licensing

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 19m·analyzed·Mar 14, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

BlahCade reviews Zen's digital Indiana Jones release, praising accurate physics but noting complexity in physics naming conventions.

Summary

Chris and Jared from BlahCade A A Pinball Podcast discuss the digital release of Indiana Jones pinball by Zen Studios across FX3 and legacy platforms. They analyze the physics accuracy (particularly praising Pro Physics for its faithful representation of the real machine), examine gameplay mechanics including ramp combos and mode-based scoring, compare Zen Physics vs. Pro Physics settings, and note visual enhancements like Indiana Jones having a protective plastic shield on the playfield. They also discuss supply chain concerns related to Zen Studios' Budapest location near the Ukraine conflict.

Key Claims

  • Pro Physics on Indiana Jones accurately simulates the real machine's shot trajectories, including the guaranteed first/second rollover lane shot on initial launch

    high confidence · Jared Morgan (experienced Indiana Jones player) confirmed Pro Physics matches his real machine expectations, describing the guaranteed rollover behavior and verifying it against arcade experience

  • Indiana Jones is a mode-based scoring game where points come primarily from bonus accumulation via mode earnings, not from direct shot gameplay

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discuss that modes are 'where you get your points' and mode earnings are added to bonus rather than tilting, making bonus the primary scoring mechanism

  • The left flipper feed from the left orbit should go straight to the left flipper on a properly set real machine, but Zen's simulation has it bouncing off the left slingshot

    medium confidence · Chris observed this behavior in Pro Physics; Jared acknowledged it depends on individual machine setup but that the feed should generally be more controlled

  • Zen Physics terminology varies across Zen platforms (FX3, Williams app) making community discussion confusing—they call it different names (single-player/classic physics vs. pro/regular physics)

    high confidence · Chris and Jared extensively discuss and express frustration about inconsistent naming: 'it really is hard yeah it doesn't need to be that complicated'

  • Indiana Jones digital version includes a visual enhancement: clear plastic shield over the left playfield area where Indiana Jones stands, protecting from volatile drop target shots

    high confidence · Jared noted this is the biggest visual subtlety, comparing it to the metal shield on real machines that prevents side drains from drop target airball shots

Notable Quotes

  • “Pro physics, they are very accurate... if it's set up correctly the ball when you shoot it will always go to the first or second or the i or the n rollover lane at the top always you can guarantee it”

    Jared Morgan @ ~16:45 — Validates Pro Physics accuracy against real machine behavior; establishes baseline for physics fidelity assessment

  • “It should go straight to the left flipper, in your experience... it depends. Every game is different. Every game is set up differently. So this particular game that Zen has, it may have really tight slingshot switches set on it”

    Jared Morgan @ ~18:30 — Explains variability in arcade machine setups and how Zen may be modeling specific configuration quirks

  • “You need to be active on it. You can't just be standing there, pass the ball around... It's going to be nasty to you if you're not nasty back to it”

    Jared Morgan @ ~25:00 — Describes the real machine's demanding play style and confirms Zen's implementation preserves this skill requirement

  • “Quit with the cutesy names, because there's a difference... Just call it Zen Physics... Pick something and stick with it across the way, but make it easy”

    Chris Friebus @ ~32:00 — Highlights industry communication problem: inconsistent physics naming creates confusion in community discussion

  • “When the flippers flip up they go like that high... Zen physics... Williams physics they're more like they're slightly up... That's your key indicator”

    Chris Friebus @ ~33:15 — Provides practical visual identifier to distinguish physics modes in video or gameplay

  • “The ball bounces in there felt very much like it would on an actual real table... the flippers were still really steep which makes capturing the ball very easy”

    Chris Friebus @ ~34:45 — Acknowledges that different Williams tables have different ball physics properties independent of flipper physics

  • “When you go into the visual enhancements... everything is super deep gold chrome. Very, very chrome. Gold chrome”

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen StudioscompanyIndiana JonesgameMedieval MadnessgameTony WalshpersonRollers of the RealmgameBlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization

Signals

  • ?

    product_concern: Left flipper feed from left orbit exhibits unexpected slingshot bounce in Pro Physics, deviating from reported real machine behavior where ball should feed directly to left flipper

    medium · Chris observed the deviation; Jared acknowledged it may be modeled after specific machine setup but generally shouldn't occur

  • ?

    community_signal: Inconsistent physics naming across Zen platforms (FX3: single-player/classic; Williams app: pro/regular) causes community discussion confusion and frustration among players trying to compare experiences

    high · Chris and Jared extensively discuss difficulty in thread discussions where players use different terminology for same physics modes

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Pro Physics confirmed as highly accurate representation of real Indiana Jones machine by experienced arcade player; basic shot trajectories, rollover lanes, and difficulty curve match real machine

    high · Jared Morgan (extensive arcade experience) validated Pro Physics behavior against real machine; flipper angle, ball control, and shot-making feel comparable

  • ?

    design_innovation: Zen added protective plastic shield visual to allow character placement while maintaining gameplay fidelity; balances aesthetic additions with playfield integrity

    high · Clear plastic shield over left playfield area mirrors real machine's metal protective barrier; maintains airball physics while enabling visual enhancement

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Zen Studios Budapest location near Ukraine border raises concerns about employee safety and potential operational disruption during conflict; mentioned as possible factor in delayed Pinball Show episode

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.239

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world is jared morgan hello everyone how is it going how you going chris uh i'm doing fine i'm scared to go to the gas station for obvious reasons oh man yeah so quick one gas prices down here or fuel prices down here in australian dollars two dollars seventeen a liter so multiply that by because a gallon is like 2.5 liters i think okay um so you know that's that's a lot of dollary dues that you got to pay to fill up your tank at So the station that I drive by now, I usually get my gas at Costco, which is always significantly less than your typical. Absolutely. So do I. Yes. So I haven't ventured there. I'm venturing there tomorrow.
1:09
Have your lunch because you're going to be waiting there a while. No, I checked the line. It wasn't bad. It was about the usual line it is at the one that's right by my house. But the other gas station was at $5, $5.50, $5.75 per gallon. Wow. What's it normally? Will be for this whole Russia-Ukrainian mess. It was $4.50 to $4.75 at the regular gas station. So it's shot up by a clean dollar, dollar and a half. Yeah. Okay. yeah right so it's only about it has been normally hovers around uh $1.40 a litre Australian down here so it's jumped up a lot and I heard that in New Zealand it's four dollars a litre four dollars a litre now that's their fuel prices normally are around two dollars something a litre over there but four bucks a litre like I had to make a call yesterday the kids and I went to netherworld yesterday for a bit of a flip and some ice cream and stuff and uh i went yeah we're catching the train in i'm not driving in at two dollars a liter right right well i mean because i i i'd had the intention of going with my friend to vegas to the pinball hall of fame oh yeah um not with those prices well the only thing is he has a prius so that will help us but it's like it definitely has suddenly put a big damper on oh wait a second do we really need to go right now or can we wait even longer i don't know my prediction will be uh in like three to 12 months time probably a lot earlier the the the sales of electric vehicles will skyrocket oh yeah everywhere in the world yeah i'm so this is this is a wake-up call that people need i've had this wake-up call for some time the problem is i just can't afford one yeah me neither i want one so badly yes but But the thing is, at the moment, I want one. I don't think that tech's mature enough to actually be good enough yet. My point has been I don't want one that's only good for a 100-mile charge. That's exactly it. I need one that's over the 200 mark, which now you're in Tesla territory.

Jared Morgan @ ~43:30 — Describes notable visual enhancement: richer chrome texturing replacing the original's rose-gold tint

Netherworldvenue
FX3product
Williams Pinball Appproduct
Epic Games Storeproduct
Pinball Hall of Famevenue
Twilight Zonegame
The Addams Familygame
Metallica (LE)game
Son of Zeus (Deep)game
Iron Man (Zen)game
Pinball Arcadeproduct
Disneylandvenue

medium · Chris notes Budapest location relative to Ukraine; speculates geopolitical situation may have contributed to Pinball Show delay; acknowledges war as distraction for employees

  • ?

    product_launch: Indiana Jones released on FX3 and legacy platforms but delayed on Epic Games Store early access; reasons for staggered rollout unclear

    medium · Chris notes Indiana Jones appeared on FX3 but early access Epic Games version delayed; speculates on reasons but acknowledges not knowing specific cause

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Indiana Jones confirms as mode-heavy game where scoring derives primarily from bonus accumulation via mode completions rather than direct shot jackpots

    high · Chris and Jared discuss that modes are primary scoring mechanism and are added to bonus; describes as having 'ton of modes' comparable to or exceeding Twilight Zone

  • $

    market_signal: Williams app described as 'essentially dead' but still receiving updates (Indiana Jones release); suggests legacy platform maintenance rather than active development

    high · Chris and Jared note Williams app was previously considered dead but still got Indiana Jones release; suggests minimal ongoing investment

  • ?

    venue_signal: Rising fuel costs impacting discretionary pinball travel; Chris considering deferring Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame trip due to gas prices

    high · Chris notes fuel prices jumped from $4.50-4.75 to $5.00-5.75 per gallon; mentions considering delaying Vegas trip

  • ?

    product_concern: Digital implementation lacks airball physics frequency seen on real machines; plastic shield areas prevent airball interactions that occur on physical machines

    high · Chris and Jared note airball physics rarely occur in digital version compared to real machines; identified as remaining development area for Zen

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade running contest to give away 5 Rollers of the Realm codes via email submission with phrase-matching from episode; designed with fair timing window (March 19, 9am-midnight PDT)

    high · Chris and Jared announce 5-code giveaway with specific contest rules, email address (blahblahblockade@gmail.com), and fair timing window to accommodate different time zones

    • 3:34
    Yeah. And $80,000 down here in Australia for one of those. It's basically a European import price for a car. you know yeah it's just too much uh i'm just going to remind folks of something here i mean obviously this situation situation with ukraine is it's horrible terrible um hungary where budapest is where zen is located it's right there next to the ukraine yeah in that little sort of pocket up So if you don't think that there are some concerns going on among those employees, I'm pretty sure there's some concerns going on among those employees. Oh, yes.
    4:23
    Yeah, that's way too close for me as a person down the other side of the world. Because I guarantee that some of those employees have relations with people in the Ukraine. Oh, of course. considering gourd who runs uh digital pinball fans his wife is ukrainian and he lives in canada so exactly i think yeah hopefully you know obviously thoughts are with the people that are they're suffering through this right now but um where it touches us in the pinball community um obviously that's going to affect magic pixel also because they're based in midwest um you know foster with uh with those that we are to a closer extent connected with via digitally or whatever so stay safe yeah um what else is going on let's see uh ah yes i am uh officially going to become a a villager on the planet of batu or not the planet of batu well i guess i don't know what the planet is anyway i'm getting trained for galaxy's edge so i get to go uh take photos in a galaxy far far away soon oh that's awesome yes so i'm rather happy that i get to be paid to be a cosplayer yeah that's gonna be fantastic because it looks like i've seen like youtube videos of you know uh park enthusiasts who go there and that it seems like the way that they do all the people who actually are dressed up in cosplay they really get into it oh yeah the stormtroopers especially because they're essentially completely covered yeah they just have a great time with the guests so i'd imagine it's going to be the same for you probably not with a big helmet on your face no i won't have a helmet on my face no i i need to actually be able to hold the camera still up to my face to take pictures yeah otherwise you have the same problem as stormtroopers you might be able to take a straight shot to save yourself can you imagine people get their photos soon it's just like they're they're they're yeah they're like this yeah exactly right yeah well that's gonna be awesome when are you gonna start doing that where can people train is i start training at the end of this next week awesome so and then how long does the training go for until you're only like two days basically you spend a day um uh learning how to live on that planet and then another day learning how to take photos on that planet.
    6:55
    Right, okay. Yeah. That sounds really interesting. Yeah. Well, good luck. And I hope that, because you're in the California park, obviously, aren't you? Yeah. All right. Well, that's good. You'll have to go and keep an eye out for Chris if anyone's up that way. I would say, you know what? If you come to Disneyland and you happen to spot me as a photographer, and you walk up to me and you go, blockade!
    7:24
    It's not that I can give you your pictures for free, but I'll give you extra special pictures. I'll make sure that you get a good, good long photo session. Or it would be just nice to talk to somebody.
    7:39
    It would be. That would be really cool. Yeah. So, feel free to hit me up when you're at Digiland there. All right. today we're going to talk about it's basically going to be only one topic but before we get into that we had our interview not last week but last podcast with Tony Walsh with Rollers of the Realm reunion Phantom Compass is the studio there that makes that and Tony was kind enough to give us five codes to give away for the original Rollers of the Realm. Yes. So we need to give those codes away.
    8:24
    Now, obviously, we would love to give it to people that have not played Rollers of the Realm. That's right. If you already own Rollers of the Realm, there's no point in you playing along with this contest. But maybe you could... Unless you know a mate. Exactly. Unless you know a mate who you know would absolutely love it. And in that case, we'd love to hear from you. Yes. So here's how we're going to run this contest. during the course of this episode we're going to be holding up a phrase, Jared's got one and I've got one it'll be visible on screen very momentarily please make note of those phrases then you're going to fire off an email to us on March 19th at or after 9am Pacific Daylight Time to blahblahblockade at gmail.com don't worry I'll put the info into the uh the description yeah uh so blah blah blockade at gmail.com uh subject rollers contest put that in the subject line for us and then in the body of the text you can say whatever you want but please include the two phrases that you saw in this episode first five people to fire off an email to us on march 19th we'll give you those codes uh to be able to uh play the original rollers of the realm contest ends on march 19th pacific daylight time uh at midnight so thereafter if you got to be on that day send it off no waiting around uh that's why we're giving a little bit of time so that everybody has a fair chance to be able to uh fire off that email because there's nothing worse i hate shows that require you to literally be on the the day of the premiere the day date time yeah and the first five getting after that they annoys me so much I'm always asleep usually when those ones run exactly so there's something to pay attention to throughout the course of the show and that was a lot of fun talking to Tony and I think we'll be talking to him again more as Rollers of the Realm Reunion gets closer to release I can't wait I really am looking forward to playing that game in the full version because the demo we had access to and thanks to Tony for that was so much fun yeah so um however today well obviously indiana jones uh the williams pinball adventure or the pinball adventure why williams i don't know williams no it's just the pinball adventure anyway yeah hey it got released by zen it got released on uh quite a few platforms there to all the what they call the legacy platforms yes all and everything that could play fx3 it even popped up on android and ios on the williams app uh which is interesting because they said that those like way way back when we asked about it it's like yeah those apps are essentially now dead but there's still one little breath of life still squeaked it up where it did not pop up and obviously we delayed our show by a week uh because we were expecting the pinball show to have an episode and talk about pricing and of i don't probably just pinball effects in general. But obviously the pricing of Indiana Jones is going to be put into there. That show got delayed. For what reasons? Don't know. Again, if we had to speculate,
    11:48
    again, where's Budapest? Where's the Ukraine? I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I'm going to say not the sole reason. Maybe not a large portion of the reason why the show got delayed. but I suspect there might be some underlying issues I would think so I mean I know what it's like we had the floods recently down here I won't go into too much detail it was all over the news probably worldwide news and you know it distracts you when there's something happening around you can't help but get drawn into it so I'd imagine something like a war would probably do that to you why it's able to though release on FX3 as opposed to the launching of early access for the Epic Games version. That's what, again, don't know. Don't know what happened there. It's kind of useless to point fingers. It's also kind of not fair to go, hey, Zen, tell us everything of why this went wrong. That doesn't make much sense either. Not really. Not from a company standpoint. but so everything that is FX3 yay you get Indiana Jones if you were hoping to play it in the Epic Games Store early access gonna have to wait a little bit more initial thoughts Jared of and full disclosure yes we received codes on Steam to be able to play Indiana Jones getting that out there does not necessarily change how our view was because I had every intention of laying down the money and purchasing this regardless if we were going to get the coach or not. But just want to put that out there because I know some people are going to be like, for whatever we're about to say, they're going to go, oh yeah, you're saying that because you got it. No, I'm not saying that. Well, I think after you hear what we're going to say about it, you'll probably think that we may not be paid about it. But initial thoughts, Jared, on... I know that neither of us have had really a long time to be able to futz around with the game just because it works. No. But what's your initial thoughts on firing it up? I feel really guilty about that, too, because normally when we do something like this, we like to really get into it, play it for a long time. But, I mean, I know this game really well. I spent probably hundreds of dollars on it in the arcade when it was new, and continue to spend hundreds of dollars on it when I found them in the wild after it was released 10 or 15 years ago. It's a great game to play, and I've played it a lot. Okay, I'm going to pause you right there and just say my history with it. Not as extensive as yours.
    14:40
    I didn't get to see it that often in the wild. And when it was there, when every other game was 50 cents to play, I think that one was 75 cents to play. And so I typically didn't... Actually, I don't know if it was... I don't know what the pricing would have been, 50 cents for all the other games. I just remember I would tend to look at the price of Indiana Jones and go, no, you know what? I think I'll play Addams Family again and get two games in on that rather than one game in on Indy. And then the last time I played it was at one of the league events that I went to probably maybe three years ago, I think. Right. And there was one that was in Peru. It was a beautiful condition.
    15:22
    And it was kicking everybody's butt, except for one guy who was like a top pinball international, yeah, top-ranked player, who proceeded to wizard mode the thing on one ball.
    15:36
    Wow, okay. Yeah, see, that's something. So I know we're just trying to talk about the digital version here, but wizard moding this game, it's not easy in real life. So if you can do it, if you go, oh, wow, I can do this in Xen, no problems at all, yeah.
    15:53
    Try doing it on a real machine set up in an arcade for dollary-doos, because I tell you what, you're going to get a rude surprise.
    16:01
    It's hard, and it's a deep game, and it's probably of its era. It has a lot of modes on it. Oh, God, yeah, it's got a ton of modes. Heaps of modes. Yeah. It almost puts Twilight Zone to shame.
    16:18
    Twilight Zone's got a lot of things that you have to earn around the thing, but this one's got actual modes. Yeah. So things that you need to do to accomplish stuff in the game. And those modes, obviously, if you're not really that familiar with the game, play a really important role in your bonus, because they do not tilt this game. Because any mode earnings you win are added to your bonus at the end. So you will get a colossal bonus, and it's how you actually get high scores. I was going to say, because this is one of those games where the points are in the bonus, not so much in the actual gameplay. I mean, you can definitely get some points in the game. Like, super jackpots in this game are very lucrative, but you have to build up to that, obviously. But yeah, the modes are absolutely... If there was a wizard pin on this at Netherworld, the modes are where it's at. That's where you get your points. so yeah with that in mind it's modes, modes, modes all day so from my perspective I've played both the pro physics mode and the zen physics mode on it I've played it with digital effects on like enhancements on, enhancements off so I've at least done that in the time I've been able to play it So that's something, right? Same here. So we've got that at least. We've seen all the different modes.
    17:43
    Well, no, I've seen a few modes. Yeah, we've seen all, sorry, the gameplay modes and types that Zen's offering. Not all the game modes. No, I still haven't even gotten the you chose poorly mode. I have. I've got it. But yeah, so I'll say that the pro physics on this, I have to say one word tricky they are very accurate I was just going to say, so you're somebody that has a lot of experience with the actual machine just what's your because here's the thing a lot of comments that we see in threads and discussions are of people saying, well it feels really floaty or it feels really bouncy and this isn't about Indiana Jones this will be just like about any of the Williams tables and then you push and prod the people and you find out they've never touched a real machine in their life correct so jared having touched this machine lovingly and deeply for a long long sorry um you're saying that the the pro physics are matching your expectations uh fairly closely yeah i can i know this because like switching but the first tell with this game is if it's set up correctly the ball when you shoot it will always go to the first or second or the i or the n rollover lane at the top always you can guarantee it you put money down and you'll get the win every time um and in excuse me in the simulation um in pro physics it will do that every time um if you're playing in zen physics it's actually really random it is like the ball will just bounce around everywhere so with the pro physics it's it's really accurate up there let me ask you this uh because this was a question i had upon immediately playing it uh after it bounces around and it goes down the uh left yep side of the oil what do you call that the orbit yeah yep um comes down i was expecting it to go straight to my left flipper instead it grazes to left slingshot and goes boing and bounces Is that an accurate representation In pro physics In pro physics, this was happening. No. So it should go straight to the left flipper, in your experience. Well, it depends. Again, this is one of those, like every game is different. Every game is set up differently. So this particular game that Zen has, it may have really tight slingshot switches set on it, and they'd be modeling it after that.
    20:23
    But generally speaking, if your ball rolls down the left hand, you can normally grab it or control it enough to catch it on the left flipper. Okay. Like it will feed, it should feed down there pretty well.
    20:39
    It shouldn't really be bouncing around crazily. Like you should be able to get a catch on that first. Well, more or less, and I guess you didn't notice it, but more or less what was happening was it's going down, hitting that left sling and bouncing it over to the right flipper that you would better flip the ball, otherwise it's going to go house ball and go center drain right on you. Yeah, okay. Now, I didn't detect that subtlety, but it shouldn't really be hitting that sling when it comes down. You should at least be able to catch it. Very similar to how you do it on Medieval Madness from that right feed. Right. Yeah, so it should behave like that. So at least you can get some control off the bat. and pick a shot to take.
    21:21
    So, yeah, so we've covered the launch, we've covered as it feeds down through the pop bumpers to the left return. What I did find, though, and this could just be because I have not picked up FX3 for months now, and I've not played Williams Tables at all for months. I've been abstaining a lot, actually. And in some cases it's been because I just haven't had time, but I also kind of wanted to have some distance between the games so I could see FX when it comes out on Unreal and really get blown away by the differences, I guess.
    21:56
    So what I noticed was in pro physics, the shot making with the flippers feels different to the other pro physics implementations.
    22:10
    I found that finding the shots on the table was different and I thought, hmm, is it just my view? Am I playing in a view that I wasn't normally accustomed to? Maybe that's affecting my position on the flipper, you know, because that's the thing when you're playing Zen. It's actually really useful to try different views because you will get a different experience, a different shot-making experience based on the perspective you're looking at. So I flicked it up to like a more top-down view and that seemed to help a little bit. But I still found that, yeah, in the pro physics mode, you really have to be quite accurate and you have to adjust the way that you play, I think. I don't know. It could have just been one of those things where I was rusty and the first couple of goes I had made me feel like that. Right. But it was noticeable to me. Now, are you saying this is a positive or a negative?
    23:06
    I think it could be classed as a negative. Okay. Which is why I'm being careful about how I describe it because it could just be me. It could be a me thing. I could just suck. because I haven't played FX3 for a while. So I don't want to call it out as a thing that's really wrong. It probably is me. So I just need to play it more. What a bad problem to have. I need to play this game more, right? Because I'm going to say, with what I was experiencing,
    23:37
    and my recollection of how I've played the table itself in the past, just trying to combo the airplane ramps over and over again, it's brutal for me on the real machine. Yeah, yeah. That's a massive challenge to do.
    23:59
    And in this, I was glad that it wasn't easy, but was I able to combo them more than twice? Yes. On occasion, I got into that rhythm and was able to do it, just like you should be able to do on Medieval Madness. Yeah, right. It's that same kind of feel, or the same thing you should be able to do on Metallica. Yep. It very much, it feels doable, but at the same hand, it's not just an easy gimme. Yeah, it's not suction ramps like it would have been on Pinball Arcade. Precisely. So, I almost, but on the same hand, if I capture the ball, and I take my time, and I aim, and I miss once, and I make the slight correction, and I miss again and then I make the final third correction and then I nail it, that to me feels like it should. Yeah, that's pinball. I'm able to make the corrections and find the shot and then the next time I get the ball, I'm able to duplicate and find the shot again. Yeah, that's right. I almost view it as a positive. That's why I was asking. You going negative or positive?
    25:01
    Yeah, I think, yeah, you're right. In general, I'm glad that the table's not just giving things. Yeah, exactly. it's making me actually show that I need some skill to make it happen. What I do like, because we're talking about ramps, like that Path of Adventure ramp when it's open, is like the ball should not fly up there. It should make it, but it shouldn't be going too fast at the top. And that's how it feels with pro physics. It feels like you need to really drive the ball up that ramp with a very clean shot. And it's mean if you don't make it up the ramp.
    25:40
    It's danger time, right? Well, it's just like the captured ball is such a sucker bet. Oh, yeah, it is. You've got to have your wits about you when you're hitting that captive ball because it'll either rattle around enough to slow down or you're losing it down the guts unless you death save it. Or tip save it. And so, back to me watching the professional player on the machine wizard moding the thing. Yeah, yeah. I've never seen somebody suddenly nudge a table more.
    26:18
    Yeah. Oh, my God. When the ball's nowhere near the flipper. Yeah. He was nudging the crap out of that thing. Mm-hmm. and making sure to have absolute ball control. And what I noticed with a few of the players that were obviously better than me but were also sucking at it, when it finally got to their ball to do it, they started duplicating some of the timings of where his nudges were, and all of a sudden they were having much better gameplay. Yep. So that's the kind of table this is, where it's going to be nasty to you if you're not nasty back to it. Yeah, you've got to give it a bit of to and fro. For sure. Yeah. I definitely think it's a... You need to be active on it. You can't just be standing there, pass the ball around. So what did you think of the Zen physics in play?
    27:08
    Oh, yeah, I liked them. They're definitely... They feel right. They were kicking my ass. And that's how they should be. It should be a marked improvement on the amount of effort you need to put in to get a good score.
    27:23
    And, yeah, they were definitely... They felt good, apart from me sucking. Well, no, I'm talking the Zen physics, not the William's physics. Oh, sorry, Zen. Yeah, sorry. This is the problem. Labels for these things, like pro-Zen things. We're going to cover that, aren't we?
    27:39
    Not in this episode, but we will say this. Zen. Just call it simulation and Zen. Yeah, something. Quit with the cutesy names, because there's a difference. We've covered this before. Where in the Williams Pinball app, it's just Pro Physics and regular physics. And then in FX3, it's single-player physics and classic physics, which you can pick then arcade or tournament.
    28:10
    It doesn't need to be this difficult. Just call it Zen Physics. It's really hard to describe. It really is. Pick something and stick with it across the way, but make it easy. you know either call it yeah zen and simulation or call it uh i think you should just call it zen physics and then whatever hell you want to call the other you whatever then call it zen physics physics well i mean obviously you can't call it williams physics because that's gonna they're gonna be putting it that's a licensing thing yeah you know it's true but if you want to stick with pro physics fine say pro physics yeah you know pro or simulation either or I would go for. But enough with this.
    28:48
    Because when we have discussions in threads, I see it all the time. Well, I was playing single-player physics. Oh, I was playing classic physics. Well, aren't they the same thing? Well, no. Were you playing the one where you have enhancements available? Well, what enhancements? Okay, were you playing the one with passive power-ups or the one where you don't have power-ups? Yeah. That's a lot.
    29:12
    It's hard. it really is hard yeah it doesn't need to be that complicated you're right so yeah it would be better to so zen physics yeah zen physics so your zen physics um i i enjoyed it a lot more to be honest i i had it's definitely more forgiving and it's honestly more enjoyable to play the game my score has tripled well sure playing Zen physics so here's for folks if you want to really be able to identify even in videos that you watch online where you go wait are they playing the Williams physics or are they playing the Zen physics look at the flippers here's the indication I'm going to get where's my camera there we go okay so Zen physics when the flippers flip up they go like that high real high yeah I noticed Williams physics they're more like they're slightly up. They're not level, but they're only slightly up. Zen physics, Williams physics. That's your key indicator as to which version you're playing.
    30:24
    Don't judge it off of how the ball is bouncing or how floaty it is. Because when you play like Son of Zeus, when Deep programmed that, and this is one of the reasons why we like that table, why we featured it, in the table reveal because the ball bounces in there felt very much like it would on an actual real table that's right the flippers were still really steep which makes capturing the ball very easy on indiana jones um but the actual bounciness of the ball on son of zeus was quite bouncy compare that to you know when you're playing i don't know like iron man where it's just this leaden ball. But you still have the same flipper angle.
    31:11
    There's your quick primer on that. Interesting enough, Jared, my score has sucked using the Zen physics. Oh, really? Yeah, I don't know why. I wasn't doing good with the Zen physics.
    31:27
    I have no answer for that. You might have just been having a sucky go as well. Who knows? It's possible. Let's talk about the visual enhancements.
    31:38
    There are some subtleties and some not-so-subtleties that go on with the visual enhancements. One of the subtleties is all of a sudden there is a clear plastic over certain areas of the playfield so that Indy has some place to stand. Yeah, that's true. That is the biggest thing I've found. And if you've ever played the game in the arcades, you'll know that the feed off the drop targets, is such that you get quite a volatile ball happening off them. And it will often shoot off the drop targets and go right to the very left of the play field, which is why they have this sort of metal shield, if you like, in the regular game, to stop the balls instantly draining out the side of the machine. and it sort of felt weird seeing that plastic shield over that area because i thought oh yeah let's see if they can see what happens if we get air balls um and what happens with that plastic shield and how it interacts with um the game whether it's actually a like a gameplay surface or whether it's actually just a visual surface you know like the balls will actually go through it um i haven't actually seen a lot of air balls from the drop targets yet you know i was just thinking about it. Although I know air balls exist to a certain extent in some of the Williams tables that Zen has done, they're nowhere near as prominent as they are on an actual machine. An actual machine, my God, that ball, I mean, almost any pinball machine I've played, at some point the ball is whacking against the glass of the table. Oh, yeah. At some point. Whereas in this, rarely will I see a ball actually jump um yeah and you should really notice it in multi-ball that's right where the balls are greening against each other yeah yeah exactly so there's there's there's the the the last bastion for deep to work on getting air balls air balls that's right air ball physics i actually had one the other day in real life when i was at uh when i was playing medieval madness there was a ball over a troll when it popped up and boy did you realize that the ball was going at quite a rapid speed above that troll when it popped boy it was loud um yeah so that's one that's a good observation about that shield area so india is a place to stand um the the idle area like all the textures change don't they yeah they did like when you go into they're all different they're all shinier they're all a completely different color actually um so they're a lot richer like It's still like in the original game, there's like a sort of a light rose gold tint to all of the chrome surfaces. But in the Zen enhancements, the visual enhancements, wow, everything is super deep gold chrome. Very, very chrome. Gold chrome. So yeah, that's another thing that I noticed that really jumped out at me.
    34:47
    I think the thing that jumped out at me the most was the airplanes disappearing when you're in yeah the visual enhancements they just plane or not on the table until you hit the ramp once you hit one of the airplane ramps all sudden airplane goes flying around which can be a bit distracting i didn't enjoy that honestly like that visual feature i went oh that's no it's actually worse than the dragon flying around of evil madness where it happens so often right where i enjoyed it was when you eventually shoot down one of the planes it goes and crashes into the side of the machine and explodes which i thought yeah right right that's cool but yeah as for them flying around the screen like quite in your field of view like over that main lower play field area it feels like the wrong place to put it and maybe that's view dependent i don't know it depends on what view you're playing well and yeah and i'll say this i'm playing uh in portrait mode cabinet mode you know so my room my screen is rotated i'm doing full screen top down view um yeah so that's affecting certain things in that area um i noticed all the pop-up scores also like become too much so you got pop-up scores you got airplanes flying around uh you're doing castle grundewald and rain is falling uh that rain effect looks so good in the rolling demo but wow it's so distracting in when you're playing it like it's it adds a layer of complexity to that mode that you just don't need um because i mean it's already hard to start with that castle grown wall centers around the the um captive ball so that's horrible to start with and then you add in rain which maybe it will be different in the um pimple effects version not the fx3 version with you know um unreal's um advanced ray tracing and lighting etc but like the the Raindrops, like, they're quite opaque. So it's like there's a lot of action on the screen that you also have to track with your ball. And it's like I had to turn it off. I went, oh, no, I have to turn this off now. It was too much.
    37:01
    The other thing that I noticed with, and this is actually, I think, probably a bigger problem, and that is that when you have visual extras on and you lock a ball,
    37:16
    the time it takes for that ball to go from the drop target trough to the idle and release the ball for next play, it's actually longer with the visual effects on because Indy has to actually animate to get over there. Normally that process is around from the point at which the ball drops into the hole and goes to the mechanism that loads the idle. It's a five-second round trip from ball into the trough to ball into the shooter lane. And with visual extras on, you're getting an extra two seconds of wait time per ball lock for that whole thing to complete because Indy's got to turn the idle. and I don't think that visual extras should affect the underlying mechanics of the table and how long you have to wait for balls to traverse through playfield mechanisms. I just think that's a poor design decision and it interrupts flow. And I was going, can we just hurry this up? And I ended up turning off visual extras because it was frustrating me that I had to wait longer for that animation to complete. So like my advice is then, like rethink that animation cut out i think the problem is that when indy stows his whip like has to fold up his whip stow it on his belt and then turn the idle remove that animation and you'll solve the problem but but just in future don't make animations to the detriment of mechanical features in the game it just doesn't feel right i'm gonna go out on a limb and say they're not going to change the animation. I'd say they're probably not. We've had animation issues before with things that we've said, hey, we didn't like the animation of this. It's affecting whatever. And I think that's a step too far. Not a step too far, but... A step too far for them to go back and revisit it. Yeah, it's not going to be worth the R&D to do it, basically. The problem is, too, and particularly with something as complex to license as Indiana Jones, I would imagine that every single animation in that game would have been vetted. Oh, I'm sure it was. And very closely monitored. And it may be that that animation is the way it is because the licensors wanted it to be that way. So it may be that my request, they probably go, mm-hmm, we don't like it either, but we had to do it like this because licensing Yeah And that okay We could turn it off Yeah And I was just going to say that the thing with the visual enhancement You don like it Hey you can turn it off You don't have to play with it on. And you can turn it on and off at will. So if you know that there's an animation that, you know, I'm going to lock the ball now, turn it off, turn it back on again when it's finished. So for instance, if I'm playing Theater of Magic, in general, I don't play it with the enhancements on because I don't really care for any of the enhancements that are there. but the one that was just like oh huh is when you vanish the ball and now you're playing with a clear ball oh that's no that's the worst horrible that's a horrible idea so boom instantly i'm hitting turn off visual enhancements when that happens so yeah you know it's the same thing hey it looks cool great to show to your friends but is it helping the game not really no and in general i'm going to say the visual enhancements on indiana jones i'm probably not going to be playing with them on because I think that they do hinder your gameplay scoring more. Are they fun if you just don't care about your score and you just want to mess around? Yes. I think they did a fantastic look on them. They look great. They're themed well with... It's not like Hurricane where you got creepy clown. I don't want no part of. That's a hard pass to the visual of pants but it's on that game boy I do not like the clown creepy clown no no as opposed to say Dr. Dude where I really like the animations I think I'm like yes I want to play with the enhancements on all the time I love it or Monsters of Rock wait Monster Bash I'm like that's not alright that's a mode that's what you get in the game exactly yeah Monster Bash love the visual enhancements I play with those on all the time and Creature when he comes through the the uh the creature i turn off oh it distracts you distract me i think it's interesting like we could probably go into like a whole what features are what visual enhancements are good and not and why a future episode let's save that yeah that's right but uh yeah for me i i will be probably passing on the visual enhancements except and this is the thing that really annoys me like to get the the other thing that's really cool in the visual enhancements is the center play field yep where you have the ring the bonus multiplier ring with all the characters around it and that gets replaced by video animations bespoke video animations that are in the game i'd love that to be on all the time yeah like that that to me is like if there was a mod available in the game that you could buy like for 400 and put it into your indiana jones i'd do that that would be an incredible mod but you have to have the visual enhancements on to see it and all the other stuff that goes on those visual enhancements i will probably never get to enjoy that because i won't get to see it so it's linked to enhancements the one thing that i noticed while playing between and this is playing between pro physics and zen physics there was kind of an oddity and i don't know how to explain it again i'm playing portrait mode so my screen is looking like this right like that. Top down, top down view. And, uh, when you go to,
    43:17
    I tend to turn off the, uh, I don't know, what do they call it? The, the, basically where the table zooms into a special feature. So like if you're playing, uh, multiple, multiple cameras, I think I call it, or something like, like if you're playing champion pub and also you get jump rope, it zooms into the jump rope. So you can actually see, cause obviously you're too far away. Um, But I turn those off because since I'm playing it as if it was a table in front of me, that's just as close to me as the flipper is down at the bottom. I can see it perfectly fine. That's right. So I tend to turn those off. And so I'm playing Indiana Jones. I'm playing in Pro Physics and get to Path of Adventure. And, yeah, Path of Adventure is up there in the corner, and it's doing its little rotate thing, and I can see it just fine.
    44:05
    Then I switch over to Zen Physics, and I get to Path of Adventure. and my screen goes from being top-down like this to also going like that angle. Oh, perspective mode. And way in the back here is Path of Adventure instead of being closer when it was like this, and I could see the entirety of it.
    44:28
    And it was kind of like, wait, no, I don't want that. Turn that off. That's not good. I don't know why it changed from what it was in ProPhysics to what it was in ZenPhysics. Similarly, when I went to video mode, and I'm playing with a second monitor, I put my back glass on the monitor. Yes, folks, I have made an Indiana Jones back glass for you to be able to play with. I had to upload that. Yeah, to upload that.
    44:54
    And the DMD is obviously also over there. Yep. And so when video mode comes up, I have to look at my second monitor and play with the DMD over there. In ZenPhysics, the DMD pops up like the table zooms in, pops up massive on the screen, and they play the video mode there. Now, I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing because now it's an even bigger DMD, but it does throw off the illusion of me having this table in front of me. Again, why it did that in ZenPhysics and doesn't do that in Pro, I don't know because nothing changed in my settings for how it should be displaying. It's going to be a bug. Yeah, that was a little odd. Yeah, I think that's just a bug. So overall impression, this is going to lead us into our next segment here. Overall impression and the big issue.
    45:47
    Did Zen do a good job? Is it worth the price point? Okay, so for me, yes, they did do a good job. If you take away the visual extras and all the extra panache they put into the game, and you look at the actual gameplay experience itself, and the way they presented the table in its regular form, yes, they have done what I think is a really good job on this table. It's a really nice way to finish off the FX3 library, and usher in the new version of the platform. so yes that would be my call they have done a good job okay I do agree it's not this wasn't hastily thrown together and I'm going to point to in the way back machine when Farsight put out their last two tables on their engine being Big Buck Hunter and Wo Nelly Big Buck Hunter especially looking like it was just a regression.
    47:01
    Lots of visual issues, lots of gameplay issues. It just didn't feel good at all. And considering Zen is making this on two engines, they could have easily just hastily thrown together the FX3 version, knowing they're going to have a much better version in pinball effects. I don't feel like that's the case at all. I feel like from what I've seen here, it plays just as well, if not better, in terms of the physics, to all the other Williams tables that they've done. Obviously, we haven't gotten our hands on the Epic game version, the Unreal Engine version of the game.
    47:45
    And that'll be very interesting, and we definitely will do a comparison thoughts between those two. Yes. When it comes to the price tag, and we're going to get into this right now here, is it worth the $15?
    48:04
    I'm going to say yes. Is it worth it if you're going to be buying it on Steam and on Switch and on your PS4, and are you going to pay the $15 to play it in the Williams app?
    48:19
    There's what I'm going to say. Slow your roll. Yeah, exactly. Pump the brakes, folks. Yeah, pump the brakes, because that's A, a lot of money to be spreading around for this, and B, where are you going to be playing it most?
    48:32
    If you're a PC player, and you are still on the fence regarding this, fine, wait until the Epic Store version comes out, which is going to happen soon.
    48:45
    They're not going to be sitting on this long. Again, it's still in the month of March. We were promised that it would be coming in March. We've just missed the day and date with everything else. Obviously, when you submit to game stores, like with Nintendo and PlayStation and Xbox, you're submitting weeks in advance for the timing of it. So whatever delay happened, they just had to roll with it. Yeah. Essentially, you submit, and then you just go, okay. Right. It's in the hands of the gods now. Right. with Steam and Epic that they can turn on and off in a day's time they have total control over that so if you're on the fence because this is a coordinated release yeah they've got to be they've got to cool the jets so they can line up all the ducks so if you're on the fence between hey do I want the FX3 version or do I want the Epic Games version fine slow slow down hesitate um and then decide once it comes out you know are you planning on only doing the epic game store version anyway yeah then there's where i'd put my money and then if you were rather than putting it in fx3 and putting it into epic games and you have a switch well fine now put it in epic games and put it in the switch version you know do something of that nature uh you know, spread it around. As time goes by and when this game hits the stores and is out for a bit, Zen is going to do what they always do and they're going to run promotions around the Steam sales and stuff like that or the Epic Game promotions and stuff like that.
    50:33
    You're going to get a chance to get this game at a reduced cost. It's not going to be like ridiculous to reduce. And it's going to be a little while. They're not going to put the game on sale a month from now. Why would they do that? That's ridiculous. Right. And whenever the game does finally go on sale, don't expect it to be at 50% off. No. It's going to be some money off. It's going to be maybe 20% off. Yeah. Maybe. If you get 20% off this game, I think you're doing pretty well because the royalties and licensing tied up in this game is the most expensive licensed game that Xen has ever done. Which is now going to be our point. Yep. Because there have been a lot of discussion on Discord on Steam forums, on digital email fans. I saw a news article on Reddit.
    51:21
    You've got a lot of people that are screaming bloody murder over the fact that $15 is too much. How dare they charge this? Look at what they've charged for all these other tables.
    51:33
    Yes, look at what they've charged for all these other tables and then realize what goes into this table. We've had this discussion so many times on this channel about not only on this channel but we've had it with mel himself when we actually had him on for an interview he went into the licensing details and how complex it was for this right so go back to that episode and re-listen to it um these things are not apples to apples you can't sit there and look at star wars tables and go hey there's it's a movie license and you know has John Williams music in it and we were able to buy three tables for $9.99. So why is this thing $15? Because it's a movie license and it's got John Williams music in it.
    52:23
    You're talking about a deal that was made pre-Lucasfilm being bought out by Disney. Disney, yeah. You're talking about a different licensing deal entirely with John Williams' publishing company, Music Publishing, that allowed Zen to use the soundtrack from the original trilogy. One piece of music only. Well, that's not one piece. I mean, that's a lot of music for the trilogy, but able to spread it amount over the initial order of nine tables.
    52:56
    Since then, they had to negotiate again to be able to plop it into other tables since. But it's always the original trilogy music. You never get Duel of the Fates popping up. You know, and honestly, I was kind of shocked when we played Mandalorian in VR, and there was the music from the Mandalorian. Well, you know why, though? Why's that? Because a completely different composer. And, like, his music is everywhere. It's even in the Stern pinball version. Not only that, but it's a modern contract with a product that's still actively in development. not that's right licensing music from a movie that came out 40 years ago with a composer who is arguably you know in the top three composers of all time with one of the most iconic pieces of music of all time um you know and somebody was talking about uh mentioning well you know why I would... All John Williams music can't be cost the same. Obviously, Star Wars is more popular than Indiana Jones. And I'd go, is it? Is his Indiana Jones theme any less iconic than the Star Wars theme? Any less iconic than the Jaws theme? Any less iconic than the E.T. theme? Any less iconic than the Harry Potter theme? And I even went on to say, I don't know, I know he composed the music for the first two Harry Potters. I can't remember if he composed it for the third. They used Harry Potter themes definitely in the third, fourth movie quite heavily. By the fifth movie, they were only using it in the opening credit crawl. And by the final movie, there was only a slight tinge of hint music of John Williams. Almost a leitmotif in nature. I guarantee he got paid handsomely. Yeah. For every single one of those.
    54:57
    Yeah. and i'm jokingly said he probably got paid the same amount to use those motifs as he did to compose the first film now that's probably not necessarily true but that is pure speculation but i think about with danny elfman composing the simpsons soundtrack or not the soundtrack the opening theme he receives this is ridiculous something like 25 cents every single the time that theme is played 25 cents wow every single lot of money yes for each imprint wow so as much as that thing is in syndication for for any iteration because anytime the simpsons is played you always even if it's that much of it hey here's some money he's a quarter so over the long run yeah he made more in that than he did for the initial fee because i think he got paid an absurdly low amount he did it just purely as a favor uh yeah right that theme oh here it is here's the theme so i'll just knock it off for you um but that often happens though right so you don't know how popular something's going to be until it's popular no no so you can't go comparing and especially you can't go comparing prices of something that came out seven years ago, price-wise, to, hey, prices do go up. I don't know if you've noticed, inflation is a thing.
    56:25
    We were just talking about the price of gas. Yeah, it goes up. But more importantly, the licensing that went into this, again, Mel talked to us a bit for what he was able to say. We've speculated a lot about what we assume happens. Based on our prior experience, what we know of licensing with pinball arcade as well right and let's be clear you're not going to hear this kind of talk on the pinball show you're not it's that is for promotion it is not for deep diving into the ins and outs of how zen works this is never going to be that way if you want to hear that stuff you come here when we have mel on and you can see us pulling teeth trying to get information out of him on some of these things so because he's reluctant to talk about why is he reluctant to talk about it because it's business well it's business but there's also things that he can't say because he's contractually obligated not to talk about it with the people that he's licensing yeah yes now if you're wondering why we keep on talking about licensing because you cannot just dismiss licensing and what it costs you can't just go i don't care what the licensing costs are zen just needs to work that out i just want my game at the same price as i've always been paying well guess what you're not going to get the game then because it's not going to make financial sense for them to lose their shirt so that you can play this game they've got to have some profit even if they have to keep the lights on like how are they going to do that like they can't absorb like let's say for example the licensing fees per table at 10 bucks and if you want to play the game for seven dollars how are they get how are they going to make up the three dollars with the added cost of development and marketing and all these things it's like when you go it's the same i was having this discussion the other day with like why is it so cheap to buy a can of drink from your supermarket versus out it's like because the person selling you that drink has a whole lot of other overheads over it than you do just buying from the supermarket well it's the same analogy not only that but the drink is an area where they they keep the cost of the actual meal down to almost what it costs to make is what they're charging you and then they uptick on the drinks because that's where they know they can earn their profit it's the same thing you go to the movie theater the cost of the cost of the movie ticket the theater barely gets the mom's office cut. Most of it goes to the studio. Okay? Where do they make their money? On concessions. Concessions. That's where they make their money. That's the agreement that you're basically having going in there. So, now,
    59:16
    the trade-off, because if you're going to be like, well, the concessions are too damn expensive. Okay, fine. So if they lower the cost of the concessions, guess what? They're going to just tack it on to the other end of the ticket price. It's got to be made up somehow. Except, contractually, they can't do that because then the studio is going to take the money from the ticket price. So that's where they're locked in. That's where it's this little fine thing. So this goes back to with the licensing. Guess what? Disney is notorious for taking a huge royalty cut on anything that they license Why Because they know that the Disney brand is premium and that people will come to it and expect a certain level of quality because it has their label attached to it. Why are Marvel and Star Wars Lego sets more expensive even though their piece count is lower than other sets? Shouldn't it be priced as the piece count? No, because they've got to pay that licensing fee. It's part of the deal. You cannot ignore licensing and just go, well, I don't want to deal with it. That's their concern. No, it's going to come to you. It has to. And it happens in every single product.
    60:28
    So in terms of licensing, A, Disney, they're going to take a massive cut. You also have to pay off Lucasfilm. Even though they're part of Disney, they're still a separate entity. Because Lucasfilm specifically controls Indiana Jones, yes. But you know, Indiana Jones is not on Disney Plus. Why is that? Oh, that's right, because Paramount still has distribution rights. Oh, yeah, that's right.
    60:50
    Now, I don't know if Paramount winds up getting a cut of this deal because they were only just a distributor. I don't know that for sure.
    60:58
    I've not looked at, again, I don't know if Paramount is labeled anywhere on the actual machine. I don't think it is. I don't think so either. but so and and that cut the disney get gets that is for every single sale of the machine it's not a one-time fee they're getting a royalty on every single sale it's just exactly the same as any other piece of merchandise like if you buy a frozen doll then that frozen doll has a licensing component which disney gets yep um the other fee that comes every single time the fee that they got to pay williams they have a licensing deal with williams yeah williams gets a cut of the pie things that are one-time fees the fee they had to pay harrison ford it was astronomical from what i have nobody has told us the fee mel's not going to tell us the fee obviously he can't that's absolutely commercial confidence even off the air that goes beyond the mda that we have yeah well and truly but we have gathered enough clues and hints to know that it was steep yeah um if you remember back with farsight doing terminator 2 yes and the arnold fee that one we happen to know arnold's fee was about 60 grand yep which basically made up most of the kickstarter amount for that table yes from what i understand harrison's is significantly more than that yeah that's a one-time fee for that um that was just for his likeness by the way yeah wasn't for his well probably likeness and his digitized voice in the game now the digitized voice is all coming from the actual soundtrack of the movie uh as because i think only sala uh john reese david he's the only one that actually recorded dialogue for the pinball machine am i correct on that i think you could be right actually all the other ones are grabs from the movie yes Yes, yes. But even still... As well as he does super jackpot call-outs and stuff like that. Right, right. So even still, that auditory grab from the movie carries a fee. Yep. You have all the actors that are also on there, which, again, there's plenty in the back glass and on the play field itself. They all had to be paid for their likeness fee.
    63:20
    And if they had audio in the movie, they had to be paid for that. And then there's a problem as well, which we covered in previous licensing discussions. And you'll know this term. It's the, well, if I'm getting that much money, if Harrison's getting that much money, then favored nation. So that's the other thing they've got to factor in as well. Yeah. You know, it's like it's so many different things. Yeah, because, oh, he got paid this much? Well, I'm supposed to get X amount of dollars below, but guaranteed that I get that percentage below for whatever the payment is.
    63:53
    Look, there's a reason this is a holy grail table. Because it costs a lot of money to put together. Now, we haven't even touched upon that. So that right there, the licensing costs alone, if you look at the last things Farsight put out, which was like the ACDC table. Yep. And they had the Star Trek table. And Mustang. Well, Mustang they didn't charge for. That must have been a relatively inexpensive license. Ghostbusters. They were charging $10 per table on those. Yeah, they were. They were 10. And those were not Disney licenses. No. And they didn't have actors that were necessarily of the same status. With ACDC, it was the music rights. And there we go. Music right publishing is stupid. Yeah. Very, very expensive.
    64:49
    So there you go. Well, okay, maybe you could have had the table for 10 bucks, but you wouldn't have had John Williams' music. And if you say, oh, I don't need John Williams music. Yeah, go back and play the Jaws table. You don't need John Williams music, really? Because that's just a table that has a shark on it. I'm sorry. It's not Jaws. It really is. Shark and a boat. It's nothing without that theme music. Yeah.
    65:14
    And it is so well integrated into this machine that it would be jarring to not have it. Yeah. the entire like you know rolling theme music in it is a digitized version of the main theme of the show right right what were you gonna what are you gonna put there in place of that yeah like so please don't do what fast I didn't do a horrible take on big guns by ACD last action hero because that made me want to throw the table out the window yeah it was horrible yeah sound like a spaghetti western theme worse um yeah no music publishing rights are insane and the bigger the artist the larger the the rights are going to be on it i'm sorry so if you want to ignore licensing you're not going to have the table that's just that's all there is to it you cannot have one without the other you have to recognize the costs of this um that's just that's part of the deal It'd be like complaining that you went onto the car lot, and you're like, well, I want that luxury car over there. How come it doesn't cost the same price as this entry-level car? They're both the same manufacturer. They share some of the same components. How come this one costs so much darn more? It's a ripoff. Yeah. No. And here's where I say, is $15 a lot to pay? Yes, it is. It's expensive. But here's the difference. Is it worth it? yeah will you get 15 when in the case of me it's actually 21 australian yeah yeah will i get 21 coins worth of satisfaction of playing this game as i would have to pay in the arcade uh the answer is yes because after the 21 dollars is spent it's free yeah like if you look at it like that and yeah i'm gonna get value out of that right so you know expensive becomes a question of something can be expensive but still worth it yeah other things can be expensive that you just don't feel that it's at at that price it's not worth it and truth be told at a lower price it still might not be worth it um there's plenty of games that i wait for game of the year i'll wait the year to get game of the year edition so that it'll be a 10 bucks less and b have all the dlc that you would normally have had to purchase over the past year that's right and even then i'll sometime hesitate and wait for the price to drop some more until it's finally go where i go okay now it's worth it for me to you know yeah now the value is there as far as i'm concerned that's not to say that somebody else didn't get 2 000 hours worth of value out of it previously you know yeah That's right. So is it costly? Yes. Yeah. If they had put it out at $10 without the John Williams music, guess what the whole conversation would be about then? Yeah, it would have been about, wow, this table is just soulless. Yeah, Zen cheaped out and they didn't put in the Williams music. It's not the same. How dare they?
    68:28
    Absolutely. The other thing that's driving me up a wall is I'm seeing people throw this around, and they've been throwing this around for some time. than it being a cash grab. Let me read the definition of what a cash grab is. It says, when a product has little or zero quality, has hastily, lazily been thrown together for the sole reason of making money.
    68:48
    The product may also have no heart or soul, and has no reason to exist other than to make a quick buck.
    68:55
    Now, does that in any way describe any of the products that Zen has put out? Don't think so. No. Does that even remotely sound like what is happening with Indiana Jones? Absolutely not. No. There are so many vaporware games out there, or not vaporware. What's the word I'm looking for, Jared?
    69:20
    Just junk games. Yeah, junk. We'll call them junk games. Just because I can't remember what the actual term is. Smurfberry games. Smurfberry.
    69:30
    That's a different thing altogether. There are plenty of pinball games on mobile that are so easily cash grabs. Oh, yeah.
    69:40
    There is crap that Farsight put out that is a cash grab. Hi, Ormels. Mm-hmm. For the fifth time? Yeah.
    69:49
    You cannot say this about this game. It's not a cash grab. I believe that Zen is charging a fair amount for what it costs them to put this out. now if zen proceeds to charge 15 for every single table that they put out oh then by all means be angry yeah that's that's that's a different situation this is i i would think this is definitely a one-off thing it's an outlier you're not going to be seeing this for hardly any other tables um i can think of if they did nba fast break i know the licensing cost for that would be absurd and i wouldn't be surprised if it would cost as much if they do world cup soccer fifa good lord again there's a reason why farsight put out world champion soccer instead because fifa's costs are ridiculous yeah um you know it's possible that if they put out adam's family i can see that being just because again you're dealing with dead actress states and you're dealing with potentially christopher lloyd who we all know is notoriously difficult there's a reason why he's not on the back to the future table um yeah and you know we already have prior art about how much that costs it's really far side like that's a known amount of money um about how much that costs to do so it's the order of like nearly sixty thousand dollars or something like that so so you do have a choice though here you can wait and get it on sale and in the meantime just go hey i'm waiting to get it on sale because i don't feel like paying this much you can bitch and moan about it and not buy the table at all in which case great bitch and moan all you want don't buy the table i will give you that if you buy the table and bitch and moan and say it's still too expensive but you're getting good time out of it you don't got a leg to stand on sorry yeah um you you bent over backwards you complained about nothing um that goes to say that all the people that are saying that epic games is evil and then you're going to download epic games and play what's that say about you that you like to raise a fuss but you don't uh walk the walk um exactly you know or you can just uh grin and bear it plenty of the money and enjoy the table um i personally i'm gonna say this on the williams app there's been questions about this uh they're offering the game for 15 bucks on the williams app which in the past if you've noticed the williams app was charging more than you know once you bought all their coin systems they were charging more money than what it was on steam or any of the consoles oh yeah this is now the exact matching price however table parts are not dropping yet for you to be able to earn this table for free.
    72:47
    In the past, table parts didn't drop for any of the new releases for around three weeks to a month. Okay. They were doing a limited time event right off the bat that would allow you to exclusively earn table parts for the new tables. Yes. Again, this was for when people hadn't gotten all the, collected all the table parts for all the other tables, then it became really thin with how, you know, like, I want table parts for the new table, not the other tables, you know, all that. So there was limited time events that would only earn you parts for the newest table, and you'd be able to, with diligent playing, be able to earn enough table parts to get the table up to a two-star level. Which is just enough to be able to play it. Yes. There's not a limited time event right now for this.
    73:36
    So, yeah, I'm not paying the 15 bucks on the Williams app. to play it. Because Zen openly admits that this app is essentially, no other updates will be pushed to it. And I'm counting on the fact that there'll be table parts eventually.
    73:55
    Yes, I've reached out to find out if there's an answer to that. No, I have not received an answer regarding it. Once we get an answer, we'll let you know. Because if it does just become, nope, sorry, India's purely going to be 15 bucks on William's app, he'll never earn table parts, then that's good to know. Buy it now. But it says on there, limited sale time of $15 for Indiana Jones. That can mean one of two things. Either once the sale is gone, then it's all about earning table parts, or the price is going to go up. We'll see. One or the other is going to happen. I think it's going to be table parts that you're going to have to then grind in order to get it. So if you don't like grinding, buy now, and then you won't have to grind later. me i'm going to wait how it worked with all the other releases they did that's exactly how it went yeah so people have short-term memories they don't remember these things or they've just come to it and they're flummoxed about what is going on which you know fair enough too it's been a while since we've had content in that particular game the fact that you have a short-term memory on this is excusable yeah um so yeah i really had to vent yeah because it's frustrating because i really do feel like we've talked about this topic many many times we've we love talking about licensing we talk about licensing on this show all the time yep so because number one it's confusing number to people don't understand it and and it's always a point of contention for people when they're bringing up costs yeah but if you lay it out clearly usually you can get some of the people to go oh now i understand yes it's a consumer but okay i understand but again yeah if you're just going to if you're going to say that oh melon guests then are gaslighting us they're just doing nothing but a cash grab you know again look at that definition you don't know what a cash grab means you're just saying this because you're bitter and you don't understand that it's this or zen becoming farsight yeah so remember the last time you enjoyed buying a new table on farsight yeah it's been a while hasn't it that's because they don't make pinball anymore why because they didn't do good with their licensors because they weren't able to upgrade their engine because they couldn't keep up with the times and therefore their product became old dated and broken is that what you really wanted zen to do no you want to continue having pinball coming at you for the next 10 years which is their strategic plan yeah so get on board or go away like and look it's up to you as a consumer what you do it's your money spend it how you like but don't whinge about it if you don't understand it look i don't i don't think that paying 150 bucks for crap seats at a theater performance is worth it for a two-hour experience not when you have to add in the drive time in parking uh you know the programs whatever all that goes into it i don't find any value in that but i'm not going to complain to the people that find that to be a absolutely fantastic experience but on the same hand those various people would be like, but I don't pay $10 to go or $15 to go watch a movie.
    77:22
    Yeah. You know. Oh, speaking of $15, I'm sorry, did you buy Demon's Tilt? That was $15. Did you buy Pinball Wicked? That was $15. Did you buy Time Shock? That was $15. Hey, those were all single tables, weren't they? And they didn't carry a single license at all.
    77:39
    Hmm. Yeah. But, oh, oh, my God. Oh, gee, $15 for Indy. Oh, no. a table that we've really desperately wanted. It's a holy grail table. It's finding the first Mustang ever built and expecting to pay the exact same price that you would for a Mustang built number 5,000. Well, no.
    78:02
    The very first Mustang built in whatever, 65, is not going to cost the same as number 17,000 that rolled off the production line because it doesn't carry the same weight. There's something different about number one. you know right anyway okay yeah that being said hey remember that contest that we were talking about hope you got the two phrases that uh jared and i raised because we had done it rewind you shouldn't have skipped through this whole thing um that's right because they're there they're there they're not there for long though again email us at blah blah blockade at gmail.com on march 19th at 9 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. First five emails with the subject line, Rollers Contest, and in the content, the two phrases that we held up, you will win one of five copies of Rollers of the Realm.
    79:01
    That being said, Jared, I think we're done here. Hopefully the next time we talk, there'll have been a pinball show that we'll actually maybe have talked about pricing within pinball effects. I assume that's what this last show was going to be about. Yeah. And we'll have a chat about that. Yeah, that'll be good.
    79:18
    And we're going to have to table that idea of, I think that was good, what you kind of hit upon, to play with visual enhancements or not to play with visual enhancements. Which tables do benefit, which tables don't.
    79:32
    Yeah, we'll talk about that. All right, good times. Well, until then, Jared, next time we're going to talk about... Stuff and things, as we always do. Sounds good. All right, folks. catch you on the flip see you later