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Dude on a Stick Annihilation

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 14m·analyzed·Mar 6, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Flippin' Out hosts discuss pinball restoration, TNA's impressive design, and digital pinball challenges.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss Eight Ball Deluxe connector replacement, virtual pinball updates (Banzai Run), and Jared's hands-on experience with Total Nuclear Annihilation at Netherworld arcade in Australia. They praise TNA's design, RGB lighting system, and soundtrack, comparing it favorably to Dialed In despite the latter's greater depth. They also note a potential design flaw on Dialed In's return ramp and discuss digital pinball Moon Knight challenge completion.

Key Claims

  • Total Nuclear Annihilation uses RGB lights for all GI (general illumination), not just playfield elements

    high confidence · Jared describes watching TNA's attract mode with RGB wave effects and reactor critical mode with cycling police-light effects across all GI in that area

  • Scott Denise, TNA's designer, is also a music producer who created the entire soundtrack

    high confidence · Jared: 'Scott Denise is actually one of his other jobs is as a music producer. So he actually did the entire soundtrack for this.'

  • TNA soundtrack was released on cassette tapes (~$15 USD, ~$70-80 AUD with shipping) as collectible art, also available free on Spotify

    high confidence · Jared describes the cassette release as 'a piece of collectible art' with customized J-card packaging

  • Dialed In has a design flaw on the return ramp/wire form where the ball bounces off and hops into random in-lanes instead of staying in the intended lane

    medium confidence · Jared: 'When the ball comes back down that wire form, it bounces off every single time and hops off the ramp and then jumps into a random in-lane' due to sharp dogleg lacking adequate chrome rail

  • TNA is positioned as a System 11-style cabinet with old-school aesthetic but modern features (laser-cut rails, LED lights, LCD screen)

    high confidence · Jared describes cabinet angles matching System 11, all laser-cut rails, LED row below backglass, big LCD screen

  • Games allowing steal multi-balls (like TNA and Addams Family) are tournament-restricted to single-player-only per IFPA rules

    high confidence · Jared: 'It will be a single-player-only game in tournaments because in the rules, any game that allows you to steal multi-balls...it's always single-player only'

Notable Quotes

  • “Spooky Pinball and Scott Denise really have got something special going on here.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~10:30 — Opening statement of enthusiasm about TNA's overall quality and design achievement

  • “I'm actually more excited about this than Dialed In, which is interesting because Dialed In is a much more deeper game.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~27:00 — Indicates TNA's presentation and accessibility may outweigh Dialed In's mechanical depth despite latter's complexity

  • “The orchestration and the light show effects in this are really, really a highlight of the game.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~23:00 — Emphasizes TNA's RGB lighting implementation as a standout feature differentiating it from competitors

  • “You stole my multi. You bastard. And it's just, oh, well, I'm sure you'll get me back at some other point.”

    Jared Morgan (quoting fellow player) @ ~12:30 — Illustrates the gameplay dynamic and social appeal of steal multi-ball mechanics in TNA

  • “It's got the same like overall cabinet angles on it that an old System 11 would have. So it doesn't look like a modern Stern.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~8:30 — Describes deliberate retro aesthetic design choice that affects player perception and cabinet appeal

  • “Everything is flashing on that game so you don't actually know unless it's a really intense white flash...But the voice call will go, 'I'll shoot the Spider,' or 'Shoot the Subway.'”

    Jared Morgan @ ~32:00 — Identifies audio as critical navigation tool for Dialed In gameplay and accessibility, not just enhancement

  • “I found it to be quite accessible, no more brutal than a System 11 game...You've got things like this neat little ball-save reactivation thing.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~15:30 — Contradicts reported brutality of TNA and highlights ball-save accessibility feature as game design success

  • “By that point, it was just like, 'Oh, my god, really? Here we go.' And then two, the rankings of our players—it was all but a lock that this one player, Tridium03, was going to win.”

Entities

Spooky PinballcompanyScott DenisepersonTotal Nuclear AnnihilationgameDialed IngameChris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonNetherworldcompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Digital pinball Moon Knight tournament experienced significant player drop-off (30→12 players) in final week due to table fatigue and mathematical certainty of outcome (Tridium03 lock on victory)

    high · Chris: 'We only had 12 players where normally we were cruising around 30...by that point, it was just like, Oh my god, really?...and then two, the rankings of our players—it was all but a lock'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Games with steal multi-ball mechanics (TNA, Addams Family) are restricted to single-player tournament play per IFPA rules; affects tournament viability and competitive strategy considerations

    high · Jared: 'It will be a single-player-only game in tournaments because in the rules, any game that allows you to steal multi-balls...it's always single-player only'

  • ?

    design_innovation: TNA implements ball-save reactivation mechanic similar to Zen pinball where completing four lanes enables player-controlled flashing lamp placement to either outlane for ball recovery; increases accessibility and extends gameplay

    high · Jared: 'This neat little ball-save reactivation thing, a bit like Zen actually, where if you complete the four lanes you get this singular flashing lamp that you can move to either outlane'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Scott Denise deliberately scaled back full RGB implementation compared to Wizard of Oz, using RGB selectively when 'logical' rather than constantly; demonstrates thoughtful lighting design restraint

    high · Jared: 'I've seen games like Wizard of Oz go full RGB on everything...What I did is I was inspired by what they did, but I dialed it back a little bit and used RGBs when it was logical to use RGBs.'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.223

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan good morning or evening depending when you're listening to this. I was going to say, well, it's not evening here, but yeah, you're right. Depending on when you're listening to this, where you're listening to this, in your car, at your home, on a daily walk, on a subway, wherever. In your pinball den, surrounded by pinball machines. If that's the case, then what are you doing listening to our scope-like label? Right?
0:51
Come on. You don't want to have this audio going on while you've got the chimes and fun music of a regular table. That's right. Okay, Jared, I'm going to do you a favor. Okay. I'm going to save my beginning of the show talk for the end of the show. Ah, okay. So Liz is in for me. Nice.
1:15
So I finally placed my order to get the connectors that I need to put on Able Deluxe. And they've shipped. So now I'm just waiting for them to arrive. Awesome. And then starts the fun. And I'm wondering how best to tackle this.
1:38
So you're wondering, hmm, I now got to work out which wire goes into which socket outing. Well, here's the thing. I mean, you know, the wires are already in their current sockets. And so I'm assuming that they're just in a number, you know, slot rows or whatever. Because right now what it is is if the wire gets pressed into a metal blade, if you will, that makes contact with the wire. So I'm assuming that those are in the particular order. And instead I'm going to be putting them into their New Deal, which is just being in a straight row with the pins that you crimp onto the end of the wire.

Chris Freebus @ ~45:00 — Indicates digital tournament fatigue and skill stratification reducing player engagement in extended challenges

Banzai Run
game
Eight Ball Deluxegame
Pat Lawlorperson
Wizard of Ozgame
Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collectiveorganization
Tridium03person
Head to Head Pinballperson|organization
TNT Amusementscompany

licensing_signal: TNA soundtrack released on cassette tape as collectible art piece with fully customized J-card packaging; represents composer/designer Scott Denise's artistic vision beyond gameplay mechanics

high · Jared: 'It's more like it's really more of an art piece than it is something you would put into your player deck...clear J-card, and it's been completely customized, and it's one of those clear J-cards'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Dialed In audio mastering significantly improved from initial board set, reducing pops and clicks compared to Wizard of Oz; essential for gameplay comprehension as audio cues direct shot priorities

    high · Jared: 'The audio in Dialed In is crucial to playing this game...the way that they've been able to master the audio and stop all the pops and clicks...far better' than WOZ; 'Everything is flashing...you don't really know unless...the voice call will go'

  • ?

    product_concern: Dialed In exhibits consistent ball routing issue on return ramp wire form where ball bounces off and lands in unintended in-lanes; suspected cause is insufficient chrome rail or ramp geometry at dogleg

    medium · Jared: 'When the ball comes back down that wire form, it bounces off every single time and hops off the ramp and then jumps into a random in-lane...they needed...a really big extra bit of chrome up the top of the front of the ramp'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Jared expresses greater enthusiasm for TNA than Dialed In despite acknowledging DI's greater mechanical depth; suggests presentation and accessibility outweigh pure rule complexity for current enjoyment

    high · Jared: 'I'm actually more excited about this than Dialed In, which is interesting because Dialed In is a much more deeper game. It's got a lot more going on.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Banzai Run beta experiencing Android platform optimization issues including camera angle problems on upper playfield that obscure flippers and create blind gameplay situations

    medium · Jared: 'Camera angle issues...when you got up to the upper playfield, it didn't actually zoom out. So all you could see is a very lower set of flippers'

    • 2:17
    I believe those are Molex, is that what they call them? Molex connectors, yeah. Yeah. So I'm trying to debate. is it a thing where I just do one wire at a time and, uh, you know, pull it out, make the connector, put it into the new connector, or is it better that I try and label every single wire and pull them all out at the same time. So I have more freedom of movement or do I just go ahead and label them all and still do it one at a time? There's two options you can do. If you've got a fair bit of a cable left, like if there's a fair bit of slack in all the cables, you can just cut the wires off close to the bottom of the Molex plug.
    2:59
    And then you'll have the wires hanging out of the old Molex plug. And then you'll just be able to put the new Molex plug and match up the wire colors.
    3:09
    Oh, I see what you're saying. Match up the wire colors. Okay. Cause then you'll know exactly what order they're in. That's right. That's the other way. But sometimes you're, sometimes with that approach you're struggling with the length of the wires because they generally didn't give you a lot of extra play in the back box cables so you might need to what a lot of people do is when they're re-cabling something like that they'll actually put extensions on so they'll actually go and put like an extra like one or two inches of wire between the plug and the old wires and actually just join them on and heat shrink them um and they're not doing that no so the other option is to yeah split the plug open um or just try and pull the wires out best you can i think there's a way you can actually put a thin screwdriver one of those little jeweler screwdrivers in to a little to trip the metal catch that actually holds the contact in then you should be able to slide the whole contact out well no no there is no contact on the wires that i have most of my wire there's only i think two of all of my connectors that are actual Molex connectors. Everything else is the original Bally connector where it's, like I said, it's just you took the wire and you just pushed it into the slot and then the little metal edges sliced the outer cable and then made the contacts with. I know the ones you're talking about. Yeah, they're terrible. No wonder you're having so much trouble with your connectors. Yeah, because the thing with the other ones, the Molex plug is because you have the crimping tool, you're actually crimping the wire on really hard. But these ones just push in. Like the other ones you're talking about, a little push in and you're right, the little metal blades of the contacts will cut the insulation for you. Yeah, they're horrible. Horrible. So that's the majority of what I'm going to be dealing with.
    5:08
    So yeah, when everybody says, did you change connectors? That's why I'm changing the connectors. Oh, well, that's even easier because you're right. You'll be able to just pull the wire out of each of the slots. Right. So all you need to do really is just take a photograph, a really good close-up photograph of the wires. And because wires are wires, they'll actually have a memory on them. So it shouldn't actually, as you know, when you had to strip the play field, like the wires do tend to keep their shape.
    5:37
    So you shouldn't have too much trouble just taking off the wires, putting the little terminals on and then putting them back in the way they were,
    5:46
    that should be pretty easy to do. Yeah. Have you got a good pair of wire strippers so you can get that nice exposed end? Order it. Well, actually, I don't know if the – I take it back. I don't know if the crimping tool comes with a wire stripper on it. It probably doesn't, so I can easily find a wire stripper. That's not a problem. the crimping tool might have a wire stripper on it but it's going to be pretty crap instead of specific wire strippers where you actually put the gauge in you can get those ones which are cheap or you can get the other ones which will make your life a whole lot easier and they're the ones that are actually almost like a pair of pliers I guess but they're actually spring loaded so you have a depth gauge and you basically the teeth sort of go shrunk and then this little blade underneath it will just go and strip the wire back yep and then you just pull and you just basically go across all your wires like that and it's dead easy a little bit more expensive than the like the two dollar ones that like have different gauge holes in it which will get a much better you'll thank yourself for spending the extra bucks on it particularly if you've got a lot of wires to do the other disadvantage with the cheaper ones is that it's very easy to cut through the wire yes accidentally when you're trying to strip the outside off but these ones have a depth like basically they won't cut anything more than depth so you're gonna save yourself a lot of short wire issues if you buy the more expensive ones so that's excited you to have that come in and hopefully that solves the problems that I have. I think you're probably right, because what you probably find is when you take the insulation off where the wires have been inserted into the thing, you'll probably find there's a bit of corrosion in those bits where the wires have actually exposed. If you take a close look at them, that will probably be the reason why you've got the problem. Well, and again, for people because this was many podcasts back that we talked about it, I have a specific circuit of lights that are out.
    8:01
    And having changed all the little transistor or whatever you want to call it that were burnt out or possibly bad, I'm left with the idea that it's got to be the connector.
    8:18
    And again, when I first bought the table, all the lights were working. When I first got it home, all the lights were working. And then when I read Pinside and it said, first thing you want to do is disconnect everything and then plug it all back in for, I forget whatever reason it said that. And I did that and that's when I all of a sudden had lights that didn't work. Yeah. So that's a classic case of, well, the last thing you touched was the connector, so it's a connector. Yeah. Did you get a, what you can get from a lot of places is fiberglass pencils.
    8:53
    Have you found anywhere that over there It sells a fiberglass pencil. I've not looked for a fiberglass pencil. Why do I want a fiberglass pencil? Fiberglass pencils are a burnishing tool. So what they are is basically there's a core that's made up of fiberglass, and you can basically take something rusted and crap and turn it into polished metal with one of these things. And the reason why I'm saying that is what you'll probably find is over the years, the standoffs of the boards that you've got. Right, the connector heads. Yep, the connector heads. those will actually be all tarnished and have probably continuity issues or a buildup of grunge on them that basically means the contacts aren't probably making contact properly. So if you get one of these pencils, they're inexpensive.
    9:41
    Well, I'll rephrase it. They're more expensive over here than they are over there in the US. So fiberglass pencils, they're often called magic pencils. but yeah you can get them in different sizes the ones that I have ready access to over here are about $18 and they're small but I can get them on eBay for much less than that and you can get all different sizes the guys at TNT Amusements on their YouTube channel constantly say how good these are for actually cleaning up terminals and all this sort of stuff that always get tarnished so that would actually be you could almost almost try that first on the terminals that you know are really bad like all the gi lights and all the light circuits are always running hot all the time yeah um give them a good burnish with this tool and um see what happens after that um because it might go some ways to fix the problem if you know that you've that you can get better continuity that way then you know exactly that doing the terminals or doing the connectors is a good move because what will happen is the old style terminals will also have like a tarnish and build up of oxidization on them. So by swapping out the terminals you're going to get even better connectivity. So you're going to have years of reliability after you isolate the issue. Right. So yeah. There is, you'll probably find them in any one of your electronic shops that you frequent.
    11:14
    Just ask them for fiberglass pencils and they'll put you in the right direction. Alright. I will have to look into that and do so. I used one on the other pinball I did up to clean off the contacts. I just took all the contacts out and just burnished them, all the little contact pads with this thing. It just cleans them up from being black to completely glossy and good again. So, they're very good.
    11:41
    Alright. Let's see, what else is going on? Well, folks, we don't really have any Banzai run per se to talk about. Jared, actually, you can mention some things, but we're still another week without it. It'll be... Actually, when you listen to this podcast, it'll be released at the end of that week. I believe they are looking at March 7th or something like that.
    12:06
    I'm not quite sure what the date is, but it's definitely in this first week of March here. Probably March 9th is what I'm guessing.
    12:18
    Yeah, I think it'll be towards the end because they've still got a bit of work to do on Android to get it working right. There's some camera angle issues. And, of course, obviously the usual texture issues you get in early betas, but I'm sure they'll be resolved.
    12:32
    It's a sharp looking play field. They've done a great job of touching it up. It was. I saw the old, the actual original play field shots of it without any art touch up, and it's pretty rough. So, yeah, they've done a great job in post fixing that up.
    12:50
    We had a weird bug in the beta with the cameras. So when you got up to the upper play field, it didn't actually zoom out. So all you could see is a very lower set of flippers. That's it. And, of course, obviously that makes it very hard because if you manage to shoot up to the next area in the play field, you're just flipping blindly. and things happened so fast up there that it was very quickly your ball drained back down the out-hole again. So it was a little bit frustrating, but that's just something they're going to get to when they get to it. Right. You know, so that's fine. Overall, though, it's a fun game. Like, really, you can tell that all the action is on the top play field, though, right? At the bottom play field, it's pretty sparse.
    13:37
    Yeah, but it's also... See, this is the reason why I was like, careful what you wish for, folks. Because the upper playfield is also painful.
    13:53
    I mean, it's not fun to play the vertical playfield. Because you're playing a pachinko machine. Yeah. And it's brutal, and there's no flow to it. so I don't know to me that's not it's not pinball per se so it reminds me of one of those little plastic BB pinball flicking games where you would flick the I mean they're like micro sized and it has a little cup that would have a point or whatever it's just kind of I don't know willy nilly there's physics but it's not your typical physics. You're not letting the ball bounce and jump around.
    14:42
    And so that's I don't know. The upper play field to me is kind of not fun. But the lower play field, you're right, there's not much to do. Not much to do in there. Like I said, it's one of those things where the game itself is a cool gimmick and certainly unique. and I'm glad we have it because it is Pat Lawler's first at least for Williams I don't know if it's his first in general I think it is, his very first and so I totally appreciate it that way I think it looks cool and it's got interesting sounds going on and everything but it's not the game that you may think that you're getting yeah, it's going to punish you and it's going to punish you very hard.
    15:36
    But, you know, that actually could be a good thing because we don't have a game in the collection, I think, that will be this hard. Some of those EMs have come close. They're pretty brutal in their gameplay, but this thing is going to sort you out for sure. So maybe that's just what we need.
    15:53
    So, I don't know. I think it's kind of good. So I think... Oh, what do you got? Well, I was going to mention I got to play some real pinball this week, but what were you going to talk about? No, no, no, no. Go. I've got a tangent of pinball related, certainly, but go. I'd rather hear about real pinball. Well, this week has been pretty cool because out of the blue, Netherworld have managed to get total nuclear annihilation. Oh, okay. Which is surprising because when I spoke to Jimmy, he's the owner, at one point he goes, oh, we just missed a shipment from the U.S. over to Australia on the slow boat. so we won't be able to get one for a while. That's no worries you guys. But the good news is we get to get dialed in. I said, well, that's a happy accident. Not a really bad thing. I'm actually okay with that. But then out of the blue, here it is on the floor. TNA in all its glory.
    16:51
    I was very surprised to see it. And I thought, well, on Friday I should go there and put a couple of tokens in it and see what the thing is all about. and I've got to say that Spooky Pinball and Scott Denisey really have got something special going on here.
    17:10
    The profile of the pinball cabinet itself next to something like Dialed In, it actually even looks like an old System 11.
    17:19
    It's got the same like overall cabinet angles on it that an old System 11 would have. So it doesn't look like a modern stern. Gotcha. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. So even though they've got that down, as far as the presentation aspect of the game goes, which I thought was really impressive, from the outside of the cabinet perspective, it's all laser-cut rails.
    17:43
    So everything on it, it looks like an old cabinet, but it's got all the new things that we kind of have been seeing recently on cabinets.
    17:52
    And it looks really, really nice. So, yep. And then they're all LED, but they're just in one big row across just below the back glass. And then below that, you've got the big LCD screen.
    18:06
    So, again, they've kept with that old school aesthetic of having actual school displays, but then have enhanced the overall experience with the big screen. And I actually met up, I happened to get there at lunchtime and ran across one of the mates that I usually play pinball with at the Brisbane Pinball Club. And so we thought we'd ride there at the same time and I'll be looking forward to playing this again. Let's have a two-play game. And it an interesting game to play in two because you can steal locks I love being able to do that Oh yeah and he was so cut It was so good He goes oh you just stole my multi you bastard And it's just, oh, well, I'm sure you'll get me back at some other point. Sure enough, he did. I had two balls locked, and then he stole my lock, so it all pays out after all. But definitely it's an interesting game from that perspective because that will be a single-player-only game in tournaments because in the rules, any game that allows you to steal multi-balls, like Adam's Family or anything like that, it's always single player only. We did that in our league because you'd have four people playing on the table at any given time, and there's many a table that would allow you to do exactly that, steal somebody else's multi-ball build-ups. And I remember I spent all of ball one building up. I didn't collect it. the person after me didn't collect it the third person was like sweet hit one shot boom collected the multi ball so then fourth person locked like one ball and then it came back around to me because I was the starting person and I purposely didn't lock any balls because I knew that I wouldn't be able to collect them other than you know out of sheer luck and And so by the time it came back around to my third ball, sure enough, all the balls were locked. And so I went and tried for it, and I failed, unfortunately, to snake it. And then the next person did. But it became a strategy of, okay, wait, am I going to let somebody else have this opportunity, or am I going to make them earn it and forego trying to get it myself? And so, yeah, it was kind of weird, but it's so much fun to see the anguish on somebody else's face. It is fantastic. I think almost we should consider allowing full-play games because it really does change the way you play one of those tables. So the thing that I think the biggest standout thing that, well, there's a number actually of standout things on this table which really impressed me for what it is and what it's trying to be, and that is it is it is it has been reported as being very brutal but i don't know maybe they had set it up a little bit softer at netherworld because we have a wide range of people playing it um at netherworld uh but i found it to be quite accessible no more brutal than a system 11 game um but not this level of brutality that i've heard other people talk about um it's you know it's still hungry but you've got things like this neat little ball say that reactivation thing a bit like zen actually where you if you complete the four lanes you get this singular singular flashing lamp that you can move to either out lane if you drop the ball down it you'll actually get your ball back so so that's that's really good like if you use that as a strategy then fine like that actually extends your gameplay on the table it's really good um i like i really do the ball lock mechanism on it. It's a bit of a highlight of the game. It uses the two favorite things, which is drop targets and their stage drop targets as well. So they're in a row like 8 Ball Deluxe is, which is lovely.
    22:04
    But yeah, then you throw ball locks into the same mechanism. That is pretty cool, the way they've done that. But then the standout thing is this whole game is RGB lights. Even the GI is RGB. And what was interesting listening to some recent interviews that Scott Denise, the designer gave about the table is that, yeah, I've seen games like Wizard of Oz go full RGB on everything. And for me, I felt it was just a little bit too, it was RGB all the time on that table and just got a little bit too much. So what I did is I was inspired by what they did, but I dialed it back a little bit and used RGBs when it was logical to use RGBs. And you see it in the attract mode. It is, there's this bit where it's just before the grand champion score comes in and the lights are going down the table and you see this wave of lights goes chunk. And then there's another layer, a little bit like Tetris on top of the other. And each one is a different colored stage light. And it just looks, I just went, wow. and I managed to get it on video to see it happening. That is just such a cool lighting effect. Everything on that area was the same colour, even the GI.
    23:27
    And there's other things that when you start up a reactor and it goes critical on the game, the reactor core area, which is the bit at the top where the roll-overs are, they've got the effect of like one of those police lights that spin. so that whole light casting around doing the chasing. Right. So they've actually emulated that effect with all the GI in that area so everything below the plastics is just cycling around. I like that. It just looks amazing. Like the orchestration and the light show effects in this are really, really a highlight of the game and I will look forward to pumping a lot more money into this thing because it just feels fun to play. It's one of those classic system levels where you're, oh, I'll just have one more game on that. I reckon I could get the reactor too. And it is fun. So, yeah, I'm very, very glad that Netherworld managed to find one of these and actually get it on site.
    24:26
    Now, I saw that you also remembered to bring your headphones and were able to play dialed in with headphones on. Oh, my goodness. Yes. Right? I did. And, again, they've not got that game turned up nearly loud enough. and I'll argue that they actually don't have total nuclear annihilation turned up very loud either. That thing has an incredible sound system in it by design because Scott D'Amesi is actually one of his other jobs as a music producer. So he actually did the entire soundtrack for this.
    24:57
    Which apparently they sent out on crappy cassette tapes. Yes, absolutely. Which maintains the 80s theme. It is fantastic. Yeah, they're quite expensive. They're like $15 US. and to get them to Australia, I think it works out to be something like total charge with exchange rate about 70 or 80 bucks for one of these to actually get the thing shipped. But the thing is, it's actually less about playing it and more about it's actually a piece of collectible art. Right. They've even done like the J card inside the kit. That's all been completely customized, and it's one of those throw clear J cards, and there's been a lot of work put into the package. So it's more like it's really more of an art piece than it is something you would put into your consider player. But the other thing, if you're interested, is you can go and access the Total Nuclear Annihilation soundtrack on Spotify and listen to it for free. So the entire thing is on there. And it's interesting to listen to it outside the game. It actually is something that if you like electronic music, you will probably enjoy because it's actually not only is it good for the game, but it's actually just good electronic music.
    26:10
    So, yeah, I did listen to the entire soundtrack from start to end. And it's actually one of those sort of soundtracks that you have running in the background while you're trying to do some work, or at least that's what I used it for. so yeah I was blown away by that the entire game is amazing and you know back to Daldin though back to Daldin you lost your thought there Jared I can see it happening the thing is though you can see what's impressed me more like compared to Daldin and this I'm actually more excited about this than Daldin which is interesting because Daldin is a much more deeper game it's got a lot more going on um but yes the audio in dialed in is crucial to playing this game as you say like i didn't realize just how crucial it is until you plug those headphones in and you get it piping into your ears the other thing that's very nice about dialed in is that compared to doing the same thing with wizard of oz the audio is far better. So the way that they've been able to master the audio and stop all the pops and clicks in the audio that they got in that very first board set is you can definitely see they put some effort into it.
    27:31
    So I ended up getting about $380,000 on a ball and I attribute it directly to the fact that I could hear everything. um but it is it is definitely q city like you need that audio to be able to understand that game unless you're very familiar with it and you then know what those lights are right the thing is that everything is flashing on that game so you don't actually know unless it's a really intense white flash you don't really know that oh okay that's probably a priority i should be shooting that yeah but the voice pump will go i'll shoot the spider or shoot the the subway or shoot this it's I was like, oh, okay, I'll do that. I ended up getting two multiballs started. I got the, I think the main multiball, and I got the one with the dude on a stick, multiball I call it, where he's just sliding backwards and forwards. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I got two of those started, and then, yeah, the score just blew up. So it was fun. I'll be definitely, obviously, I will only play a pinball machine with headphones if it's got a headphone port, because why wouldn't you? It's just amazing. But even with it up maximum, I couldn't actually, it was actually quite soft still. Like it was loud enough that I could actually hear everything clearly, but like I think it was about the same volume as the speaker volume when you actually have it connected through your headphones, which is unusual. Because you can normally. Did it have a little volume dial up button on the front? Yeah, it's got the volume rocker on it, but the volume rocker was rocked all the way up to the top and it was still, it wasn't like, you know, pumping your ears. It was enough that you could still hear the flippers and still hear the mechanical elements of the game, but you could hear the audio and hear the music over the rest of the ambient sound in the arcade. So maybe it was actually perfect, the amount of volume you had there. Because it wasn't too immersive. It was just immersive enough for me. Because this is weird. When I played Game of Thrones with headphones on, it was so loud that you couldn't hear any of the mechanical sounds of the table. and that's a bit odd. Yeah, it is a bit odd. Because it's a little sensory deprivation. You still have it in the feel of the physical machine itself, but you're just not hearing all the clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, especially when it's in pop bumpers and stuff.
    29:56
    You're not hearing the pinball. It's a little bit odd. Yes. But, yeah. the other thing that i noticed with dulled in is i think they've got a bit of a design flaw in the game and that is on the ramp that returns you back or the the habit rail that returns you back down to the left in lanes um when the ball comes back down that habit rail it bounces off every single time and hops off the ramp and then jumps into a random um uh in lane so i've had it like every single time jump off that um that habit rail and do weird things like jump off hit a plastic and then trickle into the lane i've never really had it go and stay in the lane that's supposed to be coming out of which i think they needed probably in because it's a very it sort of goes across and then it does a really sharp dogleg. It's at that dogleg at the end of it where the ball drops through, they needed, like on the older Belly Williams tables, a really big extra bit of chrome up the top of the front of the ball. They don't have it. It's just a very shallow drop-in.
    31:13
    I think that part of the rail could do with a bit of a redesign or some sort of aftermarket mod to stop I wonder if it's just happening on your table or if this is a common problem. I don't know. If anyone else has dialed-ins. I think the boys at Head to Head Pinball have access to dial-ins, so maybe I'll drop them a quick message and see if it's doing it for them. It might just be the table is either too steep or too shallow, one of the two. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure. But it feels like it plays fast to me. So I don't know. Maybe it needs a little bit more rake on it. I don't know. All right.
    31:53
    Hey, let's dip into the digital pinball realm. Okay. Remember when we used to do, well, we, but I say we, I mean Sean, used to do Lost in the Zone? Yes. Fire up that music, Jared.
    32:08
    Yeah. Did we even have music for it? We used to. Didn't we? Yeah, probably. I'm pretty sure we did. Anyway, the reason why I say that is the Moon Knight challenge that we had running for two weeks, basically, with five different modes. It is complete. We're done. We are all good. Yes, and I can safely say that there is nothing hidden within Moon Knight anymore to me. Right. You've seen it all. I have seen it all.
    32:44
    So, as a reminder to everybody, what we did was we started off with a three-ball challenge, no mods whatsoever, and then we did a five-minute challenge with a certain set of mods, then one ball, survival, and then we finished off with a week worth of three ball with whatever mods you wanted to.
    33:03
    It's kind of funny because we had significant player drop-off for that final tournament. We only had 12 players where normally we were cruising around 30. I think it's because, well, twofold. One, table fatigue. By that point, it was just like, oh my god, really? Here we go. And then two, the rankings of our players, it was all but a lock that this one player, Tridium03 was going to win the whole thing it was just mathematically the only way that he could possibly not win the whole thing was to either not play the table at all or place outside of the top ten and considering that he had already placed in second place for three out of the four tournaments and third place in that fourth tournament, it was pretty much a given that he was not going to be bumped. So he mathematically became the winner, and then it just came down to second place, and that was between three of us, and I wound up taking that by completely dominating this table. So I just kind of wanted to go a little bit into Moon Knight, I kind of developed a strategy for this table and I wanted to kind of wrap this all up into the idea of Zen, you need to rebalance the scoring on this thing.
    34:31
    Because, okay, so Moon Knight has, and I mentioned it in previous podcasts, it has this weird clock face on it and I had no idea what the clock face did. And I understand, I now understand what the clock face does in that the hour hand, whenever you shoot the right ramp, it advances, I believe you have to actually shoot it twice, but it'll then advance the hour hand one hour. Each time you move the hour hand to a different hour, it selects a new mode, one of the four modes that are lightable on that ramp. So it's like Whirlybird and Speed Punch and I forget what the other two are, but anyway.
    35:20
    The minute hand is done with the left ramp and it moves much faster around the board but it moves in five minute increments. So depending on where the hour hand and the minute hand are, that tells you what modes are currently available, or the mini modes, I should say, are currently available. If, however, you line them up at midnight. Then you start what's called Nightmare Mode. And Nightmare is hands down the most fun part of the table. Right. Because what it does is it starts a multi-ball with balls that are on fire. You start with two balls and you can eventually increase it to three balls. But there is some crazy magnet action going on or anti-gravity. I don't know what it is, but the balls will only very briefly have normal physics to them. Oh. So it'll be dropping towards your flipper, and you're getting ready to flip, and all of a sudden it'll just jank off on a right angle away from your flipper. That sounds cool. And I've had balls where literally I missed it, and it was starting to go down center drain, and then rose back up. If the ball is coming and you merely tap it with your flipper, it'll then rise up again out of, you know, it won't fall down. So you don't catch, you can't catch any of the balls. as they're coming down the in lane is about the only time that they are behaving normally or when you give a full flip to them then they'll behave normally with you know where they uh the trajectory goes but it becomes this random just crazy wherever the balls are going thing while all this is going on each lane is rapidly uh lighting and unlighting and you're going in sequence across the board. If you happen to get the ball in there when it's lit, that's how you score a super jackpot Now super jackpot in normal mode uh with without having the multi bonus uh multiplier running is worth 4 million Okay. To give you perspective, when you finish the very first main mode, that only nabs you 2 million. Right. The next mode you, uh, beat, you'll now, and that's a million and a million score. It's like a double bonus, uh, The next time, if you have two modes completed, then you get 2 million, and I forget what the second multiplier winds up being based off of. But you don't really earn that much for completing modes. Whereas in Nightmare, as long as you can keep those balls going, you can hit Super Jackpot Lane as many times as possible. And because I had the multi-ball bonus multiplier going on, which multiplies all scores by two, you're talking 8 million. So when we were playing survival, all you had to do was just play that mode, and I racked up 70 million in survival mode. The person that won it racked up 111 million. Jeez. So it's this crazy mode. It's the only mode that has massive amounts of scoring. And here's the thing. You can get it at launch. You can get it at launch? So what you do when you're launching the ball is don't launch the ball. Because as you're waiting there, the clock hands are rotating and going. And so you wait until the hour hand is at the 10 o'clock, and the minute hand, when it comes around to 25, launch right then. What that'll do is, if you get your timing just right,
    38:59
    when the ball comes through down and finally to your flippers, that clock will be locked in at 11 o'clock. So now all you have to do is shoot the right ramp twice. Nightmare mode starts. All right. That's how quickly you can get it. And you do that every single time you launch a ball. You just wait for it and do it. So that's how you can get some crazy scores going. So here's why the table desperately needs some rebalancing is you shouldn't have the mode that can score the most points available to you right at the beginning of a game. and especially when after you complete all your modes and you go into and you finally get into wizard mode which is a bear to get into I mean it's not only is it a task of completing because you're basically lighting all the moon knight insert lights so that's completing the four modes plus nightmare mode that's the fifth mode and then there's another four modes I believe beyond that and once you do that then you shoot the mission hole one more time and you start part one of the wizard goal, which is basically hurry-ups of trying to shoot the ball into lanes. And then once you complete all the hurry-ups, then it starts a multi-ball at you, first with essentially a whirly-whirled multi-ball, which is the glowing hot white balls. So you start doing that. But here's the thing. Shoot a lane, it's worth a million points.
    40:26
    A lane is worth a million. Yes. So you can real quickly start just racking up. But because there are those fiery white hot balls, it's really hard to aim. Shit. Yeah.
    40:41
    And then as soon as you lose one of those, then the balls turn into the flame ball. But it's not like nightmare mode where the gravity or the magnets or whatever are going nuts. It's just they're on fire. Same thing, though. Shoot a lane, it's worth a million points.
    40:58
    But the thing is that I earned more points in Nightmare Multiball than I did in the Wizard mode. Which doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem right at all.
    41:10
    And what it becomes is the table becomes completely anticlimactic in that you know that if you didn't have a good Nightmare Multiball right off the bat when you first launched, just restart the table because it's not worth going forward.
    41:25
    It literally became a thing where if I didn't score at least 20 $25 million or whatever, I would just stop and restart. And that's poor balancing.
    41:38
    The flip side, and you know what? There's a few System 11 and Williams and Bally games that are the same way where they just kind of become a flop. Yeah. I mean, there's some System 11 games that if you're in multi-ball, you get nothing. But if you're going to shoot the million ramp over and over and over again, it's far more lucrative than actually doing multi-ball. A classic example of this is if you play Creature from the Black Lagoon. To me, there is no other purpose on that table than to get into multi-ball, because that's where all the points are.
    42:18
    Now this is when we're playing it on TPA. Playing it in real life, good luck. Have fun with that. Get your points where you can get them. But when you're playing Digilord... Most likely it's going to drain all the time, because it's horrible.
    42:34
    But even that, in terms of getting multiball, each time you beat or get your super jackpot, and now you have to kind of restart the mode again, you're not restarting the mode, but you're starting back at square one in multiball. But it's now multiplied how many points you can earn.
    42:56
    So at least there's that. Whereas with this table with Moon Knight, there never seemed to be enough of multiplication to the points. And again, it would be nice if you could stack modes. It would be nice if it had better reward for getting to the end.
    43:15
    Anything of that nature would be key. For me, a good example of how to do it is with Ripley's Believe It or Not. in that it doesn't matter how many times you go through all the modes, they're getting better and better scoring each and every time. And each time you complete all the continents, you're now getting it stacking how many points you're earning. So you're rewarded for grinding, basically. Whereas this one, there's no reward for grinding per se. Not at least, not enough reward. So another thing that the table has, and it's probably the weirdest mode I've ever seen, they call it Respected Citizen. So when you start this up, it becomes a stock trading game. Oh, yeah, I triggered that the other day. I went, what is this? Right. So hard to understand for me. Could you, like, tell me how that works? Yeah, so basically what happens is it's a rolling number that is going up and down in terms of the price of the stock. So you want to buy low and you want to sell high. The way you buy and sell is by shooting any of the lanes or ramps. once you shoot that lane, then it says you bought the stock or sold the stock. To alternate between if you're buying or selling, you push the launch button. So clearly, if the stock price is anything above $50, you want to be selling. If it's anything below $50, you want to be buying. I played this mode for a couple of minutes straight.
    44:42
    I happen to have been really on my game in terms of hitting ramps, just comboing them over and over and over again. all told I wound up with a score total of just north of 2 million oh really I spent all this time and that's the best that I could do and so then I was like okay maybe I need to instead of just willy-nilly so long as it was you know below 50 buy and above 50 sell I was like okay I'm not gonna shoot when it's those I'm gonna wait for it to get down to you know below 20 and above 80 so that there's really a profit margin you know happening and I concentrated on doing that same result. Still just... It was just like any mode that you can spend this much time on needs to have some payout and it didn't have the payout. Yeah, see, that's not good. No.
    45:32
    And not only that, but each time you shot a lane, it reset the timer for how much time you had to stay within the mode.
    45:40
    Oh, so unless you completely trapped the ball and just flipped around on random things, you could never end the mode. right and then how you end the mode is by shooting the uh sinkhole at the very top center of the table again which is how you started the mode to begin with and that's how you cash out basically with what you're doing i mean it's just one of those things where it's just like man this game would be so much better if you just go in and rebalance it um another tactic does sound like a punishment i i'll just go i don't even think i'll be bothered with that mode now. If I get out of the scale, whatever. Just shoot the top hole and move on. And literally, that's it. The only reason why you want that mode to start is because it lights one of the letters. Yes.
    46:24
    It's just grinding, right? It's grinding to the wizard mode. Yeah. So one of the other things, one of the other tactics that I would always employ also is if you start police scanner, it turns all the lanes into a little blinking blue light that determines what mode of police scanner what particular mission mode you start. I don't care what mission mode you start. They're all pretty easy because it only takes one or two lanes to shoot and the mode is complete. But then you have the fun task of there's a car on the lower left hand side of the playfield. And it's a bear to shoot the ball into that. Is there a hole underneath that? Yeah, there's a hole underneath that. and so basically that's actually how you start any of these so you light the mission and in order to actually start the mission going you have to shoot it into that car so once you shoot it into that car then it doesn't matter if you actually are successful or fail at the end of it the car will then light on fire if you shoot the ball up the left ramp the ball will go through the car fire basically and now your ball is on fire from there there are five different cauldrons or basins that are at very different lanes. So it's basically your two orbit lanes, your two ramps, and your mission lane. Shoot the ball up any of those, that'll light the cauldron. When you light the fifth cauldron, you get two million points and the extra ball light.
    47:56
    Wow. I was able to stack three extra balls at one given time. I don't know how many extra balls you can actually get on this table, but I'm telling you can get a lot. Yeah. That is after three extra balls stacked I'll just be going, I'm done with this table now.
    48:19
    Well again it becomes this it's, you're grinding. That's what it is all about. I mean if your strategy is to get to the wizard mode then those extra balls will be handy. Right, then they can become handy. But otherwise yeah, not really. Well that's very interesting that you got that far in the game you're able to see under the hood of it, essentially, and really get to know it. Right. You really get to know it. I wound up taking first place on the three-ball anything-goes challenge at $516 million. That's a lot. Yeah, second place with $342 million. So I schooled it pretty good. You sure did. You well and truly pwned that table, for sure.
    49:00
    That being said, on the one-ball challenge day, somebody scored $280 million. that's pretty good one ball and that's one ball no extra balls are I was going to ask if extra balls count for your one ball no it just gives you I forget what the bonus points is that it gives you when you collect it but yeah so I was full on expecting to see somebody score a billion points on this and I think everybody just couldn't be bothered I'm out of frax for this table I don't have two frax to rub together for it anymore So what's the next one, and will you do the same sort of format?
    49:41
    Well, some things that we learned with this. Yes, fatigue is a big factor. Don't do anything that is a week long with it. The more ideal setting would be to do, because we did a whole bunch where it was only one day, and people were kind of like, well, the problem with that is I didn't have enough time to play, so I felt pressured, and so that made me kind of resent having to play. whereas if we had made it all two day tourneys that would have been much more digestible for it you have enough time to play but you're also not having to worry about if you have a conflict over a week that means you can get three different modes typically during a week yeah the other thing I didn't even think about this but Ksenia actually, Sven, we know as here on the podcast, uh, pointed out. So I had a thing that if you scored within the top 10 on all five tournaments, then you would get an extra thousand points.
    50:44
    Well, Hey, this is how we'll motivate people to stick with it. But then as Sven pointed out, well, there was a day that he wasn't able to play and now he's penalized for not placing in the top 10 and the other people are raised up for it. And he said, if anything, uh, make it where it's your top four out of five scores count.
    51:10
    Oh, okay. Yep. That's great. Um, so that way, if you have, well, if you have a day that you, you botched or you weren't able to play, then fine, you're forgiven. That's your grace. And by the same hand, if there was a day that were your particular mode that you're just horrible at, then that's your throwaway and you have the other ones will count. So that's a good idea. Yeah. So there's some, So there's some adjustments that can be made.
    51:37
    The only way you're going to get to know this is to just experiment with it. Exactly. Because until you play, you don't know how you need to rebalance things. Yeah. So I think we're going to... It'll be a little while before we try another one of these, because I think it does kind of ask a lot. You notice that there's maybe eight players that you see their names over and over again, and everybody else is just kind of randomly popping in and popping out whether they care or not care. So, you know, there's that aspect. I really wish that Zen could implement something where it's a multi-stage tournament that you can design so that I'm not having to keep a piece of paper near me with all my scores of everybody doing and keeping track because that also had the potential of becoming cumbersome. yeah definitely you know so yeah there's some other aspects that we could tweak with scoring so if you have any suggestions about doing this kind of a tournament and how to score it I would love to hear them either well the easiest way is to drop us an email that's blahblahblockade at gmail.com the other way would be to pop onto the tournament thread form on similarcadefans and And you'll easily find where this particular thread is. It's right at the top, and you can put your comments in there.
    53:07
    But, yeah, so that's our – we haven't done a deep dive on a table in a very long time, but there you go. So, Jared, do what you do best. Shut the door. Yeah. Don't shut the door.
    53:22
    Yeah. It's been a long time since I've asked you to do that. All right. Yeah, that's right. As you can tell by my somewhat strange response.
    53:31
    You're like, what? Is that something I used to do? I don't know. I used to do this? Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Hey, so Zen fired out a tweet that wound up being on Medium from an article that was on Medium.com, go figure.
    53:46
    And it was kind of interesting. Some company, it's a French company, and I'm going to butcher this, but I think it's Ouigo. O-U-I-G-O they are a low cost railway service and they were looking at I guess some interesting way of marketing I've actually played this you've actually played this so I was reading the article about this particular game and what's funny is this is marketers right off the bat hey wouldn't that be cool if we did some pinball game yeah, hey, does anyone of us play pinball? No. Has anyone of us ever designed a game? No. Oh, we want this to be able to play in your browser. Yeah. Oh, yeah, this shouldn't be too difficult.
    54:32
    Yeah. I've got to say that for a browser pinball game, it was pretty good. I was very impressed, eh? So some of the things that they talk about in this article and Jared can post a link to this on our website, and you'll be able to just click it and follow the link, or you can just search Zen's, under their pinball effects Twitter handle. That's where I saw it. Or you could just follow me because I just gave it applause a medium. There you go. They basically go through all the steps of them deciding to do this, then starting to do their research all the way to figuring out, hey, should we make this a 2D physics or 3D physics? and then how do you apply the graphics to make it look 3D, even though you're really technically still a 2D source.
    55:28
    It's kind of fascinating to read, but the ultimate thing that they come down to was they wanted to have a physical cabinet that people could play.
    55:40
    And so they build an upright arcade cabinet, which I just kind of went, okay you just kind of botched it there But where they really botched it was they put the screen in landscape instead of portrait Oh And I like what are you doing
    55:59
    You people clearly don't know what you're thinking. Yeah, exactly. I'm just scrolling through the article now. I'm going, huh.
    56:11
    Yeah. it's definitely worth a read just to see what goes into a big idea like this and maybe makes you appreciate what Zen and Farsight do the thing that is actually lovely is the aesthetic on this table it's a very unusual sort of design it is one of those classic it is very much inspired by Zen the fact that it expands upon like outside the realms of a regular pinball table like it doesn't sit within like a cabinet for example right you got bits that are sort of jutting out here and extra play fields there and stuff like that um but at the same time like when i was playing this game i just wanted to have one more game on it i just just one more it was really really playable and the physics were actually relatively good um i didn't notice too much problem with that but the only thing that was frustrating was that you actually needed like i was playing this on my macbook yeah even it was having some troubles running it at a good clip and um i think i did load it up on my my pixel excel at the time and it was okay on that but again it was it was in a browser and i just wish that they would just go and package this and release it on the app store and make it a like a native app right it would be really good i would i would get it and i'd probably even throw them a couple of bucks because it's actually really quite fun i don't know aesthetically though to me it looks very uh candy land oh it's totally candy land but that's actually the appeal of it for me like it's very different to what a lot of the other pinball tables are out there and it takes you it reminds you that this is actually a this is a world this isn't actually a real pinball simulation and that i think is the important thing to remember here one of one of the things that uh crack me up within the article, they were saying, one of the things we had to have is DMD, because it's not pinball without DMD. And again, clearly you don't play pinball, because there was many, many, many, many years.
    58:24
    Exactly. So, yeah, anyway, check out that article, give it a read, folks, and see what you think. Yeah, I'm going to read this in more detail. I'll keep it up in the screen so I can see it, and I will definitely add it to the show notes. There's lots of really cool pictures of the design and even things like height maps and stuff like that, which I had no idea what they are. So I've got a lot of geeking out to do on this article. It was a good find. Thanks for sharing that. That'll be fun to read through.
    58:52
    Hey, we always appreciate you listening to us. And we also really like it when you interact with us. You can do that via Twitter.
    59:00
    Look up the show at Blockade. that is where you'll find when we're doing podcasts and things related purely with pinball and with articles that get released on the website otherwise you can follow us personally I am at ShutYourTraps he is at JaredMorgz and that is his name for both Medium and Twitter so if you want to follow us on those two platforms that's the same handles the other thing you can do is interact with us on Medium by easily creating an account. It will take just a couple of minutes. And then for each of the articles that you like, you can give us a little clap.
    59:40
    It's the version of like on Medium, but less lame. So, yeah, go and have a go and see what else you can find on Medium. There's plenty of cool stuff, so check it out.
    59:55
    Alrighty, well, until next week, bye-bye. Bye-bye. wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter bugs easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some pinball Speaking of articles, and this would be the portion of the show that would have been at the beginning of the show, but it's now at the end of the show. So I've posted yet more reviews. And folks, basically, I'm all caught up on my backlog of movies to see.
    60:51
    So now it'll just be as they release in the theaters, then I can play catch up. So it's basically, you'll get maybe two reviews out of me a week. but if you go to our website that is blockadepinball.com slash episodes that'll get you to the main page and from there if you just click on articles you'll find all of the past reviews that I've written but yeah I finally watched the last of my Oscar nominee best picture ones that I was going to watch and it was Darkest Hour which is basically the Winston Churchill movie about when he first became prime minister. What I didn't know, because I don't know my history that well, was that it takes place exactly at the same time as Dunkirk takes place. And I really wished that the two movies had just kind of been blended together, because Dunkirk doesn't have hardly any talking.
    61:51
    It's all visual story, basically. and darkest hour there should have just been retitled speeches the movie because it's literally one winston churchill speech after another and they just kind of meld together and i mean hats off to gary oldman a you don't even recognize that he's in this role and you just feel like you're watching a living recreation of what happened but my god there's only so many times of somebody bloviating in front of Parliament before you just go enough! I'm done!
    62:26
    Get on with it! Show me an explosion or two! Something, please! Yeah, right. So that's why I say it would have been nice if you had a... Show Dunkirk, but just have his speeches playing over as the audio while the movie Dunkirk is playing, and then that would have been cool.
    62:43
    Dunkirk the oration. There you go. it's the next one yeah so anyway I'm happy to be done with the good for me movies the prestige films and I can get on to the utter crap that's coming out all the way up through summer which is the stuff I like get your popcorn switch your brain off and enjoy this ride yeah and hopefully you know like I just went and saw Annihilation and it was really smart science fiction okay so you know I'm expecting a few of these to actually be somewhat decent. I'm looking forward to seeing Red Sparrow. I'll be seeing that this week. Of course, I'm all over the Tomb Raider movie because even though I didn't like the Angelina Jolie ones, I still love the game and I can't help it. I just, I don't know. I dig on that whole thing.
    63:38
    Then I also have things coming up like, oh god, this is going to be a miserable week. Coming up in April, the only two new releases are a horror movie called Truth or Dare, which I don't do horror movies normally, but hey, I'm going to go see everything, right? And then the other thing is a remake of Overboard, which I hated the original.
    64:01
    I don't even know what it is. The original was Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, and Goldie Hawn was a spoiled, rich socialite, and Kurt Russell was a handyman, and while on a cruise, she falls overboard and gets amnesia and he takes her back to his country hick home and convinces her that she's poor.
    64:26
    My wife is now filling me in. It's because she didn't pay him for the job he did. Oh my gosh. Essentially, life lessons are learned and at the end, everything is peachy. Everybody has a better understanding of the circumstances of other people's lives. This new movie is with Anna Faris and she is playing the worker for I don't know, the actor is he's a Spanish guy and apparently he's been rather well known for that his language films but anyway, he plays the rich guy and bumps his head and yeah, she's the worker and she brings him back home and convinces him that he see, my wife is interested, right?
    65:12
    So, anyway, I'm just like that's the week that I'm dreading. But then the following week, I get Super Troopers 2. So, meow.
    65:20
    You probably would have had Pacific Rim 2 out for yonks over there. Pacific Rim 2 comes out on March 23rd. Okay, so it hasn't been out there yet. Nope, it hasn't been out there yet. Sounds like the movie studios are actually getting better at doing worldwide releases because, you know, piracy. They actually moved up the release of Avengers by a week here. Yeah, because Downey Jr. said, oh, yeah, I won it earlier.
    65:48
    Right? Because he used to do that tweet. I don't know who this person is. Robert Downey Jr. Oh, Robert Downey Jr. He did something that made the studio release it two or three weeks earlier. Well, no, what it is is worldwide it was releasing a week earlier than here in the States. the states it's one of the may 4th is or that first week of may is traditionally now the start of our summer movie season all right but elsewhere in the world the week prior is a better release date so but because of a how well black panther is doing and b the piracy issue and c how much money they think this thing is going to make they kind of went why don't we just release it worldwide at the same time and avoid a lot of these headaches.
    66:39
    Especially since the people are worried about spoilers because by the end of this movie, it's going to shape what's to come. And so far Marvel has been keeping their mouth shut about anything after this movie. So they want to be a surprise. It's going to be massive for the geeks. Yeah. Interesting. I'm pretty sure I saw a tweet recently that suggested that Iron Man suggested that yes, I think Marvel or the film company released a thing, oh, are you looking forward to seeing Avengers coming out this day? And Robert goes, you know, is it possible to get it released like a couple of weeks earlier? And they go, oh, yes, Mr. Downey, I think we could probably do that. He goes, is it possible to see a screening earlier? He used that word. He said, a screening earlier. Okay. and they said, oh yes, Mr. Dan, we can organize that and he said, would it be possible to have some friends along as well? Oh, yes, that'll be fun. Who? And he said, the world.
    67:49
    And they went, yeah, why not? Let's do that. So obviously this was probably an orchestrated tweet stream. Probably. But it was funny and I liked it. what's funny is it now leaves a massive hole those first two weeks of May because basically nobody wanted to release on the same day as Avengers and then nobody wanted to release the next week because they knew that they would still be earning a buttload of money yeah exactly and so it wasn't going to be until the following week after that, that's when Deadpool 2 comes out so now you've got this oh what's wrong with you, well you've got kids that's what's wrong with you yeah and believe me you need headphones on for this one so yeah so now you've got this massive gap I'm curious to know if anybody's going to shift their release and pop in but I think I'm only going to make Deadpool 2 have an even larger opening because everybody all have already seen Avengers and will be primed for the next one I'm going to be fired up for it Yeah. Because then you have Deadpool 2 release, and then two weeks after that, you have the Han Solo movie.
    69:06
    Oh, jeez. So you see how, I mean, this is this, and that's then the absolute official start of summer here in the States. It's Memorial Day weekend, is what we call it.
    69:16
    And that used to be the traditional start of summer, and then everybody kept on kind of pushing forward and forward and forward. Now it's just kind of this year-long thing that starts in February for summer movies, for some reason.
    69:30
    It should be interesting. We're now entering my time of the movies where I get to see all the crappy fun stuff.
    69:41
    Quite literally, the popcorn of the movie season. Yeah. My wife keeps on insisting that because she let me get this movie pass thing, her whole thing is, you have to go see everything. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. well she there's this god awful movie called Sherlock Gnomes oh yes and she is insisting that I'm going to have to go see this and I'm like I barely made it watching the trailer there's no way I can stand sitting for an hour and a half of this Greg no I think that's fair I think that's totally fair you should go to every single kids movie and every single movie if it's on cinemas mate you gotta go and see it That's the rule. Oh my god.
    70:29
    You can feel totally vindicated to write a totally disparaging and horrible review of the movie in your particular style. What everybody should be looking forward to is next week there's a movie called Hurricane that comes out and it looks absolutely bonkers bad. like it's big claim to fame as directed by the guy that directed the first Fast and Furious movie. Now if you've heard me talk at all, I love this knockoff Fast and Furious movie called Tork which is 88 minutes of pure comedy and it's the motorcycle version of Fast and Furious. That is what I'm hoping for. I am hoping that it is so bad it's fun.
    71:18
    And based off the trailer we might get there but there's no chance in hell it's going to be a good movie there's just absolutely no way it's going to be good but it's going to be good for the wrong reasons exactly that's what I'm hoping for on that one at least anyway and I'll try and make the reviews a little more reflective of that kind of fun because basically all I've been doing is ranting about having to watch all these Oscar movies yeah it's like I don't like this but I'm here so here please enjoy my rant this delicious plate of bread although I did hear a funny thing with Jennifer Lawrence was talking about obviously having to watch movies because she can vote for best pictures and stuff and she said she made it through three minutes of Phantom Thread which is that movie about him sewing it's this movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis He's a dress designer, and basically, he finds muses that inspire his designs, but then he also gets romantically involved with them. But the minute that they're no longer inspiring him to design, he just drops them like a bad habit and moves on to the next one. and Jennifer Lawrence is like I made it through three minutes of that movie and then went I have better ways to spend my time I'm like you know what thank you thank you for saying that that's a review right there that's what you call a Twitter review done so I just and then I read somewhere else a reviewer that I follow or not follow but pay attention to He writes for this website called Film Drunk.
    73:14
    And Vince Mancini, I believe, is the writer's name, and he's pretty funny. But taking similar takes with a lot of this stuff where it's just like, oh, my God, why do I have to deal with watching this stuff? When can I watch the stuff I normally watch? Yeah, for sure. Far out. Oh, man.
    73:35
    Well, that was actually good. That was actually a good warm-up chat. That was our cool down chat this time Yeah, that was a cool down warm up Yeah, it was good No editing necessary for Jared this time around No, I'm happy with that Because it took me quite literally a week To get the episode out Like I released it yesterday So, yeah, I got there Just in time Before I had to record the next one Well, this is all on you though Because you insist on having your pinball first So I threw you a bone this week yeah no that wasn't the reason at all it actually took me five minutes to resolve that problem i quite literally just went oh look all this pinball talk geez we did that for 10 or 12 minutes oh that's gonna be cut snip snip dump it to the end of the silent track and then just dump it at the end it was very easy for me to resolve that