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BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·44m 24s·analyzed·Nov 29, 2017
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Digital pinball comparison and critique of Farsight's EM table quality control in recent TPA releases.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss digital pinball platforms (Pinball Arcade vs. Pinball FX 3), focusing on Zen's superior community features like real-time score notifications that drive engagement. They critique Farsight's recent EM table releases (Spanish Eyes, Wild Card) for poor visual details—lighting inconsistencies, flat textures, and rendering artifacts—suggesting systemic issues in Farsight's art pipeline. They also preview upcoming Pinball Arcade releases and discuss tournament format options.

Key Claims

  • Zen Pinball FX 3's real-time score notifications and community features drive player engagement significantly more than traditional leaderboards

    high confidence · Chris describes how Zen's notification bubble prompting competition with friends motivates immediate replay, contrasting with static leaderboards that lack 'human element'

  • Farsight Studios lacks sufficient resources and art expertise to fix visual quality issues in Pinball Arcade releases

    high confidence · Chris and Jared agree Farsight is understaffed compared to Zen, working frantically to meet release deadlines with no capacity for post-launch corrections

  • Spanish Eyes has rendering perspective issues where yellow walls lack shading distinction in play-view, appearing as flat blobs

    high confidence · Chris details specific visual flaw: cabinet interior yellow paint lacks edge definition where back meets sides, only chrome rail provides delineation

  • Wild Card has multiple art quality issues: wood grain rails lack top-to-side definition, apron appears to float optically, flippers lack texture

    high confidence · Chris catalogs specific rendering problems on Wild Card, noting flippers are 'white and red, that's it' with no texture definition

  • Bonsai Run may be included in upcoming Pinball Arcade releases based on credible leaker information that accurately predicted Pistol Poker

    medium confidence · Jared confirms seeing Bonsai Run in beta build; Chris acknowledges leaker's accuracy after Pistol Poker confirmation, suggesting credibility

  • Pistol Poker is confirmed as upcoming Pinball Arcade EM table release

    high confidence · Newsletter hint confirmed by Chris; both hosts discuss it as official announcement

  • Farsight may implement another 'gap month' of no releases at season end for bug fixes and technical debt reduction

    medium confidence · Chris expresses hope based on previous year's success with month-long break that produced significant improvements

Notable Quotes

  • “You see somebody else's score pop up and you're like, 'Wait a second, no, I just beat that. I've got to play it again and beat their score.'”

    Jared @ ~5:30 — Articulates core appeal of Zen's community-driven engagement mechanic versus static leaderboards

  • “My eye will now pick out the details that are wrong because they're so blatantly large, and it bothers me.”

    Chris @ ~22:00 — Explains why EM table simplicity actually exposes rendering flaws more than complex modern tables

  • “And I've notified them about it, but we were right at crunch time, and I guess putting it into release, and my little art gripes often go unheard.”

    Chris @ ~23:30 — Reveals Chris has reported issues to Farsight but feedback ignored due to release pressure

  • “If they understood lighting, they would understand what we just talked about with the back box and the back of the cabinet and the side rails blending into each other.”

    Jared @ ~35:00 — Diagnostic observation: lighting knowledge gaps are root cause of multiple rendering artifacts

  • “Measure twice, cut once doesn't apply here.”

    Chris @ ~34:00 — Summarizes systematic quality control failure at Farsight

  • “They're still not taking the month off. It's a gap month. It's a month off. Yeah. Yeah, gap month of releases.”

    Jared and Chris @ ~47:00 — Terminological clarification defining planned release hiatus for maintenance

  • “I don't think they have anybody there that understands lighting.”

    Jared @ ~33:30 — Direct assertion of core competency gap at Farsight Studios

Entities

Chris FreibuspersonJared MorganpersonFarsight StudioscompanyZen StudioscompanyPinball ArcadeproductPinball FX 3productSpanish EyesgameWild Cardgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight Studios appears understaffed and under resource constraints, unable to address art quality issues even when reported by community

    high · Jared states 'their studio is much, much smaller than the other ones' and they lack capacity for post-launch fixes; Chris notes his reported issues went unheard due to 'crunch time'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive reception to Pinball Arcade's planned 'gap month' approach for bug fixes and technical debt reduction

    high · Chris expresses hope for repeat of previous year's successful month-long release hiatus; both hosts agree it demonstrates product health commitment

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Zen's real-time multiplayer score notifications represent superior understanding of arcade game engagement mechanics vs. static leaderboards

    high · Chris and Jared extensively discuss how notification-driven competition drives immediate replay behavior; Jared notes it mirrors standing next to opponent at physical arcade

  • $

    market_signal: Steam seasonal sales (summer/autumn sale) creating promotional opportunity for digital pinball platforms

    high · Chris notes Pinball Arcade Season 3 at 50% discount; mentions Zen tables also discounted; frames as time-sensitive opportunity for new players

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Farsight may lack personnel with lighting expertise or understanding of how real-world light interactions affect visual perception

    high · Jared explicitly states 'I don't think they have anybody there that understands lighting' and notes disconnect between how tables look in real life vs. computer rendering

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.133

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. This is the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Freibus, aka Shet Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, Jared Morgan. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. So you, the listener, are now going to get the benefit of this being take three of us trying to run this podcast today. Yes. So it may even be almost good.
0:40
We didn't get too much fat on the bone yet, but we can trim a lot of that away. For instance, I started talking about this new monitor that I'm dealing with that is new to me, but old because it's like 10 years old. It's an old Dell 30-inch 16x10. And I went into great detail about how yellow the whites were and how much heat this thing produces. And that despite it being really large and having way better resolution than my 16x9, 1920x1080p monitor, I'm probably going to go back to that one. Yep, because it introduces a performance impact on your computer that makes it even more chuggier than it was before. boom so you see how smooth that conversation with that lasted five minutes prior now it's just like in and out done that's one minute that's it's jobs done and we did actually we would also probably covering off a lot of the discounts that were happening um at the at the moment on pinball arcade so and pinball cadence in but that the short thing is that it's steam summer sale at the moment or autumn sale whatever it's called um it's a sale on steam that you can get things with. So what you do is you go onto Steam and you search for Pinball Arcade and there'll be discounts for you. They're 50% off Season 3, so go and buy that. And then on Xen, there's also some discounted tables as well. So you can go and search for them while you're there looking at Pinball Arcade's listing and then go and get some cheap games with them if you haven't already got the cheap games from Xen because they discount them all the time anyhow. So you more than likely already have But if you're new to this, go and check it out because cheap games are good games. Absolutely. And I can't recommend Pinball FX 3 enough.
2:36
Pistol Poker
game
Bonsai Rungame
Klaus Entertainment/Klaus Industrycompany
Champion Pubgame
Cactus Canyongame
  • ?

    announcement: Pistol Poker confirmed as upcoming Pinball Arcade EM table release

    high · Official newsletter hint confirmed; Chris deciphered clue (Alvin and Chipmunks, Poker, pistol imagery); both hosts discuss as fact

  • ?

    product_concern: Farsight's recent EM table releases (Spanish Eyes, Wild Card) exhibit systematic rendering and lighting quality failures

    high · Chris details specific visual flaws: yellow wall perspective blending, wood grain rail definition loss, floating apron optical illusion, flat untextured flippers, inconsistent lighting brightness levels across GI and flasher bulbs

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Credible leaker providing accurate information about upcoming Pinball Arcade releases; Bonsai Run potentially confirmed for future release

    medium · Leaker accurately predicted Pistol Poker before official announcement; Jared saw Bonsai Run in beta; Chris acknowledges leaker credibility with 'maybe I'm eating crow'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Farsight's monitor calibration or display settings may not match standard user configurations, causing lighting tuning misalignment

    medium · Chris suggests Farsight staff may be running monitors with 'really crazy contrast and brightness' or dark profiles, causing them to over-brighten GI/flasher bulbs in compensation

    • It sounds amazing. I would want it so bad if I had Steam. It's not like the games themselves changed that much. I mean, slight tweaks in the lighting got a little bit better.
    2:47
    But it's not like the games themselves are wildly different. and we only have the three new tables currently, although there's new packs coming quickly. I think I saw a rumor of what they were and I've quickly forgotten what they were.
    3:03
    But the thing that has made me probably I've been playing Xen probably 70% of the time versus Pinball Arcade 30% of the time currently over the past month and a half or so basically since Pinball FX3 came out it's the community aspect. there is totally is oh there there is it drives you yeah you see somebody else's score pop up and you're like wait a second no i just beat that i've got to play it again and beat their score yep and it's so much better than looking at the leaderboards i don't i don't look at the leaderboards on zen either um i never look at the leaderboards on tpi just had zero interest in it because there's no human element to it it's just names on the list who cares right and i and i used to pay attention to the leaderboards, but then they got so jacked up and they were never corrected. Hello, rant number 583.
    3:58
    It just lost all meaning for me. But while I'm in the midst of playing a Zen table, all of a sudden that little bubble pops up and says, hey, you're within a 1,500,000 of this person's score. You better believe that all of a sudden I'm like, oh, well, let me start a mode. Let me try and beat that. What do I need to do to get past that score. Yeah, exactly. It's just, it changes. And I don't even, like, for the record, as we well know, if you're a regular listener to the podcast, I don't have a PC, so I don't have Zen Pinball 3, but already I don't need to play it to know the power of that drive that you get from having a goal-based thing that's with another person rather than just something that you've got to do or a mission you've got to complete, you know. Yeah. if if basically it's you may as well be standing next to someone at a pinball meet and playing the zen pinball table trying to battle against their score but you're doing it from halfway across the world like absolutely to me it's just it's really what the internet was really well designed to do from a gaming perspective and that is to help people connect with each other in the gaming world like this. And, you know, it's just such an obvious thing to do, yet no one's really done it well yet with this type of thing. Like this sort of arcade-style game that really does require you to be standing next to one another and actually riffing off each other like this, looking at scores, looking at performance. You know, it's such a logical fit. I really, really hope it comes to Android at some point because I think I'll be as hooked as you if it comes over. Well, and there's little things too, like we've talked about the matchup mode, and although I'm not so enamored with it because to me it winds up kind of being like TPA's tournament mode where eventually it just becomes kind of a grind fest trying to get to the point. But what I do like about it is they keep on throwing up, it's four tables for you to play, and I'm willing to sample all four tables, and it's had me playing tables that I haven't touched in a while and kind of giving them a new lease on life because I'm like, well, at the very minimum, I've got to beat somebody's score to get me advancing into the tournament a little bit. And that makes me concentrate on what it is I need to do to score. And I've already learned quite a few things on tables that I have owned for years and never bothered learning. So it's done its job on that front. And then the last thing that I know you're not aware of, Jared, when you're on the main, called the home screen of Xen, so you're deciding are you going to play tournaments, are you going to match up, are you going to play single player, down in the corner, the right-hand corner, it'll pop up a little message saying, and it usually picks one of your friends, but it'll say, hey, your friend's been playing this table. Do you think you can beat him? Oh.
    7:01
    And you just kind of go, well, sure. I mean, why not? I'll give it a shot. Yes, of course I can beat him. It's the answer you always say. Yes, I'm going to go and play this table now if it kills me.
    7:15
    So it's brought up the issue that I was curious about, which is if somebody has never played pinball in real life before and they got Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX 3 at the same time and all the tables, what would they wind up gravitating more towards? Which game would they wind up preferring?
    7:40
    Obviously, you think it's going to be... Well, it's going to come down to, do you care about the community aspect, or do you care about how the ball behaves? Because obviously, TPA's ball behaves, I would say, closer to what a real pinball does. Zen's balls are still a little bit leaden, depending on the table that you play. Some tables, they've got the bounce, but other tables, they're still leaden. True, but if you've ever played pinball before, how would you know?
    8:11
    Well, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Which would you prefer? Just not having any real-world experience, would you wind up gravitating more towards one or the other? And then also, think about the rule sets.
    8:27
    And I shouldn't say just the rule sets, but the ball flow. All your Williams, Bally, Stern, Gottlieb tables, they've had the benefit of being put on Whitewoods and being tweaked after the fact to make the ball behave and act more fun to the user. And then their rule sets, especially your DMDs, are specifically in mind with, hey, you just put in a quarter, and we've complained about Zen DMDs before, where they have this mean habit of giving you information at the same time as laying the ball drain down the middle.
    9:07
    Yeah, that's not a great user experience there. Right, so you've got the benefit of that real-world tech being available in the game. Would that affect the user's behavior or opinion of the table? I don't know. I've been rather curious. I don't know. It would be really hard to find somebody other than a kid that hasn't touched either. Well, that's probably the test you could do, right? You could actually put, say, a 12-year-old who has never thought of pinball before. You'd actually have to put a call out to people on the internet saying, have you ever played pinball before? If you haven't, come and do our study. Or come and play some games with us and see which one you like the best. And just do an A-B test on it because I think you might find that it's just because you've got to remember that this is a form of digital entertainment. and from a pure digital entertainment perspective,
    10:04
    I kind of think that Zen wins. Well, and now you're talking about also an age bracket. A 12-year-old is going to be much more interested in the animations and video game aspect because they've had video game experience as opposed to if you grabbed an adult who didn't grow up or isn't so enamored by that now and then throw that in front of them, see what they would say. yeah, there's two different audiences, isn't it? Like, and what would appeal to some being the community aspect or the, you know, the competing against your friend aspect, some people don't actually care for that. Like, they just want to, like, for them, playing a game is just something they do in isolation and it's a way for them to almost disconnect from reality. So for those people, the community aspects of the Zen people may not be that appealing. It may be something that they maybe favor TPA more for because it kind of is really just standalone Yeah And you can play it just in isolation and just go into a zen state with it if you like and just flip. Yeah.
    11:15
    Yeah. Pun partially intended. Right, right. Hey, speaking of... I was going to finish. I was going to dovetail that. But it is a very interesting proposition to put forward to somebody and it would be interesting if you know either we could find somebody or someone else who's never played pinball before or has recently found pinball as something that they do like if they had that experience of playing zen and then playing tpa in the digital forms you know what was the the general feeling of it it would be really interesting to learn i suppose it'd be easier to find somebody that's only played digital pinball and then introduce them to a real table. Yes. Let them play a real table and then go, now what's your opinion? Which do you like better? Yeah, that's probably... I guess that's a test.
    12:10
    Yeah, you're probably right. All right, so we're going to start a GoFundMe page so that we can do the scientific study. Yes, for great justice and for science. Yes.
    12:23
    TPA has released two tables. It's their EM pack that they've... Basically, it's their once-a-year EM pack that they've said that they were going to do, and so far they've been doing it now. Two tables are Spanish Eyes and Wild Card.
    12:38
    Normally, when TPA releases a table, as of late, we've been going, Hey, TPA, you've been doing a great job. We like it. And the only gripe that we might have would be with the table choice. Yeah.
    12:51
    I'm taking issue with these releases. and why is it that you're taking issue with these releases chris is there something specific you'd like to say yes i would um the issue i am taking is that although there are not toys and the play are so much easier for farsight to you know put together the problem is that my eye will now pick out the details that are wrong because they're so blatantly large and it bothers me. So, if you look at Spanish Eyes, the inside of the cabinet is painted a nice bright yellow.
    13:35
    At the back of the table, where the back of the cabinet meets the sides of the cabinet, you cannot see the corners. It's just a yellow blob that the only thing delineating what is what is the chrome rail on top and the bottom of the play field itself. Other than that, it's like what we call a psych, a rounded edge look to it, and that's not what it is at all.
    14:01
    It's that kind of detail that Farsight needs to be paying attention to, and I've notified them about it, but we were right at crunch time, and I guess putting it into release, and my little art gripes often go unheard. all acknowledged but just completely out of scope because then I had to move on to the next thing but it's so true I'm sure that the computer itself is rendering the table the way that it's programmed yes these obviously the walls are painted with the exact same yellow color but what the computer isn't aware of is slight lighting changes perception and there should be a slight shading difference and I don't know if that's something that Fireside would have to bake in or would have to write in another program. I'm thinking that the main problem here is that it's that of perspective and view perspective in the game. So when you're in the table flyover and you're watching these games, they're perfectly fine. They look fine. You can see the definition where it's supposed to be.
    15:09
    And it looks just, yeah, it looks fine. But then when it locks it into the playing position and the views, that's where it all starts to unravel. Yeah, but even in the flyover on Spanish Eyes, the yellow stays the same yellow. It doesn't change.
    15:23
    And if you wonder why I'm noticing on here and not noticing on other tables, mostly the other tables, either the sides or the back of the cabinet are completely hidden. You can't tell. You're looking at toys, and those do change perspective, or you can see, and so your eye focuses on those rather than focusing on this large surface that the eye gets drawn to. Often those large surfaces are actually hidden anyhow by all the toys. So it's not such like a big... The canvas isn't so big. So, yeah.
    15:57
    You know, on Wild Card, the issue is not with the back, but it's with the wooden... What do you call them? The rails, I guess. Yeah, the outer rails of the table. Yeah. and so it's a wood grain but you can't delineate the top of the rail from the sides of the rail and where it really plays havoc with your eyes is when you look at the apron the apron just kind of looks it's an optical illusion but looks like it's floating so again the computer is rendering it correctly and if you look closely enough then you can be like oh yes I see that that's where one edge meets the other edge goes from top down to the bottom. But in real life, you wouldn't have that issue because again, it's how light from the room hits. It's how slight difference in shading.
    16:51
    And it just makes the table look extremely flat. Yes, that's right. And the thing is, those details are not something you should have to squint at and try and justify when you're looking at something. It should just be, yep, that is a different surface with a different shading, and that is, I shouldn't have to think about it. It should just be there. And another issue on wildcard is the flippers themselves. There's no definition on them. There's no texture. It's white and red. That's it. It looks very flat, very fake. I don't know what went wrong because it's not that way on other tables.
    17:30
    But it's just one of those things that, come on. And again, you don't typically notice it on most tables because there's so much other things for your eye to look at. But when it's a very simplistic layout, then that's all that it sees. Yes.
    17:47
    One other thing that I had a problem with on Wildcard, apparently they got this table from Klaus Entertainment or Klaus Industry. I'm not sure what it was it says, but on the apron itself is a little sticker, and it has their phone number.
    18:02
    Yeah. And this is the one from before. they actually left a sticker from some bloke on some outfit on the apron as well we don't want to see that I got the instruction card or something like that and I was like no it's almost as bad as when they left the keys in the back box of what was that scared stiff I think it's been since corrected but it's exactly that again, it's those fine details that, yes, fine, the table runs,
    18:39
    but what is going on with the graphics department? What's going on with the art department? This stuff just slides on through. And look, I'd be fine if, like, on the initial release, we saw these issues and then we knew that later on they will go, but the fact of the matter is we know for a fact that that's not going to happen. Yeah. That is not something that Farsight has the resources or time to do because their studio is much, much smaller than the other, like, Ben's in. They don't have all the graphic artists that go, oh, yeah, it'd be really nice if we could just go back through season one and completely redo it because, you know, we have the resources. They're sitting around doing nothing. We might as well have them doing stuff. No, the dudes at Farsight are, like, frantically trying to get the next table prepared probably before the December holidays now so that they can actually get the thing out before the Christmas break and then go and actually have a bit of a holiday. So, you know, it's a vicious cycle. Well, here's my last one. You just don't, you know. Measure twice, quote once. It doesn't apply here. No.
    19:50
    My final gripe is with the lighting itself. And again, picking on wildcard, Spanish eyes, I don't know. it seems like they maybe paid a little more attention to that than wildcard, but on wildcard, the pop bumpers, when I played it in the beta, they were, if they lit, they were screaming bright and you couldn't even read the top. It was just a white blob basically. So I said, Hey guys, um, yeah, let's lower the, the bold brightness on the table so that that's not an issue. Well, they lowered the bold brightness on the pop bumpers, but they did not lower it on any of the other GI lights. so if i wanted to and right now the pop bumpers now are a little bit too dim like it's hard to see if they actually are lit or not all right if i crank up the the lighting the brightness on the bulbs to make that look like it's more light lit well now the rollover lanes and the gi down by the flippers is just this you know white hot nuclear it's like tone everything down uniformly all the bulbs should have the exact same strength because back then there wasn't a difference between GI lighting and flasher bulbs. It was all the same. Same intensity.
    20:59
    Truth be told, most of your EMs didn't have that bright of lighting to begin with. It was dim all the way around no matter what. It really was. There wasn't a lot of light casting. Even that Jackster Open early solid state that I had here, there wasn't a lot of GI happening on there at all. Nobody was playing those machines in the dark. No. They were all in a pub or a club or even like a proper arcade back then. Like a, you know, that was well lit and, you know, see everything.
    21:32
    But this goes into one of these things that Farsight never seems to quite understand and that is bulb brightness at 50% should be pleasing to the eye and you should be able to crank it up to 80% which is pretty much what I feel that their base is right now. Like what they say is 50% is what I would term 80% brightness because there's no way I will ever turn the bold brightness up over 50%. It just becomes this washed out mess Conversely I can drop the bold brightness all the way down to zero and sometimes it perfectly pleasing which again shouldn be the case If I turn it down to zero it should be off You know what I was just thinking I just wonder if when they working out the tuning I wonder if they're running their screens at really crazy contrast and brightness. Maybe. I wonder if their monitors are set in such a way that they're really dark. And by setting the lighting up on their end to make it look really good, is actually, for everyone else, not right. Or maybe, like, what are you running your monitors at? Are you running them bright, or are you running them sort of at 50% or something like that? What are your contrast settings? Well, no, I actually, you know, calibrate my monitors, and I don't run them bright. I run them darker, typically, because that's what you should be doing. You shouldn't have your brightness cranked up to 80% or 90% on your monitor. That's just bad. So really, I reckon that would be the thing I'd recommend to them to do, is have you actually run a calibration tool over your monitor to get the colors and everything right? Because I just wonder if that's the reason why you're seeing so much nuking going on is because they're just running a different monitor profile than pretty much everyone else. I don't think they have anybody there that understands lighting.
    23:23
    Is that what you think? I honestly think that's the case. And you know why I say that? All you have to do is look at Champion Pub, look at Cactus Canyon, look at the toys that are in the back these big giant toys if you've ever played one of those in real life the light from all the bulbs around reflects onto them and gives them shine and you can actually see them but in TPA if you're running it in dynamic lighting they're black, they're dark you can't see them at all and if there was any understanding about lighting going on they would bake it in on those they would do something. I don't understand. There's like a disconnect between them looking at the table in real life and then taking it over to the computer.
    24:11
    Yeah, right. I understand. If they understood lighting, they would understand what we just talked about with the back box and the back of the cabinet and the side rails blending into each other. Yeah, true.
    24:22
    It's probably not a monitor profile. No, and I think it's one of those things that's just so not on their list of priorities that it just constantly, consistently gets overlooked.
    24:34
    Yeah, you could be right, actually. Yeah, that does actually sound more plausible. It's a shame, but it is what it is. And we repeatedly tell people who get upset about TPA that you have to accept it for what it is, and this is just one of those things that you need to accept, I guess. Yep.
    24:56
    Okay, enough about that. Yeah. They did come out with the newsletter. The hint was rather simplistic. It's pistol poker, people. It is pistol poker. Just for me, because I got the pistol and I got the poker stuff, but what was the lady with the gun? The lady? No, that was Kenny G. That was Kenny G? Right. That was a flute, obviously, or clarinet, whatever the hell he plays. Yeah, Clarinet, because the first picture was of Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks. So it's Alvin, pistol poker.
    25:36
    Okay, I understand now. I was going, what the... I could get everything else, and I worked out the clue. I said, what does that have to do with it?
    25:44
    So this brings up an interesting thing. And that is, apparently, and I've not seen the leak. Apparently, there is somebody that's leaking what the tables are going to be coming up. and they had leaked that Pistol Poker was going to be coming out. They also said Bonsai Run. I think last time we mentioned where I said it ain't going to be Bonsai Run for various reasons. And now I'm kind of like going, well, maybe this person does know what the heck they're talking about and maybe I'm eating crow. Yeah, look, I will admit that I saw this exact thing. It was actually in one of the betas and I didn't at the point, I didn't at the time say anything about it, but now the fact that we've actually got Pistol Poker, which was on that list, I'm going, well, I just wonder if there might be a little bit of crazy vertical pinball action coming our way at the end of the season, which I don't know. I think in some ways that's going to be a good thing, and potentially it's going to maybe make every single person who's been requesting the table hate their decision. Potentially. It might just be the novelty. You might play it once or twice and go, this is actually really not that good.
    27:04
    But hopefully it's not going to be like that. Hopefully it's going to be like, wow, this is awesome. Finally we get to play this thing and listen to the amazing music in it because it does have a really good soundtrack. So that's something it has going for it.
    27:17
    I do – I should say I am looking forward to the fact it at the end of this season. We'll see if it comes true, because we asked them point blank last year if this was going to become a regular thing, but are they going to take another month off to hammer out bugs? Oh, man. I hope so. I really hope. That was so good. They got so much stuff fixed. Oh, and they made so many improvements. Yeah. It was amazing what they were able to do last year with that time. They really used it to their advantage, and I so hope that they can go and do that again this year because it would actually be good because by doing that and saying, hey, look, we're doing this again, basically all the people in the forums and all the people in social media that go, you never fix any bugs, they go, well, there's a chance that they actually probably will fix bugs at the end of each season. They'll do a bit of housecleaning. They'll remove the technical debt. They'll do all the things they need to be doing as a software house to keep the product actually healthy. And that's the thing. It's, it's just about product health. That's all it is. Um, and I really, like you, I'm definitely hoping that it's a gap month. I'll be quite happy to just like do other things and just enjoy other, just enjoy the tables the way they are. You know what? I think I mean, I like your term there gap month. Cause I hate saying that they're taking the month off cause they're not taking the month off. They're still not taking the month off. It's a gap month. It's a month off. Yeah. Gap month of releases. Um, a break in programming, if you like.
    28:53
    They're taking a commercial break. A long one. The in-between season hiatus. Yeah, that's right. And I think it's... I really hope they do it again. I think that based on the success and the goodwill it brought last year, that they will do it again because it's definitely something that is valuable for them to do.
    29:17
    We did not have a Zen tournament this past week because holidays. So I will be getting a new one up. I'm not going to do it today. Today being Saturday, I'll probably put it up on Monday. So it'll turn into a five-day tournament. I don't know which table I'm going to be picking yet. So if you're following us on Twitter, you'll know.
    29:41
    Exactly. Yeah, there's also a thread going on in Pinball Arcade fans under tournaments that I believe it's titled Zen Tournaments, and I've made the announcement of what table it always is in there. As usual, just search Shut Your Trap, and you'll be able to find whatever that table is that I wind up picking.
    30:03
    Excellent. Get back into the tournaments again and do some crazy parameters in the tournament this time around, which you always tend to do. You know what I'm kind of leaning towards? Maybe you can help me out here. General discussion for everybody, but I'm kind of leaning towards picking one of the really old tables, like Rome or Pasha. And here's the question, because most people don't play them. Is it better to just do a standard three ball, or is it better to do the time limit on it and let people pick the crazy add-ons? I think that the time limit is good, because for those people who do know how to play them, the timeline will just be a grind fest but the people who do know how to play them will know how to start the things that mean the most points um in the 20 minutes or whatever yeah so i'm thinking that and even if you don't quite know how to do it what you can do is as you try and beat the other people's scores and compete you're going to become more accustomed to the tables nuances anyhow so i think it's probably going to be a more concentrated period of time that you can actually go and do things on those older tables. Let's be honest, some of those older tables don't really have a great rule system anyhow. No, and they have a really wonky way of starting modes. So that in itself is probably going to be fine. I don't know if you'd actually want to grind your way through that a lot anyhow. So maybe just having snapshots, 20-minute snapshots would be the way to go for that. We can't do 20 minutes. Your choice is either five minutes or survival, which is basically minute at a time. Yeah, well, Well, no, it's a minute at a time to reach a particular score. And if you hit that score, then you get to go to the next. There is also a no tournament.
    31:53
    So there you go. You got one ball survival, five minute, and then just normal three ball play. Five minutes short. Five minutes short on a table that most people don't know. That's why I'm like, you know, but is it a table that we really want to get to know? That's the other. Maybe survival might be better. like keep on like progressing the score and see how long you can last on it. Cause that might actually help you. Even on tables that I am very familiar with, it becomes really difficult to get the next score at a certain spot because you start stressing over it and it kind of, you're not so much learning the table as you are just flinging the ball wherever to try and get points. Right. Okay. So that's tricky. It's hard to balance. You might have to go with standard three ball and put some, can you put power-ups in there that make the game shorter?
    32:46
    No. You can either put no power-ups, you can pick the power-ups to yourself. Basically, you know, like, you know, pop bumpers are now going to be powered up. Okay. So it powers up a certain part of the play field. Yes. A little bit like Dr. Freeze Dr. Freeze mode.
    33:04
    Yeah, combos can get powered up. Yeah, right. Yeah, I think you might just have to go through your ball on this.
    33:12
    I don't know, folks. If you have an opinion why don you drop us an email at blahblahblockade at gmail Or you can hit us up on Twitter I am at Yes I am at ShutYourTraps He is at JaredMorgs. But the best way to comment would be at Blockade. Yes, indeed. Is there any other pinball stuff that we missed? Yeah, we took a week off, folks. Sorry about that.
    33:39
    Well, sad news is that my garage is now empty. I know I have a pinball machine in there. It was picked up on the weekend. Ed came and picked it up. So there's a big empty hole. There's a void in my life. In your heart and in your garage. That's right. Now, you know, it's important to understand that most of the things on this table weren't working. So most of the rubber contact surfaces in this game were driven by auxiliary driver boards. And those boards were not guaranteed to be working properly. So I had them disconnected to make sure that it didn't take out anything on the main board. So pop bumpers weren't working. And pretty much all the leaf switches that were behind rubbers weren't working, which is the majority of the switches, basically. So the only switches that were working were the drop targets and the two leaf switches that were on the drop target bank. So essentially what was happening is that in a normal game of that era, if it wasn't for the big drop target assembly, all the other switches would just be wired up around the outside to that particular part of the circuit. But because there was so much extra stuff, they had to add extra boards in to drive the rest of the stuff on the table. A little bit like Star Trek The Next Generation with its auxiliary coil boards and stuff like that. It's very similar to that.
    35:00
    So yeah, a lot of the stuff wasn't working. That being said, though, the flippers were working. all the rollover switches were working because they're part of the core game board and that still allowed us to flip it really well and give it a good play and just play the drop targets basically so yeah it even with half the stuff not working on the table it was still very fun to play and very fun to have a pinball machine in the garage that we could just turn on put eight credits on and just go and take turns on. The kids loved it. Awesome. Yeah, it sort of makes me want one. No, you didn't want one before.
    35:38
    Well, no, I wanted one, but it sort of makes me go, you know, there might actually be a justification to have one of these. But unfortunately, the quality of the ones that are available here that I've talked about at length before is not really reflective of the price that I want to pay for one of that quality. So that's always been a blocker for me. I just like if I was to do it I just need to reset my expectations and just you know deal with it basically I don't think I'm really there yet there's other things I could spend two thousand dollars on we need a really generous donor that is a listener that goes I think these guys need some machines a lot of machines let's just let's just create to their house look I would even be I would be happy and this is a genuine offer, and you'll probably laugh at this, but I know there's some collectors out there that actually do have storage issues, and they go, we've actually got nowhere to put these things. So if that is a genuine problem for you, and you want somewhere that is safe, to actually is very safe to store the pinball machine, and you also want the pinball machine to be used periodically so the balls don't rust and they don't go into disrepair because they're not being used, then I do have space for one,
    36:56
    probably two. I could fit two in at a pinch. That, yeah, the location is safe. I know how to fix them, so if there was a problem, I could make them work for you again. Then when you're ready to pick them up or you want to move one out and put one in, then you could just swap them around and I could just store them here for you and just use it as basically a storage locker.
    37:21
    Ta-da! And it will be free for you to do this. That's the thing. It will be 100% free. Exactly. So all you might need to do is throw me a couple of rubbers here and there if one's break. But that's a lot cheaper than paying $100 a month for a storage locker. Right. So pretty good deal if you ask me. So if you're interested in that proposition, just let me know and send me a tweet, a DM on Twitter, and we can sort something out and it'll be worth your while. So there you go. I'm going to be exceedingly jealous if somebody takes you up on that offer.
    37:57
    It'll be pretty good. I'd be happy if someone used the space that I have just waiting for, just basically needs a pinball to go in it. So, yeah, take me up on the offer. I'd be happy to. A whole lot better than putting the machine, taking the legs off the machine, folding up the back box, and just putting it up somewhere where it just sits and, yeah. And rots. Rats potentially go and make a nest inside of it or water leaks onto it. Exactly. This is a lovely dry garage. It's well ventilated. It's a good storage location for a pinball machine. And there's two opportunities for people. I could try that with the guys at Farsight and say, hey, we've got a cabin in the next mountain over that could use some entertainment. And I know you guys have storage issues. So any of those machines that you just got in storage? you know just chuck them down here just put them up in here I'll make sure they don't go rusty for you and I'll do you a service for free absolutely free the other interesting thing that I'm entertaining at the moment is we have a new starter at Labrokes who in conversations told me that she has two pinball machines just now the boy was like oh I've got two pinball machines I said yeah hello new friend exactly it's like so how did you come to have these machines it's oh you know my father had them and you know they're just quite literally sitting in my house in the lounge room and i have to walk around them all the time said you know you could probably put them on site in lab brokes and get as part of like you know the office entertainment budget or whatever and like i don't know get i don't know a retainer each month for them and just have them on free play and like your dad could actually get a little bit of money for them and then if um you know anything broke he said he'd just pull into the retainer like the the money he's been getting each month and just fix him up i said you know if he was up for it he wouldn't even need to attend the site because i could probably fix most of the things for him and maintain them and clean them so he just puts them there collects the money and i take care of him so it seems like a pretty good deal, really. I would be going, if I had those two machines sitting around at home, not doing anything, I'd be going, yeah, just put them in there. Right.
    40:19
    It's possible that it might happen, but we've just got to make sure that where we put them, they're not going to disturb anyone too much, because they're noisy. You think?
    40:29
    The pinball machines are a Doctor Who and a Lethal Weapon 3. Very perfectly fine machines. I think Lethal Weapon's a good fit for lab rogues, because it's an easy machine to learn. It'd be good for people who haven't actually done it. and Doctor Who's fun when it's actually working. So that'll be great, both those two. Unfortunately, very loud.
    40:48
    And squawking Daleks is going to get very old for people who live down on the level that we're going to put them on. Well, you can always turn down the volume, but what you can't turn down the volume on is all the flippers and the outside lights. Those are nothing you can do about that. Well, I guess you could put some, maybe if you put some sound dampening material inside the cabinet.
    41:09
    Well, upstairs. I don't even know what that would do. And upstairs we actually have a room that was previously the studio where the media team used to do all their recording for the video spots. And that's completely soundproofed. So we do have an elevator in the building as well that we could probably wheel the pinball machines in and just put them in there. But, you know, that would be a logical location to put them. And you could also put like the Xbox up there as well and have like a media room.
    41:35
    Yeah. Fun time in the break room. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'd be doing every lunchtime for sure. I'd be going in there and just making sure the machines were working and operating within spec. Exactly.
    41:51
    Purely functional play, not enjoyable play, exactly. No, not in any way enjoyable. No, no. Purely looking at it from a is-the-thing-doing-what-it-should-be-doing perspective. Right. Times five. with probably four other people that are also looking at it as well.
    42:12
    So yeah, hopefully, we'll see what happens. It'll be cool if it worked. Stay tuned, folks, because Jared will be crowing about it if that does happen.
    42:22
    I would laugh. I would laugh so hard at somebody who said, yeah, that's a great idea. Here, here's two. Just leave them there. I'll collect them when I'm ready. I'll go, okay. And then a few months later, they're like, okay we're bored of these can we get some other ones in here sure yeah exactly that would be alright I would be okay with this it would be a very nice Christmas present if someone wanted to surprise and delight me for Christmas just give me a couple of pinball machines that I could just look after for you alrighty well we're gonna with that hopeful thought we're gonna call this session to an end we appreciate everybody listening to us. And make sure you check out the website blockadepinball.com. There you can catch up on past episodes, see timing notes, and websites that we happen to talk about sometimes in these podcasts.
    43:15
    Beyond that, we'll see what happens next week. I should note for people that this is that time of year where suddenly there will be gaps in weeks when we do podcasts because, you know, it gets holiday busy and sometimes we can't get our schedules coordinated. So if for some reason you don't hear from us for a week, that'd be the reason why. But we appreciate you all at the same, sticking around and finding us when we do post. Yeah. Thanks for listening.
    43:47
    Yeah. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter modes. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. with Remusement.com Sales, Restoration, Customization Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that BlackAid is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.