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Recommend Tables Like You Recommend Home Theatre Test Movies

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 6m·analyzed·Jul 3, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Blockade hosts recommend TPA demo tables using home theater test-disc philosophy.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss Pinball Arcade's recent releases and create a top-10 list of recommended tables for new players, using a home theater demo philosophy. They cover the Big Hurt (Gottlieb Premier baseball table) arriving in TPA, Indy 500's strengths and minor bugs, and recommend demonstration tables like Addams Family, Medieval Madness, Fireball/El Dorado, and Roadshow based on graphics quality, playability, and broad appeal across Steam and Android platforms.

Key Claims

  • Big Hurt is a Gottlieb Premier DMD table from the 1990s featuring an oscillating glove mechanism and grand slam shots

    high confidence · Jared describes the game's mechanics: 'Its main feature is this oscillating pitcher's glove or catcher's glove that moves across this ramp. And the idea is you can shoot left field, right field, or straight up the middle.'

  • Big Hurt has a center post that removes all risk from the game, and the ball return placement makes it too easy to trap cleanly on the flipper

    high confidence · Jared: 'So all the risk of this game is taken out with the center post' and 'Gottlieb drops it pretty much right at the very bottom of the return lane. So it just goes plop and then just neatly rests on your flipper.'

  • Indy 500 in TPA has a turbo lock ball detection bug where rapid sequential ball entries can cause the ROM to lose track of balls

    high confidence · Jared explains: 'if you're quick to shoot two balls into the turbo, and one of them makes it in, and then it senses that there's another ball in there, it thinks that it hasn't actually put the first ball into the turbo'

  • Farsight's Season 1 and 2 tables lack alpha panes on flashes, making them look 'flat and lifeless' compared to Season 3+ builds

    high confidence · Jared: 'pretty much all Season 1 and Season 2 tables don't have any alpha panes on the flashes, so they look flat and lifeless'

  • Medieval Madness had flipper gap inconsistencies that were eventually fixed through updates

    medium confidence · Chris: 'I know that this was flipper gate—remember the flipper gate on this table? The gap of the flippers?' Jared: 'the gap of the flippers was all wrong according to everybody, and the flippers weren't even.'

  • Big Shot has DX11 lighting issues where insert brightness changes noticeably at inopportune moments

    high confidence · Chris: 'all of a sudden, after you collect so many inserts, all of a sudden it will noticeably get brighter when it shouldn't have'

  • Bride of Pinbot suffers from baked-in dark room lighting that makes the playfield look 'muddy and horrible' despite the table being bright in real life

Notable Quotes

  • “Frank Thomas' Big Hurt. And Frank—instead of hot dog, it's a Frankfurter. So Frank Thomas.”

    Chris Freebus @ Early in episode — Humorous explanation of the TPA newsletter clue for the Big Hurt release

  • “I grew to hate this game because it was in our pinball league, and there's this one guy who I think listens to this podcast—he'll know who he is—who got colossal scores on this because he was just spamming the ramps over and over again.”

    Jared Morgan @ During Big Hurt discussion — Explains the game's poor design due to easy ramp returns and center post safety

  • “It's just boring. If I had one myself, I would actually modify the railings and cut them off and then re-rig them so that the ball dropped at the very top of the ramp, at the very top of the in-lane, because it's just boring otherwise.”

    Jared Morgan @ Big Hurt design criticism — Indicates willingness to modify a released game due to poor ball physics

  • “The difference that I'm finding with Indy 500 is, although it is a lot of flow, there is some catch-and-shoot moments going on.”

    Jared Morgan @ Indy 500 discussion — Explains why Indy 500 succeeds where No Fear fails despite similar speed/flow

  • “It's a little easier than the real thing. The ramps, specifically the right ramp...I can really get into a zone on it in this table, whereas on the real thing, me hitting ramps was like, 'Come on, it's right there. Why can't I hit it?'”

    Chris Freebus @ Indy 500 real vs digital comparison — Notes TPA's difficulty balancing vs real arcade machines

  • “It looks very, very digital and plastic, you might say.”

    Chris Freebus @ Indy 500 car model criticism — Criticism of low-detail 3D car model in upper right of Indy 500

  • “What tables should you recommend for them to purchase that are the best—call it demonstration tables?”

    Chris Freebus @ Demo table list introduction — Frames the episode's core concept: recommending TPA tables like home theater test movies

Entities

Chris Freebus (Shut Your Trap)personJared Morgan (The Australian)personBlockade Pinball PodcastorganizationPinball Arcade (TPA)productFarsight StudioscompanyWizardAmusement.comcompanyBig Hurt (Frank Thomas' Big Hurt)gameIndy 500gameAddams Familygame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade hosts using 'demo table' framework to guide new pinball players, applying home theater test-disc philosophy to pinball recommendations

    high · Chris explicitly frames recommendation list as 'demonstration tables' using home theater sound/picture demo concept

  • ?

    community_signal: Hosts acknowledge and work around platform differences (Steam vs. Android) when making recommendations, showing awareness of fragmented user base

    high · Chris: 'we're kind of basing this on what is good for both...Jared is primarily...exclusively—an Android user, and I'm exclusively now a user on Steam'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Pat Lawlor's design output consistently recommended and praised, suggesting dominant designer preference within host community

    medium · Chris: 'I could fill this entire list with nothing but Lawlor tables'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Platform-specific rendering inconsistencies between Steam DX11 and Android versions creating different player experiences on identical tables

    high · Big Shot lighting issues on Steam DX11 but looks 'great' on Android; Bride of Pinbot looks fine on PlayStation 3 but 'muddy' on Android

  • $

    market_signal: TPA pricing structure (full seasons vs. individual tables) creates friction for casual new players; recommendation list attempts to address purchasing confusion

    medium · Chris: 'Let's say they don't want to buy entire seasons. And who can blame them? The Steam sale has just ended'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.199

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com, sales, restoration, customization. you are listening to the blockade podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your crap he is jared morgan aka the australian g'day chris how you going mate uh this feels like deja vu but i'm doing good that's right yes we just had to we started the session this exact same way and then i had a technical difficulty and so we're starting the session again this way so take two rather than making Jared do some editing so yeah things are going well I've got the pizza and slurpee in the belly so I'm happy on that front but I'm rather shocked at the date I know it means nothing to you Australians but for us Fireworks Day July 4th is just right around the corner and that means that my boy is summer is halfway done which is frightening because it feels like it just started Right. So he's not going back to school just yet, right? He's got a bit more time off. Yeah, he's got until August 10th, which is just insane to me. See, when I went to school, we got out in mid-June, and then you didn't go back until the first week of September. Wow, that's a huge amount of time off. Yeah, right? It was good times, right? Yeah, totally. it's actually the same amount of time that he has off now, except for he gets off at the end of May and doesn't go back to school until August 10th now.
1:55
So it's still two and a half months, which is what I had. But the problem is that August to me is still summer. That's, that's still, it's ingrained in my brain that that's the time off. Right. And you know, summer movies are still coming out every year. It's still summer. It's not, summer's not over until September in my as far as I'm concerned so yeah usually when you hit July 4th that meant ah summer's just getting started now it's like wow summer's flying by what have you done yeah so it's a little a little freaky to me there but uh you know yeah I can get over it Yeah, exactly right. It'll be fine. So a couple of things have happened here. One of them we'll get into immediately. The other one we'll delay just slightly. But the Indy 500 has come out on TPA. Yes, it has. That is what we're going to get into a little bit later.

high confidence · Jared: 'they took it to a dark room...The playfield is quite light, and there's a lot of light tones on it. But it just looks muddy and horrible on this.'

  • Safecracker is a polarizing table that doesn't work as a demonstration game because many players dislike its gameplay style

    medium confidence · Chris: 'although it looks fine and plays fine, there's a lot of people that hate the way it plays. It's a polarizing table...if you were really trying to entice somebody with a table, this is not going to be the one.'

  • “Those of us that are home theater enthusiasts, there are plenty of movies that are absolutely terrible, terrible movies...But they've got some of the best sound for surround sound and fantastic picture quality.”

    Chris Freebus @ Demo table philosophy explanation — Establishes the framework for table recommendations

  • “I could fill this entire list with nothing but Lawlor tables.”

    Chris Freebus @ Roadshow discussion — Shows Chris's strong preference for Pat Lawlor's designs

  • “if you were really trying to entice somebody with a table, this is not going to be the one. Again, going back to the home theater equivalent, it would be the equivalent of, after you showing them a whole bunch of action sequences with nice, loud, awesome things, that then you throw in, I don't know, like Out of Africa, and you're like, 'Look at the beautiful scenery.'”

    Chris Freebus @ Safecracker criticism — Extended metaphor explaining why certain games work/don't work as demos despite technical quality

    • Medieval Madness
    game
    Fireballgame
    El Doradogame
    Roadshowgame
    Safecrackergame
    Bride of Pinbotgame
    Big Shotgame
    No Feargame
    Pat Lawlorperson
    Black Rosegame
    Elvira and the Party Monstersgame
    Victorygame
    Bally/Williams gamesproduct_category
    Season 3+ (TPA)product_line
    ?

    product_strategy: Safecracker's gameplay style makes it unsuitable as introductory demo material despite technical quality, establishing 'engagement appeal' as separate from technical build quality

    medium · Chris's extended metaphor comparing Safecracker to showing 'Out of Africa' after action sequences

  • ?

    product_strategy: Medieval Madness has received iterative improvements (bug fixes, graphic updates) over its TPA lifetime, addressing flipper gap and other issues

    medium · Jared: 'This one has received a fair few bug fixes along the years...I know that this was flipper gate—remember the flipper gate on this table?'

  • ?

    product_concern: Big Hurt (Gottlieb Premier) has poor game design due to center post safety mechanism and optimized ball return placement that eliminates risk and player engagement

    high · Jared: 'So all the risk of this game is taken out with the center post' and 'It's just boring...I would actually modify the railings'

  • ?

    product_concern: Farsight's Season 1-2 TPA tables have systematic visual quality issues (missing alpha panes, baked lighting, poor graphics) compared to Season 3+ releases

    high · Jared: 'pretty much all Season 1 and Season 2 tables don't have any alpha panes on the flashes, so they look flat and lifeless'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Indy 500 has turbo lock ball detection bug affecting ROM logic on rapid sequential ball entries

    high · Jared provides detailed technical explanation of ROM behavior when two balls are shot into turbo in quick succession

    • 2:55
    What we're going to get into right now is because it was announced in the newsletter. And, of course, once you get a newsletter, you get a hint. You get a clue. What the next table is going to be. So I literally, Jared, right before we started a session, pointed out, hey, newsletter came out. I was like, oh, I better look at that and see. So I looked at the newsletter and then we started this podcast. And so I was like, hey, what's that clue all about? Because it's a picture of a hot dog being added.
    3:27
    Thomas the Tank Engine. And then it's a picture of Tom Hanks, specifically the big poster, I believe. And being added to a picture of William Hurt. And I was like, what is that? Thomas Hurt? I don't know what. And Jared Sorelli went, well, is that him from Big? And I went, yeah, Big Hurt. And he was like, oh, it's Big Hurt. And I was like, I still have never heard that. You don't care? Right.
    3:54
    Yeah, Frank Thomas' Big Hurt. And Frank, instead of hot dog, it's a Frankfurter. So Frank Thomas, yeah. So, yay, Gottlieb premiere table. Well, you know what? Hey, at least they're getting it out of the way at the front of the season. Yes. So that way all the people that whenever a Gottlieb table comes out at the end of the season, they go, oh, if I had known that, I wouldn't have bought the season. Oh, it's a load of rubbish. Now congratulations, you're not going to buy the season because that's right off the top. You got your Gottlieb premiere being a giant stop sign to you.
    4:29
    Have you played this one much? No, I've never played it. I'm not familiar at all with that title. I was thinking when you first said it, isn't there a Stern game that's also a baseball theme?
    4:43
    Jeez, I don't know. Is it called – it was an early one. Was it – No, I mean it would be a DMD. I don't know. I don't think so, which is kind of unusual if you think about it. Well, maybe in Sega. Maybe I'm thinking Sega.
    4:59
    Yeah. What was it called? Not Smashball, but I forget the name of it. It was something baseball themed, I'm sure. Yeah, I think you're right. You know what would help? See, we had a problem getting this session going on Blab, so we switched to Google Hangouts today. And if it were on Blab, then we'd have our peanut gallery being able to answer this for us, but instead we're not able to.
    5:22
    Yeah, well, that's exactly right, yeah. But that's okay. see now I'm feeling like a pinball idiot and I don't want to feel like doing a Google search right now Slugfest but that's a Williams it's a baseball pinball machine and it's 1992 so it's like a pitch and bet sort of game well and that's just what I was when you first said the title I was like oh are we getting a pitch and bet this is a Gottlieb from the 1950s and it's a pitch and bet well, wouldn't that be unique to us? That'd be pretty cool, yeah. Right, but instead it's a Gottlieb Premier, and I'm not excited about that in the least. So this game, because I have a bit spent youth, I did manage to play this game when it was fresh out of the box back in the 90s. Yeah. Because it's a 90s era being a Gottlieb Premier. And DMD, its main feature is this oscillating pitcher's glove or catcher's glove that moves across this ramp.
    6:29
    And the idea is you can shoot left field, right field, or straight up the middle. And the ramp has this pop-up ramp in the middle that allows you to get a grand slam. And that's pretty much how you score in this game. You get grand slams and it goes off its nuts when you get it. Like the whole thing just lights up and the commentator goes off his head. And yeah, it's fun. if you have never played it before you'll go oh that's pretty cool and then you know you'll do another 10 times and you go okay i'm a bit over this now so um the the good thing about it is though the pitchers that the pitchers glove or the catcher's glove is actually spring-loaded so if you're playing this on like a brand new shopped gotley with super strong flippers and everything it really is a strategy to avoid the glove because that glove will get you rocketing back towards the flippers at a rapid rate but the other thing is that this game has a center post in it because of that reason so all the risk of this game is taken out with the center post I grew to hate this game because It was in our pinball league, and there's this one guy who I think listens to this podcast, he'll know who he is, who got colossal scores on this because he was just spamming the ramps over and over again. And it's not that he was, you know, trying to abuse anything at all with the table. It's just the way this table is. Because when the ball returns to the flipper from either the sort of left field or right field, it goes pretty much right near the flipper. So you can always catch it no matter what. So you know how on a lot of Bally Williams games, the ball, if it comes off a ramp, it returns right at the very top of the in lane. Yeah. and then rolls down over the switch and then sort of goes towards your flipper. So you do have to do a bit of jiggling to get it to rest on that flipper if you want to trap it. Well, God leaves drop it pretty much right at the very bottom of the return lane. So it just goes plop and then just neatly rests on your flipper. So it's just boring. If I had one myself, I would actually modify the railings and cut them off and then re-tig them so that the ball dropped at the very top of the ramp, at the very top of the in-lane, because it's just boring. otherwise.
    8:58
    I did a quick Google search so I could actually see what this looks like. Yes, I do see Big Hurt and all that. Then I did a Google search of just baseball pinball.
    9:11
    That's the only modern table I've ever seen pop up. Everything else is flipping back. This very well might be the table that I was thinking of as being a Sega table. yeah it's got some modes in it it's got the usual Gottlieb Premier modes which I think is about 6 because that's the cap of what their system allowed them to put into a game but it's all about getting the home runs and progressing through the game that way it's just a classic Gottlieb Premier really well the good news is at least Farsight is being timely and having this come out during baseball season.
    9:55
    See, I wouldn't have no clue about that. That's actually a good thing to release now. That's a good idea. So,
    10:03
    Farsight, if you're listening, that means that you have from November until June to make sure that we get the... Oh, God, now I'm drawing a complete... NBA Fast Break. Thank you very much. I was going to mention that today, too. NBA Fast Break, yes. So now we've got the big hurt. I need my NBA. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and just for the fun of it, give us Monday Night Football from Daddy East. And we know the soccer table is coming. Let's cover all sports, huh? So this is basically, this will be the sports ball season. Exactly. If they do that. Instead of the season of the designer, we'll have the season of the sports. and we can get our, you know, hey, you want another Gottlieb? Let's get Gottlieb 300 so we have our bowling table in there. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know. Yeah, you could actually make this a sports-themed season. Maybe that's what they're going for. I don't know. Hey, if we started with Indy 500, why not, right? You know, car racing and... Car racing, baseball. Car racing, baseball, football, basketball, soccer.
    11:14
    And Doctor Who. Doctor Who that's right we'll call that let's see what would be decidedly English do the English play cricket I know you guys play cricket we play cricket yeah we play cricket there you go yeah we can't even there's no way we can work out how Doctor Who fits into the sports season it's nothing we got nothing that's it that is an interesting idea they could actually make it a sports season season. That'd be pretty cool. So since we brought it up,
    11:50
    Indy 500 is out. I played it a whole mess just yesterday. Did you get a chance to play it yet, Jared? Yes. Well, it has been released on Android, and we had a limited beta on it, because I was also putting in some extra things for the UI as well. There's been a lot of cleanup happening in that as well. I'm seeing as an aside, more and more control support getting added into it, so that's a positive thing. But yes, let's talk a little bit more about Indy 500 before I launch. Indy 500.
    12:20
    I am having a blast with it. I'll just say that. It's such a fast, flowy table, isn't it? It is a very, very fast and flowy table. But what I like about it is that because I also, I've been going on a kick of trying to knock off some wizard goals from season five.
    12:37
    No fear. Very fast, flowy table. Don't enjoy it at all. It's just not having fun with it. And the difference that I'm finding with Indy 500 is, although it is a lot of flow, there is some catch-and-shoot moments going on. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of Black Rose.
    12:58
    Specifically, that shot all the way up at the top center of the table. Oh, the broadside shot. It's the broadside shot. And here we have it again. This is what you've got to go in to get your extra ball and to one of the ways that you can start a mode in this. It's a bit like Elfire and the Party Monsters as well, right? Because it has that hole as well Right, so it's a very, very long shot straight up the middle There's also a couple of catch and shoot moments with hitting the I'm not sure what they're calling the light targets, I believe Oh, the stand-ups Yeah, the wall, I think they call them Yeah, where it hits a square target that has four small lights on it. You hit it four times, you light that four times, basically. Yeah. It shows your progression on that.
    13:52
    And then also, the flow of it is very cool because there's a couple of different shots. You can flow right into the loops. You can flow right into the ramps. You can flow right into the ball lock.
    14:04
    Yeah, that's good. The turbo loop combo is pretty fun to do. once you nail it and you get the timing right. You just go shoot and then straight into the turbo. You get good points for it too a lot of the time. The thing that I'm most appreciative of this is, and I mentioned it many podcasts ago when I was griping about Victory. I don't have a problem with Victory's layout. I have a problem with Victory's rules or lack thereof. Yeah, that's right. Indy 500 takes care of all that. To me, it has the hurry-ups. It has the flow shots just going over and over again. It really does the racing theme very, very well. It does, yeah. And the sound effects that go along with it are fantastic. This is one of the noisier tables going, though. It is. Have you ever played one of these in the arcade? Yes. Yeah, what about that rocker motor, that thing at the top right-hand corner? Boy, does it make a noise when it rolls on the real game. Well, not only do you have that making noise, but you have the turbo lock, which once it has a ball on it, it's constantly spinning. That's not always making a noise. And then you've got the sound effects just going on of the high-pitched squeal of cars going by. F1 squeal, yeah. Yeah. It's really good. And your announcers and everything else like that. I mean, it is a noisy, noisy machine. It's kind of good, though, because if you think about it, you're at the F1. If you're at an F1 race, it's all just noise all the time. So it kind of captures that. It's difficult to capture that sort of thing in a pinball machine. But with the mechanical elements in this game, they've kind of done that, which is pretty cool. Yeah. I will say, as is typical, it's a little easier than the real thing.
    15:55
    The ramps, specifically the right ramp. so if you're coming off of the habit trail on the left side drops into the left flipper and then you can shoot the right ramp it's almost I don't know I can really get into a zone on it in this table whereas on the real thing me hitting ramps was like come on it's right there why can't I hit it I agree it's pretty brutal in real life that table.
    16:29
    The ball seems to just rock it They not vacuum ramps because I had plenty of balls come right back down the ramp So that good on Farsight They not making it just oh you touch the ramp the ball going up No they come back down all the time And on this particular table, it's particularly dangerous for a center drain when they come back down. Yeah, they are a little bit dicey when it comes back down the wrong way. I agree. It's got some dangerous elements to it.
    16:57
    Yeah, overall, very good. I'm not happy with the modeling job that they did of the car that spins around in a loop on the upper right-hand side of the table. Yeah. It's a very low-res.
    17:15
    It lacks detail. Yeah, it really lacks detail. And because of it lacking detail, it looks just kind of slapped on. even when you go into tail exploration mode that's when you can really see that they didn't detail that car there's no shadow on the car um it looks very very digital and plastic you might say yeah what about the um what what's the uh car like on the lower left where it diverts and locks the ball for a pit lane is that looking okay to you it looks okay again it could be modeled a little bit more detailed, but it at least looks okay.
    17:53
    Yeah. I don't spend a lot of time staring at that one. When I trap a ball in there on Android, it jiggles quite a bit. Is that how it works on Steam as well? It does some jiggling. We were having some issues of it not diverting the ball and getting stuck. They fixed the collision issue on that, although I have managed to get two balls stuck there. You know that there is actually a bug, like a ROM issue on this table as well, that's not really fast. So, you know, if you're quick to shoot two balls into the turbo, and one of them makes it in, and then it senses that there's another ball in there, it thinks that it hasn't actually put the first ball into the turbo, so it will actually try and load a second ball into the same slot in the turbo, and it will just spin around, and it won't recognize that there's actually an extra ball in there, and it will go, yep, there's no lost ball. Everything's fine. Oh, I wonder if that's what's happened a couple of times because then it goes into ball search mode and eventually spits it out.
    18:59
    Yeah, I think it will eventually, if it's detecting no action on the play field, it'll just spin the turbo and both balls will come out again. But I had it on Android where I did two really quick shots into the turbo trying to get like a, I think it was a super jackpot and I managed to go, yeah, I'll just nail both these balls in there. And the first one went in cleanly, and then the second one just dropped into its place, and the turbo didn't spin, because the way the ROM works is it will go, shoot the ball up, once it detects the ball is in the turbo, it will spin around like one slot, and then continue holding the ball, and it's spinning turbo. You won't see my finger, because I have my camera on at the moment. But it's spinning around, and then once it gets another ball in there, basically the ROM software will go, right, vacant slot, spit the ball in. Once the ball's loaded, it will then go, cool, I'm going to spin again. And it does lose track of the ball in the real-life table as well sometimes. So it's not so much a bug with Farsight. It's actually a bug with how the ROM handles the balls in that assembly. That's always the tricky thing with these tables is determining what is a software bug for Farsight and what is a ROM bug for the actual table. It can get kind of frustrating, especially if you don't have your own table sitting there in your living room that you can compare it again. You're just playing going off of memory.
    20:24
    Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so with this table, it got me thinking, just because it looks pretty good, and it's playing really good, and it's fun.
    20:36
    Again, Farsight's been doing fairly well with their table builds from Season 3 on. But it got me thinking about when you have somebody who has either never played pinball in general or is brand new to digital pinball. You know, so maybe they've played quite a bit of pinball in real life, but digital pinball. And you have your phone or you have them over your house at your computer and you're like, hey, have you seen this app? Have you heard of this app, TPA? Inevitably, people always be like, oh, no, what is that? And then you show them a couple of things. They're like, oh, that's pretty cool. Right. At first glance, they're kind of blown away and usually like it and stuff. So then inevitably the question becomes, well, what table should I buy? Yeah, that's right. Now, let's say they don't want to buy entire seasons.
    21:31
    And who can blame them? The Steam sale has just ended, and they don't want to spend $40, $30 or $40 just for one season, especially if there's a couple of different tables that they're interested in that are spread across many different seasons. So we decided to help everybody out.
    21:51
    What tables should you recommend for them to purchase that are the best, call it demonstration tables? And what I mean by that is we used to, those of us that are home theater enthusiasts, there are plenty of movies that are absolutely terrible, terrible movies. They are not good in the least. The stories are just a mess. The acting is hilarious. But they've got some of the best sound for surround sound and fantastic picture quality for, you know, showing off your gigantic TV. So you show them a scene and you're like, isn't that awesome? And it's pure eye candy and ear candy, right? So that's what we're going for with our top ten list of tables to recommend. This is what your eye candy and ear candy are. These tables that we're going to mention have probably the fewest bugs, at least as far as we're concerned.
    22:43
    Yep. User mileage may vary. That's right. Platforms may vary. Yeah, platforms may vary, but we're kind of basing this on what is good for both. So Jared is primarily, well, I think exclusively an Android user, and I'm exclusively now a user on Steam. So between those two, we kind of feel like we're covering both consoles and the mobile market in combination. And we agreed on both of these because there were some tables that I said, oh, this is really great on Steam. And Jared was like, oh, it's terrible on Android. So the following tables. Yes, the following tables we think are pretty dang good demonstration and good recommendations. If somebody's asking you, hey, what should I buy? Feel free in recommending these, and I don't think people will come back and hurt you.
    23:33
    They shouldn't. If they do, there's something wrong with them. It's their problem, not yours. That's right.
    23:42
    So let's go ahead and start off kind of the safest, easiest choice. which is Adam's family. Yeah, absolutely. This is very well implemented. It's very well implemented. It's graphic-wise, Farsight did a great job. Lighting-wise, in DX11, they did a great job. Bug-wise, I don't think there's any major issues going on with it. No.
    24:10
    Like Android, the lighting is perfectly fine in Android. They've got decent alpha bloom on the flashes, and it doesn't look like nuked like some of the tables do. It's well-balanced. The lighting's good for mobile, and, yeah, it plays well. Very few bugs. And then on top of that, even for the pinball noob, most people that have any clue about pinball have played or seen an Adventist family table. So it's a safe, you know, slide-you-in kind of table. Yeah, absolutely.
    24:41
    Next table, Medieval Madness. Oh, yes. Now, what's interesting about this was this was, I believe, Farsight's first DLC content after the initial four-pack.
    24:55
    It was. Yeah, I think it was. It was the first table pack, and it came out with Bride of Pimbot, didn't it? Yes. I think. Yeah, it was Bride of Pimbot. And at the time, everybody flipped their wigs over Bride of Pimbot of, wow, doesn't that look awesome? As opposed to nobody was thinking that Medieval Madness looked that awesome. this one has received a fair few bug fixes along the years it's got some bug fixes, it's gotten some graphic fixes I believe too yeah it has I think they've cleaned some things up on it and I know that this was flipper gate remember the flipper gate on this table the gap of the flippers yeah the gap of the flippers was all wrong according to everybody and the flippers weren't even and it was oh my god you thought the world was ending it's kind of a quaint complaint nowadays don't you think yeah well yeah this table plays very well um as far as being faithful to the original um yep it's fast just like the original um and it's fun it's packed full of humor um it's got tina fey in it so what more can you really want yeah and i mean again it's one of those tables that, and surprisingly, most of this list does not contain tables from the first and second season, because a lot of those tables have bugs or bad graphics, or there's something messed up with them enough that you kind of go, well, that's not exactly demo quality. It's not that, again, this is not a comment on the gameplay itself. This is a comment on the build.
    26:29
    The gameplay is purely gravy with what this list is being put forth. That's right. Yeah, it's funny because with it being a pack, though, and the person getting Bride of Pinbot, at least with the DX11 lighting, Bride of Pinbot's not that fantastic.
    26:48
    It suffers from them overlaying on top of what they already worked on, but they worked on it with the idea of kind of making it look like it was in a certain room environment rather than just being… Oh, yeah, they baked it to lighting, so they took it to a dark room. Yes. And it just looks, this is one of those tables on Android that needs a complete facelift to make it look like the Season 3 onwards quality. Like it's, there's zero alpha panes. In fact, pretty much all Season 1 and Season 2 tables don't have any alpha panes on the flashes, so they look flat and lifeless.
    27:24
    And this table looks like it's covered in chrome dirt. Like it just looks dirty in the way that they've photographed it. And this table in real life is actually quite bright. Like, the play field is quite light, and there's a lot of light tones on it. But it just looks muddy and horrible on this.
    27:43
    And again, it depends on the format, because I always thought that it looked really great on PlayStation 3.
    27:49
    So that's why it's, like I say, bright a pinball, that's just a bonus to getting Medieval Madness. But bright a pinball is certainly not your demo table. No. so table number three to recommend for purchasing to somebody is the combo pack of Fireball and El Dorado yes EM's everyone needs an EM in their collection I think everybody should try them because again if you're recommending it to somebody who knows what their style of table is you know they may say that they love DMD's and then all of a sudden they play Fireball and they're like wow this is really pretty fun yeah exactly yeah so this out of all the ems in the collection by far these are the two finest ones and both of them are good representations of what uh farsight can do with with pinball in tv um they both are lit very well they both graphically look nice the physics on both of them are really good and again all you have to do is compare eldorado to eldorado city of gold and you can see what a difference the tuning is between the two of them. Yes. It's notable. Yeah. And you'll get much more enjoyment playing the original Gottlieb EM version of that table. Yeah. Just the way it holds the drop targets over between balls is much more satisfying than having them reset on you, as we've talked about in past podcasts. And Fireball itself is a unique table with the zipper flippers.
    29:19
    And it's worth the cost of admission alone just to try that out because it changes the way you play the pinball. Zipper flippers, you've got a spinner in the middle, and both of them, chimes. You've got to have chimes at some point. Useable chimes. Right. So, again, that'll help. I think Big Shot is an honorable mention here, too. Big Shot is good fun to play as well. No, it's not.
    29:43
    I think it is. This is probably back and forth between me and Jared would have happened, where I just go, you, Big Shot, I hate you. Because I don't think Big Shot, to me, lighting-wise, Again, I play it exclusively DX11. The lighting in DX11 is jacked up because the inserts, they don't light with the same intensity, and all of a sudden, after you collect so many inserts, all of a sudden it will noticeably get brighter. When it shouldn't have, it should have always been an even brightness. When Farsight was first doing the conversion to DX11, it would appear that their art team missed a few inserts because I'm not going to get into it, but it's across a couple of tables where things are lit perfectly fine one moment, and then all of a sudden you activate something else, and all of a sudden it dims, and you're like, well, what the heck just happened?
    30:34
    Okay. See, on Android it looks great because we don't have any of those issues with dynamic lighting. Like, it looks... The way they baked the lighting in on that table looks really, really nice. Yeah. And crisp, like the graphics on it are really, really crisp for the season that it was in at the time with the technology they had. It's a very sharp-looking table. Right. So, yeah, that's a point of difference between us on that one. Yep. But we can agree on Fireball and El Dorado. Absolutely. Those two are great. Next up. So we had some debate about this, too, because the table we're going with is Roadshow.
    31:13
    Yes. I said my problem is I could fill this entire list with nothing but Lawler tables. And I kind of did the same, I think, really, when I first picked my tables. And Jared had picked Safecracker, and I love talking him down from that, saying that although it looks fine and plays fine, there's a lot of people that hate the way it plays. It's a polarizing table. It is a very polarizing table.
    31:37
    And so it's not a knock on the build itself, but more a knock on if you were really trying to entice somebody with a table, this is not going to be the one. Again, going back to the home theater equivalent, it would be the equivalent of after you showing them a whole bunch of action sequences with nice, loud, awesome things that then you throw in, I don't know, like out of Africa and you're like, look at the beautiful scenery. And the person's like, really, this is demo material. I can care less. Show me explosions. Yep. So yeah, explosions. Yeah. Safecracker isn't really explosions table, except when you get the token running down the table, which is hard to do. Like, let's be serious. It is hard. It is. So anyway, we decided to go with Roadshow.
    32:23
    Again, it's a nice wide body. Nice wide body, which you've got to experience what that feeling is like in TPA.
    32:30
    Yep. It's, again, crisp graphics, really nice audio package, and the physics are pretty dang good on it. They are. Yeah, they are pretty good. It's got heaps and heaps of things to do on that table. It's got a really deep rule set. Exactly. It's a good one to have in your actual... real collection if you have pinball machines because of its depth. But yeah, on TPA, it's, it's translates really, really well. Nice job on that one. Farsight, I think. Not to mention that then you get the creepy talking heads that I sure somebody will be like I seen that before And you know I think they got a name for that actually I think it actually called Pintronics I think the heads are called
    33:15
    I just call them creepy heads. Creepy heads. All right, moving on. Our next choice, and again, me and Jared, we don't necessarily care for the table, but it looks good. Jackbot.
    33:35
    So I think I say I'm not a fan necessarily of the layout. I specifically do not enjoy Pinbot at all.
    33:44
    But Jackbot, being the same layout, I do get a kick out of it, and I do think that, again, the presentation of it is really good. The lighting is fantastic. The graphics are nice and crisp. The audio package comes through clear as a bell. I don't know of any bugs. And one of the big complaints with Pinbot was if you get the ball stuck in the bumpers, it would just shoot them out to your left out lane like nine times out of ten, it felt like. And so that would just become the source of frustration. And Jackbot doesn't. They tuned it better. So it's not that horrendous. That's right. There is subtle tuning changes in Jackbot, which make it a lot more fun to play. And it's all really about the casino run in that game, isn't it? That's the exciting part, like gambling and trying to avoid the bombs and using the cheats in it. I was going to say the gambling aspect adds to it. And then on top of that, with it being just a reskin of Pinbot, again, you've got the people that maybe they were familiar with Pinbot, and they see Jackbot, and their memory is fuzzy. But they're like, oh, yeah, I remember that visor thing. Oh, yeah. And so, again, you're hitting two birds with one. No, yeah. You're essentially hitting two eras with this particular choice. So you'll get the people from the 80s that had a misspent youth, and then you'll get the people that have only been in the arcades in the late 90s. And so that's a good bridging to get people, oh, yeah, I remember this sort of thing. Yeah. Exactly. That's right.
    35:12
    Moving on, we went with Dracula. Now, we had to debate a fair bit about this, didn't we? Yes, we did. We did. I'm one of those people that I think the art, and this is all related to the real machine. I hate the art of the real machine. I don't care for the gameplay.
    35:31
    I don't like the machine personally, but you got to admit the farce I did a good job on it. Yeah, this table probably, it's very, very crisp, the graphics on it, even on mobile.
    35:46
    The missed multi-ball is a cool feature that surprises you the first time you see it. And the stackable nature of the multiballs in this game gives it the longevity that it needs. If you can get a triple stack on this, you get a huge amount of points. And that's really fun to achieve that too.
    36:07
    The physics on it are pretty spot on. Again, it plays like the real machine. It does. And so again, if you're using it for demo purposes, trying to get somebody, entice somebody, and have them walk away going, hey, good recommendations to me, thank you. I think that's one of those, it's a safe bet.
    36:27
    Yeah, I think so. I think this is a pretty good one to choose. Moving on some more, we go with, hey, look at this, another lightning flipper table, fishtails.
    36:36
    Fishtails, yeah. This one was one that we sort of just, when we were debating the tables, we went, how about fishtails? And pretty much at the same time, we came to the same conclusions that, yeah, you know what, this is actually a pretty fun game. It's of that era where it was all about, you know, locking the balls, getting the multi-ball, and, you know, maybe doing a few modes. There was a video mode in this, very much like the Getaway High Speed 2 sort of rule set. It's all about multi-ball driven with a few sort of distractions along the way. But, you know, getting Rock the Boat on this game, really getting the scores going with the cross ramps is a hell of a lot of fun. Right, you've got to have your Mark Ritchie cross ramps at some point. you've totally got to get the double cross yep absolutely and the other cool thing is if you have a weak shot up the boat which is the big centre feature of this game of course you get a U-turn so if it goes back the other way you get like this U-turn so they really thought well from a real perspective about utilising every single aspect of what the table could do physically and sort of gave you things that you could sort of aim for in the game based on that so it's well implemented but the lightning flippers on this game. For the record, I think this game was designed to use full-length flippers, but when it went to the European market, they demanded that it have lightning flippers, and that's kind of what they shipped them out as. So, yeah, it's brutal because of that. So, quick game times. When you find this table out in the wild, the playfield is usually just beat to crap.
    38:10
    Yeah, usually, because it's very fun to play. Well, and it's also just, I think, how the ball comes off of the boat U-turn and everything else like that. The fish in the front of that are always just scraped up, faded.
    38:25
    Very frequently, the playfields just beat. And this one was even a playfield that had the automotive clear coat called Diamond Plate on it. And even with that, it's still getting beaten up. So, this game's got a hammering, usually, in its lifetime. Because it's just very accessible to play. And that's why it's a good table to recommend. Yeah, it's nice because all of a sudden it's like, oh, this is how it should have played. Oh, okay, isn't that wonderful? Or this is how it should look. That's right.
    38:53
    So the final table that me and Jared came up with a consensus on, and we'll have two more following single picks of our own, was Whitewater.
    39:01
    Yes. Now, the tricky thing with Whitewater is that the audio package is not good, but that's not Farsight's problem. That's Williams' problem. The ROM had really crackly and poppy voice samples in it. And I remember in beta we were going, geez, what have you done to the sound of this? And he goes, nothing. This is how it actually comes in the ROM. Like, it's just how it is. It's terrible. When they compressed the audio on it. I mean, this was a pre-DCS game as well. So you don't have the digital aspect of it. It's all analog audio. And they just messed up the compression on it when they were doing it. The part that makes this such a fun table to recommend to people is the left ramp, habitrail, whatever you want to call it, the falls. And just watching that ball go, it's such a – it's one of those things that when you finally get the ball to go up there and ride along it, it's like, yes! I mean, you just feel good doing that. It's a cool shot. And, you know, the whirlpool is cool as well, how it disappears and goes out somewhere else. If you haven't played this game before and you make that shot, you go, where's the ball going to come out of? and then you see the mountains start flashing and then it rockets out of that up-kicker eject to your right flipper and scares the bejeebers out of you. It did for me, at least, when I was playing. I went, whoa, jeez, where'd that come from? Now, I will say, if you're playing this in DX11, turn the bulb brightness way the heck down.
    40:33
    Farsight unfortunately nuked this table with the bulb brightness. I think I have mine down at like 10%. The bulbs still flash. You can still see everything lighting-wise, but now you can actually read what the inserts say.
    40:50
    Also, it completely blows out the inserts if you had it up too high. Yeah, they had it up too high. It was blowing out the inserts. I've come across this now and then on a few tables. I actually just turned Indy's bulbs down also.
    41:04
    Me being a person that works in camera, I don't like it when things blow out. They shouldn't be that way. It's not that way in real life. So I will turn the bulbs down until it looks like a natural lighting situation with the bulbs. Still with the benefits of a DX11 lighting system, but just not with the nuking. Exactly, because I'm still turning down the environmental room lighting way the heck down too. I usually write mine at 20%, sometimes 15%. So it's still like a really dark room. No, it's not terribly dark. It's call it twilight.
    41:42
    OK, so you can still you can still see things on the table that aren't lit, but not not to the point where it's like nice and bright. It's just, you know, you understand that it's there. part of that is that like on tables such as Champion Pub or Funhouse or even Roadshow those big toys should be fully lit you should be able to see them even though they don't have a light necessarily shining directly on them they should be lit by the insert that's on the bottom and the way that Farsight has designed their lighting program the lighting throw the throw of the lighting does not go far enough and so So the surfaces should be reflective and catch glints of lighting and give you it. And especially on Champion Pub, you don't see anything. I've complained about this numerous times. So I turn up the lighting in the room just enough that I can still make out what is there, but still keeping that nighttime-ish because I want the light show. Yeah, it's got to be dazzling. Like when the flash is going off, you want to do what flash is supposed to do and make you a little bit, yeah, a little bit sort of dazed. Exactly. That's what they're designed to do. Exactly. Everything in a pinball is designed to make your ball drain, even the lighting. You've got to remember that. So that's why you see Stern pinballs with their LED flashes now, which are practically blinding in a dark room. Yeah. It's so much so that on Game of Thrones, there are actually two settings in the settings to turn down the intensity of the light show, purely because of epileptic issues. like it's that bad that you will trigger an epileptic attack if you're susceptible to it. So they had to actually have an option to dial it back a bit. So, Jared, what is your final pick for tables to recommend?
    43:31
    Oh, geez, what was it again? I forget what I said it was. You were really wanting to say either Safecracker or Champion Pub.
    43:37
    Yeah, it was, for me, it was Champion Pub, I think, because it's another one of those games that has so many cool toys and things to muck around with, like the boxing bag and this jump rope and the massive dude in the middle that punches back at you and you can do an uppercut on him and all that sort of stuff. There's a lot of stuff you can do in this game, and it really has the theme of a 1930s brawler boxing rink, like a fight club-style tournament thing. Really down well. They've done the theming beautifully. The voice work in it is great. So is your recommendation for the table itself or for Farsight's build?
    44:23
    Because that was my argument against it was Farsight's build. Again, what I just said about the lighting in DX11 is not good. I know people complained on PlayStation that the jump rope mechanism doesn't work as it should, that it's very buggy in that respect.
    44:41
    I haven't really found a lot of trouble with the jump rope assembly at all. Like it works fine. I can get up to like 13 or 14 jumps on it. No problem at all. So for me, that works well.
    44:53
    Everything seems to be okay from what I see. I haven't really encountered any big bugs with this table at all. So on mobile, it plays really well. Okay. So that was why I was talking Jared down from it, but we'll let Jared have his pick. Jared, if I'm going to talk you down from my pick, my choices were between Centaur and High Speed. and I wound up going with high speed because I think even in DX9, the lighting, that was the first time that Farsight actually programmed in the table to go dark when all the lights turn off, which they'd never attempted to do that. I don't know what they did. They almost forced a dark pane on top of it until the lights came back on, but it really captured the effect of what that table is all about. on top of them capturing the speed of it. And I've played it a couple of times, and when that upper flipper doesn't have the proper strength or there's something misaligned on the table, it just totally ruins the table. And so Farsight having it tuned correctly to work,
    46:05
    to me it shows off that table. But you said that you found it to be soulless. it is absolutely so awesome mobile because as you say it's all about the light show that era of table like relied on the light show to draw players in and of course without any dynamic lighting on android at all it's flat and it's lifeless and really boring but that's what I'm saying the non-dynamic lighting version dx9 they still managed to pull that off on steam so you're saying that they didn't pull that off on android no table does not dim or do any sort of we don't have any sort of dynamic lighting apart from like alpha bloom on the flashes where we have a little sort of yeah extra sort of haze around the things there's nothing all right so anyway those are our 10 tables that we feel that you could recommend safely to somebody enough to entice them to then maybe go all right i'll buy seasons or hey can you tell me some more tables if they ask you some more tables here are the 10 or well i don't even know if it's 10 uh call it the uh six worst tables that you could possibly recommend to somebody to try out in TPA.
    47:10
    We're going to start with the most obvious. Do not recommend going nuts. No, do not. It's not the one you want. It's hateable. And again, it's not necessarily having to do with anything that Farsight did on this. Although somewhat you can blame Farsight on certain aspects of it, but it's just a terrible table.
    47:33
    It's paired with Flight 2000, which at first I did a good job on it, other than the fact that Flight 2000 has just a bunch of railroad Yeah, you can see that it's terrible. I enjoy the game. I do play it, but it's just you can see the visible railroads coming into effect when you're playing it. So don't recommend going on Sword of Flight 2000. The other obvious one, don't recommend Black Knight. because Black Knight is, as we all know, it's not emulated. It's got bugs up the wazoo. It's got terrible art that Farsight did fix because, I don't know,
    48:18
    many of you that have been listening to us for a long time remember the prefixed version of Black Knight where it looks like somebody has started a fire on the table.
    48:26
    It had burnt areas. Now, here's the thing. You might be tempted to recommend somebody to buy Black Knight because it's paired with Creature from the Black Lagoon.
    48:39
    But again, Creature, bad for demo purposes because it's got the back of ramp. It's got really kind of shady audio. It's got terrible graphics on any of the raised, like the brazed plastic above the slingshots. It's out of focus. It's fuzzy.
    48:59
    Bad, bad. It's not a good look. No, it needs an R package big time, and it's got some, I don't want to call them railroads, but very predictable ball bouncing.
    49:11
    Yes. Especially if you've ever played the real machine, that table is wild and crazy and hard to manage, and doing something like move your car should not be anywhere near as easy as it is in the TPA. No, because that middle lane is, if you don't get a good direct shot up it, it rattles around and it'll come straight back down the middle. It's brutal. I used to joke that the creature was one of those tables that even though I hated the presentation of it I still enjoyed playing it and so it was like hate playing I had this weird dichotomy going on where it was just like, God, I really don't, I shouldn't like this table, but I'm enjoying playing it all the same, but it's just not a good build. I wish they would do better on it. Anyway, don't recommend either of those. Black Knight and Going Nuts, those table packs, just stay far away. Don't recommend those to anybody.
    50:07
    don't recommend Circus Voltaire. No, I really wish that it was one that we could, but it's such a shame because it's a fun table in real life. It's a fun table and it should be a complete showstopper. It's floaty in TPA. Yeah, it should be a complete showstopper in looks, but the ball is floaty, the lighting still isn't quite correct, especially if you've ever seen a real one. Yeah, that neon tube. just cast light on everything in the game. Yeah. It was great. And the chrome just shimmers everywhere.
    50:42
    Yeah. It's such a vibrant table in real life. I mean, certainly on mobile and TBA, it's flat and lifeless. Yeah. And from an Android or iOS perspective, the way the juggler multi-ball locks work are totally unconvincing. It's like the ball goes down and it's being held by an invisible post, and then when it goes to juggle the ball, the ball just sort of moves slightly into the cup and then transfers over to the other cup. And it's got farting saucer noises everywhere in it, and it's terrible. It is terrible. On top of that, you'll never have a table that loses your ball completely off the table more than Circus Voltaire.
    51:23
    ROM-wise, I don't know what the heck they did, and Firesight refuses to acknowledge. You should have a different set of judges judging your performance every single gameplay. Yes. and in TPA you have the exact same three judges every single time. Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. And we've pointed it out to Farsight, and they've just kind of done the, well, no, that's just what it is in FreePlay mode. I'm like, no.
    51:50
    No, it's not. I've played it many times in FreePlay mode, and that's not the case. Judges alternate. Not only that, but judges used to alternate on certain things. Yes. Oh, did they? They did. And I don't know if this is when they switched to DX11 or what they did update-wise, but they don't switch anymore. So, again, they used to switch. We don't know what happened. Unfortunately, Captain Voltaire is paired up with Funhaus. And, again, Funhaus is not necessarily a showstopper, and it's way too easy also.
    52:24
    But it is one of those, you know, it's going to be hard for somebody to not want to buy that pack. They'll be like, but, but, but, but, but, and you're like, no, no, no, please. Not good for demo purposes. You know, you're going to come away kind of going, well, that wasn't, and you're going to then come to our forum and gripe and complain. Yeah, just like everyone else does. Exactly. On the same tables. Exactly.
    52:45
    Number three, we went with, or I'm counting down from number six, so number three, the Dr. Dude Firepower combo pack. Yeah, that's. Dr. Dude has some pretty poor tuning.
    53:01
    Yeah. On top of that, it is a crazy busy table to look at. Even if you see it in person, it's crazy to look at. It's clown woman busy. Unfortunately, that requires extra care on Farsight's part to really delineate the graphics, to really get the lighting dead perfect so that you have that sense of dimension and you can figure out where you are on the table with the ball, and it does not translate well. I don't think. It doesn't. I remember in the beta for that particular table, they had to take the curly wires out, you know, the little curly wires, because there were so many polygons in it that they had to exclude it at the time. But later on, they were able to put it back in after they got some performance issues worked out. Like, it was those curly wires were causing the gameplay to chug because of the amount of rendering it had to do. And then Doctor Who is paired with Firepower, which, again, it's not emulated. And so we've got issues that pop up because of that.
    53:59
    And the light show is pretty bland on it, when in real life it was kind of pretty cool. It's not a game that has any flashes in it, because I don't know why.
    54:10
    But there's still touches in that table. It doesn't even have a ball saucer. It just has this blank sort of wooden texture to it. And it's just not right. It is a wood... I mean, it's not a steel saucer that it goes into at all. It is wood, but it's lacking that, again, the graphical depth. It needs the intricate detail that they obviously cheaped out on the polygon count with. You would know what that saucer looks like because you have one. Exactly. Is it actually like a, because I know a lot of the time it'll be like a round hole, but there'll be like a plastic sort of red sorcery thing that the ball sits in while it's waiting to be kicked out. Is there like a metal plate that it rests against when the ball's in there?
    54:58
    Can you remember? No. I think it's a plastic. I believe it's plastic. Yeah, the thing is on the table there's actually not even that. There's not even a hint that there's a plastic stopper in the bottom. It's just like this wood texture all the way across, and it looks rubbish. There's no sense of mechanical element in there. So, yeah, it's unconvincing. The flippers are also way overpowered. Oh, yeah, they are. And the ball. Now, this is a fast table to begin with. But, again, this is part of Farsight. Hey, let's make it just blitz where this can also be a slow-moving table. You know, if the ball's not hitting certain aspects. Right. It's going to be a slower roller. It's a flat table. It's not a steep incline. That's right. I mean, it's an early solid state. These ones don't roll as fast as the later ones.
    55:48
    Number two would be Harley-Davidson because nobody should have to play Harley-Davidson. No. This is, again, one of those tables where it looks ugly.
    56:03
    Bad lighting choices, bad graphics that they put on. It looks fake. It doesn't look real. you question it the entire time you're playing it and that you shouldn't be doing that you should be able to fall into the fantasy of it and with Harley you just don't and then on top of it it's just not that great of a table no and the sad thing is it's paired with Taxi which is more likely what somebody would be like I remember Taxi I want to play Taxi and Taxi not necessarily much better again not good graphical implementation not that great of tuning um it's got the same problem with lack of mechanical like elements in the table like it should have um on the left hand side in the shot there's a catapult um assembly and it's just devoid of any evidence that the catalog a catapult assembly is there it's just like they haven't filled in the animated catapult mechanism in there and it just looks really fake when the ball rockets out of there.
    57:11
    It's not good. And you compare Taxi to its sister table, Diner, which they did in Season 3 and right there you can see what the difference between the two tables are. Yeah, I know the difference and it's much, much better.
    57:26
    Now, number one, this one's going to shock people. Do not recommend Attack from Mars and it's paired with Genie.
    57:37
    that's half the reason why that is half the reason attack from Mars now when it first came out for instance the strobe multiball mode was completely pointless because nothing happened on the table during that there were no strobes Farsight has gone in at least in the dynamic lighting and given us strobes and given us flashers I don't know if they've done that on Android at all nope No strobe. So right there is just such a huge negative when a big mode on the table does nothing. It's all about the strobe. It is about the strobe on that table. It is actually a feature of the table, the strobe. Now, on top of that, again, I know they fixed this on the PC version. I don't know that it's been fixed on any of the console versions. but there were a few shots that from a cradled position, you could not hit. Like if you were cradling on the left flipper trying to hit the right ramp, it was impossible. You could not. And when I say it was impossible, one of the players in our forum who is just a master at TPA,
    58:48
    Tarek Obederk, I think is the name, and also V. Palmer, both of them said it's impossible. You cannot make this shot. and it should be such an obvious shot to be able to make. Farsight has since gone back and tuned it so that you can make that shot.
    59:05
    But again, I don't know if that translated to any of the PlayStation or Xbox versions. Also, there was the issue of you'd go around the orbit a couple of times and all of a sudden they would do this weird thing where it hit an invisible collision and the ball would go wing on a strange angle and go straight down the middle. It was either straight down the middle or straight in the out lane. But it was like, what did it just hit? It hit nothing in the last two times I looped it. It was perfectly fine. So it had some serious tuning issues. So, again, your mileage may vary on what platform you're playing on, but that's why I wouldn't recommend it. Genie, I wouldn't recommend. A, if you're not playing in dynamic lighting, it is a nuked mess that is completely flat and devoid of any life.
    59:52
    Agreed. That's what it looks like on Android. Unfortunately, it's fun to play, but it looks like boring. It is much better with dynamic lighting, but you still suffer from the giant crime that is the ball moves at speeds that are not supposed to move that on Genie. No, that's right. It's completely wrong. This is a very flat, wide-body machine, and the ball should not be moving. It should be flat, and it should be floaty. like it's supposed to be all floaty and it should be like the ball is coming towards your flippers in slow motion as you try and nudge it back into play again. Right. And it's just not like that. It's, it's not, it's too fast. It's the same with, um, flight 2000 as well. Um, it's just that game is too fast. It's a fast game. Like I've seen videos of it being played, but it's so fast. I almost lose track of the ball on it. It's just unrealistic.
    60:46
    So, uh, yeah, those are, those are our don't recommends, uh, obviously with them being double packs and picking six, well we kind of wound up with 12 tables instead of 10.
    61:00
    But that's the way it goes, right? Yep, that's right. I mean, if you're a completist and you want to get them after you get all the good games and you just want to go, whatever, there's a Steam sale, I get them. Look, they're not terrible.
    61:14
    They're still playable games, they've just got some issues, except for Black Knight, which is actually really, really terrible. Yeah.
    61:21
    So, hey, why don't all of you let us know what you think of our list? Were we on the money? Were we missing something? Are you very offended that we either included or didn't include a certain table? Why don't you send us an email at blahblahblockade at gmail.com or hit us up on Twitter at blockade. Let us know what you think of our list. Me and Jared had some fun just kind of debating back and forth, And it was really hard to put aside our biases towards, like, I could have filled this entire list with nothing but Gottliebs.
    61:53
    Yeah, totally. But that's just because I don't like Gottliebs. It has nothing to do with the quality that Farsight did. And that's what we wanted to focus on was, what are the tables that Farsight did a bang-up job on? What are tables that Farsight should really, really, really, really, really revisit?
    62:07
    That's definitely an important point here. If you are going to debate this on the forum, don't be tempted to go, well, this table, as in the manufactured version that you play in the arcade, I don't like this table because of this reason. All about the job that Farsight has done, implementing it and making it as true to life as possible. Yeah. So just bear that in mind.
    62:30
    Bear that in mind. So beyond that, you can hit me and Jared up on Twitter. I am at ShutYourTraps. Jared is at JaredMorgz. Say hello to us, won't you? yeah come on and then if you follow along you can uh get tweets of uh me saying things like when uh recently doing again wizard mode hunting and i was just doing um a cyclone no excuse me on cyclone a hurricane and going through all the wizard goals and one of the things that i noticed they didn't make us do was get three balls into the ferris wheel at the same time because that'll score you 2 million points if you can do that. Oh, wow. Okay. Thank God they didn't make us do that, because that is just pure brutality if they did.
    63:21
    That falls into line with, but they made us put two balls into the shooter plunger lange on TX sector. On TX, yeah.
    63:32
    It's one of those things where it's like, I'm glad you guys didn't do it. Why did you have to do it on this other one? But then again, why didn't you do it on this? Because it seems like that's a true sign of a wizard isn't it not whereas instead on hurricane we had three different wizard goals that you don't have to get in that game because it carries over to the next game you know your election which to me that has nothing to do with wizard your wizards should be what you can accomplish with one quarter not what you can accomplish with five dollars worth of quarters.
    64:06
    Exactly. Right. So, uh, yeah, uh, drop us lines, follow us, uh, give us some notes on what you would like to maybe hear us talk about in the future. And we'll incorporate that. You never know what, uh, inspires us to, uh, base a show around, uh, in the meantime, go play some, go play some Indy 500. It's a, it's a gooder. You'll enjoy it. It is. Sure is.
    64:31
    So that has been our session. And, uh, we will talk to everybody again next week. Maybe next week we'll be able to get Blab up and running again, as I just got a message from Pinball Whiz going, did I miss it?
    64:42
    He's like, no. Oh, no, no. We just weren't able to be there. So, yeah, we'll be recording again next Saturday, and hopefully I'll be able to give you my report on being able to play NBA Fast Break paired with another NBA Fast Break. Oh, that would be pretty cool. Yeah, I'm going to hopefully be able to do that at our league tomorrow because that's what has been promised. Oh, that's going to be good. I'm very much interested in hearing how that goes. I've never had that opportunity before. Me neither. Never had it. One of my favorite games. All right. Until next time, folks, we will chat. Thanks for listening. See you later.
    65:26
    WizardAmusement.com. The West Coast League of Classic Pinball. makers of custom pinball shooter rods and buyer specifications swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools even if you don't own a table looks great as a pinball memento to admire prices start at 39 but mention blockhead podcast receive 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 blog page is delivered to we can't prove unless you tell us how now stop listening place it in ball