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Rethemes and Cross-promotions

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·44m 53s·analyzed·Nov 6, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

BlahCade discusses advertising cross-promotions and custom pinball restoration projects.

Summary

BlahCade hosts Chris and Jared discuss Halloween celebrations and costume choices, then pivot to movie tie-ins and cross-promotions in advertising (focusing on Zen's Doctor Strange table launch and Nissan Rogue/Star Wars crossover). The episode includes discussion of custom pinball restorations (particularly Tim Moyers' jet-black Getaway) and concludes with speculation about re-theming classic pinball machines like Ripley's and Firepower.

Key Claims

  • Zen put the Doctor Strange table on sale for approximately half off to coincide with the movie's theater release

    high confidence · Chris stated this as a current promotional tie-in

  • The Doctor Strange movie was designed thoroughly with 3D in mind, unlike most Marvel films which use conversion techniques

    medium confidence · Chris explained this based on visual effects and filmmaking decisions, though this is technical speculation about production methodology

  • Tim Moyers completed a 'perfect restoration' of a Getaway table with jet-black piano lacquer finish that debuted at Arcade Expo 2.0

    high confidence · Chris directly observed and experienced Moyers' restoration work; Moyers is a member of Chris's pinball league

  • Farsight held a 75% discount sale on Pinball Arcade seasons 2 and 3 during Halloween

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussed this as a past promotional event that has already concluded

  • Aurich Lawson is creating custom translite artwork for a Heighway Pinball table

    high confidence · Chris mentioned Lawson is in his league and currently working on this project

Notable Quotes

  • “John Youssi on the billboard, it's like, oh, yeah, okay. It's kind of wasted. Why spend millions of dollars advertising on TV when all you have to do is throw the trailer up on YouTube and you'll get 7 million hits in a 24-hour period?”

    Chris @ N/A — Illustrates the economics of Star Wars marketing and how major IP requires minimal advertising spend due to brand power

  • “Disney didn't pay one dime for that. No, but it would have been a lot. It's a cross-promotion.”

    Jared @ N/A — Explains the Nissan Rogue/Star Wars Rogue One cross-promotion as a paid advertising deal, not a free tie-in

  • “That's why we keep on wanting to talk with Farsight especially regarding the Stern app because that's endlessly fascinating to us. It's like, come on, we want to know how this works. Who's benefiting who and how are the licensing fees taken care of and all that madness.”

    Jared @ N/A — Highlights community interest in understanding how digital pinball licensing and cross-promotions work between Farsight, Stern, and IP holders

  • “I would turn Ripley's into a freak fest...the artwork would be a little more dark and foreboding...instead of the penguin jackpot, it would be something different.”

    Jared @ N/A — Demonstrates fan re-theming creativity and the distinction between cosmetic restorations and thematic reimaginings

  • “If you're going to re-theme something, you really have to actually put a considerable degree of thought into it. Because what you're essentially doing is you're redesigning a table from scratch, essentially.”

    Chris @ N/A — Articulates the complexity of pinball machine re-theming as a design undertaking, not merely a cosmetic change

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonTim MoyerspersonAurich LawsonpersonZen PinballcompanyFarsight StudioscompanyDoctor StrangeproductRogue OneproductGetawaygame

Signals

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen Pinball coordinating table release promotions with theatrical movie launches (Doctor Strange); pattern suggests ongoing strategy to capitalize on IP movie cycles

    high · Chris: 'Zen has put that table on sale for, I believe, half off' during Doctor Strange theatrical window; hosts speculate on future Rogue One table

  • $

    market_signal: Discussion of advertising cross-promotions (Nissan Rogue/Star Wars, James Bond watches/BMWs) reveals how companies pay to integrate brands with major IP to reach audiences; applies to pinball digital licensing and theme deals

    high · Jared and Chris detailed cross-promotion mechanics where brands pay studios for integration; Jared noted this model is common in perfume, video games, and automotive sectors

  • ?

    collector_signal: Documented instance of high-end pinball restoration (Tim Moyers' jet-black Getaway) indicates active market for custom cosmetic upgrades and premium restoration services among enthusiasts

    high · Chris observed Moyers' restoration at his house; Moyers' Firepower described as 'shinier than Wizard of Oz'; hosts note such commissions are 'tough individual' investments

  • ?

    community_signal: Ark Lawson creating custom translite for Highway Pinball's Alien table indicates grassroots community engagement with machine customization and aftermarket artwork services

    high · Chris noted Lawson is 'currently doing the artwork for the alien table for Highway Pinball, which is Ron's way to being released too'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Hosts speculate on future Zen Pinball Rogue One table based on pattern of Star Wars/movie-tie-in pinball releases; no official announcement

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.135

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Frevis, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, Jared Morgan.
0:40
Hello, Chris. That sounded like a spooky intro there. Well, you know, that's because the elections here in the States are Tuesday.
0:51
Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. But I was thinking it might have been a spooky intro because we're doing a wash-up of the Halloween as well. We had some zombies come up to us and get lollies. Yeah, lollies. I actually dressed up. Did? What did you dress up as? I actually dressed up. So at work, again, we were mentioning this last time, that you've got to be able to function and whatever. So there are two different kinds of slates that we use. Other parts of the world might call them a clapper. A clapper, yeah. It's the whiteboard that has the information of the show title, what scene, what take, what roll number.
1:32
And at the beginning of any take, I'm the one that pulls it out there and says marking and clack, clack that. And that clack is, in the old times, it was what they synced the sound with. Because it's that spike that you could easily match up to it and then everybody's words sync together.
1:49
So back in the day, these things were not digital in the least. No. But probably for the past, well, I mean, since I've been in the business, so probably for the past 25 years at least, they've all been,
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
game
Firepowergame
Frontiergame
Heighway Pinballcompany
Arcade Expo 2.0event
Pinball Arcadeproduct

low · Chris: 'I wonder how long we're going to have to wait until we see an announcement from Zen right you know that thing has Zen written all over it'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Hosts discuss practical approaches to re-theming classic pinball machines (Firepower as Raiden shooter-em-up, Ripley's as Freak Fest) highlighting mechanical preservation vs. cosmetic transformation; reveals design thinking about theme-mechanics fit

    medium · Chris and Jared detail how re-theming requires extensive thought; suggest using existing playfield mechanics (drop targets, multiballs) to match new theme; Jared proposes Firepower Raiden concept with enemy-wave gameplay

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Hosts express frustration that Farsight cannot disclose licensing arrangements for Stern app and digital tables; indicates complex tri-party licensing (Farsight, Stern, IP holders) that community finds opaque

    high · Jared: 'The problem is that Farsight can't talk to us about it. They can't because it's not their place to talk about it' regarding licensing fees and cross-promotions

  • $

    market_signal: Farsight running 75% discount on Pinball Arcade season content during Halloween; pattern of seasonal/event-driven discounting to drive Steam adoption over console sales

    high · Chris: 'Farsight celebrated Halloween also by putting the first four seasons on a heavy discount...season two and three were 75% off' intended to convert console players to Steam

  • ?

    content_signal: Hosts reference ongoing podcast for pinball documentary/movie Kickstarter that interviews industry figures; indicates content production activity around pinball culture documentation

    medium · Chris: 'there is a Kickstarter for a pinball movie...they basically have a podcast going on to kind of promote the movie, but they're interviewing various people' including Tim Moyers

    • 2:06
    I shouldn't say they've all, but there's digital slates. They have time code directly displayed on the slate. I see it spinning. It spins really fast. So I guess when you freeze frame it, you get the exact time code. Well, the second that you slap the sticks together, it freezes on screen. Ah, okay. And that way you know what the time code is, and then they match that up with sound, and the editors just have an easy time of going with it, right? They're no longer visually matching up the cue with the actual audio sound. They just, it's put together. Put a return step and away they go. That's cool. Right. So we call those smart slates. Okay.
    2:44
    And now what we call the regular non-digital slate, you might say, we call that a dummy slate. Dummy slate, yeah. and dummy slates are still used but it's only on a feature no TV show uses them and even on features it's very rare to come by those almost everybody's always using the digital ones so anyway I had a shirt that is many years old that across the front it just said I am dumb so I took some white camera tape and created a slate stuck it to the t-shirt, made I Am Dumb look like it was the title of the show. Then I put on a purple fright wig and a purple cape and I became Captain Dumb Slate.
    3:32
    That's pretty good, I have to say. I wore some Oakley sunglasses that I had that a guy hadn't worn them in probably 12 years or so. So they're just enough out of fashion that it looked aggy. exactly they looked a little odd and funky but uh you know they kind of you know wrapped around the eyes and they were mirror reflective or whatever and i wore that all day long indoors and all right the the i got interesting reactions from that because on the one hand since nobody could see my eyes they said i looked dead serious all day long i was like oh really on the other hand i got a lot of questions of are you sleeping there because you can't see that so use that to my advantage. The hard part for me was not only wearing sunglasses indoors, and stages are typically dark apart from the scene, essentially lit.
    4:28
    That makes things difficult, but these were polarized sunglasses. With all of our digital monitors, you could have seen them.
    4:36
    Either you'd see nothing, and then you'd tilt your head, and then you'd see the screen. Or I started realizing that different monitors had different polarizations, because one would be dark and one would be lit.
    4:51
    And, yeah, it was kind of taxing on the eyeballs after a while. It would have been. It would have been tough.
    4:57
    Yeah, over here we just prepared the lolly cachet and got a whole pile of stuff from Costco, including little mini tubs of Play-Doh, which, surprisingly enough, were, like, the highlight for some kids. Like, there were some older kids coming through. Yeah. and when they saw the play they went oh my god is this Plato and we went yeah and they went you're kidding me this is amazing I'm going to play with this when I get home I was like wow okay Plato was a big hit so yeah it went pretty fast ah the things that amuse yeah that's right because it's different everyone expects just to get lollies and junk but to actually have something tangible like that I think it's like a point of difference.
    5:47
    So, yeah, even for the big kids. So it was good. The kids dressed up and Zachary had this cool glow-in-the-dark shirt of, like, bones, like a skeleton shirt. So that looked really cool. And Sienna dressed up as, like, a cat. So that was cool. And Kim had just, like, black everything on with, like, this super bright neon pink wig on, which looked really good. And because I got home so late from work, I dressed up as nothing. So that was my costume. Yay! What are you dressed up as? Nothing. That's what I'm dressed up as.
    6:21
    Our sound mixer took the day off that day. I think he had a dental appointment or something anyway. So he was joking the next day. He's like, how come I didn't win the costume contest? And he was like, what? You weren't here? And he's like, I know. I was the invisible man.
    6:36
    Nice play. Well played, sir. Well played. Never be just going to be like, ha, ha, ha, you weren't here. You weren't here. You don't count. If we can't see you, we can't judge you. So there.
    6:48
    Now, what has come and gone, Farsight celebrated Halloween also by putting the first four seasons on a heavy discount.
    6:57
    So if you didn't scoop those up, sucks to be you. Because they actually had season, I believe season two and three were 75% off. That's huge. So you could have picked them up. It's about the time they did it, too. Yeah, it is. It really is.
    7:16
    Because for people who are stuck on consoles, that's like a prime excuse to get off consoles and get on Steam. Right. Like if I was in that position, I would go, yeah, now's the time to do it. Here we go.
    7:31
    But like I said, snooze you lose because we didn't announce it last week, and it's sales come and gone. But you've got to keep up with these things. Did you know about that? Was it even announced last week? well if you followed if you follow Pimble Arcade on Twitter it was announced if you got the Pimble Arcade newsletter it was announced in there I'm sure they announced it on Facebook so basically what we're saying is you might want to try following Farsight on some social media and then you'll get these announcements because that's how people find out things these days it's all about the social medias and of course we like to always say or you can follow blockade at blockade on twitter where we tend to retweet those very things anything pinball related that we follow digitally and sometimes even real pinball we will retweet yeah that's how that works speaking of sharing because Dr. Strange just opened up in theaters this weekend Zen has put that table on sale for, I believe, half off. In case you haven't picked that up.
    8:42
    It's going to be interesting to see how the table compares to the movie, eh? I think it's going to be very much disconnected, because it's not a tie-in. Yeah, it's not a tie-in.
    8:53
    It looks good, though. The movie looks interesting, though, right? Oh, I'm very much wanting to go see it, and I'm very much wanting to see it in three dimensions, because that would be pretty amazing.
    9:04
    Well, my understanding is that up until this point, Marvel hasn't really designed a movie with 3D in mind. It's always just been kind of their conversion slap-on, and sometimes it works great, sometimes it just kind of leaves a disappointing experience. But this specific one was designed thoroughly with 3D in mind. So much to the point, because if you've seen the trailers, there's all sorts of literal world bending going on, buildings holding in on themselves, kind of like Inception did. Plus there's all sorts of kaleidoscopes of imagery happening and realities just kind of splintering and everything.
    9:46
    And all of that is very heavily layered in 3D. Oh, that movie was amazing. Right, to the point that when they were watching it then, watching the playbacks of visual effects and stuff, in 2D, the filmmakers were getting confused because it wasn't clear what was happening, you might say. So they really had to go through efforts to make the 2D version be readable and get the action across because they designed it too well for 3D, you might say. Oh, wow. So, yeah, whenever I hear about a movie that is really, really, truly designed for those 3D. Yeah. Exactly. Then I get excited and I'm like, okay, I'll pay the extra money to go see that in the theater and see it that way. So this definitely seems like it's one of those that you'd want to check out. There is a site that I go to called cinemablend.com, and they have a section called To 3D or Not. Yes. And basically every single 3D release that comes out in the theaters, they have gotten the, you know, went to the review screening, and they break down whether or not it is a good 3D or not experience.
    11:03
    It a handy dandy guide to definitely go in knowing ahead of time whether it worth the extra bucks or not They saying it definitely worth the extra bucks That a good idea to actually have that said because if you standing in front of the movies on in a cinema if you do it spur of the moment and you have to do your research, you go, oh, should I 3D this one? Or no. Okay, 2D only then. Save yourself some bucks. And most movie reviews, it's all about the movie, and they'll maybe throw a line or two about, oh, and it was in 3D, blah, blah, blah, and that's it. But this one has a consistent breakdown. So it's broken down the exact same way for all movies that they review in 3D, and they don't review the movie itself for that. It's the implementation of 3D. So they would have categories like the field. They'd have produced for 3D rather than tacked on 3D and stuff like that. Exactly. How well of a fit is the movie for 3D? What's the brightness level? in 3D because obviously when you wear the glasses it dims things. There's been plenty of movies that take place at night that they're like, it's unwatchable because you can't see what the heck is going on.
    12:17
    The reason why that's important is because, and I can't believe this practice still exists, but some movie theaters dim the projection bulb. They don't project with as powerful a bulb as they can because they think that they're saving money, that they'll get more life out of the bulb, which is complete bogus science right there. It doesn't – if you flick the switch, whether the bulb is bright or not, it's not going to last longer.
    12:42
    And so they're cheating the audience of a nice, bright picture. And with 3D, obviously, you want the brightest picture you can possibly project to make up for the ND that is in the glasses themselves. It sounds like the whole concept of brightness is a little bit like when you do a slow motion recording. if you've got to have the room really, really well lit because of the fact that it just saps all the light out of the process, saps all the light out of it. It sounds way a little bit like that for 3D. Well, the reason why the process saps that light is because the film is now running faster through the shutter, so it has less light hitting it because it's going faster through the shutter. Now, this is in film terms. Digital kind of works the same way but kind of doesn't. because in digital we still do have to pump up the light still to get it bright so yeah and the flip side is if you ran it at 12 frames a second which would make instead of slowing things down it makes everything go really super duper fast you have to have less light because the exposure is open that much longer so yeah it's kind of this play on things. But anyway, that's why I like the site, because they consistently break down each movie the exact same way. They're not reviewing the content of the movie. They're just reviewing the 3D implementation of it. What was that link again, the URL?
    14:13
    Cinemablend.com. Cool. I'll put that in the show notes. Definitely. And then you can get email updates, which is what I do.
    14:20
    I just got an email update on Trolls, which I was like, well, I have no intention of watching that. I'm not going to read your review of it. I could care less if they can be the best 3D in the world and I'm going to be like, I ain't watching no troll doll movie. No, thank you. It does look fun for the kids though. I don't know if we may or may not be going to see it.
    14:38
    Hopefully the kids don't see it. That's what we call taking one for the team. I don't think I can do that. It's so funny because there hasn't been a lot of movies released lately that I've been interested in. And all of a sudden the next couple of weeks is just slam bam. So Doctor Strange I want to see. last week, a movie called Inferno, which is based on the Dan Brown book, so it's Tom Hank's movie directed by Ron Howard. It's the... Robert Langdon, I think, is the guy's name. It was, you know, The Da Vinci Code and Angels of the Moon. Those were the previous two. They're always good movies. Like, sure, they're probably a little bit sort of commercial blockbuster-y because they're based on that style of book, but they're always good. They're just good movies to go and see if it's exciting. I've never seen him in the movie theater. I've always waited on video, but it still piques my interest enough that I'm like, oh yeah, I definitely would want to wait for that and stuff. But so apart from Doctor Strange opening up, there's a new movie called Hacksaw Ridge, which is a Mel Gibson directed movie. That's the one about the soldier who doesn't fight, he only helps. Yep, and if there's one thing Mel knows how to do, it's stage a battle. He's pretty good at that.
    15:51
    What about that Arrival? Because we're only getting the Arrival movie here. That opens next week for us. A buddy of mine saw a test screening of it about two months ago and was raving about it. It's just the best thing that he's seen all year. It's by the same director that did Sicario and The Prisoner. Both of which I haven't seen.
    16:17
    Both of which are pretty dark. Right. That's probably why I haven't seen them. and he's also the director that is on tapped, uh, or is directing right now, the new Blade Runner movie. Oh, wow. And so after seeing the arrival, my friend, uh, who is also a giant Blade Runner fan, like I am, he was like, I am so at ease now with the new Blade Runner movie. Cause this guy's got his hands on it because the arrival is just fantastic.
    16:46
    Uh, the arrival from what I've seen, it's kind of like a, not really a horror, but a... Well, this new creature has landed, and how do you communicate with him? Yeah, a little bit like... What was that movie?
    17:02
    Somebody referred to it as this guy's close encounters. Yeah, that's right. That's what I was thinking of. Yeah, it looks really cool. And then the week after that, it's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Oh, yes. Which I'm all over. And then, what? at least two weeks after that, I think, or maybe three is Rogue One.
    17:24
    Oh, really? It's coming out... Gee, that's really been quiet down here. We've not seen a lot about that at all down here. Really? So maybe it's not being released for you guys, although I would think that's a worldwide... They will totally do it because piracy. Yeah. Let's be honest. Yeah, that's why I'm like, that one's got to be coming out at the same time as us. I wonder how long we're going to have to wait until we see an announcement from Zen right you know that thing has Zen written all over it oh yeah I have not actually seen there hasn't really been that much news about it at all down here maybe I just haven't been following the right news outlets for it but I've not seen anything about the movie I would have to go and watch the trailer to understand what the hell's going on.
    18:18
    Well, see, this is one of those things with Star Wars. They don't need to advertise. They really don't. If you see Star Wars on the billboard, it's like, oh, yeah, okay.
    18:28
    It's kind of wasted. Why spend millions of dollars advertising on TV when all you have to do is throw the trailer up on YouTube and you'll get 7 million hits in a 24-hour period? Yeah. Yeah, job's done. Let's just go and do this. So advertising budget is, let's just do a bit of post-production on the trailer and put it up on our YouTube channel and maybe some tweets, and that'll do.
    18:54
    That's 20 grand right there. Meanwhile, we'll check, this kind of cracks me up. Nissan has a vehicle called the Rogue. Oh, yeah. And I've already seen commercials for the Nissan Rogue, and they threw Star Wars events happening while the car is driving down the road. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me because it's not like the car is in the movie or whatever, but because the nature of the name of the vehicle is a Rogue, also an instant Rogue One tie-in. Well, I've got news for you. Yeah, Disney didn't pay one dime for that. No, but it would have been a lot. It's a cross-promotion. That's so common in advertising now. It's totally cross. Yeah, James Bond does it all the time. They do it with their watches and BMWs and stuff like that. and basically it's the they're paying the movie and saying hey we're going to benefit by the cross promotion with you so we'll pay you and then we'll put up our commercial and obviously they get it heavily discounted for that purpose because as far as the studio is concerned they're like well shoot yeah you're going to air all sorts of commercials aren't you we don't have to air a commercial just make sure you tell us what the release date is thank you see it all the time with Perfume and stuff here. I don't know if it's the same tactic over there in the US, but you'll see there's this perfume ad running and then at the end it's now available from Maya or now available from some discount chemist chain. So they get the ad, they run it, so the perfume company probably pays them a little bit but they probably pay the lion's share for the advertising and everyone wins. It's a good model. I wonder if that's kind of the same thing with third-party video games that are cross-platform but sometimes at the very end of the ad, it'll say, you know, PlayStation or Xbox One, but you're like, but it's available for both systems. I wonder if that's kind of the same thing where they're like, hey, we'll pay the extra money just so we can slap our, you know, PS4 at the back end. Right. Yeah. Well, we'll buy the video rights to the ad so we can play it and sort of, you know, do like an edit at the end, because that's probably what it is, right? Like, they'd be like, okay, you got the footage here. This is the ad package. These are the assets. you can do what you want with them within the constraints of this off you go and then they just go and do it whatever they want but it usually is that little spot at the end and it's like a one second spot just at the very end it's weird eh advertising is certainly an interesting beast just I mean how things are promoted and everything that's why we keep on wanting to talk with Farsight especially regarding the Stern app because that's endlessly fascinating to us. It's like, come on, we want to know how this works. Who's benefiting who and how are the licensing fees taken care of and all that madness. And the problem is that Farsight can't talk to us about it. They can't because it's not their place to talk about it. There's actually this show down here in Australia that is all about the advertising industry and how they sell to us as consumers. It's called the Gruen Transfer. And I don't know whether it is something that you guys can get over there. It on ABC so the Australian Broadcasting Corporation over there And it is just fascinating to watch how they sell and the tactics they use That how I know how that cross thing works because they went into detail about it.
    22:36
    It's a fascinating show. I never miss an episode when they do a season down here because it's always fascinating. It's always really timely. They talk about something that happened in the week in advertising, and they go into more detail about it on the panel. So I noticed an article pop up, and I kind of went, hey, I've been to that guy's house.
    22:56
    Oh, pinball? Pinball, yeah. You may notice we're a little pinball-light, folks. That's because we're a little pinball-light this week. Yeah, there's not very much to talk about, so we're talking about other stuff. Not much to talk about, but I ran across, have you seen this getaway table that is jet black?
    23:15
    It's jet black, so the playing field. Playfield Cabinet the whole thing got repainted basically redone it had its debut at the Arcade Expo 2.0 last year and there is a Kickstarter for a pinball movie I'm having a hard time coming up with a name of what the movie is but they basically have a podcast going on to kind of promote the movie, but they're interviewing various people. And they wound up interviewing this guy. And his name is Tim Moyers. And he's a member of my pinball league.
    23:59
    Yeah. And this is the guy who you'll remember when I went over to his house, I said his whirlwind was, or excuse me, not his, well, his whirlwind, but also his firepower was shinier than wizard of Oz. That was right next to it. Yeah. The entire cabinet was a piano black lacquer. I mean, even the back of the cabinet was done. I mean, phenomenal job. So anyway, he's restored what they call a perfect restoration, you might say, a getaway table and a frontier, ballet frontier. Yeah. as one of those things where it was like oh well I guess I'll get to see that in February when he next hosts because we always go to his place in February for the league night really interested to see what it looks like in person because it looks gorgeous like I said it was a lot of repainting done I bet on the subject of that I'm looking at a past auction now for Grey's Online of a customized getaway called Redline Mania. It has this rather buxom lady on the back glass with a very low-cut leather top on.
    25:23
    And it's actually got some custom playfield artwork done too. Instead of the sort of inside the RPM wheel on the playfield, they've actually got like Redline Mania decals put in there They've done a little bit of touch-up on the play field as well, and they've got, like, custom side art, which looks like it's got maybe even laser-cut things that protrude down beyond the side of the cabinet. It looks really, really nice.
    25:55
    I can't see any pictures of the one you're talking about, though, which is why I got onto the internet and wanted to have a look around, but there's none. I can't find a single thing.
    26:03
    Well, that's disappointing. Yeah, it is very disappointing. Well, you know what? While you're blathering about that, I'm going to do my own little search. All right. But, yeah, the auction was for – it was GraysonLine.com, so I don't know where it was. Oh, it was in Port Melbourne.
    26:21
    And it was $6,630 Australian dollars for this particular thing. Looks like it's a really nice condition, the getaway anyhow. So for that reason alone, it would have been a good one to get. But, you know, $6,000, it's a little bit steep.
    26:44
    But, you know, if you're in the market for one, go for it. So Jared's about to mention it because I just sent him a link to it. So it was actually mentioned by Pinball Magazine.
    26:58
    And the new Translight was done up by Ark Lawson, who is also in our league, and he's currently doing the artwork for the alien table for Highway Pinball, which is Ron's way to being released too.
    27:13
    Oh, that does look nice. Wow. That's a really nice reimagining of the back glass because that back glass is really busy, the original one. Right. This one focuses on, it looks like something out of Hawaii Five-0, the back glass. It's really, really nice. and I can see what you mean about the playfield. There's a little bit, it looks like the playfield... A center playfield, you know, the center vehicle that the RBM surrounds has been redone. The helicopters are black.
    27:47
    The pavements are black as well. All the bitumen is black. That actually makes a huge difference, doesn't it? Yes, in the show notes, Jared will obviously post this and you can take a glance at it and hopefully come February I'll be able to tell you what it actually looks like in person but I'm sure it's uber shiny I just love the look of the glass smooth the thing that really strikes me about it is and when you see it you'll probably agree as well our dear listeners is the fact that the shooter lane is just so pristine it doesn't have all that black grime like bashed into it over the years it is just like pure wood they've actually kept it really clean when they've done the clear coat on it. So it looks really amazing. Very nice. It absolutely. Yeah, don't you wish you could afford to do that? Yeah, I would love to just be able to go, well, I'm going to commission my own custom pinball cabinet because that's what I do.
    28:50
    That would be wonderful. I'll just add it to my other 20 machines. I have my custom game room that I built for my pinballs. Yes, exactly. But it's a tough individual that will commission their own custom artwork on a pinball.
    29:02
    And good for them that they can do that. I also hate them. If you could completely, I don't want to say re-theme, but basically do what he did there. Take a machine and not completely turn it into something new. Like, let's say years ago, before there was an actual Ghostbusters pinball, somebody made a Ghostbusters pinball on Flash. So I'm not saying doing that, but I'm saying re-update, say, Flash, keeping it Flash, but doing a new paint scheme or something like that. Is there a table that speaks to you that you would want to mess with that, do that on? Oh, geez, not off the top of my head. no I don't have one that sort of screams out to me and is going that would look so good as a this I'm thinking that you could probably think of something to do with maybe the brighter pin bot and make it into a transformers table just with the fact that the head actually moves around and there is some element of transformation on the table so you could maybe tie something in with that.
    30:21
    But unfortunately, it's using the base platform of the brighter pin block, which is a little bit limited in what you can do. Right.
    30:30
    I don't know. It's a tough call. You have to actually, it's one of those things, I think, that if you're going to re-theme something, you really have to actually put a considerable degree of thought into it. Because what you're essentially doing is you're redesigning a table from scratch, essentially. and reimagining it. Well, because I'm thinking, say, something like Ripley's. Yeah. Which, to me, was trying to do the Indiana Jones styling.
    30:59
    But, it didn't really pull it off. Right, it doesn't pull it off and it kind of comes off kind of cheapish looking as opposed to being its own thing. I would turn Ripley's into a freak fest.
    31:12
    Yeah, a freak fest. Yeah, Freak Fest. It would be much more sinister looking, I guess is what I would try and make it look dangerous, you might say.
    31:24
    Now, you'd still have the call-outs, and that would be the other thing, is if I would maybe be able to change the call-out voices. Instead of the, come and play the pinball, talking head dude, it would be a much more almost Crypt Keeper-like. Oh, yes. That would be kind of cool. It would still be a Ripley's Table, and would still have the same rules and everything else like that and all the callouts. It's just the voices would be different. The artwork would be a little more dark and foreboding, I guess.
    31:56
    There wouldn't be a penguin jackpot. It would be something, I don't know what, but it would be something different. So I don't know. That would be kind of my call for what table I would mess with. Mess around with, yeah. I'd actually like to, I think an easy one to read theme would be Firepower.
    32:16
    Like we were pondering doing earlier on because of the fact that it doesn't have any real animations or anything like that. It's all just play field driven. It's just crying out for another plane themed sort of game on it without all that terrible artwork.
    32:35
    Right. You could make it a, if you wanted to go hark back to classic shoot-em-ups, you could make it a Raiden table where you actually have the Namco Raiden pew-pew-pew shoot-em-up game that was in the arcades. Many, many incarnations. That would be a really good one because you'd have to, of course, make it with the drop targets. You'd add the drop targets in. So you'd be using those as sort of like enemies.
    33:00
    You could shoot down the enemies with that, like an oncoming wave, and then, you know, when you lock your multiballs, that's almost like a big wave of enemies coming down, like boss mode. So if you tied it in properly and put, like, a pin soundboard or something like that in there that triggered certain sound effects when the multiballs were released, it would actually probably work, you know?
    33:24
    Yeah. So that would be an easy one to re-theme, I think, and get the artwork right on it. And maybe, you know, on tables like that, you could actually add in a few extra things like maybe you could get a firepower 2 maybe and with the ramp and stuff like that and sort of use that as the base because it got a little bit more stuff going on on it right or maybe cannibalize bits and pieces from another pinball machine and actually add them into the game um still using the same switches and everything but it just does something a little bit different like you shoot the ramp and it gives you the same points but it's a ramp so it's a little bit more visually different you know but i've been having a lot of fun with Pinout. Oh, you mentioned that.
    34:07
    Yeah, I've been really, really getting into it. I'm actually got the ranking of mediocre now, which doesn't sound that good, but it's actually probably one of the higher ranks you can get in the game. Well, when your game company is mediocre games, yeah. Yeah, if you get the ranking of mediocre, you're doing probably pretty good. So I managed to get enough bonus points, or bonus time to get pretty much the end of the bonus round mode. And maybe about, I think I might have to go back and see if I can do better at some of the video modes because it's the video modes that get you the huge amount of time bonus. I think I managed to, like, sneak through the, basically, it's a mode that looks like the getaways video mode. We go to dodge cars, but it's, like, pretty much in three lanes and the cars are just coming towards you. And I managed to get, like, 60 bonus seconds or something in that round. And that really helped me get a lot further in the game. But, yeah, it's all about the bonus rounds. You can do those at every opportunity and you'll get a huge amount of points as you start to get better at them. And the good thing is that if you do buy the unlock, you can go back through each stage and try and improve your time at like a stage pass. So if you think, well, that one's a bit low, I reckon I'm going to go and try and boost my time in that one, which will then improve the stage in front of it and I can start from that point and improve from there. so it seems to work pretty well that way I really should download that and try it out it's really good you're probably as a real pinball person I sort of had a bit of trouble with the flipper physics when I first started but it's like any game remember flippers are just a control mechanism and once you work out how the game developers wanted you to use the control mechanism then you're fine the hot tip there is backhand all day is the trick so you can backhand pretty much any shot in the game and it'll go up the ramp so yeah that's my tip backhand for all the things I'll tell you what I just pushed the button I'm installing it on my phone so I'll be able to enjoy that but we won't be able to I don't know how long much I'll be able to enjoy it because work has pretty much been consuming my life alright yeah it has been pretty busy for us too because of all the racing season happening at the moment but it's sort of slowing down a bit now so it was funny I don't know what it's like for you since you just go go go all the time but for us it was sort of like a slow burn we had to start planning things out so that when the developers were available again we could actually say right here's all the things we want to get done so yeah it's sort of weird my days are more spent of coming onto set and going so what are we doing today and then you get the shot list for the day and you go, okay, let's plow through that and you don't really think about tomorrow. No, because it's day by day. It's day by day.
    37:06
    Whatever fires you can put out that day, you don't want to start any fires for the next day and have to worry about that.
    37:12
    No, that's true. Go home, forget about it and don't worry and worry about it in the morning when you get there.
    37:19
    Yeah, that would be absolutely the way to go. So I'm curious, with your work being a sports betting kind of thing, how nuts did the World Series affect you guys, if at all? I don't think it was super huge for us, actually. Because, I mean, there probably would have been some markets available for it, but because we are down here in Australia, we don't get the fervor of the World Series that you probably do in the U.S. I mean, people still love to bet on it down here, that's for sure. But it's probably not something as immediate as racing and that sort of thing. The problem is that at the same time the Cubs won, it was more in spring carnival when everyone was focused on the action down here in Australia. So I think a lot of the time, we certainly got news coverage for sure down here because it was such a historic win. But, yeah. Yeah, it's rather interesting. The ratings-wise, that game seven was huge, which baseball hasn't been a huge ratings gatherer in a very long time.
    38:33
    And to the point that I loathe baseball, I hate watching baseball, and even I watched the last three innings of that thing.
    38:41
    You kind of feel compelled. There are certain events that happen that you just kind of go, you know what? I can either be in the dark or I can join the conversation and it'd be better to join the conversation than to be that one guy. Yeah, exactly.
    38:58
    Very true. And on top of that, I'd already on my drive home that day listened to the Lakers win a tough road game and that was thrilling to me because they're the Lakers and they're not exactly good right now. Yeah, right. But they're in a complete rebuild, and so it's kind of exciting. So anyway, I got all excited about that. So I was already in a good mood, and I was like, you know what, let's see what the good mood of the country is. Yeah.
    39:28
    And it turns out they then had a, as teams do after they win a championship, they had a parade a couple of days later.
    39:37
    It wound up being the sixth largest gathering of human beings in the world. Wow. Okay. That's pretty big.
    39:50
    Over 5 million people gathered for the parade. Wow. That's incredible. It really is. If you look up any of the photos, pictures from this, it's just this sea of blue people because they're all wearing their blue Cubs shirts. You'll see the one picture and you'll be kind of like, well, that's a lot of people. And then you see another picture and you realize, wait, so there was all those people in this picture and then there's all these people in this picture and it wasn't like they were just moving.
    40:23
    This is a completely separate group of people and yeah, it's quite staggering to see that many people gathered for one event.
    40:34
    But yeah, and most of the other events that beat it were things that took place in other parts of the world. India, I think had two of the records and someplace in I believe Iraq had another one of the events so it was more, those are more religious gatherings for events well some could say this was a religious experience for the fans yeah pretty much yeah exactly our former podcaster Jeff Strong was a huge Cubbies fan, and he tweeted out that he can now die happy. Yeah, absolutely. So, Jeff, congrats that your team pulled one off. It's good. It's good when the, I guess, because they were totally underdogs because no one ever thought they could win.
    41:30
    Well, when you've had a 108-year drought, yeah. I was saying that back when the Cubs won their first game, Pimpleball wasn't even invented yet, and that's true. it wasn't actually invented.
    41:45
    Or to throw it in another way, it's sliced bread wasn't even invented then. Yeah. Yes. It's incredible how long ago it was. Right. We all use, oh, that's the best thing since sliced bread is some meter of time. And then you realize that, wow, when they last won, that wasn't a thing.
    42:09
    How sad for those people. we might have to we might have to uh change the phrase this thing's insult this thing's the cubs won their first right right well i i think last week i guess we should probably talk about the sort of plans for the the month really because there's going to be a bit of change in schedule right yeah so we are going to have one last podcast next week and then jared is going on a vacation that's going to take him away for a couple of weeks. Yes. So you all are just going to have to deal with listening to reruns or downloads, however you want to do it. And hopefully when we come back for that, there'll be just ample amounts of pinball to talk about. But here's my challenge to you folks. Why don't you hit us up with an email?
    43:01
    Blahblahblockade at gmail.com. Ask us some questions, throw us some topics that you want us to touch upon next week. before we go on this little break. And we will happily answer whatever we can and discuss whatever we can. Extrapolate and hypothesize, just like we do all the time. Because we're experts at it. We are experts at stringing along mass amounts of BS. That's right.
    43:31
    Or you can also hit us up, like I said, on Twitter, at Blockade. You can hit myself up at ShutYourTraps. Shut Your Traps. Jared is at JaredMorgz. We respond to you. Trust me. Sometimes it might take a day or two, but we will get back to you. And we certainly like hearing the feedback and hearing what you guys want to hear from us. So do that, won't you? Keep the suggestions coming. It's good to actually hear from people who listen to the show. So it's not like we're speaking out into the void.
    44:01
    Although this week, that's kind of what it felt like. Yeah. exactly right alright well let's I guess we can wrap it up and get on with our business I think we can thank you all for listening and take care we'll see you next week see you later wizardamusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter modes easy to install totally unique mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order wizardamusement.com sales restoration customization Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favourite podcast hosting service that BlogPaid is delivered to. You can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some Pingol.