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End of year free-for-all

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 20m·held·Jan 2, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

BlahCade discusses cabinet shipments, Spooky flipper quirks, and hypothetically strips classic Williams tables for Stern Pro models.

Summary

Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan conduct a year-end free-form episode of BlahCade A A Pinball Podcast discussing arcade cabinet shipment issues, Spooky Pinball flipper design limitations, and a speculative exercise imagining how classic Bally/Williams tables would be gutted if Stern applied its Pro/Premium/LE model to them. They critique the recently announced Stern Led Zeppelin table against JJP's Guns N' Roses, discuss cabinet unboxing videos, and explore mechanical cost-cutting across iconic games.

Key Claims

  • One-Up Pinball Arcade cabinets did not go into the ocean; they were delayed on the boat. One-Up's Outrun cabinets did go into the drink.

    high confidence · Chris Friebus, early in episode, correcting a misconception based on YouTube videos

  • Spooky Pinball games lack end-of-stroke switches in flippers; they only have two lugs (wind voltage, no hold voltage) and rely on computer control for hold, causing inconsistent flipper feel.

    high confidence · Jared Morgan, citing conversation with Dave (Netherworld Arcade tech): 'They have a different feeling to them than the Sterns and the older Williams tables...they don't have end-of-stroke switches in them.'

  • Data East realized the flipper design without end-of-stroke switches doesn't work, as evidenced in Last Action Hero where upper flipper sometimes doesn't fully flip.

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan describing Data East USA Inc.. experience with the Ripper mechanism

  • Spooky's next game build will include end-of-stroke switches due to numerous complaints about flipper behavior.

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan: 'I think they've received so many complaints about the way their flippers works that the next build that they're going to be making...it will actually have ender stroke switches'

  • Rick and Morty (Spooky) cabinets shipped to Australia were damaged in transit because they were stacked on their side instead of flat, breaking playfields.

    high confidence · Jared Morgan describing shipment damage to Australian arcade cabinets

  • Doug (Cool Toy) and Retro Ralph/Justin (One-Up Weekly) received Marvel and Star Wars cabs for unboxing videos before BlahCade, which hosts had hoped to do with Mel live.

    high confidence · Chris Friebus: 'Doug over at Cool Toy...unboxed the Marble Cab' and 'Ralph had the Star Wars cab sent to him'

  • Stern's Led Zeppelin table design is lazy, featuring minimal playfield complexity compared to JJP's Guns N' Roses, and was designed by Steve Ritchie (same as AC/DC).

    high confidence · Jared Morgan and Chris Friebus discussing Led Zeppelin table: 'I would expect that the premium would at least have piles of drop targets on it or something. It just seems like a very lazy design.'

Notable Quotes

  • “They have a different feeling to them than the Sterns and the older Williams tables. And I was talking to the tech there, Dave, at Netherworld, who also did bad Santa this year. He was saying that the reason why they feel weird and the reason why the flippers don't sort of have that same sort of solid feel to them is that they don't have end-of-stroke switches in them.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~8:00 — Identifies root cause of Spooky flipper performance issues—design decision without end-of-stroke switches

  • “it just seems like a very lazy design. Like, okay, what iconography do we need to use? Yeah, okay, we'll put that. oh, well, sure, you've got to put a Zeppelin toy on there. Is there a theme? No, we're just going to have you playing some music.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~42:00 — Harsh critique of Stern Led Zeppelin table design philosophy vs. JJP Guns N' Roses

  • “Everything on those tables was put there for a reason. Right. and retroactively stripping them out of a table would really take some work because everything was there for a reason. It had a purpose.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~55:00 — Articulates design philosophy difference between classic Williams and modern Stern Pro model cost-cutting

  • “that would be a third of the bill of materials on that table i would think...it is really really really expensive that bit of the machine like it's a lot going so that would go 100 if that was a pro model”

    Jared Morgan @ ~63:00 — Quantifies expense of Addams Family 'Thing' mechanism as a cost-cutting target for hypothetical Pro model

  • “You just want this. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, when they slapped Primus on top of the Wonelli table it's like yeah okay that was just a quick and easy slap of paint thrown on top”

    Chris Friebus @ ~45:00 — Criticizes thematic superficiality of reskin-style designs (Stern's approach vs. integrated themes)

  • “the lower playfield literally is junk and does nothing anyway”

    Jared Morgan @ ~57:30 — Validates AC/DC Pro model removal of lower playfield as justified cost-cutting

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonSteve RitchiepersonDavepersonDougpersonRetro RalphpersonJustinperson[name withheld pending review]personPython Anghelo

Signals

  • ?

    product_concern: Spooky Pinball's games exhibit inconsistent flipper strength and feel due to missing end-of-stroke switches; computer-controlled hold voltage produces variable performance that frustrates players

    high · Jared Morgan detailed technical analysis of Spooky flipper design: 'they don't have end-of-stroke switches in them...only have two lugs, so they've only got wind voltage, not hold voltage' and observed behavior on Rick and Morty where same shot sometimes succeeds, sometimes fails halfway

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: One-Up Arcade cabinets shipped to Australia were damaged due to improper stacking (placed on side instead of flat), breaking playfields and rendering some units unusable

    high · Jared Morgan: 'the way they stacked the container...they didn't stack them right...they were like on their side so all the way to the playfield was just knocking out the the cabinet...some of them were were unusable'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: One-Up's Outrun cabinets were lost in transit (went into ocean/water), causing disruption to orders

    high · Chris Frebus correcting misconception: 'Turns out none of the Pinball Arcade the one-up pinball cabs, they didn't go in the drink. They were just delayed on the boat. What did go into the drink was their outrun cabinets'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Stern systematically removes mechanical features from Pro models compared to Premium/LE tiers, prioritizing cost reduction over gameplay depth and design integrity of licensed IP

    high · Extensive discussion of Stern's Pro model removals across multiple tables (Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Ghostbusters, Game of Thrones); Jared: 'they've completely just eliminated it. Taken out of rule set.' Chris notes pattern: 'that's a classic pro move'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.240

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world it's jared morgan hello everyone how you going uh well i know i'm doing okay and uh i don't know it's for for me it's day after christmas for you it's second after christmas yeah that's right we've had it we've had an extra day to recover from the excess amount of food that we that we had on christmas day what was uh what was on the spread for christmas day for you uh christmas day uh a trip to carl's jr for some burgers carl's jr yeah well so i guess you guys will pop your your christmas cherry around thanksgiving you go full turkey uh on thanksgiving over there whereas everywhere else we usually do christmas day as the day that we get our get our excessive amounts of food on so yeah and i'm not i'm not big on that food anyway um so i don't make it and we don't go anywhere on christmas day so yeah right that's right craig nothing does say christmas like burgers i completely agree uh exactly right the festive burgers well it was it was that or uh the del taco and uh the family decided that they'd rather have burgers so carl's junior is good it's probably not the same as the Carl's Jr. we have here in Australia because we do have it here of course because everything in America comes over here but yeah the California burgers are pretty nice interesting we can do a compare and contrast on Carl's Jr. because part of the core tenet of the show is snacks at one time that was definitely a core tenet of the show absolutely so folks you're going to notice, hey, look at that. There's little words coming down the side of the screen here.
2:13
We need your input today. Today is an absolute free-for-all. We have no clue what we want to talk about. It's going to be a hodgepodge of anything. If you guys have questions, if you guys have comments, if you want to bring up a topic, we're more than happy to jump onto it. We just want to come on and do an episode where we weren't tie down to pinball well that's right because you know we talk about pinball a lot obviously because you know it's what we do here at the plucky pinball podcast but you know sometimes you know you just want to have a bit of a fireside chat and and jared was a little sick of talking about cabinets i really was a little bit sick about talking about cabinets because you know the thing that's really bothering me at the moment chris is it's just everything seems to be trickle fed with the cabinets, right? And I'm just getting a little bit done with it. That being said, Craig here says, yeah, I've seen some YouTube videos about the Marvel cabs and the Star Wars cabs, so I'm just going to point this out.

  • The ball-capture chamber (hologram/magnet feature) on Stern's Led Zeppelin is not included on the Pro model.

    high confidence · Chris Friebus: 'the one cool feature that it has on it, which is in the middle of the play field, the little chamber that raises up and can magnetically capture the ball. Hey, guess what's not on the pro model?'

  • AC/DC was likely the first Stern table to introduce Pro/Premium/LE segmentation with mechanical feature removal, notably the lower playfield.

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan: 'I thought it was ACDC wasn't it?...because that was certainly like what do you mean you're taking out the entire lower playfield?'

  • The The Addams Family features a colossal and expensive 'Thing' hand mechanism taking up approximately one-third of the bill of materials.

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan: 'It is massive...i would think all right it is really really really expensive that bit of the machine like it's a lot going so that would go 100 if that was a pro model'

    • “Well, let's assume that we're dealing with the DMD era now. We're doing Bride 2.0.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~71:00 — Reframes classic Bride of Pinbot with modern technology assumptions for hypothetical Pro model exercise

  • “Scott Danesi did the audio for it again and he's very good at doing audio.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~35:00 — Praise for Spooky Rick and Morty Bloodsucker Edition audio quality and designer credit

    • person
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    [name withheld pending review]company
    Netherworld Arcadevenue
    BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization
    Rick and Mortygame
    Guns N' Rosesgame
    Led Zeppelingame
    The Addams Familygame
    Creature from the Black Lagoongame
    AC/DCgame
    Twilight Zonegame
    Bride of Pinbotgame
    ?

    product_strategy: Stern's Pro/Premium/LE model deliberately removes signature features and mechanical complexity from lower tiers, creating artificial differentiation and forcing premium purchases

    high · Hosts systematically deconstruct what would be removed: hologram on Creature (gone on Pro), hand mechanism on Addams Family (100% removed), etc. Pattern shows deliberate segmentation strategy

  • ?

    design_innovation: Jersey Jack Pinball's Guns N' Roses features oscillating cabinet lights along side rails creating stage-show aesthetic; Stern Led Zeppelin borrowed similar concept but executed poorly

    high · Jared: 'you can clearly see that that idea of cabinet lights that oscillate up and down the side rails of the cabinet, that's too close, too coincidental...the way they've done it on that Guns N' Roses pin is really really tasteful and it really does look like a stage show' vs. Stern's inferior execution

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community criticism of Steve Ritchie's recent designs (Led Zeppelin, AC/DC) for being formulaic, lazy, and theme-driven rather than mechanically innovative

    medium · Chris and Jared describe Led Zeppelin as 'lazy design' lacking depth, 'whole lot of meh,' and merely 'slap of paint'; pattern mirrors AC/DC criticism suggesting design fatigue or IP-driven minimalism

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Spooky Pinball has committed to adding end-of-stroke switches to future game builds in response to widespread flipper complaints

    medium · Jared Morgan: 'I think they've received so many complaints about the way their flippers works that the next build that they're going to be making or whatever the next game is, it will actually have ender stroke switches as nature intended'

  • ?

    content_signal: Larger YouTube channels (Cool Toy, Retro Ralph/One-Up Weekly) receiving exclusive cabinet review opportunities ahead of dedicated pinball media (BlahCade), signaling audience size/influence disparity

    high · Chris acknowledges: 'unfortunately it was kind of the things that we wanted to do with Mel here live...that idea is scrapped for now...They've got a lot more followers than we do...There's a slight subscriber disparity'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball's Guns N' Roses significantly outpaces Stern's Led Zeppelin in thematic integration, mechanical complexity, and design cohesion; community perception strongly favors JJP

    high · Chris: 'in comparison to the Guns N' Roses one from JJP, it's incomparable. Yeah. No. Nothing.' Jared echoes: extensive favorable comparison of GNR's stage-show aesthetic vs. Zeppelin's minimal design

  • ?

    community_signal: BlahCade episode solicits live viewer/listener input on hypothetical Pro model cost-cutting scenarios, demonstrating community co-creation and deep mechanical knowledge among audience

    high · Hosts repeatedly invite comments: 'We have no clue what we want to talk about...If you guys have questions...we're more than happy to jump onto it' and audience actively responds with table suggestions (Creature, Fishtail, Doctor Who, etc.)

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Bride of Pinbot's glove mechanism (Johnny Mnemonic variant) is acknowledged as difficult to maintain, frequently faulty, and unreliable—making removal in Pro model hypothetically beneficial

    medium · Jared: 'that glove...that loves a pain in the butt to maintain. It is just full of faults. Everyone complains about it. When you get it working, it's great, but it's hard to get right.'

    • 3:14
    We'll get this out of the way really quick. First things first. Turns out none of the Pinball Arcade the one-up pinball cabs, they didn't go in the drink. They were just delayed on the boat. What did go into the drink was their outrun cabinets.
    3:33
    That's a shame. Yeah. Ruins a few people's Christmases there. Definitely. Two, if you weren't already aware, there have been two different unboxing videos. One done by Doug over at Cool Toy. He unboxed the Marble Cab, put together a really slick-looking video, especially for the review. I mean, like, really slick. You should check it out. Yeah, probably. And then Retro Ralph and Justin doing their one-up weekly. Ralph had the Star Wars cab sent to him, and he assembled that whole thing and also put together a review. So if you guys are really wanting to see these things more in action, unfortunately it was kind of the things that we wanted to do with Mel here live that we were hoping to do.
    4:21
    So that idea is scrapped for now. But, you know, it's one of those things. We get why it happened. They've got a lot more followers than we do. Yeah, there's a slight subscriber disparity.
    4:39
    So, folks, if you want us to be the first to get that kind of content, please subscribe. Subscribe and kick that bell. Oh, my God, I hate doing that. Like they always say. I really hate it. We'll allow it this particular podcast. Only this time. Seriously. we've been trying to do everything we can to give you guys more content and to do something and those of you that actually watch our full length episodes we've mentioned it before a lot of you are subscribers but the more subscribers that we get the more opportunities that we'll have to not be down the list of people that would get this opportunity but up near the top but yeah I'd definitely check out both those YouTube channels for those videos because they're going to show you pretty much everything that you were hoping to see other than what we would mostly comment about, which is the actual, you know, how is the pinball displayed and what it's playing like and all that jazz. So obviously we're more on the software end whereas they're more on the hardware end. The hardware, yeah. There we go. See, we're sort of, because it's pinball related, we're definitely sort of coming in probably halfway through the movie with a lot of the arcade one-up and at-game stuff there's already large communities out there that that cover that stuff as a specialty so but then we've got people like jared here who you know has netherworld arcade to go actually play pinball and so he's got the real world comparison going on um so i mean we do have our uh we do have our our place hey you know what i found out speaking of netherworld Arcade. So, Netherworld's been pretty good with spooky pins, right? I managed to get a fair few plays on Rick and Morty there. And what I noticed was on Rick and Morty, the flippers are weird on spooky games. You might have noticed this as well. Weird in what way? They have a different feeling to them than the Sterns and the older Belly Williams tables.
    6:48
    And I was talking to the tech there, Dave, at Netherworld, who also did bad Santa this year. He was Santa for the pub, dressed up as Santa, and got very drunk, which was very funny. Nice.
    7:01
    So he was saying that the reason why they feel weird and the reason why the flippers don't sort of have that same sort of solid feel to them is that they don't have end-of-stroke switches in them. They've actually got the old-school – they actually only have two lugs, so they've only got wind voltage, not hold voltage. so so the it's must be a design decision that spooky made very early on when they were making their um their circuit layouts and they opted not to put in any hold voltage in the coils it's only just full wind and then the computer um like determines when the hold voltage turns on so the coil doesn't burn out so essentially it half volts the coil so that the the flipper stays up doesn't heat up too much and as you can tell data east did that um leading up to um last action hero when they had the ripper thing that fired the ball back really fast yeah um to the flipper and they quickly realized that it just doesn't work um they need an end of stroke switch to sort of like tell the circuitry that hey no the flippers dropped back down again you need to flip it up so i found really weird things happening with that game. Like the upper flipper on that game sometimes doesn't even really full flip. It sort of half flips or like flips and just flops back down again. So I think they've received so many complaints about the way their flippers works that the next build that they're going to be making or whatever the next game is, it will actually have ender stroke switches as nature intended. So do you feel that the flippers, they feel like they're worn out? They're not strong? sort of yeah they they have this sort of um it sort of feels variable um the strength on them like you can sometimes get a really like you feel like you really aim the shot like on Rick and Morty there's a the left ramp is super steep like it goes from the bottom of the playfield all the way up to the very top part of the um the back the backboard on the playfield it's such a steep ramp and sometimes you flip it and you think you've got a beautiful clean shot up the ramp and it just goes nope it doesn't make it up there uh and like it'll just rattle half the way up and not go up there which definitely that's not a clean shot if it starts to rattle but like you'll do a nice shot up there and it'll just get halfway up and come back down and then sometimes it'll fire up there like it's got like it's got vacuum ramps like on fast like people so is that what the EMs with their flippers, is that the same type? Like when did end of stroke come into play?
    9:43
    I thought, not sure. I think early solid states or early EMs didn't have any end of strokes. I'm just asking because that's always my thing with EMs.
    10:01
    Those flippers don't feel strong i mean it seems like it's a labor to get the ball halfway up the up the field the coils and those are very like they have very low windings in them to start with they're not really that powerful um uh and it's designed like the way because like the they they just the play fields would generally pitch pretty flat anyhow so like the way people set them up now is probably incorrect so they they really do need to have those things quite floating quite flat because Because that was always our statement, complaint, whatever, with Pinball Arcade. We were like, you can't apply the same flipper strength mechanics, physics, whatever, that you have on your stern tables that you're making and put them on an old Gottlieb EM. It's a completely different beast. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's completely different.
    10:59
    Okay. yeah so i think that'll be good to see when they actually get that back and maybe it's we had a few problems with the shipment to here to australia most of the cabinets i think we covered this in a previous show but um the way they stacked the container that was sending down here to australia um yeah they didn't stack them right and a lot of them um broke in transit so there's a lot of there's a lot of cabinets down here some of them were were unusable like they were knocked open basically the cabinets um because they weren't shipped properly they weren't shipped on on their containers on their like flat they were like on their side so all the way to the playfield was just knocking out the the cabinet so our one the our one ours being netherworld's one um was okay and was flippable but i still reckon it's got some quirks in it i just don't know it's it's strange like i really love rick and morty as a game it's really fun to play um it's uh it's like tna but with ramps um and and it's not brutal like tna like you don't get instant kickouts from the the trap and all that sort of stuff but it's got enough interesting things on it to do that um if you like the show and you're into it you know it, you can get a lot of fun out of it. It's very good. If you compare that and South Park Pinball, I'd rather have Rick and Morty, because it's just better integrated. You mean the Sega South Park? Yeah, the Sega South Park. Yeah, no, that one's junk.
    12:32
    Yeah, it is. It is. Basically, it is not fun. It's a one-shot table with a bunch of random sound clips from the show, which was great when the pinball came out, because I think the show had only been out for two years maybe when that big ball was made. But all these years on and then seeing as Zen did... It hasn't aged well. No, it has not aged well at all. It has not aged well.
    12:58
    Yeah, so probably incomparable, but yeah, it's really tightly integrated. The theme's great. And also what they call the Bloodsucker Edition, which is the one that you can get if you're a Spooky Fan Club member, which is the one that Netherworld got. just got a kick-ass sound system in it. Jeez, this thing, you crank it up and the whole thing vibrates and it sounds fantastic.
    13:23
    Because Scott D'Amici did the audio for it again and he's very good at doing audio. So yeah, it's a really, really good package, that one. I strongly recommend going happy or flip if you can. Okay, so me and Jared had this conversation a little bit during the week and I'm going to carry this over here. And it started with me asking what he thought of the Led Zeppelin table that Stern showed because I just kind of went, I mean, especially in comparison to the Guns N' Roses one from JJP, it's incomparable. Yeah. No. Nothing. And then the one cool feature that it has on it, which is in the middle of the play field, the little chamber that raises up and can magnetically capture the ball. Hey, guess what's not on the pro model? yeah that uh-huh the one the only thing interesting thing it's really like you look at the play field on that thing on the led zeppelin and there's not a lot going on at all like except for that thing in the middle that traps the ball yeah um i don't really like to put this way the the pro and the premium and le's they're not going to look that different because there's not even drop targets everywhere. They've just got stand-ups in most places. I would expect that the premium would at least have piles of drop targets on it or something. It just seems like a very lazy design.
    14:56
    Like, okay, what iconography do we need to use? Yeah, okay, we'll put that. oh, well, sure, you've got to put a Zeppelin toy on there.
    15:10
    Is there a theme? No, we're just going to have you playing some music. It'll be kind of like what the ACDC table is, because they're both designed by the same guy, Steve Ritchie.
    15:22
    It's a whole lot of meh. And then you try doing the chase lights, basically that JJP did on Guns N' Roses, and they look just not even close. It's horrible. Yeah. No. They had the, obviously, I don't know who nicked the idea from who, because you can clearly see that that idea of cabinet lights that oscillate up and down the side rails of the cabinet, that's too close, too coincidental to be, you know, like someone was talking to someone. Let JJ be in certain. but just the I think this is actually a limitation of Spike 2 they just can't have the amount of lights that J.J.P. have on the games and some people say that's actually good because some J.J.P. games are a rainbow vomit light show but the way they've done it I'm sure you agree here Chris the way they've done it on that Guns N' Roses pin is really really tasteful and it really does look like a stage show. Well, and that's what I'm saying, that there is an actual... I was impressed that there was an actual almost story to the Guns N' Roses layout and theme and what they're presenting instead of just putting out another music table. You know what it really reminded me of? The Led Zeppelin thing. It reminded me so much of ACDC. Yes. And that's also a Ritchie table. Yeah.
    16:56
    And it just... Oh. It's just got nothing special about it. Like, Zeppelin fans will love it, but even Zeppelin fans are, like, kicking back on it because there's some songs on there that aren't, like, classic Zeppelin staples that aren't in there. Well, I mean, what you're doing is you're asking, you're basically asking, oh, you like Led Zeppelin and you like their music? Then you're going to want this. We're not going to make any other reason why you want this. It's just going to be... You just want this. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, when they slapped Primus on top of the Wonelli table it's like yeah okay that was just a quick and easy slap of paint thrown on top and you know you did something but it's exactly the same as the Supreme branding they put on everything you know like Supreme when they just go oh red and white there you go and now you're gonna pay five times as much yeah like okay one up did a Supreme cabinet yeah and it was just everyone was going what people that yeah well yeah yeah everybody's going what and yet they sell them out yeah they do yeah and then they get sold on the aftermarket for like five times as much right okay so anyway what i was saying was we had we started having this conversation and then we started talking about because of that one cool item that is on the zap table being removed from the Pro model, what would certain Bally Williams tables look like had Stern gotten a hold of them and done the Pro and Premium and LE edition on them? So I'm going to ask this of those of you that are watching live here and can comment. Go ahead and ask us what we think would be removed from whatever table you want to post up there. We have a pretty good knowledge base of all the tables that exist. we can kind of do this. We're going to start off with Creature from the Black Lagoon. So Jared, what do you think is the first thing that would have been eliminated from a pro model?
    19:06
    There's not a lot on that table that's really feature rich. So the only thing that you probably lose on it is that big secondary ramp with the massive plastic habit rail that leads you back down to the whirlpool section. To the whirlpool. So that whirlpool ramp that that's gone you've only got like a single tier ramp there and it'll just be it won't be metal like it won't be like a metal into it it'll just be a continuous bit of plastic um taking you back down to the right oh i don't even think that i i don't think it would even take you down to the i think they would eliminate that completely you would still just shoot the ramp the main ramp that you would be doing um yeah but now it would maybe have one other drop down feed to the to the right orbit to get it back to that right flipper, but that would be the end of it. In terms of your bonus counting for how it cycles around they would have something else to compensate for that in the rules so you reckon because of course you know shooting the ramp lights the double feature point system on that game so you still need it i think that would still return it to the right flipper so it would it would i just don't think it would feed all the way down directly to the i reckon it would i would think it would because you need that so you can actually do the double feature. But you're not thinking stern here, Jared. Think about what they've done to the Star Wars table, to Game of Thrones, to all manner of things, where they've completely just eliminated it. Taken out of rule set. Look at Ghostbusters. Taken out of rule set. Right? That's what I'm saying. That's a classic pro move. Here's the thing that I know that would be gone. The hologram.
    20:51
    Oh, that hologram would be gone. It'd just be a painting. Sure. It'd just be an image. Creature in the middle. Yeah, for sure.
    21:00
    Yeah, that's 100% gone. So that and the ramp, there's your pro table for sure with that one. Is there a spinner on there? You know how they love to take the spinners out. And there's no drops either. So they might even take away the kiss feed as well. So you know how you shoot the kiss feed and it goes to subterranean trough and then feeds into the upkicker. They might actually just remove that section of the trough as well and just make it a stand-up target or something there. Like just a flat stand-up. If we had Photoshop skills, we would have done these, but we don't. So if anybody out there does have Photoshop skills, feel free to show us your versions and send them our way.
    21:49
    Fiscal says, what would Fishtails lose? oh geez uh that'd be a pretty bad table wouldn't it fiscal you know what you know what it would have for the it would still have the center boat and the u-turn yeah yeah but that's it yeah it would definitely wouldn't have the fishing reel no go well you wouldn't even have the ramp going to the fishing reel to feed the balls into the lock it would be a virtual no that up kicker It'll be a virtual lock, for sure. Yeah.
    22:24
    And, oh, geez, what else? I mean, they'd probably keep the spinner, because that's integral to getting the size of the fish, the lye.
    22:37
    But, yeah, I think they'd probably cost cut on that center ramp as well. They'd probably lose a captive ball and just make it a, I don't know. Well, I mean, they'd have, I don't know. Is the captive ball an expense?
    22:53
    It's probably not. I mean, it's not mechanical. And again, it'd be hard to redesign that boat. Because that would be a huge set of rules to take out. That's a huge hole.
    23:04
    They wouldn't do that. They couldn't do that because it's just too integral to the game. And this is the problem, Chris, with a lot of the Belly Williams tables. Everything on those tables was put there for a reason. Right. and retroactively stripping them out of a table would really take some work because everything was there for a reason. It had a purpose. It was part of the building materials for a reason because they weren't doing the Stern model. So this is a really interesting exercise to undertake because you've got to put your thinking cap on to see how that would work around the problem as well if they took a thing out.
    23:40
    And we haven't even got to the juicier ones yet. No, I just had... Oh, let's see. No garage. Well, there would be the garage. Like you're saying, the garage would be there. That would be where the virtual lock would be. Yeah. But it wouldn't be the up kicker to the ramp that goes, the habit trail that goes all the way across the table. It would be like a target, I think, for school. I reckon for school it would be like a target. Probably not a drop target even. Not even that fancy. It would just be like a stand-up target that you hit to trigger a lock. and it'd be because the drop target acts as a barrier to the hole you'd probably have to hit it a number of times to actually light lock and yeah that'd be not a lot of fun I'm trying to think what was the first pro premium separation I thought it was ACDC wasn't it? I thought so you might be right yeah because that was certainly like what do you mean you're taking out the entire lower playfield? Then you find out the lower playfield literally is junk and does nothing anyway. Yeah, that's right.
    24:51
    I think it was ACDC. That was the first one. It may not have been the official first one, but it was certainly the first one that people took notice of because it removed a key playfield feature. In fact, it removed... There was a few things in it that they took out that people were up in arms about. Yeah, like the swinging bell.
    25:10
    things like that. Yeah, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. All right, what's another table? What was one that you were thinking of that we should do?
    25:20
    Oh, well, this one, I know we talked about these two. Should we go, should we step up to something as big as Adam's family? Yes. Or should we keep that?
    25:32
    I mean, Adam's family? Hmm. I'm trying to think of the things that they, well, okay. automatically what I'm thinking is that left flipper with the um the thing flips gone yeah that will go thing flips is gone um yeah the toy hand because that's literally all you use that for yes yeah yeah uh the toy hand I think stays it's I just think that that's a I don't know it's a feature that I'd have a hard time it might mechanically work different I guess Maybe the hand toy would just be there permanently, and it would just suck up the ball or something like that. Maybe it doesn't pop out of the box. I've had a look at that mechanism under the playfield, and it is colossal. And it's not only just the hand mechanism, but there's like a – if you have a look underneath it, it's basically this big metal box. It literally goes almost to the floor of the cabinet on the playfield. There's about probably two inches of room at the bottom of that metal box at the pivot point of the playfield when you lift it up to service it. It is massive. And the thing is that there's a solenoid that actually, when it drops into the bottom, like you hear it when the thing retracts and it goes plonk, that's the ball dropping about 30 or 40 centimeters down to the bottom of this box. and then there's a solenoid that kicks it up this sort of like path that stages the ball near the right outkicker. And the way it gets it into the right outkicker is it's got this little tiny solenoid that just pops it over this little ridge, this little lip on the thing rail into the main trough. So there's a lot of engineering there. So it's a lot of mechanics going on there. that's probably like that would be a third of the bill of materials on that table i would think all right it is really really really expensive that bit of the machine like it's a lot going so that would go 100 if that was a pro model you'd be losing that you would probably keep the turntable you have to keep the turntable the vault the vault turntable i think is too integral to the game not to have it there i was trying to think of a way of doing away with that and the only thing i could think of was like a stand-up target or maybe a drop target that you hit to trigger the letters but it's it's a jackpot hole as well that's the problem and there's a mode that needs that um as well like there's a uh tunnel hunt mode requires that one there's so many modes that rely on that upper vault the only other so yeah the only other thing i know for sure it would be gone is the power the the magnet oh the magnet field doing the power yeah gone yeah that'd go see ya yeah so those three i think they would have to get rid of the hand yeah um because of the the sheer cost of the thing yeah um and it would make it just think of the table without thing oh like well that's what i'm saying they probably have the toy there they probably have the hand toy there and it has flashes around it like they'll be going nuts it wouldn't actually That'd be it. No, it would just be there sort of sitting over the lane probably, like hovering high enough over the lane that it looks like the ball would be picked up by it. But that's it. It might even have the plastic box there in the hand, but the hand would just be a bracket holding the hand in place like that, I reckon. So it would still have the aesthetic of it, but it would just do nothing.
    29:09
    I was just thinking that means for sure that something like Johnny Mnemonic wouldn't have that glove. Oh, no. No way. No, that would have to go. And that's actually a good thing because that loves a pain in the butt to maintain. It is just full of faults. Everyone complains about it. When you get it working, it's great, but it's hard to get right.
    29:30
    Now, what about Doctor Who? What would you do with Doctor Who? That mini play field is the crux of the game. But you know, it is just so incredibly expensive. could you do a far side on it could you actually have a smaller mini play field area up the top there and have like a like some targets that trigger the locks or something right because you've got you've got so much mechanics in that thing you've got the fact that it rises up is is a huge expense and then you've got the virtual lock solenoids in there or so you got the lock solenoids in there as well which fire the balls out and store the balls so i think you can make it a virtual lock and maybe knock out some of the bill of the expense there so you could have you could maybe keep the platform and make it a virtual lock so you're not having to worry about the solenoids and you can still have it rise up but oh geez you wouldn't be able to cut too much cost off that though but there's a lot of there's not a lot of meat on that uh on that table to trim to really cut no i know that we were also talking about like twilight zone or it'd be... The old Twilight Zone. Goodbye, gumball. Goodbye, power play field. Goodbye, ceramic ball. Yep. It is completely... You get rid of the power. I imagine that you would lose one of the upper flippers.
    30:58
    I have a feeling you couldn't get rid of the left one because that kicks over to the piano. So it would probably be the right flipper, midfield flipper, because that only shoots over into the camera. It's kind of an area that's not kind of a... eh, whatever. I mean, not much really happens there, so I'd imagine that that would be the one that would... Well, you've also got the Town Square shot as well, and that's how you pick up hitchhikers. Yeah. So they'd have to change the mechanic of how you pick up hitchhikers. And the camera is, while it is sort of like a mystery award, you could probably put that feature triggered somewhere else in the play field. Well, but here's the thing. If you have the left flipper flipped up and you flip from the right flipper, you can get it into that area. so you can still shoot the area.
    31:44
    There would just have to be some kind of a diverter or some alteration to the rules for what happens when the ball goes over there.
    31:53
    Yeah, and that would be very hard to do. Yeah. Now, what about bride? Interesting question, Fiscal. Bride of Pinbot. Well, again, the main feature of that table is the rotating head. how would you make the rotating head less rotatey? Would you remove a face from the head and maybe just have one of the heads like a static face? Well, let's assume that we're dealing with the DMD era now. We're doing Bride 2.0.
    32:31
    All right, Bride 2.0. So if you're doing a pro model, it would just be a flat surface that when the ball rolls down, maybe it uh different areas of the surface are magnetized to capture the ball and so there's no rotation going on it's just the ball comes in and gets magnetized to that area um so you reckon that'd be they'd have one face but like three or four magnets in there yes right that's interesting and then for the for the premium that's when you get the whole rotating mechanism I don't know, I kind of like the idea of the magnetized head. That sounds really cool. They should have just done that to start with.
    33:16
    Yeah, but then you wouldn't have a bride giving her ophi. Yeah, that's right. And putting the balls in her mouth. Yeah.
    33:25
    Because, you know, this was designed by Python Angelo. Oh, my God. And he was just terrible for that sort of thing. It wasn't just sexual innuendo. it was blatant the bride has basically two flashes for nipples if you have a look at the playfield top down he wasn't messing around with the innuendo on that table it was intentional so yeah well I imagine too the plastic clear ramps would just be metal the plastic clear you mean the ones that are like that lead up to the head. Yes, there's the one that leads up to the head. That would just be just a plain piece of metal ramp. Undecorated, non-laser cut. You think that's... Oh, no, that's... Oh, metal ramps. That's the reason why they eliminate them on pro versions of the table. Really? The plastic ramps are cheaper? Heaps cheaper. They're injection molded. You just make a mold, shove a whole lot of plastic into it and pump them out. That's why you always see the premium models with the metal ramps, and that's like a feature of the build, because, you know, metal was more expensive. I just figured that what was more expensive was the habit rails, the metal habit rails. Oh, so yes, the habit rails, yes, they are expensive. They would definitely go in a pro model, unless it was integral to the game, like it was an area of the playfield that took a little bit of extra hits.
    34:59
    And, I mean, that's an interesting thing. What about skill shot on Bride? Would that actually be simplified? because that's a big bit of metal, a big chunky assembly. And it's got a lot of triggers all the way down. It does, yeah. I mean, I know that if they were building it today, it'd be all opto-sensor.
    35:18
    Yeah, it would be. I guess that's part of the interesting portion of this conversation is, are we assuming that it was being built then or being built now?
    35:32
    Yeah, that's right. I think if they were building it then, that's the tricky bit because a lot of the things that we see on Stern tables now that they sacrifice for pro models, they just virtualize everything. So they'll virtualize a lock mechanism, which probably the System 11 games back then just wouldn't have had the ability to do. They wouldn't be able to keep track of lock balls the way they do now. They actually needed a physical lock to work. but if they were redesigning it now and taking that layout they would just completely virtualize everything basically I guess what we're trying to say is it kind of sucks when you think about it really does what are you designing for you're now designing essentially two tables or are you just throwing one to the side being like, you know whatever, but then you think about the cost there's no way that i mean some of these things that they eliminate where you just go wait a second and that's why the price is fifteen hundred dollars less really it's like i don't know if that's worth fifteen thousand dollars like one thousand five hundred dollars like uh that's not a lot of stuff removed um so yeah it's it's definitely sometimes you go I don't know I have to ask why it's tricky over to our peanut gallery questions comments anything you want us to bring up go ahead type it in we'll broach it and even if it's I think we're done with the let's talk about pro and pre models even though it was an interesting thing I think we've exhausted all the things we can think about that would really make tables suck if you remove them so what about other questions what about trying to think if we have been playing you know I've been I can probably talk about something new well new to me at least managed to get my hands on a VR headset recently and this one is the Quest 2 which is a new one from Oculus and I thought yeah you know what i want to try out i want to be a super late adopter to vr and try out stuff i mean the oculus headsets it's barrier to entry is pretty low now like it's not like you had to spend like a thousand dollars and have a really powerful gaming rig um like you did when the first round of like rift headsets came out um like this is all using essentially an android based solution with a VR, a specific VR chipset from Snapdragon in it, the XR2, and it's all contained in the headset. Even the tracking is contained in the headset. You don't need to put up external IR sensors and stuff like that like you did with the older ones. It's pretty neat. Because that's the thing. I have access to, I had it plugged in here, the Oculus Rift. There's so many wires. So many wires. Yes, so many wires. it takes like if you if you're setting one up you really have to have a dedicated space for it don't you like it's so hard to get right yeah you need room um yeah yeah i mean especially if you plan on playing you know if you're planning on playing something like beat saber yeah oh yeah yeah you gotta have some room you gotta have some that's the thing the the way they've managed the whole room what they call that the feature that chris was talking about there is called room scale in VR and it's the setting that you set up to define the space that you're playing in the virtual space that you're playing in the way they've done it on the Quest 2 is interesting they allow you to actually draw out your room area with the controllers or you can set what they call a stationary boundary and the way the games work with that is it changes the way you play the games So the things like Beat Saber that generally encourage you to move around and actively dodge the barriers and stuff that comes towards you you get less of that action which to me particularly when you learning vr is actually not a bad way to start it almost like the um the basic mode of vr you sort of learn how to actually control things in the vr space and then you can sort of move to like the modes they have and beats that was like 360 mode where everything's coming at you literally from everywhere which is pretty intense but the um the the whole room scale thing is better managed you can actually play this thing in pretty tight spaces like you'll see behind me in my room i pretty much use that little space behind my chair as my vr space and i it just basically defines guardian boundary it's a circle it's just about a circle big enough for me to stand in and that's all you need um for for the quest and sure probably some gameplay elements are sacrificed because of it but you know that's actually fine um i haven't noticed any problems in any of the games i've played so far where the space is an issue so that really makes again vr more accessible to more people because some people don't have a dedicated space for vr right so here's a question again to the uh to those watching i've been trying to do gameplay video of pinball who wants to see jared doing gameplay video of whatever he's playing in VR.
    41:19
    Yeah. There are ways of doing it too. You can do... There's a guy that I seem to come across a fair bit on YouTube that deals with VR. It's called Mike from the VR Oasis. It's a really good channel if you want to dip your toe into VR. He really breaks down things nicely for you in a very accessible way and his reviews are really... He's a really personable guy anyhow. um mike and um he he explains the features of the games and he also touches on things that's really important like if you're a new vr player um it takes a while to get used to the like the motion of some vr games um and i really i was super excited for this free title on the quest 2 which was a roller coaster simulator i thought oh yeah i love roller coasters it's gonna be awesome and then you love roller coasters and then you tried yeah and then i tried one in vr and i nearly spewed like it was it is really hard the motion aspects of vr if you're if you are thinking like you're moving forward like in a car racing game or something like that and your body doesn't feel like it's moving forward it does very weird things to your equilibrium like uh and there are some that the way that facebook classifies the games is that it's comfortable um intermediate and intense as far as a vr experience no they clearly say that intense experiences are not for everyone and really uh only for experienced vr gamers and even then may not even be for them so they're like saying if you if you go intense expect that you are very comfortable with VR and you're very comfortable with the motion elements of it and prepare for a bit of weirdness. So the way they are trying to overcome... The makers of the Roller Coaster Simulator game are very smart. They obviously got a lot of feedback that people were losing their lunch when playing this game. So they've got a couple of tactics that help you still experience the game, but it makes it so... there's this little target and on the front of the car that you're in, like you can obviously look around you and everything and see all the environment. And then right in front of you, there's like this target. And the target is the motion sickness target. So if you're looking around the game, you're going, oh, this is not feeling good. You just look at the target and that gives you a horizon. Oh, okay. Because it's all about, it's the reason why you feel sick in VR games is lack of horizon. Yeah. so the other thing they do is they give you a helmet and the helmet gives you can have just the regular helmet on which just gives you a little border around your field of view so again you get that feeling of basic horizon then you can go at an extra level and have like an iris so you have like the helmet and then an extra field of view or FOV inside the helmet that gives you like extra horizon and then if you're really still having trouble you can even have a basically a grid view that displays completely around your field of view in the helmet, and it has like a moving square shape horizon. I had all three of those things on, and I still felt sick. So, it really disappointed me. Have you tried out any of the pinball that's out there, you know, whether it be Zachary Pinball, or Pinball Facts 2 VR, or I doubt you went the Stern Pinball VR route, but I definitely have not tried that yet. So there's two different things. This is the interesting thing about the Quest 2 as well. So the Quest 2 is a pretty decent headset to get your hands on. And there's two reasons why. It's got a pretty extensive catalogue of games that you can run on the headset itself without any extra software. You don't need a computer. But the other thing is that it also doubles as a fully-fledged VR headset that you can connect up to your PC as well. and you can do that with the cable that comes with the headset or you can actually do it wirelessly as well if you install a couple of extra programs on the headset. So it will work with SteamVR, no problems at all. So you can actually play all of your Steam titles through this headset.
    45:47
    And there's another thing that is really good about the fact that the headset is based on Android. It uses all of the regular Android things to do the games with. So one very clever set of folks have set up a thing called SideQuest. And what SideQuest is, it allows you to sideload games onto the headset. Now, these aren't pirated games. These are official games that developers have used, a little bit like the difference between itch.io and Steam. So itch.io is a different marketplace, and in the case of itch you often get steam keys as well that the developers give you so you can add it to your steam library um whereas um that the whole side quest thing it's like a marketplace for games that are either in beta or are experimental um and perhaps don't yet meet the quality grade the really high quality grade that facebook sets on their marketplace so like there's some really interesting stuff on there like you've got this um first person shooter called pavlov and it's um it's really it's almost like um sort of playstation 2 graphics but in vr and it's a really polished shooter like if you're like first person shooters you would install side quest and get this because it's free and it's really professional for what it is there's this other game that really i've been having a ball with which is a drumming simulator and it actually has uh it's a pretty fully fledged game at the moment because it's been in development for a while but you actually have like it's a little bit like guitar freaks and drum mania or guitar hero where the the notes come towards you and you've got to hit them in time but the thing is that this is like a full virtual drum kit so you're not actually striking anything you've got the controllers in your hand and you're actually like you know doing this and rolling around the thing and i initially i thought this is really going to suck without having that feeling of hitting something that rebounds you get but it's actually not as bad as you think it actually works really quite well because you actually get this well this is an early beta too like the this guy has got some things to work out i'm going to send him a um um a bit of a note because i think there's a few things that probably are still in development like judgment system you know how in in guitar hero you have like you know you hit the note perfectly you hit the note sort of okay it doesn't have that yet and i think having played way way too many um credits in drum mania by konami in the arcade this is like an area of expertise that i have with these games like i really know how they should work the other thing is because the sense zone is um when the symbol picture goes over the drum pad like this um let me just get this right like that so as it's coming down towards you it actually rather than having a baseline like you have in guitar heroes the baseline is actually the symbol or the the tom or the other drum pad so what you're getting is if you're trying to keep the beat you're having all these notes come down sort of off-center like that but at the same time like if you have one like that and that you have to actually hit them at the same time and that's really hard to judge yeah so but you know that's the side quest thing is really really interesting um on the platform so it's free to install all you need is a computer it even works on mac so like you can what i know right so you can actually do this whole thing so i've been having a really really fun time with it I have bought a couple of games officially through the Facebook store, and one of them is Shooty Skies Overdrive. Now, this was a mobile game that was released just as a casual game. But what they've done is pretty incredible with it. I found out that Shooty Skies is actually developed in Australia by a studio here.
    49:51
    And they've done, essentially, a shoot-em-up in VR. And basically, your hand is the plane. and you have all these enemies just throwing bullets at you and you literally guide the plane through the bullets like this with your hand. And you've got this, your other hand like handles the power-ups. So you've got like all these different random cutesy power-ups that you can use like one of them is like a vacuum that like sucks up all the bullets. So you can clear the room with all the bullets. And the other one is like they have one that's like a llama trumpet. So you actually have to hold your left one up like this like a trumpet and it starts blowing these things out to blow up the enemies. It's hilarious.
    50:35
    And it's really well done. I would like to see more shoot-'em-ups on the platform that actually use your hand as the plane because it's such an intuitive way to do it because you're literally, this is the thing that you're guiding through the bullets. I reckon it could be really fun. And then to fire back, you can make the gun thing.
    50:54
    Well, it's auto-fire or you can set it so it fires automatically. Yeah. I'm intrigued by what popped up here a little bit ago here, the KFC console.
    51:06
    No, I read about it, like the headline, and I thought, well, that's surely a joke. So, Fiskler, are you actually saying that this is a real thing?
    51:17
    That it's a warming drawer underneath? Is it underneath a specific console, or is it something that Kentucky Fried Chicken is designing?
    51:26
    I've never heard about this thing. I need to Google it. I mean, Jared, we know that the system name would be called the Dirty Bird, right? It would be the Dirty Bird, yeah. Oh, wow. Oh, it is actually a thing.
    51:41
    Hang on. So this is... Okay, so this is a product from Cooler Master. It is... This is a description. I love it. It's forged from the fires of the KFC ovens and built by Cooler Master from the ground up. There has never been a tastier way. a tastier way to experience the latest titles and stunning 4k 240 frames per second okay sure thing so there's a so i think what they're doing is they're using all the residual heat in the in the system yeah to act as a food warmer okay sure so this is is this essentially a PC case that you can put a PC into that also doubles as a food warmer.
    52:30
    Well, okay. Because, you know, you've already got the image of the gross guy that hasn't gotten up out of his chair in 26 hours with five zillion Coke cans surrounding him and just grease stains all over his shirt, and now he's going to have warm food right there. What more can you want, right? So here we go. So it's also VR ready, you should know. So you can get on your feet and enjoy the world of virtual reality with the smell of fresh chicken captures your senses. Oh, my God. I'm not kidding. This is the copy they're using on this.
    53:04
    Oh. I mean, it's well-specked. It's got a good spec in it. Like, it's obviously using an RTX NVIDIA card in it because it's got, like, you know, 240 frames per second with up to 240 hertz output. So it's pretty chunky. But I can't even believe it.
    53:26
    Yeah, I wouldn't, like fiscal rights in the chat, it's apparently going to have like two grand of power inside it. Yeah, you're not kidding. Like it's a well-specced out PC. There it is, folks. I was able to take the time. That's, yeah.
    53:40
    You know, I can't even. What's funny about this, though, is that a few weeks ago, and we haven't watched it yet, but there was this whole thing called...
    53:55
    It was a little Lifetime movie that KFC was doing with... Oh, that, yes. Seduction, something of the taste of seduction or whatever. And everybody was laughing away, ha, ha, ha. And then it's legit. I recorded it. I haven't watched it yet, but... No, it's proper. Yeah, it's a thing. So apparently somebody at KFC has been thinking outside the box and was given a budget.
    54:23
    So, like, you know, I'd hope that if you buy this, you at least get some vouchers for KFC so you can fill the thing up a couple of times with chicken, right? Like, it looks like it's, okay, yeah. This is very interesting. I wouldn't get one, but it's... It is a chunky beast. It's got some really good specs in it. It's not how you'd be spending your money? I don't understand.
    54:49
    Well, look, it is a... What it is is a very compact... It's a compact-looking PC. It's pretty small-looking, unless my eyes deceive me. There's no idea of scale. And it's got heaps of tech in it. So I'm not sure about the warming box, but look, you know.
    55:08
    I think they need to consider a vegan version of this. It's all in the Easy Bake Oven. Yeah, it's all about the Easy Bake Oven, yeah, for sure.
    55:19
    Yeah, you're right, Fizzle. It has a really powerful system on the chipboard, the NUC9. It's incredible. It's incredible and crazy at the same time.
    55:34
    I'd be happy to give one a go if Cooler Master wants to send one my way. There you go. Which they won't. They won't, but if by chance it gets to them, don't worry. Our information is listed down below for how to get in contact with us for reviews and such. For product reviews. Yeah.
    55:55
    It is a good way of using the heat that is naturally inherent in a computer system, though. What they're doing here is actually showing an application for reusing essentially the wasted power from a PC for something good. And, I mean, that's a novel idea. So good on them for thinking outside the box. That's definitely good.
    56:18
    So I got, for Christmas, two games that I'm way behind the curve on. But that's okay. This is what I do. I wait for a game in year editions and with it having all the DLC and it's a lot cheaper and ta-da. So I got the Spider-Man game for PS4.
    56:37
    And I got Last of Us Part II. And I started playing both of them yesterday. And I'll just say the Spider-Man game is...
    56:51
    I didn't know what to expect from it because I've tried the Batman game and didn't like it at all. There's a certain play style that I enjoy. And the Spider-Man game is doing two things that just are going, oh, that feels good. One, the swinging around the city, it's effortless. You don't have to think about where you're firing your web or anything else like that. It just automatically finds a point of contact and away you go. Oh, that's so good. And it just is smooth and you get that diving sensation. It's crazy. Top notch on that. The other thing is the fighting aspect. there are a ton of moves that you can do. And I was worried that I was going to have to try and memorize all these moves. No, it's like God of War. Just button mash and cool things happen. Oh, yeah. That's cool. See, that's my sort of fighting game, right? Exactly. I was always turned off like the Street Fighters and Mortal Kombat's of the day because to play those games well, you actually need to memorize moves and have instant muscle memory. Yeah, I mean, as much as I want to enjoy them, it takes effort to learn them it really does yeah it's not fun but that sounds great like i'd get into it it's almost like casual it's a casual beat-em-up isn't it really yeah i mean it it just it's the kind of game that you can just sit back relax you're not going to get overly stressed about it um you're going to see some cool things happen that you're going to go oh how did i do that and then you go into the move set list and you go like oh well gee if i just had have known to do this this this button you know in this combination i can do that all the time but i'm not gonna remember that i'm just gonna button um and and and then it's also got a little mix of gta in that you are god i swear i i think they actually mapped new york city really like one to one mapped it if i'm not mistaken so it's not gta where they faked miami or faked new york um i think there's legitimate it's true to scale and everything but well uh they've hidden collectibles all over the place but they didn't make it the annoying hiding where you have to stumble upon them and find them no they'll put a little icon on your map and you can you know select that icon and they'll send you to the area and tell you within how many meters you are of that item and you know so you can find it that way there's still a little bit of looking to be found um but it will locate you where them where you need yes yes and that hits me in the yeah gta had that a lot but also like tomb raider does that where they hide all sorts of objects and the more objects you collect that helps you with your power-ups and so it encourages you to not just plow through the story mode but to actually uh explore explore and play uh just you know it's their side missions without being actual missions call it that way that's cool so that was so that's fun mechanic then i slipped in last of us part two and first off i've never had a game where you had to install one disc that was nothing but data and then you have your play disc that you play with for secondary game is massive oh i have i have had that experience before and it not been a game like that It been on a much smaller earlier version of the console That how you used to play Beatmania on PlayStation 1 You had... Oh, yeah, back in that day. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Final Fantasy used to come on four discs. That was just, you know... You can't even insert the second disc. Right, but in today's console, it's all about... Like the Spider-Man, it took me 90 minutes to copy it onto the console and then download all the updates before I could even play.
    60:36
    So you actually get the disc. So let me get this straight on because I'm not a console owner. On the PS4, you get your starting game disc if you choose to buy it from the shop. And you actually literally install that disc onto the hard drive in the console. Yep, you're no longer playing off the disc. right so this is essentially just your your license copy essentially yes your disc winds up being your key your key right right yeah and the suck part about that is that the because i only have a 500 gig ps4 and so at any one time i can basically have about three games installed. That's all?
    61:16
    Depending. I mean, well, the Last of Us 2, on the back of the box it says minimum 100 gigabyte free.
    61:25
    Wow. Yeah. That's ridiculous. And the Spider-Man game, I think, took up 65 gigs. So, you know, do the math. You fill it up really, really fast. And I hate it because there are certain games I don't want to delete because I like to go back to them. I'm being...
    61:46
    Truth be told, there's probably about six games that you can have on there at any given time. But... What you're saying is that 500 gig doesn't last long. No, I really should have an external drive connected to this.
    62:02
    So it allows you to use... It actually does support like a USB to drive. PS4 fully allows you to do external that way, or if you wanted to swap the internal drive, they made it easy. They knew that people were going to be good. They didn't make it proprietary or anything else like that. That's smart. I remember with the PS2 on some of the Japanese versions, you could actually get you could actually plug in a hard drive into that too. And it would work in the first or second generations of them with really fat PS2s. That was cool. So The Last of Us 2 though, I finally get it installed, I start playing. Immediately it's just like, oh yeah. Let's cozy up. It's going to be story time because I know that's what this is. And my lord, did they just start letting the F-bombs drop.
    62:47
    Oh, really? Like the other game, the first one, they were there. But it was sporadic. It wasn't just... They were just flavor. They were flavor swearing. Yeah, yeah. This is... You're watching a Tarantino movie. Right. Oh, right. so it's certainly not one for the kiddies to be listening to any issue at one point i was i was i probably put in about three hours yesterday and i'm sitting there playing through it and all of a sudden my wife goes is this your game yep not watching a movie this is the game yeah um this is a game and the funny thing is i got all that time in and i knew this basically from ever having played the first one uh my cutoff point i basically went well there was the prologue right because this is what i love about naughty dog they do a phenomenal job of putting you through the tutorial basically to remind you how to play to remind you how to to use without it ever feeling like like it's tutorial it's just a natural it's a natural progression like literally one of the first things you do because it's all snowing and everything and you're about to go out and there's some kids having a snowball fight and they're like oh you gotta play snowball fight with us you're like okay great so you're starting to scoop snowballs you're tossing them at them well this is showing you remember this is your trigger finger for your gun and this is your aiming reticule right i mean without it that's really nice yeah um and and they're breaking up like who is doing what because you're the story shifts from person to person and so it's like okay you know now you're doing some exploring and now you're doing some horseback riding and you're doing all these things but it is all thoroughly part of the story it's not story game story game it's all story that you're just kind of building interactive storytelling exactly and so that's very cool and so basically where i got to a point and i knew again i knew this was going to happen but uh i basically got to the point where i went where a new like a title card popped up and i went boom there we go i'm done with the prologue we are done with the tutorial now the game itself the game proper starts we're actually in the game now yeah right so i'm looking forward to uh looking forward to that's your deep diving into this bit of depression well it's a grim story it's a grim it's a grim story right okay so you really need to have your happy you need to have a full bucket of happiness before you start the game well i've said it before the very first time i tried playing last of us i didn't make it very far um i i went naughty dog i love uncharted uncharted is my favorite game and i tried playing it as if i was playing uncharted and that's completely the wrong way to play it and i got a little freaked out over the survival horror aspect of it and didn't care for that and so i put the game down and i didn't touch it for another year and a half or so um at which point i had been watching the walking dead and that's when i realized it's a walking dead episode and if you treat it like that you're golden right i see right you just need to understand how the game developers want you to experience the game not exactly you think you should experience it exactly hey you know on the you know maybe uh we could switch gears now yeah and to a subject you probably won't expect me to bring out but that's movies what uh sure never talks movies oh but i gotta warn you guys folks next time we uh come in i'll be doing my annual uh best of worst movie list yeah just warning you yeah warning yeah okay what do you got it is a tradition that you should expect by now if you're a regular bike like this so i i have watched um a it was obviously school holidays here in australia yeah um this is our this is our summer holidays over here um so kids are off and they're looking for entertainment so um managed to um watch um the disney pixar um movie called soul oh okay um now soul is it almost feels like a not a sequel but um like a a related a related area for Pixar compared with Inside Out. Yeah, I was going to say, I just heard somebody say that it's the, that was the kids' version, this is the adults' version.
    67:26
    It does kind of feel like that. So that movie, so Soul is all about this jazz musician that has an accident and is sort of forced into this limbo state between the real world. Wait, did he forget to breathe while he was playing his instrument?
    67:44
    No. No, basically he has a physical accident. I'm going to tell you how it is. It's sort of weird. The movie sort of starts off a bit slow, and I thought, oh, man, the kids aren't going to dig this. And then it's almost like the whole thing they did, the technique they did with The Wizard of Oz, where everything's sort of in black and white, and then everything goes into full color. But it's not so much the color shift, it's just the shift between almost like the real world and then this... Yeah, there's a visual cue.
    68:17
    There's definitely a visual cue, and it's really well done. And when it switches into the soul world, let's call it that,
    68:26
    that's when I could go, okay, I think the kids are going to start getting into this. And Zachary didn't really care for it that much. I think they both liked the movie that Kim picked for them first because it was very much straight down the line kids. This is more thinking kids movie. That makes sense. But I really enjoyed it. It's, I mean, if you've got Disney Plus, it's there for you now. Because it's almost like they released it straight to video. It was probably going to be a theatrical release. It was. But nothing more. Yeah.
    68:59
    And it's a good move. Like, it's actually perfectly suited for video. It brings me, though, to another idea about, I don't know why Oculus and that aren't actually take advantage of the 3D market here. Because if you can't go to the movie theater and you still enjoy 3D, this movie is stereosophic 3D compatible. Why aren't they doing this in VR? Because essentially that's what it is, right? Yeah. It's two screens. You can actually have full VR. So that's an aside. The guy that I got my Oculus from,
    69:35
    he swore by watching 3D movies in VR. Yeah. I mean, he loved doing that. I don't see how he could keep that thing on his head for two hours, but he thought it was a fantastic experience and that it really made the 3D pop when watching. It would. Yeah.
    69:56
    It would be incredible. I think the way they do 3D on the Oculus, I've seen some 3D content. I've watched some videos they have available for free. and there's definitely a field of view like you'll have like your main view here like your screen and then a little bit to the left and a little bit to the right is your field of view but anything outside of that is just black well he had it so that you could actually be sitting in a theater watching the movie yeah that's right there's actually a app you can use it's like a virtual theater app and you can actually go and watch that they'll do rebroadcast of things like top gun and stuff like that you can go and sit and watch top gun uh in a virtual environment just like you're in the theater it's pretty cool uh but i don't know how 3d would work like that i don't know whether it would actually be 3d from the perspective of like the screen and the things coming out at you sort of within the theater space or whether you'd literally be plopped right in the middle of the 3d a movie because that would be that would be pretty cool like essentially having a seat inside the movie where you could look around the environment and have essentially the directorial stage at the front, but the environment around you. That would be an incredible experience. Yeah, now you're asking a lot.
    71:12
    That is probably too much, because that's not something they could cater for. That would need to be a game experience. They'd need to render that on the fly. Look, I'd be happy with the former. I think that would be an amazing experience in 3D. I just need to work out how to get 3D content.
    71:28
    Well, fortunately for you, you guys can actually still buy 3D content. They don't sell it here in the States.
    71:36
    That's ridiculous, I think, isn't it? It's still a thing they're producing. It's still a thing they're producing, and if I want a 3D movie, I have to import it from the UK.
    71:45
    Ridiculous. And it was entirely, and we've mentioned it here before, and it's my soapbox, but it was entirely because they decided that well, we've got these 4K TVs, we need to sell the 4K ultra-high definition discs and the best way to do that is to because people just adopted buying 3d tvs but they saw that the trend was fading and so they were like okay so we're going to stop selling 3d tvs and then we're going to stop selling the media that goes with them but we're going to have all this 4k media instead that people will then buy and so that was their decision they were like boom that's our cutoff and it was like literally there was movies that were scheduled to come out on blu-ray in 3D that then that release got chopped. But over in the UK, there they were. But the problem was that depending on who the studio was and who was doing the releasing, like all the Marvel movies, thankfully, and the Star Wars movies, those are put out on region-free discs.
    72:50
    But I really wanted to see Terminator 2 in 3D, and that was region-locked to region 2. And so I wasn't able to buy that disc. So, you know, I had to go the Jolly Roger way and download a pirated version.
    73:03
    That's the problem, isn't it? If they're not going to make the content available in the country that you're in, there are people out there like you who want to do the right thing and want to pay the money. But if you're going to restrict it, what is the whole concept of regions anyhow in today's modern world? It doesn't matter much anymore. You'll find that most disks are region unlocked now. Region unlocked. That's good. I mean back in the day it was because you know we would movies weren't being released worldwide on day and date it was oh it's going to be here in America and three months later it's going to be there in Australia so because they literally moved the film canisters around didn't they like they actually shipped them to the different like they had a certain amount of these produced and they just went around the world in a stage release yes and then plus you would be timing it for like you said your kids' holidays, you're in summer, we're in winter. It kind of coincides with our winter break and your kids in summer, but not all of the big release dates match up to around the world to everybody else's holidays, obviously.
    74:11
    But yeah, now that they're doing day and date release, it doesn't make any sense to have a region locked disc because all the discs come out day and date across the world too.
    74:21
    Yeah, that's right. because i know that you know people are just going to pirate anyhow like right you know they've made torrenting and piracy more difficult but you know there's vpns and there's plenty of different ways you can get content if you want to go down that path and i think they've just gone you know what why are we trying to fight this let's actually just do it offer it so it's legitimately available and then i'm sure that that's that's resulted in a decrease in piracy the fact that that actually releases content everywhere at the same time.
    74:51
    That's the main reason why people would pirate to start with. So, yeah. Well, it certainly makes it easier for people that want to do it the legit way to be able to do it the legit way. Because, like I said, to me it was Terminator 2, and also I really wanted to see Valerian in 3D. And I didn't get a chance to see either of them in the theater, because T2 was literally in the theater for like a week and a half and they pulled it from the 3d version and so i was like okay i'm gonna wait for the disc and i'm just gonna buy the disc sight unseen i'm all ready and they denied me that opportunity so ridiculous you know i didn't that would be pretty bad about downloading it given that that movie is is now old yeah i still think that that movie would be pretty amazing in 3D still. It was alright. It was alright? No. It was alright. It was a conversion. I mean, the conversions have gotten really, really good.
    75:59
    But there's... You no longer don't have to film a movie in 3D natively, but you still have to plan for it. You can see that there was just things that I know Cameron would do differently if he had been planning for 3D as opposed to doing the conversion.
    76:18
    Right. Interesting. But yeah, that's something I'm going to have to look into trying to work out how to do. Hey, Jared, look at the time there.
    76:28
    Oh, wow. Hey, look. We've filled the show with enough nonsense to make a show. Hooray! I'm just going to throw this out here because I did have fun doing it, even though it doesn't seem like people are much catering to it, but we'll see. I'm going to still give it a shot. I'm going to do another 10-minute pinball, probably tomorrow.
    76:50
    Record a giant block of them. These are going to be my top five packs, I guess, but it's usually a table within a pack that I recommend to anybody that ever wants to. When they're new to Pinball FX3, and they're like, what do I download? These are always what I recommend.
    77:07
    We're going to try this again. Once again, if you guys want to watch live, I'll be here tomorrow on Sunday at 2pm doing exactly that. So be sure to tune in. That's to you that are watching right this minute.
    77:22
    So that's going to be... I've got plans on doing my five worst that are in there. And I'm still looking for ideas. I thought I had one other. I'm slipping me at the moment.
    77:36
    I enjoy making them. so I'll keep on doing them but I thought that we would do that just because this particular episode I'm not going to chunk up into little chunks to spread out through the week because it was all over the map yes and you found that you know inside baseball here no one really cared for the split ups did they not for the 10 minute pinball no you guys actually liked the full episode yeah so that's good data to have you know that saves I'm still going to try it it's really easy all I just gotta do is this week I will have to remember to actually hit the record and stop button oh yeah that'll help because I did like three attempts where I kept on forgetting to hit record I was like okay I'll start over again that's good you have a practice run it's like a rehearsal on those tables there's a lot of rubbing the head and patting the belly and look I didn't even say that oh yeah that's right I did have one request where it was, oh, hey, show strategy and everything. And I'm like, well, I can do that on Bally Williams tables, but I can't do that on any of the other stuff because I suck at most of the other stuff. Yeah, that's right.
    78:52
    Anyway, hey, like we said, next time we come back, it'll be after the new year. That'll be me, among other things. It'll be my annual tradition of my movie rundown for things I saw in 2020. I'm sure a lot of you saw a lot of crap just like I did because you had nothing better to do. Probably.
    79:14
    That'll be a major feature next time. And we're still waiting, obviously, on any other pinball news that'll drop, although I don't believe we're going to be hearing much.
    79:26
    Not for next week, but once everybody's back in business, after the start of the new year, I'm sure that things will be dropping because we should have been having CES the second week of January. So all of those products that the companies would have been presenting, they're going to be probably presenting virtually. So we'll have to see what emerges with that. So that's kind of a farther glimpse forward into what's going on. So apart from the movies, Jared, what other things will we be talking about?
    79:58
    Stuff and things. can't beat that alright until next time guys buh-bye see you later