All right, welcome back, guys, to another episode of A Pinball Podcast. I believe this is episode 38, I'm pretty sure, maybe 37. Hell, I don't know. It's upper 30s. It's somewhere around there. Anyhow, today we are going to be talking about the Led Zeppelin gameplay reveal. Now, we've already beaten this to death. Not going to talk about the artwork. Not going to talk about anything to do with how the game was revealed or anything like that. We've already discussed that. I think overall, just going over it real quickly, I think they did the best that they could do with the situation that they were put in. Obviously, DMCA be damned. It's a sucky situation all around, but I'm sure it will get fine-tuned over time. Anyhow, that's all I'm going to say on that, and we're going to move straight into gameplay because that's what this was. This was a gameplay reveal event. And you know what? I thought overall that everybody did pretty well showing off the game. I felt like seeing this in action, the play field to me felt like a cross between like a Star Trek and ACDC or even a high speed. And if you really look at the play field itself and you look up in the upper right hand side, you can see elements of that. Like I see it in it. It reminds me of ACDC and high speed, like all those. It's almost like a what's the word I'm looking for, like a conglomeration. Am I even pronouncing that right? I'm probably not. It just looks like it's a hodgepodge. of Steve Ritchie stuff just put together all over this play field. And that's kind of what I was noticing. And more and more as I saw the game actually being played and I saw this kind of working itself out, it definitely felt that way overall. Now, just judging the game on its own, we'll just start directly from the beginning, the plunge. I'm not a big fan of the plunge. And the reason being is, one, it is hitting into the targets, which we thought it would do. but I was hoping that similar to high speed or similar to like a black rose or something like that that we'd be able to go from the plunge do a full plunge or a power plunge and go up the left loop or the uh the side ramp loop the hot shot ramp I think that's what it's called I need to figure this out I keep getting my terminology wrong we'll just say hot shot ramp but it does not go up that direction it will always hit the led targets now for me that's a little bit of a bummer too just because I don't like the idea of plunging and the ball immediately being out of control no matter what you do I don't like that and even coming from a tournament background you know I'm not a fan of knowing that this game will indeed be in tournaments no doubt about that but I'm not a fan of knowing that we're just going to all have to basically short plunge or soft plunge to a flipper nearly the whole entire time and that's not I don't know for me it's not my biggest or my most exciting way to start a pinball game, but it is what it is. Now, going over all that, let's just discuss the shots now. And I'm going to move over my play field over here real quick. Too big. Come back. There we go. Now I made my whole browser go nuts. Okay, we're good. We're good. I'm not even going to edit that out. We're just going to do this in real time. Okay. So looking at this play field overall, the answer or the questions that we had was pretty much answered. I mean, the game obviously does play fast, and that was almost a given because it's a Steve Ritchie design. Now, the game that they ended up playing on was the Premium Edition. I thought I'd heard it'd be the LE, but it turned out it was just the Premium, but that didn't affect anything gameplay-wise because everything else is the same on the play field. So just looking at the shots in general, The game played super fast, and it played so fast, in fact, that that upper flipper shot to the side ramp on the fly is nearly non-existent. Probably in about an hour and a half, I might have counted maybe four successful shots off that, and I'm talking if you just rip that left orbit spinner just flush, and that ball comes screaming around that orbit, that is a tough shot. And, you know, a big reason for that is, especially if you look at the way the play field is designed, that upper right flipper is way up there. It is way, way up there. And as a result, your reaction time has to be so quick on a shot or on a ball that's coming around that orbit fast. And it's nearly to the point to where I'm almost thinking when I do get a chance to play it, it'll just be one of those situations to where I'm either just going to let the ball just travel back to my right flipper, or I might even hold my flipper up and just kind of nudge it into the LED targets. Now, that being said, there is still some other options with the upper right flipper that we saw actually performed well on. And one of those things that excites me is the fact that you can sweep the ZEP targets that are up there, those drop targets. And so the lead targets, those are stand-ups which are on the far left-hand side or across the play field from it, right by the side ramp, whereas the ZEP targets are the drop targets that are at a little bit of an angle just right north of your upper flipper shot. Now, it is pretty much, it's a sweepable shot, but I'm not so sure if it's a sweepable shot on a consistent basis whenever you are hitting that left orbit flush. But that being said, the ramp in those targets can be hit though, but the only way that I'm really seeing them going to be able to hit with any consistency is if that ball is coming out of the pops. If it's just trickling down a little bit slower to the upper flipper, I think that's the only way. again we didn't see any center shot hit even though it was advertised that it could be hit from that flipper we didn't see it happen one time and even on the slow ones and i'm still i don't know obviously it's got to happen if they're saying it can happen but i don't think it's a big part of the gameplay either i think it's just a of surprise it can be done once out of every i don't know 20 25 games that we might play at home it just it just doesn't seem like a shot that you would readily go for anyways. But that being said, after watching this, I'm not so convinced that missing the side ramp shot is as big a deal as I thought it would be. Now, that being said, I still hate that it's stripped out. I don't like it. I still do not like the idea that I could actually just crush that shot and hit it flush and the ball immediately goes out of control, that's still a bummer. But seeing it too, seeing how often it's not hit, I don't know how much of the game I'm missing yet. And I won't know until I get a chance to actually flip it and just see how it just generally feels. Now, unfortunately, yours truly, I'm not going to be able to flip this game anytime soon. I am staying in on a pro. I'm going to go for it. I'm going to do it. But from my understanding, I'm not going to be in on the I think all the pros that are in the first run, those are all going to operators. I think the earliest that I will get a pro as of today would probably be about a month from now. So it's not gonna be anytime soon unfortunately. And I don know maybe the more I see it it might make me lean another direction but I really wanna get a chance to flip and I want to get a chance to get a feel for it so I can tell you guys the viewers and the listeners how this game really plays and what I think about and give you guys a better idea because obviously there's still a lot of places that are shut down, and a lot of people are not going to be able to play this game anytime soon. I want to be able to give the best information that I can give. So that is kind of a bummer, but it's understandable. So if you're looking for me to have any type of gameplay review on this, like a hands-on review, it is not going to happen anytime soon. It's probably going to be well over a month from now, unfortunately. Now, continuing on and talking about the shots in general, looking at the ramps overall, I actually do enjoy how these ramps return. They return super fast, as expected. The left ramp is a lot smoother just seeing it played in general than what I was kind of expecting. When I saw that ball bouncing all over the place out of the Zeppelin during the feature reveal, I was a little bit worried how that would affect timing or if that would have an effect on timing. But it does appear that it did not have an effect on anybody's timing at all, and we never saw that ball jump out of the wire form either. So, you know, I don't think it's going to be that big a deal now after seeing it in action. one of the things I really did love is it felt like every single shot was pretty much backhandable, which was nice. I mean, we were talking about all three ramps are backhandable, obviously. I mean, center ramp's going to be accessible to both flippers, but all the ramps are backhandable. I love that the spinner shot on the left-hand side is backhandable. I believe that the scoop also can be backhandable. So can the targets as well. And the way that you get those targets in of scoop to be backhandable is basically just by doing a rolling flip shot. And the way that you do that is if you're trapped up and instead of doing a post pass over, you do your post pass a little bit quicker. And that just makes the ball go up the end lane and comes back to your flipper while you're holding it up. And then once the ball gets to the nearly the end of the flipper, you can do a little flick shot and that'll allow the ball to go the direction you want it to go. Now, you guys haven't tried that yet. I would highly recommend trying it. If you have a star track you could do it on there a lot of people are doing it on teenage mutant ninja turtles as well with the lair shot and so those are shots that you can hit with the backhand also one of the other things i noticed as well is that you know the game like we talked about it plays fast because everything is wide open but what i really did like as well is that pretty much it felt like this game really wants the ball to return back to the flippers. So what I'm saying is, is the way that this is designed, obviously you're going to have your ramps return, you're going to have your orbits return, but it felt like even the angles of the ball save targets, of the rock targets, of the lead targets, of the zip drop targets, it felt like this game, even though it was playing fast, it wasn't necessarily going to punish you for bad shots. The only place that I saw that was really punishing people for missing a shot was that post on the left ramp and that shot a few times as soon as somebody hit it it just come rocketing right back down the middle but other than that not a lot of these other shots are really they didn't really feel like they were too dangerous and thus i can start to appreciate a little bit more in the coding and the rule set that they have set out in which you can hit combos and then targets in order to up your multiplier a little bit obviously they got to entice you a little bit to try to take some risky shots but overall i don't feel like on this pin that there's a lot of risk involved. I think the game's just going to play fast and that in itself, if you miss a couple of shots, obviously you got to drain eventually, but I don't think you're going to have any cheap drains is what I'm saying. So I can appreciate that. And especially looking at, like I said, how the targets are kind of angled, the ball seemed like it wanted to stay in the middle of the play field more times than not. Now, seeing how they had the outlaying post set up as well, it looks like that these are probably going to ship with the post probably smack dab in the middle and thus at the same time even if you are hitting it off that upper target on a pro i feel like you might not get as cheap drains to the right you know and plus the game being wide open as well that helps a lot too because take for instance ninja turtles right you got the april targets and the april targets and the rock targets here on led zeppelin are pretty similar in terms of where they're at and how they're angled big difference is, is that this right ramp on Led Zeppelin is way back in the back of the playfield, whereas Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has a ramp right there by it. And with a ramp being right there, they also have a post that is right there too. And so a lot of the times, a lot of people, if they hit those April targets, it will hit off a post also. And you end up with a lot of cheap drains on the left-hand outlane side, which kind of stinks. I know plenty of people have been complaining about it, but with Led Zeppelin, you're not going to get that necessarily. So I do appreciate that in terms of how this layout is. Now, I think overall, when we do take, well, let me back up a little bit. I want to talk about the pops also because the pop bumpers, you know, I go back and forth where I like these in a play field. I really do. Like I started to really appreciate having pop bumpers up closer on a pin like Iron Maiden. And so I don't really, I'm not a big fan of pops being like way back in the play field. And it always seems like, especially Steve Ritchie pins where they're at. They are always constantly just way back in the back and usually on the right hand side. The other thing about them is that they usually it's not dangerous whenever that ball comes out of the pops. You know, more times than not, it's either going to just come trickling back down to a left flipper or it's going to go trickling down the right side of the orbit. And this is the exact same thing. And that's another reason why that this is feels like it's kind of like a safe pin. And plus the shots that, you know, dimension is again, the upper flippers so far up there. I actually don't feel like you will get punished that much for missing a shot necessarily. And I don't even know if you'll get punished if you basically are late on a shot. You know, some of these pens like take Iron Maiden again, for instance, or even I think that this is probably possible on Jurassic Park 2. If you're super late on that shot, you're going to send it directly to an out lane. I've had that happen to me a couple of times on Iron Maiden, actually. So it doesn't seem like that's possible on Led Zeppelin just watching the gameplay because there was a couple of whiffs from people trying to hit it, you know, trying to hit the ball from coming through that orbit. But, you know, so that's one thing to kind of look out for as well. Let's see. So moving forward, you know, when we take this pin and we kind of consider it, you know, against all other pens because inevitably it's going to be compared to Guns N' Roses. But, you know, I was telling somebody this just the other day that I don't feel like anymore. There really no need to compare this to Guns N Roses too much And the reason why I say that is because by the time Guns N Roses is done with its run Stern is already going to have five or six titles out during that time Like right now we already have Avengers Infinity Quest and Led Zeppelin against Guns N' Roses because they're right around the same time. And Stern, of course, will have another game that will come out probably sometime between March and May, sometime right around that region. And guarantee there will not be a new Jersey Jackpin announced around that time. At least I would be shocked if there was. And so we're going to continuously have these comparisons, but at the same time, I just want to take a step back and just kind of appreciate that Stern is releasing the amount of games that they're releasing. And so when we really, when I do think of comparisons for Led Zeppelin, and this is my point that I'm making, I personally, I'm kind of avoiding comparing it too much to what Jersey Jack is doing and comparing it to what other people at Stern is doing. I kind of want to compare it more to what Steve Ritchie has done. And I feel like overall, and I've gone back and forth on this, is I feel like overall that this kind of is a mid-tier layout for Steve Ritchie. I feel like that this is in front of Star Wars and I owned a Star Wars for three years. And I feel like this is a better overall layout, just seeing it and seeing it in action compared to Star Wars. So I think Led Zeppelin's a better overall layout than that. I actually am starting to like the layout a little bit more than Game of Thrones also. I'm not really crazy about the premium and LE version of Game of Thrones, but I like the pro version and the general flow that that game has. Now, when I'm comparing this to something like Spider-Man or ACDC, that's when I think that this game isn't quite up to par with those and so thus I feel like it's kind of in that mid-range region in terms of what the layout design is I think it's a it's a mid-tier offering for Richie compared to his other pens against it but that being said I feel like at the same time this game and its code has a chance to be the best code on a Steve Ritchie pen and so when you add everything up together with code and gameplay and even the lights and we'll get to the lights here in just a few i think this game does have a chance to be legitimately one of the top tier Steve Ritchie pens that he's released i know crazy right that's even with some of the some of the choices and stripping out the game on a pro now if we're looking at this just from a premium and le standpoint i think it really does i i think the code alone will really help will really help this game kind of flesh itself out and emerge itself or become an emerging pen over the next six months. And when we kind of look at how this code is, and this is kind of just a segue into how the code is, and I can kind of bring this back to with how this deals with the electric magic mech that raises up. And so I feel like that that mech raises up a ton, and obviously that's a code choice, that it plays a large part of the game. Now, I don't think that any of the multi-balls can stack together, so it felt like there was a large amount of time that that mech, that raising mech that has the spinner and the magnet in it, it felt like that it was in the middle of the play field more times than not. Now, it still feels like a clunky shot to me, but it was nice seeing the ball being able to be hit through the spinner and up the center ramp, that is cool. And I said, hey, in a past podcast, I felt like that would be a top five shot if that was done properly. Still don't think it's done properly here though because the ball has to rebound off a post in order to get up that center ramp. So it's not like a flush shot. So I feel like it's still an opportunity miss. But I think the mech is pretty cool. But at the same time, I don't feel like I'm missing out on much by not having it in the pen. I don't feel like that multiball is really that big a deal. And I don't know, I guess because I have a spinner on the left-hand side, and I've never been a big fan of spinners being smack dab in the middle of the play field. That's another reason as well, but I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that enjoy that type of thing and more power to them. And so I noticed that that felt like that that was up a large part of the time. But another part of the code that I did really appreciate is I like the idea of having different songs playing all the time or as often as possible, and the lights and the shots moving around according to what part of the song you're on. Now, I did see that the lights started blinking white, and that was indicating when the next shot sequence or song sequence was about to happen. I thought that was a nice little touch. But one of the things that I kind of noticed that kind of suffered in some parts, but it was weird because it was hard to tell with the sound being kind of muffled at times or kind of staticky. It was kind of hard to exactly tell, and I feel like this is something where you have to play it in person to really understand or fully appreciate it. But I was curious, and I still am curious, how the transition from song to song will be. There was a couple of times that when Raymond was playing, that the song obviously had finished, and it was transitioning. However, there wasn't really any pomp and circumstance, or I think that's the terminology used. There wasn't any big action on the play field or on the LCD screen that indicated, hey, this song is done, and we're going into the next song. In fact, it kind of felt like there was just a lull between some of it, just because it took a few to get another song going, and it kind of just felt like a bare spot to where there could have been, I don't know, a light show. There could have been something like a bigger call-out indicating that the song was finished, just something. And one of the reasons why I'm really tuned into this is because on my Iron Maiden, I have it customized with a hip-hop soundtrack. Well, one of the perks of that is that a couple of the initial songs that are on there, it actually has two or three songs now kind of stuck into it that loops together. But yet these songs are looped so well to where it doesn't start from the beginning of a song. It just goes directly into part of a song that makes sense to where the tempo keeps going and everything. And that actually really makes the game pop. I mean, it's something that as soon as I experienced it for the first time, I was thinking to myself, I wish all music pens would do it this way because it is outstanding. And part of me wishes Led Zeppelin would do this. Now, I understand why it can't be done because, obviously, they want the full song to play out, and it relates to scoring, it relates to wizard mode and stuff like that. But in the future, I would definitely say that one thing I want to see is these songs just kind of coming together better. I feel like that might be lacking a little bit right now in Led Zeppelin, But again, that could be a circumstance too of me just simply not being there and not really getting to hear it or experience it in person. Maybe it just comes off better in person But that was one of the things I was noticing And obviously they cannot do it in the way that I describing it on Iron Maiden because again scoring wizard mode you have to start from the beginning of a song That's just the way it is. That's just one thing that I hope can be fixed in the future. You know, whether it's either with this or even, you know, future games that are music pens to where I really, I dig that these songs do go together. Like you don't have to start a new song. It just starts for you. I just want something more actionable that shows that, hey, that's done. If you feel like that's a concert, you know, it ends properly. There's lots of, I don't know, pirate, whatever it could be, light show, whatever it could be. Something like that to indicate that, hey, I'm done with this song. You rocked out. We're getting immediately into the next song. Let's start rocking out some more. All right. So the lighting system now, and we were just talking about the lights, the expression light system. I have to fully admit, I was wondering how that would look during actual gameplay, and I think it looks pretty cool. I think that it is a cool twist to a light show, and I like the fact that it beats to the sequences and it beats to the music. That's something to me that I enjoy seeing out of pinball. Now, the questions I really want to know, and they might have answered this and I just missed it. I'm curious to know if that type of lighting system, if it actually adds extra light to the play field enough to where it makes a huge difference to where you do not need PinStadiums anymore. I'm really curious about that. I'm curious to see if it doesn't create any dark spots, if it all just meshes well together. And you know, that that's something that I really want to know. And I want to know, is it, can you change how the lights are? Can you make it to where it's just, you know, a solid white light? Does that make a difference? I don't know. Part of me thinks that they wouldn't put this on there in such a spot if it didn't really light up the play field and didn't really add to the overall gameplay. Now, obviously, everybody's going to say, well, GNR has the Hot Rails, and they do, and it's great. But just judging this on a Stern, I think it works out well for what Stern is trying to accomplish. And I think it's pretty exciting if they're going to add this on to other games. I think it's even more awesome that this expression lighting system is part of a premium package as well, along with Art Blades. That's cool. And plus, it's available or it's going to be available on the Pro, too. And so I hope moving forward that this is something that isn't just a gimmick related to Led Zeppelin. I hope that this is normal on all their pens moving forward. I really do, because I think something like that goes well, even no matter what the theme is. I think it goes in pretty well, a lot better than what, say, the projector did on Stranger Things. I think that this makes so much sense, especially on a music pen or any type of pen that has any type of light show or sequencing. I could see it working out well. Now, obviously, there's going to be some themes or maybe it doesn't make a difference or anything, but I don't know. Having that option at least available across the board on all pens, I could dig that, and I think it would be welcome, I think, personally. you know pretty much there's not much else to go over on this pen I think I pretty much covered everything that I want to cover I don't want to get too deep in the weeds talking about the code and the rule set right now but we briefly went over it and how you know what the innovations are out of that obviously we talked about the different shot layouts and everything there didn't really seem to be too many rejects going on there was a few on the right ramp that I didn't mention earlier but overall not really that big a deal I mean I think just watching this more and more you know yeah there was a lot of criticism up front from a lot of different people and i certainly had some of my criticisms of it and obviously this game suffers from not being able to have certain assets but overall i think it's going to be basically a worthy entry for stern i think that they're going to sell a lot i think we're going to see this at a lot of tournaments i think that the people that get this game they're going to have a lot of fun with it because obviously it does have flow. You know, we're going to often hear people, the one thing that we will hear a lot of people say negative things about or have a little bit of a critique on is theme integration. Now, me personally, I think theme integration is one of the most overused pinball terms that there is. I do. And when I look at this and people are saying, well, you know, lack of theme integration, lack of this, lack of that. Again, I've done the same thing. But when to really take a step back and think about it, it's got 10 Led Zeppelin songs. It's got coding related to those songs, to where the shots move according to where you're at in that song. You're collecting gold records. You're collecting platinum records. The coding is such to where you're going through several different modes that relate to different tours. You know, you have the LCD screen kind of showing the psychedelic type thing going on. And I just, I feel like that there is theme integration in this. I mean, the pinball machine looks like an album cover, albeit an ugly album cover, in my opinion, but it is still their album covers. And so this, to me, when you really look at the facts, this pen screams Led Zeppelin theme integration. I mean, it just does. Now, obviously, it doesn't mean that they have all the assets that really make it a fully, I guess, fleshed out theme integrated pen, but there's still integration there. It's got music, it's got the shots relating to the music, got the artwork with the album. Of course, they got the Zeppelin everywhere. They got the Ick on a Stick guy everywhere. I mean, they got the symbols. They've done what they could with it. And I just, I don't know, maybe that's just me going on a little rant. I just feel like that that's such an overused term that people just beat into the ground. And I mean, I don't know. I'm excited to play this game. And I think that overall, it'll be a pretty, I think it'll be a pretty fun tournament pin just looking over it. And I think overall people will have fun shooting at home. I don't know. I don't think that this pen is going to be bolt to the ground for me. I think it'll be one of those things where I do have fun for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and then send it on its way. But overall, like I said, it's, it's one of those entries that's a mid tier Steve Ritchie entry in which I think the code will really bring it along and I think it'll be fun overall to play. That's kind of my assessment on it. Hopefully within a month or a little over a month, I'll finally have hands-on gameplay review for it. But that's all I got for now. Thank you guys so much for watching. I greatly appreciate it. I will be having another video coming out here, maybe not today as of the release of this, but within a couple of days before Christmas to where we'll actually do a shot analysis of the play field i feel like nobody really does that at all and i just feel like doing it because that's what i do anyways on my spare time because i need a life but it is what it is but otherwise guys thank you guys so much for watching i greatly appreciate it and yeah that's it you guys take care have a great day later guys