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Aaach Toe

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·57m 37s·analyzed·May 10, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Blockade hosts discuss Jared's career move, Mac-to-Windows transition, and Zen's new Star Wars pinball tables.

Summary

Blockade Podcast hosts Chris and Jared discuss Jared's job transition, his switch from Mac to Windows, and their impressions of Zen's new Star Wars pinball tables (The Last Jedi and Ahch-To Island). They analyze table design, gameplay mechanics, and Zen's recent FX3 updates including play limits for tournaments. Chris pitches a hypothetical Dune pinball table concept to Zen.

Key Claims

  • Jared has left LabRex and started a new job doing technical writing with product manager responsibilities, planning to transition into a product role over the year

    high confidence · Direct statement from Jared about new employment with company offering laptop upgrade

  • Jared is switching from Mac to Windows/Surface Book Pro due to better hardware options and Steam gaming access

    high confidence · Extensive discussion of hardware decision-making process and Surface Book Pro specifications

  • Zen released two new Star Wars pinball tables: The Last Jedi and Ahch-To Island

    high confidence · Both hosts confirm release and discuss gameplay details of both tables

  • The Last Jedi table has excessive upper playfield stacking that makes it feel too top-heavy, similar to Black Knight 2000

    high confidence · Chris explicitly compares the design to Black Knight 2000; Jared confirms he doesn't enjoy that gameplay style

  • Ahch-To Island is a simpler table with three major modes based around Chewie, Han, and Rey characters

    high confidence · Jared describes table depth as similar to System 11 with these three specific modes

  • Zen's Pinball FX3 update added the ability to limit the number of plays per game for tournament purposes

    high confidence · Chris discusses implementing play limits (10 plays, then 3 plays) in tournament settings

  • Ahch-To Island features turnstile-style playfield elements that spin like wooden pinball machine mechanics, which is visually unusual for Zen tables

    medium confidence · Jared describes observing this new element and comparing it to homemade wooden pinball aesthetics

  • Chris suggested a Dune pinball table to Zen, who responded tongue-in-cheek

    medium confidence · Chris mentions making this suggestion and receiving a response, but doesn't detail Zen's reaction

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm going back to doing technical writing, but I'm going to be sort of applying a product manager lens to it. And I'm probably also going to be, over the course of the year, transitioning into a product role at this place.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~2:00-2:20 — Announcement of career transition and job change after LabRex departure

  • “Steam is what I'm learning now – if you are a gamer, really Steam and Windows, well Windows and any platform that supports Steam, really is probably the way to go. Like, your choices on that platform, they're just huge.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~7:00 — Explains primary motivation for switching to Windows platform (pinball game access)

  • “I don't think there's a stinker, but neither one of them has really grabbed me. Of the two, I'm preferring the Ahch-To Island over Last Jedi.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~25:30 — Overall assessment of Zen's Star Wars tables being competent but not exceptional

  • “Yo, dog, I heard you like upper playfields, so I put an upper playfield next to the upper playfield.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~29:00 — Humorous critique of The Last Jedi's excessive upper playfield stacking design

  • “I love, love being able to limit the amount of plays that you get. It's just the best.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~37:00 — Praise for FX3 update feature that enables realistic tournament play limits

  • “I only have one shot at it. And so it's kind of thrilling. It's more – it's much better than me just going, oh, well, okay, I'll just spend the next hour devoted to trying to beat that score.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~42:00 — Explains why play-limit feature fundamentally improves tournament experience and stakes

  • “Dune has always been one of my absolute favorite novels. And it got me thinking – you know, Zen needs a new property to make a pinball table about. And wouldn't that be an awesome property to do?”

    Chris Frebus @ ~46:00 — Introduction of Dune pinball table concept pitch to Zen

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonLabRexcompanyRed HatcompanyZen StudioscompanyThe Last JedigameAhch-To IslandgamePinball FX3productBlack Knight 2000gameBlockade Podcast

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: FX3 tournament feature enabling play limits is being actively used by Chris as tournament director to create high-stakes gameplay experience

    high · Chris running tournaments with limited plays: 'The first time I tried it out, I gave everybody 10 goes. But then this one that we're running right now... I only gave it three chances.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: The Last Jedi table criticized for excessive upper playfield stacking creating top-heavy, timing-dependent gameplay similar to Black Knight 2000

    high · Chris: 'The Last Jedi reminded you a lot of Black Knight 2000 with the upper playfield... it's too top-heavy, and it's very much timing your flipper hit just right.' Jared: 'Yo, dog, I heard you like upper playfields, so I put an upper playfield next to the upper playfield.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jared Morgan has left LabRex and started new position doing technical writing with product manager responsibilities, planning transition to full product role

    high · Direct statement: 'LabRex decided to get rid of me. Well, it's only taken me a couple of weeks. I've already found a new gig... I'm going back to doing technical writing, but I'm going to be sort of applying a product manager lens to it.'

  • ?

    announcement: Zen Studios released two new Star Wars pinball tables for Pinball FX3: The Last Jedi and Ahch-To Island

    high · Both hosts confirm release: 'Zen had released their two Star Wars tables. Oh, yeah. The Last Jedi and Ahch-To Island.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball FX3 received update enabling configurable play limits per game for tournament simulation purposes

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.173

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you yes you are listening to the blockade podcast i am your host chris free this aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan hello there haddy haddy haddy so once again we are speaking to we're speaking to Jared not via a laptop but via his phone again in case you're wondering the slight shift in his audio that's right the slight less baseness but the good news is that will be changing shortly yes because listeners you may be aware last time that lab brokes decided to get rid of me well It's only taken me a couple of weeks. I've already found a new gig.
1:02
So, yeah, this one's a pretty sweet one too. I'm going back to doing technical writing, but I'm going to be sort of applying a product manager lens to it.
1:14
And I'm probably also going to be, over the course of the year, transitioning into a product role at this place. So they're the sort of company that I've been looking for for a while, And it was just very fortunate that they were around and hiring when LabRex decided to do what they did. So, yeah, I'm really happy, very, very happy. And we'll be glad to, A, get into game film pulling again, and B, actually have some sort of laptop. Yeah. Now, you had hinted to me that you were going to jump out of the Mac cult and into the torture of the Microsoft world. Yeah, I was quite on the fence about doing this right. Like I have been using the Mac for about three years now, three lab breaks, and I've really got a taste for it. I mean, it came from after I left Red Hat and I was using Linux for like six years. Going to the Mac felt like a breath of fresh air because everything, well, just worked.
2:18
And that was great. But what I found was that, you know, the Macs are nice, but I think Apple are kind of losing their direction with their desktop products. Their mobile products are strong, but their MacBooks and stuff are just becoming too expensive and not really that innovative. Whereas, you know, in the Microsoft space, you know, I think the last time I used Microsoft product of any type was really back in Windows 7.

  • “You could imagine the playfield. You could do some really cool things with the playfield. I would envisage if I was conceptualizing that game is that you would just basically have the whole playfield as sand.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~49:00 — Describes creative concept for hypothetical Dune pinball table mechanics

    • organization
    PinballWiz45Bperson
    Surface Book Proproduct
    Infinity Gauntletgame
    Dunegame
    Steamplatform
    Command & Conquergame
    blockadepinball.comwebsite

    high · Chris describes using the feature: 'They did a big update on Pinball FX 3... I love, love being able to limit the amount of plays that you get... I gave everybody 10 goes... I only gave it three chances.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Both Star Wars tables are considered competent but not exceptional; neither has strong appeal despite being well-designed

    medium · Jared: 'I don't think there's a stinker, but neither one of them has really grabbed me.' Chris: 'There's not really a stinker in there for me out of the two packs' but acknowledges lack of engagement with upper playfield design.

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Chris pitched Dune as potential pinball property to Zen Studios; Zen responded tongue-in-cheek but no commitment indicated

    medium · Chris: 'I did make one suggestion to Zen, for which they actually responded tongue-in-cheek... Zen needs a new property to make a pinball table about. And wouldn't that be an awesome property to do?'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Ahch-To Island features unusual turnstile-style playfield elements with visible rotors spinning like wooden pinball mechanics, new visual design element for Zen tables

    medium · Jared: 'they've got these things that look like turnstiles that are on the left loop... they actually spin around like turnstiles... I just thought that really bizarre. I've never seen that style of playfield switch ever on a Zen game before.'

    • 2:50
    Yes, it would have been 7. So not Vista, but Windows 7. Yeah. And it was okay. It was okay back then. But then I heard all the stuff about, you know, their mobility stuff through Windows 8 mobile, I think it was. And then they just skipped 9 altogether. And I went, whoa, they seem to be a little bit scatterbrained. I went, I might just stick with Mac. But have you look at the hardware now that Apple certifies, not Apple, Microsoft actually certifies. I think that's the thing that's tipped me over the edge because these products, the Surface products that they're bringing out now, they're quite interesting. The 2 and 1s, I'm interested in the 2 and 1 products because I sort of like the idea of having a detachable tablet as well as a keyboard, right? Yeah. And for me, yeah, the Surface Book Pro is the one that I requested at the new job. And it's actually got an NVIDIA graphics card in it, and it's a 1060, I think. I don't know how good that is, but I'd imagine it's pretty good. No, that's pretty good. It'll be able to handle most Steam games fairly darn well. And how interesting that it will be able to handle Steam games, Chris, because what will that mean?
    4:12
    Jared might actually be able to play Pinball FX 3? That's right. I might be back in action. Well, I might actually be in action. In action. So it's cue a letter music, a whole new world for me to explore. Unfortunately, I don't know. Do you have any? You haven't purchased any of the Zen product on Steam, have you? Nope. Not a single one. Yeah. So I'll be looking for a discount or maybe having a chat to one of our friends at Zen to see if they can help me out.
    4:47
    I don't know. They might. I'm hopeful. For those of you that want a little behind-the-scenes action, when we first started – well, not first started doing the podcast, but soon into the podcast, we were gotten in contact with somebody from Zen and they put out well hey what do you guys need and me and Jared went well because I had already purchased a whole bunch of stuff off of a humble bundle and so I wasn't missing terribly much but she was able to fill in the holes for me and then I think Jared didn't you similarly did she try and fill any of the holes for you on on the android platform oh she really wanted to but it was unfortunately not possible on android because of the way the the the entitlements work i mean steam is what i'm learning now is that if you are a gamer really steam and windows and well windows and any platform that supports that support steam really is probably the way to go like your choices on that platform they're just huge like you've got all the good big name pinball titles on there you've got black flaggers on there as well yeah you've got you know all all of the choice that you could possibly want all on on steam so i kind of that's was weighing heavily on me um when i thought well i could go with a mac but then i'd be no better off and i could if i got the service book pro to set it up in a way that would still allow me to like keep the work stuff separate, but on a personal profile, I could actually try it on Steam and see what it was like.
    6:36
    It was funny what you were saying, though, where you said that Apple has dropped the ball on the... Gaming support. Well, not gaming support, but also what you were just saying with the hardware support as opposed to what they were doing with mobile. And how Microsoft pretty much just all but dropped mobile. I don't even think there's Windows 10 mobile anymore. It's just Windows 10. It's basically just, they've merged everything into one platform. Right, but they don't even have their own phone anymore. They're not making their own phone platform. They don't make Windows phone anymore? Nope. It's gone. Okay. So, I think that they kind of saw where their bread was buttered and rather than Double down on it. Yeah, rather than try and compete with both Apple and Samsung for Android, just fine. Go focus on the hardware, on the PC side of things, and really make that a smooth thing. And then on the same hand, what they did with that was merging the Xbox One, essentially is now a Windows 10 gaming device.
    7:49
    Is that right? So they've actually put Windows 10 on Xbox One, and that's how you game on it. I couldn't tell you for sure how that is. All I know is that whatever game that you can play on Xbox, you can play on PC. Oh, really? That's insane.
    8:05
    Well, like you can buy the Windows 10 version of it, if I'm not mistaken. They really wanted to make it so that you could play kind of cross-platform. You know what I mean? Okay. A little bit like Sony does with their PlayStation Link on their Sony phones, right? You can actually like... Yeah, but they want to really, like, Sony is still very sketchy about it and doesn't want to do, Sony doesn't want to connect with a PC right now. They really don't want to do it. Sorry, I was talking about their console, their PS4 console with one of their phones. That works really well.
    8:42
    Yeah, but nobody buys Sony phones. They're actually, well, maybe not in America. Not in America. They're popular outside of America. Yeah, not in America. You commented before about Apple and Samsung. It's like, hang on a second, it's Apple and Android.
    8:57
    But you guys probably only... Here in the States, everybody is using the Galaxy phone. Yeah. I mean, that's... There's plenty of other... Well, here it's very different. Nobody's really using LG.
    9:09
    Definitely nobody's using Motorola anymore. I mean... Interesting. Yeah, Samsung really has a lock on it here. it's probably because of their um partnering with the telcos so pretty much they're the only phones you can get on contract so therefore you know you buy them because that's it unless you want to pay a thousand dollars for a phone yeah i mean i'm trying to think also you know because when you walk into the store um you know google's the the pixel they've they've really been pushing that and i think people are still trying it out and there's a good chance of it uh gaining a fair amount of traction but yeah um yeah you know Motorola kind of they they started doing all this slap stuff on the back of the phone thing to turn it yeah turn into speakers and everybody was just like why do I want to carry more stuff you know that why don't I just have that as part of the phone that'd be a good idea right you know um yeah yeah I saw that that uh Moto add-ons thing and it just went, oh, I don't know if I want to add things. If you want a really good camera, I just want it built into the phone. Like, you can do that now with cameras. You don't really need an external one.
    10:27
    So anyhow, I'm really looking forward to giving it a go. And I'll probably be doing a Medium article on my transition.
    10:36
    On my transition from Mac to Windows. And I think it's going to be okay. I actually think it will be okay. The reason why I went on Mac when I started at LabRooks was because I was using a lot of open source technology and in particular, a framework called Ruby. And Ruby really did not work well on Windows at all. Like it worked pretty well on Mac and it definitely worked well on Linux, but Windows, it was hard to get it working from all reports. But I think that really made some strides into that. So that's another thing I went, Well, you know, the only way I'm going to find out is to do it. And then if it's terrible, well, then I'll work around it, you know? Yeah.
    11:19
    And I'd like to point out, folks, if you have not already or if you haven't, just haven't visited in a while, please do visit our Medium site. It is blockadepinball.com slash episodes. and that's where you'll find of course all the past episodes of our podcast but as well it's all of the movie reviews that I've been writing which I'll tell you right now, summer season's about to kick off and I'm going to be writing even more which I can't, I don't know as it is, I'm writing about three a week so yeah, I've got to say that it's really good this is not a circle jerk here but But, like, I really, the thing that, if you haven't checked out Chris's reviews, I'll say this from my perspective, that it's not a typical movie review. It's not the sort of movie review you see on all the other critics' sites. What's interesting about Chris's takes on these reviews is that they're the different side of the movies that perhaps other critics wouldn't touch on. And it's more honest sort of regular Joe review rather than critique review.
    12:34
    And I really enjoyed, what was the one that you did recently? I think it might, well, certainly A Quiet Place convinced me that I need to go and see that movie in the cinemas. Your review of that was great. And I think one of the ones you posted really recently was the Isle of Dogs review. Oh, that was great. Yeah. And the way you wrote that particular review made me understand why it was good, not just because a reviewer told me it was good. and I think you know people who are listening to this now Chris is pretty immersed in this so like really if you wanted to get a very impartial view about a movie it's probably a good idea to actually have a look at Chris's reviews first before you go and see it because I just feel that he's sort of tapped into the right sort of language and the right sort of style with these reviews so I use them now to short this movie.
    13:38
    Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, my thing is I don't believe that – I mean, other than giving a brief plot summary to remind you of what the heck I'm even talking about. Oh, yeah, no, I know what you're talking about. I'm not going to dive into that. I'm not going to dive into – half the time, I don't even remember who the character name is. It's just the actor. I have a terrible time with that. Yeah. You know, and so what I tend to focus more on is things to look at, because I don't know about you, but I'm pretty good at being able to determine what kind of movies I'm going to like and what kind of movies I'm not. I mean, before I even see the movies.
    14:19
    And yeah I think I developing that skill because I don go to movies that much So yeah So you kind of really hone into well that looks like the kind of thing that I going to want to deal with
    14:30
    And so, like a prime example, one of the ones that I just reviewed was Rampage, which was terrible. And see, now here's the thing. If you go to Rotten Tomatoes, you'll see that it got, you know, like really, really horrible Rotten Tomato aggregate score. And then if you read any of the basic things, they're all going to kind of focus on the same thing. But my whole point is, why is it terrible? Because I'm a person that loves action movies, and so many action movies tend to not get good reviews as it is. So it becomes a thing of, well, what is it about them that I like and what is it that I hate? And I'm able to appreciate movies for what they set out to do. So, and I keep on coming back to this one this year because I knew it was going to be a terrible movie, and that was The Hurricane Host. It was – there's no way it was going to be a good movie. But the thing was is while watching it, it knew it had no chance of being a good movie, and it kind of wore it as a badge of honor on its sleeve the entire movie, and you kind of wound up having fun watching it. So it was like, I am so terribly crap. Please enjoy the ride. Right. We're going to embrace the crap. And we're not going to try and polish it. We're not going to try and, you know, pull the wool over your eyes. We know we're stupid, and we just want you to have a good time with the stupid. So then you get to a movie like Rampage where it doesn't realize how bad it is. And it's like you do realize what you're basing this off of. You're basing it off of a video game that literally the entire point of the game is to be a monster and smash buildings. That's it. That's the plot. You know, and now you're going to extend this. I just, I don't know why they chose that as a screenplay opportunity. I don't know. They made an emoji movie. you know it's like at least that had some some premise to it like it was thinly veiled but at the same time it was it was at least sort of it had a plot that based on what you shared in your article about rampage rampage was just full of like i reckon probably you could just go and watch the movie trail and get more satisfaction out of it from what i got out of your review honestly yeah because i the movie trailer made me have a slight hope that there might be something interesting but the the problem was that it was so abysmally dumb and it flaunted science like pseudoscience uh and and all to where you just why did i do it yeah if you have an inkling about anything. You just kind of go, what? And a prime example is that there is these experiments that are being done in outer space and the space station, this is the beginning of the movie, the space station is exploding and so the person loads it up into their escape pod and jettisons out, but before making a safe distance away, the escape pod winds up blowing up also and these experiments wind up you know, leaving, you know, floating through space along with all the other debris. And it winds up being able to make it through the atmosphere and land on Earth. OK, right. I'm cool with that. Whatever. Here's what I don't get. One of them landed in San Diego. One of them landed in Wyoming and one of them landed in Florida. That's a pretty broad path. Isn't that like the entire length of the continental U.S.? Yes. Yes.
    18:02
    There's never a debris field that large. No. I mean, well, when that space station was going to be crashing over into Earth, they predicted there was a line that drew across the U.S. where it was going to land. But there could be debris across this particular transverse line. Well, here's the other thing. these pods that were in, they were inside of like a cooler case also. So first the cooler had to survive the debris that was, and then that would burn up in the atmosphere, and then these things would separate. So by the time these things were ready to separate, there wasn't enough,
    18:44
    they weren't in space anymore, if you will. So it would have all landed in the same, I don't know. So anyway, that's the kind of nonsense then. And it's one of those things as the movie goes on, I'll suspend my disbelief for a while. That didn't bother me. That didn't bother me at the beginning. But then, all of a sudden, things just happen and happen and happen and then you start going, wait a second. And once you start that path, then you go back to... Right, and then it just all... And it got to the point where I was ready to turn around and look at other people in the audience and go like, are you serious with this? Yeah, it's like, am I actually seeing this? Do they expect us to swallow this as plausible? Like, you know, sure, it's an action movie. Yes, it's a movie. But you kind of have to remain within the realms of physics and science.
    19:33
    Yeah. Just so it doesn't become uncanny valley with the stuff you're trying to do, right? Yeah. So my whole point of bringing up the Blockade articles. Is to go read them. Well, yeah, go read them. But I wanted to also hint at I'm currently re-watching all of Tarantino's movies. and I was thinking of eventually writing an article what I like best to worst and worst being I still really like his movies so it's not like it's a bad movie of all his batch it's just there's some that I like way better and you can judge the scale of that but anyway so I'm plowing through those all right now because I haven't visited his movies in some time like I watched Pulp Fiction the other night and I haven't watched that in probably at least five years. Right. So it had been a while, and it was fun revisiting. So anyway, that's the kind of thing that I'm going to be posting about soon too.
    20:34
    Okay, cool. Well, yeah, definitely check out the article section on the site if you haven't already.
    20:39
    So I guess, you know, I'm not going to be editing this, by the way, so you're going to have to put up with all that front-loaded warm-up until I get my Surface Pro and actually have an editing suite again. So welcome to the pinball segment of the podcast. What have you been doing? You'll understand why it's this delayed because there's not much to talk about. Not a great deal. No, the only thing going on was that Zen had released their two Star Wars tables. Oh, yeah. The Last Jedi and Octo Island. Octo, is that how you pronounce it right? Yeah, or Acto. I don't know. I'm saying Octo. I think it's Octo, yeah.
    21:21
    With British accents, it's definitely Octo. I have to say that out of the two tables, I actually kind of like them both.
    21:32
    There's not really a stinker in there for me out of the two packs. I don't think there's a stinker, but neither one of them has really grabbed me. Of the two, I'm preferring the Octo Island over Last Jedi. and you kind of hit upon it for me. We were briefly talking the other day. You said that The Last Jedi reminded you a lot of Black Knight 2000 with the upper play field.
    22:01
    And I went, aha, that's why I don't really like it. Oh, really? So you don't really like Black Knight 2000 either because it's just too top-heavy.
    22:10
    It's too top-heavy and it's very much timing your flipper hit just right. And if you miss it, well, now it drops down, and then you've got to go through all these steps to get it back up to that upper playfield.
    22:22
    And that's what I don't care for. And then with Last Jedi, it really does it in terms of there's the upper playfield that you can hit, and from that upper playfield, you can make it to another upper playfield. Yes. And it gets frustrating.
    22:42
    Yeah, it's, yo, dog, I heard you like upper playfields. So I put an upper play field next to the upper play field.
    22:50
    Yeah, it's a lot going on at the top. I like the, well, I find it interesting, the layout in that particular table. You can tell that if this was to be produced as a real table, it would be a super duper wide body. Oh, yeah. Because this thing would be like, basically, you could take a pinball machine and if you had it lengthways, you would, like, when you normally orient people, you have to actually put it sideways and then double the playfield size. Because that's how wide this thing would be. I reckon that's how wide this thing would need to be if you were going to actually do it. It would need to be Hercules playfield size, I reckon.
    23:27
    I know. But with a regular ball. But with a regular ball, yeah, that's right. So it's big. It's got a lot of flippers. That left upper playfield on the table is a bit weird. Like the flipper geometry that they've got up there with the three flippers. I don't know if they actually needed... The upper flipper of that, I haven't figured out why that's even there. Like, it doesn't make sense to me why that flipper is there because none of the ramps are directly accessible via it.
    24:02
    You know, your bottom two, obviously the one is to shoot the left ramp and the other is to shoot the right ramp.
    24:09
    But, yeah, it's bizarre. I mean, the right one is easier to understand because it's like you're shooting those drop targets, which I kind of like the way they've done them. They're essentially like stones that you drop down. So that's nice. That right-hand play field is kind of nicely designed because it's got all that stonework, and that part of the play field is all about the Akto or whatever it's called, island, isn't it, really? Yeah. like it's about that sort of geography so they've done they've kept that side of the really quite sort of natural looking which is cool um but yeah it's um it's strange something is a strange but i think it's okay i think it's okay see here's what i find interesting is that they bothered to put the island on the last jedi table but then they went and made an entirely another table devoted exclusively to the island. Whereas what's not represented on the table, at least not that I've noticed, is at the end of the movie when they go to the planet with the red dirt, if you will. Yeah, the red dirt planet, whatever it's called. That doesn't seem to be represented on this table. Yeah, true. I kind of wished that they had put that on there instead of Acto and then left that to its own table. I don't know. It's kind of a bizarre combination and theme focus as far as I'm concerned.
    25:41
    And it just hasn't really grabbed me whether it's the it's got to be the upper plate fields. That's all I got to think. There's just this weird flow to the table for me that's not grabbing my attention as well as the other one. Right. Now, with the Octo Island, the interesting thing about that one is it's not an incredibly deep table.
    26:05
    It's not. It's like a System 11, really, isn't it? Yeah. There's like three major modes based around Chewie, Han, and Rey. Yeah. And that's about it, really. And I've already got the wizard mode on it. I was really surprised. I went, okay, we're done.
    26:26
    So, yeah. I think I've actually got the wizard mode on The Last Jedi as well. I just had a really cracking game on it, and I just got to the end, and I sort of didn't really feel amazing. But I got the wizard unlock, so fine, I guess.
    26:44
    But it's still fun to flip. Well, they're definitely better than – there's quite a few Star Wars tables that I just go, ugh. like that horrible like what is it balance of the force or something like that oh that thing is just I don't know I would get a refund on that one if I could I personally am not a fan of the Darth Vader table I find it to be too reliant on combos and it's not a shooters table at all so that one I thought Oh, yeah, I agree. It's all like, yeah, it just, yeah, there's something about it that just feels clunky, right? Yeah. It's not that good. Hey, did you notice on the, I'm going to watch this name every time I say it, the Arndtow, on the Arndtow table. No, there's no N. It's A-H-C-H-Tow.
    27:51
    So Arndtow. Octo. I'll just call it the Opto table because Optos are for pinball. So the Octo table. Have you noticed that they've got this new element on the play field that I've never seen them use before, and it is the type of element that you would put on a wooden pinball machine if you were making one yourself. So your ball had something to interact with. It's like it's instead of having a spinner, they've got these things that look like turnstiles that are on the left loop and that weirdly placed sort of wall right near the upper flipper.
    28:34
    And they actually spin around like turnstiles. So a little bit like, you know, if you were making a wooden pinball machine, you'd make a cross and you'd put a nail through it. And then the ball would shoot through it and spin it around like a helicopter blade Yeah Well they got those sticking out of the size of the playfield but you can see the full rotor And I just thought that really bizarre I've never seen that style of playfield switch ever on a Zen game before. Hmm. Have a look next time you play it. Yeah, I don't think I've noticed.
    29:08
    Yeah, I just went, oh, it looks like a wooden pinball machine. like a make it home that you make for your kids with marbles you know yeah it's like it's a really unusual thing oh yeah that's right i mean it's not it's not a bad thing it doesn't actually affect the gameplay it's just something new and visually different and i kind of like yeah i don't have a problem with it i just thought it was unusual and worth highlighting that's all they uh they went through and did a big update on pinball effects three. So I know you don't know about it since you don't have it, but, um, is that the one that they did last time with all the, the new, um, yeah, we highlighted it in our last thing. So I finally have gotten a chance to live. And so I've been able to play with it. And I love, love being able to limit the amount of plays that you get. it's just it's the best right when you were telling me about it last week I was going oh jeez that's like the biggest win right there as a tournament director like a pseudo tournament director in Xen there's no tournament I know of in real life that will go just play the game unlimited times during the two hour period or three hour period that you have You get one go, or two if you're lucky, and that's it. Then you're done. So I love that. Basically, your best go is your best go, and that's it. So the first time I tried it out, I gave everybody 10 goes. But then this one that we're running right now that is ending pretty soon,
    30:56
    we're playing, and I only gave it, well, because it's opening this weekend, I did the Infinity Gauntlet table. And this is a table that is bizarre. And it's baffled me whenever I tried playing it before. And I only gave everybody three chances.
    31:15
    Which is just plain mean. And my intention with that was, well, hey, if you really want to learn this table, you're going to have to go play it on your own in single player mode. And then bring your skills to the yard. Bring your milkshake to the yard. you know and that way also if you want to go ahead and build up because i then said don't use whatever modifiers that you want if you want to go build those up go build them up in practice but you're not going to be able to build them up here in the uh in the game itself and yeah so the first game i played i forgot to put in any of the modifiers i was like whoops and uh and so i played it so then the second game i played and i had my modifiers in and i wound up posting like like the high score had been, I think, $33 million, and I posted like $250 million. So, yeah. So, this is the thing.
    32:08
    I saved my last go, because I was like, ah, nobody's going to touch that, but I'm going to save my last turn just in case. And sure enough, I checked it today, and somebody that rarely plays in our tournaments, PinballWiz45B, he went and posted a score that was $300 and some million. I was like, ah, that's why I'm saving this one. So I'm going to have that one more go. You've got to have that a contingency, man. But that's just it. You've got to have that a contingency plan, right? I only have one shot at it. And so it's kind of thrilling. It's more it's much better than me just going, oh, well, okay, I'll just spend the next hour devoted to trying to beat that score. It's, you know, I got one shot. That's it. So, yeah, I love that. The stakes are high, man. The stakes are high. That's just it makes me so happy that they put that in there.
    32:58
    Is that all the Zen talk we had? Kind of. I did make one suggestion to Zen, for which I actually responded tongue-in-cheek.
    33:09
    But I've been reading the Dune prequel books. Okay. And I finished the three of those, and now I'm into the actual book again. Dune has always been one of my absolute favorite novels. And it got me thinking. I was like, you know, Zen needs a new property to make a pinball table about.
    33:33
    And wouldn't that be an awesome property to do? Because you don't follow the movies or the movie. Don't certainly don't follow the sci-fi miniseries.
    33:45
    Just follow the novels and create your own artwork and do your own thing. You know, so that's the only licensing aspect of it is from the book. But if you remember, back in the day when there was real-time strategy games being played, Dune was the first one or one of the first ones to really capture people's imagination. And then it became Command & Conquer, I think, became the next iteration. Oh, yeah. So you're familiar with Command & Conquer, right? Yeah, the video game. I didn't know it was actually like a tabletop game. No, no, no, no. I'm talking about the video game. Oh, right, right. It's considered a real-time strategy. Well, before Command & Conquer, there was the video game Dune, and it was very similar. It used the same kind of mechanics that it did, and it was wildly popular back in the day. So that's what I'm saying. I'm like, oh, man, can you imagine a giant sandworm popping up and eating your ball? You can imagine the play field. You could do some really cool things with the play field. I would envisage if I was conceptualizing that game is that you would just basically have the whole play field as sand. And you would actually have the inserts with sand blowing over them, like in a desert. So you could really do some very interesting environmental effects in that game. And then you just have random sandworms popping up and just grabbing your ball and taking them in. Well, the thing about a sandworm is that it is attracted to movement. Oh, perfect. You put a ball into a pop bumper, that's going to attract a sandworm.
    35:23
    Similarly with the sandstorms, you could have a sandstorm go over the table and completely change what the playfield looked like. Yeah, you could actually change the layout or add a new ramp or take a ramp out or break a ramp or something like that. Exactly. Or break a ramp. Yeah, you could. You have things in the book where it's all about you're harvesting spice, but you've got to harvest it before the sandworm comes. And so there's your hurry ups.
    35:49
    I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff. There's all sorts of little things that you can, that you could do. And that's just scratching the surface. And, you know, let alone if you start getting into the, you know, who are you following? Are you following the treaties? Are you following the Harkons? Are you following the Freeman that are running around? I mean, there's all sorts of little things that, that could come about it. So anyway, I suggested that too. So you could actually have, that sounds like a good idea. I mean, You could basically have those modes similar to Game of Thrones and Doctor Who where you select a type of family, I guess, or a clan. Exactly. And it adds things like modifies the risk of your play field changing or stuff like that, you know. Exactly. And there's a bunch of those houses in the book. So it's – I think that's kind of what got me thinking about it. me reading them and then me playing Game of Thrones and realizing that there's a lot of Game of Thrones took from Dune, um, of the, the politics and the various houses and stuff. And I was like, well, certainly if they can make a pinball machine out of, of Game of Thrones, you could do the same thing with Dune and, uh, better than Verzen. So I tweeted that out to them and they tweeted back me a picture of, uh, if you, if you know the image, you'll, it'll pop into your head, but Sting was in the movie. He played Fade Rothau and was notorious for this shot of him in this leather bikini thing.
    37:17
    No, I don't know it, but I don't want to know it either. That sounds horrifying. Just find my tweet, click on Zen's response, because they attached a GIF of it.
    37:29
    They were like, that would be pretty epic. And that was it. oh no definitely that's a definitely good reason not to base it off the movie oh yeah so I think we can probably leave Zen there for now because that's a fair bit of coverage yeah but you know I actually did see on Android that FastSight released an update to Pinball Cadet oh Oh, that thing. You know, yeah, that. So they released it, and they've done some graphical tweaks to it. They've also done some extra modes and stuff to it as well. And they're just putting a bit more polish on it and stuff like that. So that was interesting to check out again. It's actually still, I don't really actually have a problem with that game. It's actually an interesting distraction. so they put some more ball effects on it and stuff like that so the ball changes when you activate certain modes and stuff like that in the game so it was interesting to play with it and sort of revisit that particular title. To me it reminded me of Snowball and I wasn't really a fan of that. It zooms in a lot more now so when you are in a particular area of the playfield it doesn't have that really wide view that Snowball suffers from. It actually does zoom in a bit more which helps um but the thing that um was also interesting is that they've for the first time in a long time we actually have an updated beta um for farsight uh that's up for android at the moment and i don't know if you've got something similar on steam or that you've you've seen anything come through i haven't uh looked in steam for the beta just because as far as i know there wasn't any tables coming so i know it's not it's not a it's not a table update it's uh i guess a an improvement update so bug fixes and other stuff oh okay one thing one thing i noticed though in there is that they're actually starting to discount some tables now they they had this new thing where it's it's not you can't buy them or anything it'll it'll take advantage of the discount but they've got i think it's at the moment the gotley some of the gotley ones they they've marked them down to a very cheap price from their normal, like thinking in Australia, it's like nearly five bucks here for like one of the Gottliebs if you don't buy it in the season to like the classic mobile 99 cent price.
    40:13
    So, yeah, there you go. If you're on Android and you haven't got any of those, I think there was a Wipeout and a couple of other Gottlieb ones that were in the last season. So if you haven't got those yet, hold off, because you're in for a bargain if you haven't. I'll have to look and see. They did update the new beta right now of the Pinball Tournament app that they have. That's the thing with the tickets, basically, folks, where you're playing the reskin of Fireball. And they made a few improvements to how the end of the game registers in terms of now it's painfully obvious when you hit 50,000 points that that's why the game is suddenly not letting you play anymore. It starts flashing to 2,000. It lets the balls drain as opposed to just the game stopping and all of a sudden a score popping up. So that was nice. Yeah, that's good. But they still missed out the opportunity of doing a bonus count, if you will, to show you what the heck your time bonus and ball bonus, what those scores actually mean. Um, like I said, I understand what they are now, but I had to kind of work it out for myself. And I, you know, for a two second animation, just throw it in there and, uh, let it be painfully obvious for people. So they know it would be better. It definitely would be a better user experience. If you actually spelled that out clearly. I agree. I did ask, uh, whether they were going to be doing another table for that. And they, the way it was phrased to me, makes me kind of go, wait, is this a Farsights for Hire on this job? Because they were saying, well, we'll have to see what's requested of us. What's requested of us? Yeah. So it sounds like currently there's no plans to do another table in there. The only reason why I want another table in there is because... You're bored of Firepower. Yeah, I've kind of reached out to the ministry, Fireball, and and yeah the equally bored part is me waiting around for somebody to play against i literally have two people that i play against that's it um i don't i know i don't qualify for other people or they i should say they don't qualify for me and so i i made some suggestions i said how about handicapping people um i go you've got a problem in terms of not having any users and the only way you're going to have users is if they, whenever they log in that they get to play on somebody. So you need to start handicapping and whether that, whether that means, uh, handicapping, not necessarily changing how the game is played, but encouraging people to want to play against you. So again, do that whole categorization where if I an a and the other people are a B before the game even starts say we going to pair you up with an A player If you choose to play and you beat that person you get an extra couple of tickets
    43:20
    And similarly with me, if I want to play against a B person, it'll say, oh, hey, well, you know what? They're only playing for two tickets. You're going to be playing for 10. Make it so that I've got a little more scratch in the game. Yeah, totally. to where I go, I don't necessarily want to play against them. I don't know. Something, but whatever it is, make it so that we've got more people to play against.
    43:48
    Yeah. Because without that, the game's dead. Yeah, without it, the game's dead. And right now, again, the only mode that's available is the tickets mode, which is free.
    44:02
    Once you get into the money mode, there's going to be even fewer players and that's not going to be cool at all. And I also suggested, you know, as it is right now by playing what they call the practice mode instead of promo. So if you're playing in the practice mode, you can earn trophies for doing various things. And some of those trophies have actually given money. So currently I have $3 in my account. Right. Well, how about making it so that by doing this trophy, you can earn say up to about 10 bucks. And I say that because you're not able to cash out until you've hit 40, I believe. Oh, right. Okay. So you're giving me free cash that I can't cash out anyway. Especially the bonus bits. So in, in the, in the bookmaking world, coming fresh from lab breaks, what they're giving you is bonus bits that you can't actually take with you. You can use them within the game to actually play, but you've got to turn them over a certain amount of times before you can actually withdraw. Exactly. You're being comped with the idea that you're probably going to spend more, or for the idea that now there's extra players for those people that actually will be spending more.
    45:18
    It's an acquisition strategy. Yeah. But the problem is that some of these trophies, that there's not that many trophies available for the practice round. And some of them are downright impossible because there's not enough players to play against. So like one of them, it's playing 10 matches a day for a week.
    45:38
    Well, I can easily post... You're only getting one. Yeah, I can easily post 10 scores, but then I have to wait and see if anybody's even going to play against me.
    45:49
    So they're basically unobtainium. Yeah. achievements that are only relevant if the actual user base was such that it could support that achievement, which it's not. Right. Yeah.
    46:04
    So they'll be sitting there for a while. Yeah. Here's hoping. Somebody's been having a good laugh, though, within that game. Oh, yeah. Have you enjoyed playing against Sissy Bitch?
    46:19
    Somebody has gone and pulled Jared's avatar and my Twitter avatar, which I've now changed just to fuck with him. And tried to pretend to be Jared and then also, and I don't know if it's the same person or not, but they went and they did the same thing with Ksenia and hit one of his avatars. They used that one for a little while and the username was Ksenia's gay. And then for which he's like, are they trying to insult? Because that's a really lame insult. It's like a solid. I don't know. And and so then they they changed it and they put a new picture and said Queen Ksenia.
    47:05
    So I kept I asked both of the Jordan and Sven. I said, how come they pick on you and nobody picks on me? And they were like, well, that's because you don't ban anybody. I was like, oh, yeah, good cop. You guys are bad cop. so exactly so someone has a lot of time in their hands clearly and they they like to i mean it's fine because sissy bitch the uh the the one that uh it's got my avatar he's actually first at the moment so hey look i'll take it i'll take a first place finish without having to actually do a single thing or spend a single cent no worries mate thanks keep playing well well they were first for that day.
    47:43
    Until I beat them a whole bunch of other times. Good. Yeah. I gotta say, it is fun doing the competition with it. I mean, even only having the one table and the lack of players, I love the competition because as soon as somebody posts a score against me, if I lose, I'm like, rematch. If they lose and they request a rematch, I go, sure, let's do it. it's fun to compete that way and that's what I love about Pinball FX3 doing the tournaments because it's that competition thing the thing about Zen though it's just circling back to it the reason why it's successful is there's no barrier to entry you just do it and you don't need to know anyone you just go and join a tournament basically it's the equivalent of just walking into a pinball arcade that has a tournament on and going hey look I want to join the tournament sure come and join let's play and then the fact that they opened it so that if you're Steam you're playing against Steam PS4 and Xbox One and if you're Xbox One or PS4 then you're only playing against either your same console or the Steam player but still it opens up that pool of who's playing and who's not and I saw one person comment about how they were saying that they were entering a tournament on all of their consoles the same tournament I'm trying to do it that way so yeah you know it's it's competition is what makes pinball fun there's no doubt about it yeah it is a competitive well not sport but it's a competitive hobby yes um skill it's designed it's yeah it's designed for it really yeah yeah i i attribute uh pinball to like that of darts or billiards or pool it's not a sport it's a skill um and i even it's still i even extend that out to golf. Sorry, it's not a sport. It's a skill. Yeah, it is. You can be a world-class athlete and play golf, but it's not an athletic sport.
    49:45
    Not when there's other guys. Golf carts? Like taking it around to all the halls? The fact that you can actually drink while playing, it kind of ruins something about that too well it doesn't it only ruins the fact that it's not a sport it doesn't ruin the game because that's the only way i can play golf when i've had a few beers and that's it usually it's ambrose so because i'm that bad i have attempted it twice in my life and we just started referring to it as gopher hunting because i could never get the ball more than two feet off the ground anyway yes so pretty much yeah i'm very much the same i'm terrible yeah we're on it we're on a one of these uh par three courses and i i'm out there with a wood because there's no chance that i'm gonna even get it down there far anyway but so we were just like ah what the heck let's just hit it with the woods sure basically if i make contact with the thing it's gonna go a little way. So let's make sure that that big fat headed wood is going to contact this, give me the maximum opportunity to contact the ball. Exactly. Do you have a broom that I could hit this with? Because that's the size head I need to actually be able to play golf. That's me. I mean, geez, I need basically a head on the golf club. That's the size of, you know, a plate I reckon. And then I'd be able to play golf. Yeah. So mini golf for me. Just terrible. Yeah. Mini golf is great. I love mini golf. Yep. Bring that on. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. All right. Oh, I did have one very short little bit of real pinball news. Okay. And that is, those of you following me on the Instagrams, little scene that I've laid down white paint on the Star Race play field. And it has made a big difference already to how it looks. It's amazing what happens when you do it, eh? It looks good. Yep. Unfortunately, it highlights all the bad.
    51:52
    Yeah, it makes all the other ones very prominent. I'm not going over all the other white bits. I'm drawing a line in the sand saying I just wanted to get the bits that were really terrible. I'm going to be doing the blacks next, and I've learned my lesson from doing all the whites. I'm just going to be putting a big sheet of Frisket over the whole play field and just cutting out everything I want to spray. There you go. And getting it done. I did find an Instagram account where this guy is doing really beautiful restorations on tables. He had a medieval Madden's playfield that was, you know, where the castle lock is, where you shoot it through the flappy bit and it goes in the back and goes into like a trough at the back there.
    52:40
    Well, this particular playfield was smashed to bits, basically. he'd seen a lot of play so he rebuilt the the side of the um well that area um with putty and bog and smooth it off and everything and part of it of course was spraying it and i don't know if you realize that there's a lot of red on that play field in fact the entire play field is basically red um like when you actually mask everything off and i i was looking at it and i made a comment on his instagram post saying geez it makes my star race frisket job look trivial in comparison because what he'd done is he had masked off every single insert and every single bit except for the red on the playfield. And, like, his detail work on his masking was incredible. And all he was using was just white masking tape. Oh, my God. Like, not Frisket, not anything. He says, no, I just use the cheap, crappy white masking tape of mine, and it works great. and it really does. Like, I couldn't fault it. So it seems it doesn't really matter what you use, but yeah, he had great success with the masking tape. Anyhow, I just thought I'd mention that. And on the day that I learned that I had a new job, I thought, I'm going to celebrate. I'm going to go to Netherworld and grab a bit of a burger and play a bit of pinball. I got there a bit early because they open at 12. and um uh i've got chatting to jimmy who's the owner and he goes oh geez we got this um he told me the story about a game that he got um it was a a star trek like william star trek and uh it'd been sitting downstairs in the uh literally the netherworld of the netherworld um in their basement um for about nine months in pieces and he said this one was crazy like we had a we had a land line when we connected the business up and we never turned it on and just one day we decided to actually connect a phone to it and actually listen to the messages and this guy had left a message on saying look i've got this star trek um do you want to like have it because i'm just literally going to just get rid of it and and junk it and i went uh uh yeah we'll take it like it didn't have any legs but that's easy to fix yeah it's makes it easy so this thing look the plastics are a little bit smashed up like the ramp of course the big warp ramp is a bit damaged which always happens on this game but they said look you know if you've got the capability like we've seen your work on instagram with restoring style do you want to have a go at this one too um so i might have to convince kim that i need to find room for another table here so I can set one up for them as well.
    55:37
    So my Star Race might have a friend if we can work out how to actually get it in here. So, yeah, that's some interesting news. Cool.
    55:50
    Alright, well, for other interesting news, folks, why don't you go ahead and follow us on Twitter. The show is at Blockade. Jared is at JaredMorgz, and I am at ShutYourTrap. You can also drop us an email at blahblahblockade at gmail.com That would be a good idea if you have any suggestions for our show or comments and stuff that require more than 140 characters.
    56:13
    240 now because they are double-pointed. That's right. And then, as we mentioned before, why don't you go ahead and check out the website that is blockadepinball.com slash episodes. Yes. alright well that's about it really that was a good show we'll hopefully have more to talk about next time we're sitting on things that we want to talk about that we can't talk about yet but when we're able to talk about it you'll know it yeah so yeah until then buh-bye A little positive. We're just extending that to you. All right. Later.
    57:05
    WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter odds. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com, sales, restoration, customization.
    57:20
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.