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Dressed to a Tee

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·52m 18s·analyzed·Nov 30, 2015
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Blockade Podcast merchandise launch and tournament recap with Zen/Pinball Arcade discussion.

Summary

The Blockade Podcast hosts Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan discuss personal topics (holiday cooking, shopping), announce the launch of official Blockade Podcast merchandise (T-shirts via Represent.com), recap their monthly tournament results (featuring standout player PinballWiz45B), discuss Zen Pinball tables (particularly Epic Quest), cover Pinball Arcade news (Judge Dredd coming soon, No Fear licensing adjustments), and reflect on personal entertainment experiences including Lego Dimensions and Lord of the Rings.

Key Claims

  • PinballWiz45B achieved a score of 93 million on Victory at the Blockade tournament of the month, significantly outperforming other players

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing tournament results; confirmed on stream

  • Switch 3 Flip turned in a score of 2.9 billion on High Roller Casino without extra balls

    high confidence · Chris's direct observation during tournament commentary

  • Blockade T-shirts are being produced through Represent.com with a campaign ending December 21st; goal is 25 sales to fund a domain name

    high confidence · Chris and Jared explaining the merchandise campaign mechanics

  • Judge Dredd is coming to Pinball Arcade with complex upper playfield geometry similar to Zen table design

    high confidence · Discussed based on Pinball Arcade newsletter hint; PinballWiz comparison to Big Rays USA

  • No Fear (in Pinball Arcade) had to have Valvoline licensing removed from backglass and playfield, replaced with a stylized 'No Fear' logo

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing licensing changes in TPA release

  • Epic Quest is a low-scoring Zen table requiring precision aim and catch mechanics rather than flow play

    high confidence · Chris's detailed gameplay experience and comparison to other Zen/TPA tables

Notable Quotes

  • “There's the PinballWiz 45B tournament, and then there's the rest of the world.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~24:00 — Emphasizes the exceptional competitive dominance of PinballWiz45B in their community tournament

  • “I'm going to take you off my friend list because you're not being friendly to me.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~35:00 — Humorous complaint about PinballWiz's superior Zen Pinball skills making casual competition unenjoyable

  • “Zen always, they have a habit of putting flippers at just kind of weird places on the table that you normally wouldn't see.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~42:00 — Design observation about Zen Pinball's distinctive playfield layout philosophy

  • “I won't have to sell you to the salt mines after all, son.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~55:00 — Humorous expression of parental approval of son watching Back to the Future trilogy

Entities

PinballWiz45BpersonSwitch 3 FlippersonCaptain BizarrepersonProkopersonChris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonBlockade PodcastorganizationBlockade Tournament of the MontheventRepresent.comcompanyZen PinballproductPinball Arcade (TPA)product

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade Podcast successfully launching official merchandise to fund domain and support creators

    high · T-shirt campaign via Represent.com; goal of 25 sales; $19.99 price point; Australian shipping cost noted as $50 AUD

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade Podcast exploring structured 'Zen book club' approach to discussing digital pinball tables with varying commitment levels

    medium · Chris and Jared acknowledging they would not succeed at formal weekly meeting structure; informal approach to Epic Quest discussion; competitive leaderboard engagement

  • ?

    community_signal: PinballWiz45B demonstrates exceptional dominance in Blockade tournament community, with hosts suggesting him as functionally separate tier of competitive play

    high · 93M Victory score, 2.9B High Roller scores; host comment 'There's the PinballWiz 45B tournament, and then there's the rest of the world'; 11-point season lead

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Zen Pinball tables exhibit distinctive design signatures per individual designer including unusual flipper placement and tight ramp geometry

    medium · Chris: 'Zen always, they have a habit of putting flippers at just kind of weird places on the table that you normally wouldn't see'; discussion of Epic Quest precision requirements vs TPA flow tables

  • ?

    licensing_signal: No Fear required licensing modification in Pinball Arcade (Valvoline removed, replaced with styled logo)

    high · Chris: 'they had to get rid of Valvoline'; Jared: 'they made that into it's quite clever the way they did it. They made that into No Fear with N and F as like blue and red'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.157

0:00
You're listening to the Kade Podcast. WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com, sales, restoration, customization.
0:45
You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Shut Your Trap, a.k.a. Chris Frebus. With me, as always, my co-host, Jared Morgan. Hello, and good morning, or good afternoon, or good evening, or good evening. whatever time you're listening to this. That's your prerogative.
1:04
For me, it is early Sunday afternoon. For me, it's early Monday morning. Ta-da! Yes. Time zones are hard. Time zones are hard, and look at that.
1:16
It's that time of the year. It's December. How was Thanksgiving for you? It was tasty because I went to my folks, and none of my other siblings were there. And whenever it becomes a small Thanksgiving like that, I tell my mom, don't bother making the big old turkey feast because I don't really particularly care for it. My son doesn't like it.
1:41
And that's a lot of effort to go through just so that my wife can be happy. Cooking turkey is really hard. Instead, my mom made her homemade lasagna, which I'm always a bigger fan of. Yeah.
1:56
Judge Dreddgame
No Feargame
Epic Questgame
Big Rays USAgame
WizardAmusement.comcompany
  • ?

    announcement: Judge Dredd confirmed coming to Pinball Arcade with distinctive upper playfield geometry

    high · Newsletter hint 'Your driving days are over, punk'; Chris recognizes reference; discussion of complex upper playfield angles

    • I've heard people, I've seen all the posts on Google Plus and Twitter about how you can prepare a turkey. And the pros, as in the people who work for restaurants, say that you brine them for a couple of days and then you cook them in the oven and just keep on soaking that thing in butter, basically. So between the brining and the buttering, you can get a pretty succulent turkey out of it. But geez, it's a lot of effort. Too much effort. I don't believe in cooking anything that takes more than an hour. and that's including prep oh wow okay so no roasts to the Freemans household I take it no you know what that's what stores are for you go to Costco and get yourself a roast chicken for well probably there it's like three I don't even know how much it would be there probably real cheap yeah I mean I'm sure I'm losing some of my man cred for not even knowing how to carve a turkey, but again... You take a knife and you cut the crud out of it. It's really easy. You make slice, slice, slice, and you hack bits of the meat off. Or you go to Boston Market and it comes pre-sliced. You eat it up.
    3:15
    Turkey dinner! Yay! How about that? Yeah. Did you partake? I asked you that last time, and it's come and gone now. Did you partake in any of the Black Friday, or are you thinking of joining in on any of the Cyber Monday nonsense? Well, probably I'm sure we'll go into this later on, but I've already done my Cyber Monday purchase. It's not really cyber. It's more cloth-like.
    3:48
    Oh, yes. Yes, you know. which we'll talk about later on, of course. Yes. But it all sounds so clandestine and secret, but everyone will find out what it's all about. Probably sooner than you think. Yeah, probably.
    4:04
    No, so I've done that. I've done my purchase. Because, you know, we've got to battle with, like, Aussie dollar is 69 cents at the moment to the greenback, so it makes it really expensive to purchase anything in Cyber Monday sales, except there's some apps. Oh, yeah. Yeah, apps, anytime now, Zen. Just put the tables on special for Android and iOS. Anytime now. I've got my money ready to go. We've got it on the Steam sale right now, which by the time this podcast is aired, it'll be over. But yeah, all the tables that I need are only 50% off. I know, only. Only 50%. Here's a little violin playing. Here's the thing. I've never, on the PC with Zen Tables, I've never paid anything less than 66% off. I think most of them were 75% off that I bought, plus whatever I got on the Humble Bundle. So I'm like, it's a matter of pride. I've got to wait for that price point. And then as you so obviously pointed out, Barbie Bob-omb wound up giving me a few codes for a couple of tables.
    5:22
    Yeah, if you do the math, it all winds up being 75% off. Oh, yeah. People I would have had to buy. So, yeah, I can't complain. You went, okay, look, I'll just buy them. Fine. I'm not going to wait for the – because this is the autumn sale. I think there's also the – I believe there's a sale usually right before Christmas, a winter. I don't know if that's the winter sale or whatever. Winter is coming. But I also know that because Steam is no longer doing the flash sales.
    5:53
    I don't know if you've heard this. They've changed their sale policy, and that is they're now going to, it's whatever the price is, that's the price, and it's that price for the entire length of the sale.
    6:06
    So there's no more of the logging into the deal every 12 hours to see what suddenly got put on sale. which I always found it was kind of funny anyway because the final day of the Steam sale everything went to its lowest price that it was anyway so it's like even if you miss something you just look on that final day and hey look at that so no more flash sales to look forward to so okay well just buy it then buy it yeah I can't wait hey Farsight where's yours yeah what's going on there guys like Like, yeah, you know, people like to spend money. They like to spend money that's not as much as they normally spend. So, you know, you've got to have a loss leader sometimes. Something of that nature. I don't know. Again, different philosophies from two different studios. It's interesting.
    7:01
    And they couldn't be more different. More polar opposite. Yeah. When it comes in terms of selling the game. Yeah. It's really interesting. We're totally different business models, right? So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? I know what we're going to do. We're going to talk about this very thing that Jared was talking about or hinting at, I should say. We have T-shirts for sale. Yay, finally. Finally. You know how this came about? So I was looking around on Google+, and this guy actually had a shirt done up through this service called Represent. and I thought, oh, that's pretty cool. It looked like a pretty decent quality shirt because that's the first thing I look for when I buy shirts. It's like, are they crap? Like, you know, really poor quality cotton. No, this is all like, you know, American apparel. No, Gildan seems to be the thing you guys have over there. And they're always really good shirts. We've got a couple of those through Red Hat when I used to work for there as promo shirts and they're good. So I went, all right, cool. I'll check this out. So off I go and create this shirt template just with the art assets I had. It was just like a white shirt with a white logo and like white and black logo because that's all I had. I thought, oh, good to go. See what Chris reckons. And then I say, hey, look, I did this sort of proof of concept up just so you could see what it looks like. And Chris went, oh, let's redesign that.
    8:30
    Let me shade all over your work. Oh, look at that. No, look, we've got a brand new one now. And that's good because that's kind of what I wanted it to. I wanted to have Chris and I sit down together and work out a really good design so we could sell it to you guys.
    8:50
    So, yeah, I think we've got something pretty nice. So here's what I like about this site. We're not actually having to make the T-shirts and then hope to sell them to you guys. This is strictly they – we've set a campaign time. it is up on December 21st at which point anybody that has purchased a shirt that's when it will be shipped and then the campaign starts all over again so it's we've set a goal of we're hoping to sell 25 shirts because then that will also help fund us getting an actual website for this little bad boy but yeah it's nice because it means there's no inventory for us And not only that, it means you can pick your size. That's right. Yes. Size is small to 5XL. Good Lord. As if we were going to stock that. Right. No way. Yeah. So we've put it on a nice charcoal gray, you know, not black, not white, something in between.
    9:49
    It looks really good. Yeah, it's got the Blockade logo on the front. And on the back, it's got our Twitter handle at Blockade and our catchphrase, pinball, movies, snacks, but mostly pinball. That's right. So at least go check it out. The website is represent.com slash blockade-logo-tee. That's T-E-E. That'll get you to the T-shirt. obviously I'll tweet that out and we'll adjust yeah I'll put that in the show notes for this episode and episodes to come all for the low low low low low low price of $19.99 plus shipping which for Jared wound up costing him an arm and a leg yeah I don't mind telling people how much it costs to get things down to Australia so a $19.95 shirt which is perfectly fine that's about the going price for a decent quality shirt. Cost me $49 Australian dollars to Australia. So $50 later, I've got myself a black age shirt when they eventually produce them and we get 25 sales.
    11:03
    So yeah, this is how committed I am to this shirt. I've wanted this shirt for ages. I'm going to damn well pay $50 for one and I'm going to get it. But don't worry kiddos, here in America it's not going to be anywhere near that much. Did you end up placing an order yet? I haven't actually placed the order yet? No.
    11:20
    I'd say it'd be like five bucks. That's what I'm guessing too. Whatever the standard domestic shipping rate is for US, it'll be about that. Yeah.
    11:31
    Anyway, get your t-shirt. Make sure that... Show your support for us. Wear it at your local pinball tourneys, at shopping, around the youngsters, and they'll go like, hey, what's that? Yeah, you go, it's cool. It's blockade, and it's great. Christmas present. belated.
    11:51
    It's just not going to ship until after Christmas. Sorry. You can just take a photo of it. Like take a screen capture and just put it in the car and say, we ordered you one of these and they'll be coming soon. So yeah. Good.
    12:04
    Good. So at least that's finally happened. We can, we can finally stop talking about it and well, we can stop talking about it and actually now we have something. Cause the great thing about represent as Chris says, is it takes a little risk out of it for us. And that was a real big problem we had.
    12:19
    And we're not making a fortune out of these. We're not making a fortune out of these shirts either. I think it's like a couple of bucks or something like that. Yeah. So, yeah. We're not planning on retiring anytime soon off these. We just want to make them available for you guys and, you know, get a little bit of cash from them. Not much, just enough. We did. Like I said, enough to buy a domain name. It just gives you the domain name. Or if anyone just wants to like cut out the middleman and just sponsor just put domain name. We can just stop all this t-shirt malarkey right now and we'll be right. And I can get on with the job of making a domain for us.
    12:55
    All right. Hey, other things that the blockade is doing, we just ran our tournament of the month this past weekend Yes we yeah let talk about that let do uh so our our top three for tournament of the month was a brand number one brand new player Talk about just like coming out from nowhere.
    13:28
    Name of Proko, I think, Proko? P-R-O-C-O. Congrats. Yeah, not too shabby to just like, hi, here I am, Spank. Boom! I've got all the floors.
    13:43
    Second place went to Captain Bizarre, and third place went to PinballWiz45B. looking at the season to date stats though Pinball Wiz is pretty much running away with it he's got an 11 point advantage over Switch 3 Flip and 12 points over Captain Bizarre and then after that nobody's even close me included I had a chocker this time around it was a terrible showing for me I did what I thought was okay.
    14:20
    And then everyone else played. Well, I figured I put in a pretty good Gorgar score, which, unbelievable for me, I never do good on Gorgar. What was your Gorgar score?
    14:31
    800 some thousand. Yeah, that's not bad. That's pretty high for Gorgar. Well, the top score, it was good enough for second place. So, you know, overall, top score is 900 some thousand. But anyway, I figured I did good on Gorgar. And then Medieval Madness, I did 215, 230 million, which, not using an extra ball, I was like, damn, yeah, I'm rocking it. That's pretty good. Yeah, and then I turned on to the Twitch stream that Switch 3 Flip was doing, and he was doing Battle for the Kingdom on his second ball.
    15:09
    Without extra balls, you might add. Without extra ball, yeah. And I watched. He plunged them. He was just killing it. I was like, oh my god. And then, but here's the two that I'm like,
    15:24
    I'm not even, I can't even fathom, score-wise. So on Victory, PinballWiz45B turned in a score of 93 million. Yeah, 93. And for real, it was screencast. I was struggling to get 3 million. I got my score, I'll hold it up here now so you can see, on Twitch, it was 6.9. Yeah, 6.9. So that was my screen cap score. And then my medieval score was 119, which was sort of okay. Certainly not as good as the others. It was kind of the average. I was seeing a lot of those scores around that for medieval. High Roller, though, it wasn't really good at all. I've had better games than that on there, which is 138.
    16:09
    Okay, yeah, my High Roller score, in practice, I had done better than what I wound up turning in. I'll say that. But there's the other score that I wanted to bring up. Okay, well, what's your final score? My final score is Gorga, which is 411. 411, yeah. Yeah, which is about halfway there.
    16:27
    That's usually what my average on that table is. No, High Roller Casino, Switch 3 Flip turns in a score of 2.9 billion. Billion? Billion, I saw that. I was like, what? Come on. Yeah, yeah. All I can say is I'm glad he wasn't in my grouping, but it's just stupid. Pimblewiz was actually in chat at the moment. He was saying, let me tell you, first game of Victory was brutal. What was your first score on Victory? Can you remember, Pimblewiz? I bet you it was something like, you know, only 34 million. Oh, only 34. Oh, shucks. Yeah, it was a brutal game.
    17:06
    Go away. Here's the part that I laugh at. everybody go this um uh first two victory's not so hard you just you just complete finish eight times i'm like i barely finished you know hit finish twice in any of the games so he also adds that that that that shocker brutal game that was 34 million was only on one ball because he tilted the first two balls really like i think we should just say right so So there's the Pinball Wiz 45B tournament, and then there's the rest of the world.
    17:45
    Everybody keeps on asking, people keep on asking me if I would bracket the games, or not bracket the games, but separate them by division. I'm like, first off, how am I going to separate the divisions? We only are getting like 30 players. I mean, come on, really? I'm not making more work for myself. But B, what are we going to do? It's like, okay, so Pinball Wiz, Switch3Flip, and Gus, you guys are all playing against each other permanently. Yeah. And the rest of the world can just go and sort of hang around in the B pool. Yeah. I don't even think there would be a C pool. Really?
    18:19
    Again, not enough people. I mean, you want a large sample size to play against, and playing against just five other people, it's not really fun. No. I mean, there's no hope. But speaking of Pinball Whiz's scores, So, uh, sagging into the Zen book club.
    18:53
    Um, I, uh, I inadvertently started mine last week just based off of Barbie recommending, uh, Epic quest. yeah i didn't get a chance to play that one um last week at all but i did play the other three that we had lined up oh yeah um yeah which we haven't really we kind of had past judgment on them but kind of not officially closed off the thing so you know let's call it closed this is why we're not doing anything organized with the zen book club because it's kind of like hey you know i had some time to play and that's what i did you know um yeah we did We would not be good if we were actually doing like a proper, like turn up every week, have coffee and cakes and talk about an actual book. We would go, yeah, I'm just going to phone it in the night before and just read some reviews online from Amazon and see if I can make up my own sort of review for it.
    19:50
    So I started playing Epic Quest and it's one of those that I, I know I've played it, but I couldn't remember exactly what to do. And, you know, I was like, I know that you can level up your guy. And that was about the end of it that I knew.
    20:04
    So I started tinkering around with this thing, started figuring it out, learning. Oh, yeah, if you shoot, you know, into the dungeon, that unlocks a monster. And then you got to battle the monster. And, oh, hey, that's kind of like, you know, when you're playing Super League and you have a limited amount of time and he's trying to, you know, knock your health down and you're trying to knock his health down. And I was like, OK, I get this. And so I was getting the fun of that. and all of a sudden I started approaching people's scores, you know, that are on my friends list, and there's Cassinia. And I'm like, oh, you're going down, buddy. You're going down. So I finally pass his score. I tweet it out, and I'm like, hey, check your score. Yeah, yeah. And then Pinball Wiz goes, oh, I can beat that. I'm like, no, stop. I'm like, I know you can't. I don't want to compete against you. I'm like, let the amateurs have their fun. you the pro zen player can go you know f off somewhere it's like i'm gonna take you off my friend list because you're not being friendly to me i mean i have a feeling and he can probably confirm this as he's in the chat but um his score is nowhere it's not even up it's not even posted on the friends list and all i can imagine is he hasn't played it since they did the reset um so i'm not looking forward to when he actually plays it because my score is like 23 million or something like it's pretty woeful um but uh it's tough yeah i find it hard to get when i have played that game i have so many terrible games on it and then maybe one game it's like oh okay i've got a relatively decent score but it's a low scoring game isn't it like 23 it's a low scoring game it's also a game that you can't just flail around on um it's a lot of catch and aim. Yes.
    21:50
    I find in general on Zen tables that doing flow play and just coming live off the flippers and shooting up a ramp,
    22:06
    I don't know if it's just a narrow ramp or something like that, but it's not very forgiving. I mean, like, balls don't just bounce on the post and continue up the ramp. It's hit the post and not going in the ramp. Brick it like a pro. Exactly. And so that becomes really, really challenging because with most of the TPA tables, a perfect example would be playing something like Theater of Magic, where it's just flip the ball and the ball's going to go somewhere.
    22:40
    Yeah, it will. It's got vacuums on all those shots. So with Epic Quest, it was a matter of learning where the bounces are, learning what the dead passes are,
    22:50
    knowing when to flip and when not to flip, when to catch, and then also figuring out the angles of the flippers.
    23:00
    I know there are certain tables that I just have issues with figuring them out. I remember playing the Boba Fett table and just for the life of me, not being able to hit anything just because the angle that I thought it would be, the ball wasn't coming on. so I have to retrain my brain on some of these things. I think this is the ongoing theme with Zen Tables because there's different designers doing each table and they are given artistic and creative license to do whatever they want with the tuning. It will very much depend on the designer how these tables are actually playing. It would be quite interesting to see a breakdown of tables per designer. I know that there is a thread about this on the Zen forums, I think. You know what? That would be interesting. and see which ones you go, oh, I love this game, and I love that game. It would be like, you know, do I love Steve Ritchie games? And if the answer turns out to be there's like a – there's the equivalent of a Steve Ritchie at Zen, then, you know, you're going to probably find that all those tables are going to become your favorites because of that developer style. Yeah. But anyway, so I'm playing Epic Quest, and if anybody wants to compete against me and, you know, mock my scores again just look me up on steam shut your trap friend me and uh i'll accept and then be like why did i accept you because you just killed my score and i'll do that too on android i'll um i'll start playing epic quest a bit um over the next week or so and uh see if i can improve on my score on that because i haven't played that for a very long time and it's fun table once you get into it yeah the only the only thing that i'm not digging is that every single time you fight a monster, it's the same shots.
    24:43
    I understand having to hit the same ramps or whatever, but it's the same ramps do the same damage. It's not like it's shifting. Oh, now it's this ramp to do the damage. No, you either hit the shield ramp or hit the bash button.
    24:58
    Yeah. That kind of bugs me a little bit. At least you know which ramp is the guy full. Yes, I've learned what the shots are. Yeah. I've learned what the shots are. And I've started to, again, I've learned some of the angles so that helps.
    25:16
    You just got to dog yourself into each of these tables. It really is just like going and playing a new one. And you just got to understand it and have a play and get your eye in.
    25:27
    Something of that nature. What else can we talk about? Oh, I know. The Pinball Arcade newsletter came out. Oh, yeah. Jeez. As usual, they have a hint.
    25:39
    I know what it is. I think I might know what that table is. I'm not even going to bother describing what the hint is. I won't describe what the hint is because I can't remember it other than it has something to do with... Your driving days are over, punk. Oh, is that what it is? Your driving days are over. So let me put it in my best voice of what it should be your driving days are over punk Successfully wrong I don like it But anyway yeah it going to be Judge Dredd people
    26:15
    Which is pretty exciting. I mean, I'm stoked to be able to play that table. Yeah. Even though we won't get... Yeah, it's a super team. It's got some crazy angles. I mean, like, the upper positions are weird on the upper part of the table. truth be told if anything is close to a real life Zen table, this is it because Zen always, they have a habit of putting flippers at just kind of weird places on the table that you normally wouldn't see interesting Pinball was saying basically Judge Red is pretty much like Big Rays USA by Pro Pinball interesting bummer is we won't get to see Dead World spin. No, because Dead World won't capture. So that sucks.
    27:06
    We'll be curious to see if they do much like what they did with Safecracker, where there is the Super Game. Which is all multi-ball game. I hope so. I mean, they better. And do you reckon that it'll be activated by replays or something like that? Will it be just you can walk up there and put the Super Game interaction, or do you think it will be sort of like a... You have to earn the super game. Not that it's going to be very hard to earn it in TPA, but...
    27:34
    Yeah, I don't know. The only way you could really do that would be to have it so, yeah, the replays contribute towards the amount of super games you have. Because otherwise, you'd just be playing super game all the time. And, yeah. Well, unless you didn't feel like playing multiple all the time. I mean, you know. Yeah.
    27:56
    I don't know whether they had a separate leaderboard in Ancestor. The game had separate leaderboards. Yeah, oh, did it? Super game? Yeah, the game itself has separate leaderboards, so I'm sure that, again, they've already established it with Safecracker, so there's no reason to think that they couldn't do it again.
    28:14
    Okay, well, there you go. Obviously, they're laying the groundwork for that for future tables. So, yeah.
    28:22
    And No Fear has officially reached GA now, so it's out in the wild, which is pretty cool. um here's what i'm curious they mentioned something about uh did they have to nerf some of the licensing on it oh yeah they had to they had to get rid of velvoline um from the uh from the back glass the play field they made that into it's quite clever the way they did it they made that into no fear but with n and f as like blue and red and it looks like you know exactly what it is, if you know what the table is.
    28:58
    Oh, they muted the names in some of the challenges. Oh, okay. Oh, because the challenges were sponsored?
    29:05
    Oh, right. What about Wingski Jumpers? I don't know. I forget what it was like in the real game. It's been that long since I played it. The last time I played that game... When I looked at it, it wasn't like anything jumped out at me, so I was just kind of like, okay, hey, I'm glad they can do that, because again, And it brings me hope for roller games at some point. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, which will pretty much be like blanks everywhere on it because it's so promotion rich in there. Yeah, but again, you can have your fun. You can put in your own promotions. You could. Yeah. I mean, you could if you really wanted to. Since they're extracting the audio from the pinball, you could actually, you know, Norman could weave his magic and add in different things, like put in whatever he wants. really into the extracted play Orville's yeah Brunswick has been released on PS4 they pushed that out to PS4 apparently Brunswick pro bowling which was interesting because that did make a brief which I say since they already have the Brunswick license get in there and I know but I want them to make the Big Lebowski pin. And that's got an official Brunswick lanes on the lower play field. So, hey, you've already got the license, just saying. Well, you've got the license for that particular piece of intellectual property, which is the Brunswick lane. Big Lebowski, that's not going to cost much. No. That just starts Dutch Pinball. You've got bridges and, you know, it's easy. Yeah. No problem. And they're not even allowed to use the original music in the pinball,
    30:46
    Dutch Pinball can't, which is real. I know some people are disappointed about that, but what are you going to do, right? Music licensing is hard. Yeah. You think? As far as I fully know.
    31:00
    Yeah. Just a wee bit difficult on that front. Shifting gears here a little bit. Different game. So my son got Lego Dimensions for his birthday. Okay. It's, and I swore I wouldn't go this route, but it's one of your Skylanders or Disney Infinity type. Oh, with the little thing you put on the... Yes, you put the little thing on there. And NFC things. Here's the only advantage. It's Lego.
    31:32
    They pop off the little stand, and now you have just the minifigure. And, you know, so you can actually play with them as an actual toy. So that's cool. And the platform that you put it on, you have to build the whole scene, basically. so i mean there is some lego billing to it so that's pretty cool that's better than just like a big bit of hunk of plastic with this tiny little nfb chip in it right which is all the skylander stuff is it's a rip-off right so here's the part that i'm appreciating about the game it has uh you know comes what's that no that purchases yeah no it's go to the store at purchase.
    32:14
    That's right. That's the part that sucks. Because you're playing and you see a little glowy thing. It's just like any of the previous LEGO games.
    32:25
    You know, where you'd see something glowing and say you can't activate this without a certain character, and you wouldn't get that character until much later in the game, and then you have to replay the levels, and then you can access that arena. Well, in this instance, you're not earning the characters. You want the character, you've got to go the store um fortunately they tell you all the different characters that will open the item so you can at least go to the store with knowledge and be like oh i need this character this character and this character and that'll you know allow me to open up most of the game um but anyway you start off with with uh wild style from the lego movie batman and uh gandalf from lord of the rings okay Well, my son has not been interested in, he just turned 10, and up until now he hasn't been interested in live action movies for the most part, which kills me. Because there's so much I wanted to show him. Well, because of him being interested in Lego Dimensions, he started wanting to watch Doctor Who. So we start watching Doctor Who. Well, now all of a sudden he's getting the time travel bug and seeing what that's all about. which reminded him that I'd shown him Back to the Future like two years back and he goes aren't there some other Back to the Future movies? I'm like yes there are we watched Back to the Future 2 what do you say? Yeah okay so we watched Back to the Future 2. Totally loving the back end you know he's getting the joke of you know the time travel soon as we finished the movie he's like let's watch the third one. I'm like what? Oh my god you are my son and so we watched the third one i won't have to sell you to the salt mines after all son exactly so so he gets the game he started playing it and they do have back to the future uh for purchase uh to add into the game too um but we don't have that yet but uh so he's playing it and and he's seen the doctor who stuff and he's also messing around with Gandalf and he starts asking questions. And I'm like, if you really want to know, like, what do you say?
    34:41
    So he agrees. He agrees to watch Lord of the Rings. So I throw that in. And do I throw in the theatrical version? Hell no! It's extended version. It's already extended the normal movie. I kind of forgot that it's a four-hour movie.
    34:58
    And he was exhausted by the time it was over. I know I know but then this last week and we just watched Two Towers but we did it in like three sittings it was like okay that's been an hour and a half let's turn it off and we'll come back for more but anyway so I love I'm loving the game for the fact that it's actually making him interested and wanting to know more of these things Lego Dimensions the gateway drug You start watching The Simpsons, and of course you can get Simpsons in the game. So it's like all these things that he's starting to get interested in are all in the game. I don't know which is the cause for which.
    35:40
    So really, LEGO Dimensions is just a massive launchpad for binge-watching, really. It's LEGO Binge-Watching Dimensions. Yeah, yeah.
    35:52
    Exactly. yeah no it's one of those things where I can't argue that it's at least getting him you know making him aware of some other things making him interested in what they are although he hates superheroes so I still don't think that any amount of that is going to make him go hey dad let's watch Batman right okay fair enough well look if it opens his mind to other movies that you know are considered sort of, you know, best of their breed, then good on it, I say.
    36:27
    Good on it. I am looking forward to, there's a whole level about Portal. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Because there essentially is no Portal 3 ever going to come out. This will probably be the closest that we get to it. So I'm looking forward to that. I've never actually played Portal. Yes, there I said it. What? I haven't said it. Well, it's, you know, it's $10 on mobile. Oh, $10 is a... I should probably just get it because it would look really nice on the shield tablet. I should just go and buy it. Maybe they put it on sale. They put portal out for free quite often. I get, that's how I got the first game because it was for educational purposes. They were trying to get teachers to put it in the classroom. Oh, really?
    37:13
    No, believe me when you play it, you would understand that how it can be used for educational purposes because it's spend my disbelief until playing it. Yeah, because it's very physics-based, and it's understanding, you know, warps. I mean, wormholes. It helps understand the science of that in terms of, you know, how would you actually play around with one of these. Cool. The second game, usually Steam. Oh, but you're not on Steam. Never mind. All right. I was going to say, it'll be on sale for $5 right now, probably.
    37:48
    They put that thing on sale at 75% off. It's normally $20. Yeah. it's a hell of a $5 purchase. Uh, highly recommend it. I'd say probably a pretty good $9 purchase really on Android. Yeah. So yeah, the first game is really short. The second game is much longer. So, uh, the first one, that's why I say it's, it's one of those where like, really I'm done. That's it. Where was the game? What's happened? Yeah. I should get on it, but you should. Damn you. Damn it. Just get on, play the portal. Huge success. Uh, final thing I want to do to mention, see, I'm slowly segging into these things. I'm getting better at these segues, Jared.
    38:26
    So we went from pinball to video game to movies and now we're going into TV. You just won a color TV? Do you watch Walking Dead? No.
    38:40
    No. Do you guys have it down there? Or is it for purchase pay thing? Yeah, it's on pay TV down here. Yeah, we do get it. I don't know if we got the latest season down here yet.
    38:51
    What is it? Something of the Walking Dead? Day of the Walking Dead? Fear of the Walking Dead? That's a spinoff.
    38:59
    That's over and done well for now. They're just about to air tonight actually. It's the mid-season finale. So they break up their seasons into two Yeah they do It annoys the crap out of me Not just with Walking Dead They cut the season in half and go well where the rest of the bloody show you mongrels
    39:21
    Well, you know why they did it. This goes back to Lost. Oh, right. So that's who's to blame for it. That's who's to blame for it. No, people couldn't stand it. You'd start the season off, you'd get seven brand new episodes, and then all of a sudden it'd be a week of rerun, and then one new episode. and then two weeks of reruns, and then one new episode, and then a month of no new episodes, and then two new episodes. And so it really became this piecemeal thing, and it sucked. The reason why they have to do that is because you're actively filming the season. If you're on a TV show working, you come to December,
    39:57
    you're filming, say, episode nine, and they're airing episode seven. It takes eight to ten days to film each episode. So let me understand this. So when they actually sell a season, say The Walking Dead, to the television or the cable TV companies there, they don't wait until it's finished. They're actually doing it in real time as they're basically fixing the aircraft in the sky as they're doing it. Wow. Okay. I didn't know that. For instance, I'm working on American Horror Story.
    40:29
    They've aired seven episodes. We're currently working on episode 10 and 11. Wow. 12 episodes total. Yeah. So, I mean, it starts coming up on you fast. Now, there are shows that they filmed their entire season before one episode even airs.
    40:51
    Those are usually cable shows. The main networks, that's never the case. It's always airing while you're filming. Right. So that was why they had to do the rerun cycle, though, in order to give the show a chance to actually be made.
    41:03
    Right. There you go. Well, I've learned something today. Yeah. So Lost said, well, hey, everybody's getting ticked off at being strung along with these storylines. Why don't we just air everything in one go? So they stopped airing Lost in the fall and then waited until January. And then by that point, it was all nice and caught up. And they would just air every single episode in a row. And then somebody got the bright idea, the networks did at least, where it was like, hey, you're on to something because, yeah, people will enjoy that. And then if we put you on hiatus for, say, six weeks, we now have a time slot that everybody's used to tuning into. We can introduce a brand new television show. And maybe that audience will. Yeah. Right. And so that time slot's no longer being hogged for an entire season. So that's when this mid-season break thing started happening. Okay. And so anyway, my whole point of bringing this up was that Walking Dead has become one of those shows for me where I have to watch it the night it airs. I still don't watch it live. I still DVR and then watch it because I can't stand commercials.
    42:14
    But I have to watch it because and literally I can't go on the computer after it airs on the East Coast, you know, which is three hours ahead of me for airtimes. because all of a sudden spoilers just start popping up left and right. And I was like, oh, guy, you can't even. And here's what's beautiful. They'll be like, it'll be on your main splash page when you pop up the internet, right? And there'll be this picture of one of the characters, and they'll be like, a character died tonight. And you're like, gee, I wonder who. You didn't put it in the headline, but you did put a picture of the person. Yeah, I didn't spoil it. But if you don't have a text reader and you're actually using your eyes, then I did.
    42:58
    You're right. And the thing is, as of late, I've been trying to save with various shows, save them and then binge watch them because I'm enjoying them much more that way. And I plain can't do that with this show. It's like, and it's weird. I haven't had that sensation with a TV show in a long time where you have to be current on it. Boom. You can't go home. and the the the part that's making me worried is with game of thrones i don't have hbo um i don't watch it until it comes out the next year on blu-ray yeah now i haven't had to worry about spoilers because and yes i'm going to be the typical bastard that says i've read the books but I've read the books so I wasn't concerned about spoilers but with this upcoming season they're now moving into territory of the book that has yet to be written oh so I don't know what the hell's going on I'm like how am I possibly not going to hear a thing for an entire year you're just gonna have to like put your I'm forgetting about that filter on and and just I don't have a good one of those, though. Oh, really? Oh, I've tried. I can't forget things.
    44:15
    Yeah, I can do it. Especially since you go, I should probably forget about that. Forget about what? That thing you just saw. Oh, you mean where that person got, you know, no, no, forget about that. Don't, don't. And then it's all over. Then it's locked in. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. The way you get around that is to, you know, start watching Game of Thrones season one now. and then watch them every year after that. And by the time you get around to the current season, you will have totally forgotten about who dies when and how.
    44:45
    I know some guy has said. Well, I don't know about you, but before the season starts, I typically tend to re-watch everything. Everything? Wow, okay. Yeah. So I'll start with season one and I'll go all the way through, you know, the four or five seasons and then be caught up. I used to do that with Lost also. and that was significant. You kind of had to, though, because it was nuts.
    45:08
    Yeah, but then all of a sudden you realize after six seasons, you're like, okay, I've watched the first season six times already. I'm done with that. I don't need to watch that anymore. So then you kind of advance yourself a little bit, but yeah, I'll go back and re-watch things just to catch up.
    45:24
    The other thing I was going to say with Walking Dead, though, is I think it's gotten too big for its own good. Okay. So there was one of the main characters the episode ends with what looks like him getting his guts ripped out and being chowed down by zombies and everybody freaked out well the way this current season is structured is everything's taking place within the same two hours you might say oh the same event has happened and i just keep on telling it from different angles so uh because they tend to you know there's one group that's in this town and there's another group that was outside trying to lead away a zombie horde and there's another group that um you know separated from that so you're seeing it from all these different perspectives so they do this with the character they finish with what appears him to be dying and then the next week no he's not in that episode or the resolution isn't in that episode the following the resolution's not in that episode the week after that resolution's on that episode people were getting ticked they're like you gotta tell me and i'm like have you people not learned anything this goes back to the days of twin peaks where everybody expected to find out who killed laura palmer you know first episode of the second season and when that didn't happen then everybody was like screw you i'm not watching you anymore and it's like shouldn't you be here for the character development shouldn't you be like invested in this world and you know hopefully they'll answer the question eventually but that's what makes for good tv not not this disposable stuff that you can just you know turn in turn off each week and it doesn't matter what the heck has been going on and so that's why i say it's like i think that audience is now watching walking dead and based on the numbers that it has yeah that's the case i think just chill people let them tell a story this really is the the thing about society today not wanting to get on a rant but it seems that we all want things instantaneously instant gratification and we're not willing to just wait a little bit for something it drives me insane anyhow that's my rant over that was a pretty short rant that was no 60 seconds of rage i'll say rage no i don't have it in me like maybe if i had five coffees i could i could spin up for that but i've actually just had one this morning not nearly enough to rage 60 seconds just asking a lot of you i get it i get it no i don't have any yet well gang um we encourage you to join us like we said playing epic quest against us uh current table of the week is fun house so uh you know for kind of really mock you yeah grab a hot dog hey bucky um i was working in an arcade when that table came out and the arcade was one of these Dark Hole arcades, the way all arcades should be. Yes. And there was something menacing about that table. The way it's lit, the way that animatronic head is lit when you just have ambient light is spooky.
    48:33
    I'll tell you what, it drew a crowd. It would have. It draws, it absolutely drew a crowd. I mean, nobody had seen anything like that. It was like, holy crap, it's talking to us. Look, it's moving. Yeah, that was pretty. Yeah.
    48:46
    And then you got to the power of two on Roadshow, which again is like, it's you just don't have that menacing look at Rudy has. He's a disturbing little bugger. Yeah.
    48:59
    Yes, he is. I mean, even on the side of the cabinet art, it's not exactly an inviting Rudy. No, no. You come to the fun house. Have a great time.
    49:12
    Yeah. We promise we won't abduct you. Honest. So, yeah, anyway, that's our current Table of the Week funhouse. So join us for that. Why don't you follow us on Twitter? Follow the show at Blockade. Or you can follow myself at ShutYourTraps or Jared at JaredMorgz. You can also follow Bonzo, who the hell knows where he is. Guy, we miss you. Come back. he's at DrexClown and I think those are all the followings but again we do encourage you go look at our t-shirts at least even if you don't buy we'd love to hear what you think and some feedback on it that website again if you don't like something about the t-shirt there's a good chance if we get enough feedback about it we can probably change the design because we can make a whole other if you want a different color or whatever we can start a whole new campaign and do different colors and stuff like that. We just wanted to concentrate. Get something up there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Narrow everybody's focus into one for right now, and then later on we can do some redesigns, and we can make hoodies or whatever. Mobile phone. But anyway, that's... It's true.
    50:30
    I didn't even look that far to see. Awesome. So go to represent.com slash blockade dash logo dash T as in T-E-E. Go check it out.
    50:45
    That was a endorsement from this guy. All righty. Well, we shall talk to you all again. next week. Thank you, Jared Morgan. I have been Chris Frevis.
    51:08
    We will see you all next week in the Blockade. Bye-bye. WizardAmusement.com The West Coast leader in classic pinball. Makers of custom pinball shooter rods to buyer specifications. Swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools even if you don't own the table looks great as a pimple memento to admire prices start at 39 but mention blockade podcast and receive 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization remember to leave a review on itunes or any podcasting channel blockade is distributed through. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Until next time, remember...