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Education is Important, But Pinball is Importanter

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·51m 31s·analyzed·May 2, 2016
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

Blockade hosts discuss Zen's Alien vs. Predator digital table and a rare Hankin Star Wars machine's restoration challenges.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss their recent experiences with Zen Pinball's Alien vs. Predator digital table, analyzing its linear mode progression and voice acting quality. Jared recounts visiting a rare 1980s Hankin Star Wars pinball machine in Australia with severely water-damaged circuit boards but an exceptionally well-preserved playfield, exploring restoration options using modern controller systems while preserving originality.

Key Claims

  • Hankin was Australia's only pinball manufacturer in the 1970s-1980s and released Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back without a license by copying Firepower and Aliens playfield designs

    high confidence · Jared describing the Hankin Star Wars machine's design philosophy and history

  • Zen's Alien vs. Predator table features linear mode progression that should be mandatory for story-driven tables to improve progression mechanics

    high confidence · Chris and Jared's discussion of game design mechanics in Alien vs. Predator

  • The Hankin Star Wars playfield is in exceptional, nearly flawless condition despite the machine's age and water damage to electronics

    high confidence · Jared's detailed inspection report of the visited machine

  • Zen Star Wars tables are currently 50-75% off for May the 4th, with Force Awakens/First Order pack at 30% off

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing current Zen sale promotions

  • Ben Heck developed a Raspberry Pi-based controller system that can replace damaged solid-state pinball boards while preserving original playfield connections

    medium confidence · Jared recommending this approach for restoring the Hankin Star Wars machine

Notable Quotes

  • “Education is important, but pinball is importanter.”

    Chris (quoting his t-shirt) @ N/A — Episode title and thematic statement about the show's priorities

  • “It was sort of like they were football commentating the match between Aliens vs. Predator. Right. Not really in there.”

    Chris @ N/A — Critique of Aliens vs. Predator voice acting quality as disconnected from action

  • “The playfield is practically flawless on it. It looks like it hasn't had a lot of play at all.”

    Jared @ N/A — Assessment of the rare Hankin machine's exceptional preservation despite electronic damage

  • “They're going to basically—this is quite literally what they thought. Well, what tables are out in the market at the moment? Well, there's Firepower, and there's that really cool...table. So let's nick those playfield designs.”

    Jared @ N/A — Candid explanation of Hankin's unlicensed Star Wars table development strategy

  • “I think if it's telling a story, and we both know that Zen tables are designed to tell a story, I think it needs to be linear.”

    Chris @ N/A — Design philosophy argument for story-driven pinball progression mechanics

Entities

Zen PinballcompanyAlien vs. Predator (Zen table)gameHankin Star WarsgameJared MorganpersonChris FreebuspersonHankincompanyWizardAmusement.comcompanyBen HeckpersonGhostbusters (Zen table)gameStar Wars (Zen tables)game

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball knowledge and community connections present in unexpected professional contexts, with colleagues discovering shared interest through casual observation

    medium · Jared's story of DevOps colleague at Ladbrokes discovering his pinball interest through t-shirt and connecting him with rare Hankin machine

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Linear mode progression being implemented in story-driven digital pinball tables (Zen Alien vs. Predator, Ghostbusters) as intentional design choice for improved progression and difficulty scaling

    high · Chris and Jared's detailed discussion of linear mode benefits and upcoming Ghostbusters implementation; contrast with arcade operator needs for faster gameplay

  • $

    market_signal: Zen Pinball running aggressive promotional discounting (50-75% off Star Wars tables) around May the 4th and Civil War movie release timing

    high · Chris announcing current Star Wars sale percentages and Civil War discount coordination with movie release

  • ?

    product_concern: Zen's Aliens vs. Predator voice acting critically assessed as 'terrible' and disconnected from action, though overall table mechanics praised

    high · Chris and Jared's extended critique of AVP voice acting quality compared to film integration

  • ?

    technology_signal: Raspberry Pi-based controller systems being adapted for vintage solid-state pinball machine restoration as viable replacement for damaged original electronics

    medium · Jared recommending Ben Heck's controller approach for restoring the Hankin machine while preserving original playfield connections

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.155

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. 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. you are listening to the blockade podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always from australia jared morgan g'day chris how are you i am doing well uh i just completed uh doing some pinball playing on twitch for our uh turn of the month we'll uh get in a moment, but the thing I'm not doing well about is my goddamn printer.
1:01
Yes. I've got this Hewlett Packard desk jet and I've had it for a couple of years, maybe three years total.
1:16
A year after I had it, it was finally time to change the ink cartridge out. So I did that, and when I did that, it no longer printed. It would print color, but it would not print black ink. So I had gone to HP Tech Support, contacted them, and they quickly informed me that I was one month out of warranty, and therefore they really shouldn't be able to help me. And so I raged and screamed at them and said, really, this is how you stand behind your product. and they proceeded to run me through a whole bunch of troubleshooting whereby they were trying to pin the blame on me and my computer.
1:58
Exactly. First starting, oh, well, do you have the latest firmware updates? And, oh, okay, well, let's make sure you have those. And do you have all this? And I kept on telling them, and this is the part that bugs me about tech support people, is you go, it was printing. I stopped printing. I put in new ink. It no longer printed. nothing happened to the firmware in between that time period clearly the thing that changed was me changing the ink but no they'll run around every other possible situation so then they started saying oh it's your printhead your printhead has probably gone bad and I was like oh okay and they're like well it probably needs cleaning well did you run through all the you know cleaning diagnostics exactly I'm like yes I ran through every single one of those things all it ever does is prints my color ink which now by the way I'm running low on color ink for all these diagnostics that I've run so that is here to send me out some freebies because your diagnostics cost me money right and so then they go oh well what's your printer ink levels on the color and I was like oh well it's low they're going to need to change soon but according to the little screen guide thing which by the way all it's doing is reading the computer chip for how many prints it's done. It's not actually telling you how much ink is literally in the cartridge.
3:18
It's like, you have got approximately three print jobs left. Give or take a print job. Exactly, and that's how it measures the level. So, they go, oh,
3:29
well, you need to change all the inks. What? Why is changing all the inks going to suddenly make the black ink work?
3:39
But they're like, no, you need to change all the inks. I was like, that's absolutely asinine. That's ridiculous. The color ink is working right now. So then after more yelling and screaming and all that jazz, they finally determined that I probably had a bad printer cartridge.
3:57
Oh, really? My thing was, well, I had already gone and exchanged the one that didn't work, and I went to a different store and bought one from them, and that didn't work. And so then they said, oh well we're not quite sure what's going on with that tell you what we'll send you one out so I had to wait a week and a half while Hugh Packard sent me a new printer ink cartridge I put that in and it worked all of a sudden magically my printer head is no longer the problem everything is working brilliantly oh right ok that's weird why would it ok Yeah, right? I can't even fathom a guess. I have no idea what the issue would possibly be. And all that Hewlett-Packard was saying was, oh, well, you really shouldn't take your printer ink down to the point where you notice that the print quality is degrading.
4:55
What? What are you talking about? So anyway, since that time, I've changed the printer ring cartridge once, and it worked. That was one time, right?
5:10
Granted, I didn't take it down to where it was starting to print gray. I saw a little guide on the thing, said you're low on ink, and I changed it then, and it continued to work. So that one cartridge that I've changed it for just died. And when I say dying, it wasn't dead yet. It was just starting to get kind of gray on the color. I went, okay. So my son had a report that was due at school this past week. I was like, well, why don't I go get some nice brand-new ink so that he has a nice crisp black text for his report. So I went, purchased the brand-new ink, went, plunked the cartridge in,
5:45
pushed print. It printed off two pages whereby it completely faded to white and then didn't print. Right. I went, wait a second. This all seems familiar. I remember this debacle from last time I do so sure enough I went onto Hewlett Packard's website and went to their tech support and went into the forums and you know when there are quite a few people complaining of the exact same thing that you're experiencing i.e. it was printing grey I changed the cartridge it gave me two sheets and then went to white it's probably not my printer it's probably something to do with your product it's probably something to do with your consumables which seems to be a little bit crap yeah and of course when you go to the tech support on their website it's oh well your printer's out of warranty we can't help you great we can help you if you call this phone number but we'll charge you to talk to our techs you know what's going to be cheaper taking the printer Put it in the bin and go and get a Canon, because Canon are much better. I'm going to either get a Canon or I'm going to go with an Epson. I'm not going to go with a Hewlett-Packard. Go with a Canon. We have never not got a Canon printer ever since we started buying printers, and they are great. We did have a printhead issue on one of the models, and it was actually cheaper to buy a new printer than a printhead, so we went, whatever. We'll probably need a new one anyhow. Now we've got one of these cool multifunction ones with scanners and everything on it and an actual document feed and everything like that. So it's really good. It has this to beat. That was a sad thing. We have had a Hewlett-Packard printer prior to this one that we currently have. The only reason why I'd gotten rid of that one was when I upgraded to Windows 8. Yeah, when I upgraded to Windows 8, I'd previously been on XP. and that particular printer had no drivers for Windows 8. So that was why I had to buy a new printer. We had not had a single issue with that other printer, which was a Hewlett Packard. It worked like a beast, and we had it for years and years and years. Never had an issue. And then we buy this pile of crap. And it's like, right, never again. Hewlett Packard, you're dead to me. Yes, pretty much. And they wouldn't have been dead to me if their customer service had been nice instead of blaming me and everything rather than blaming their crap product that is amply available via the forums of how crap it actually is. See, that would have worked back in the early 90s when there wasn't really great internet around. Right. And people didn't have the knowledge that other people had. It's like, oh, well, yeah, it must be my fault. Like, I don't know. I mean, they're the manufacturer. They must know what they're talking about. But now it's like, no.
8:53
Well, you know, when you do a Google search and you literally are typing, okay, desk check 3520 will not, and it fills in the rest, print black ink. Yeah. You know, the Google search that.
9:06
Yeah. There's a few index results in Google for that one. Yeah, there's a few. And then when there's about, you can go through maybe four pages of Google and just see tag after tag after tag on it. Yeah, this is not isolated just to me. No.
9:25
So, yeah, I guess I now have to go buy a new printer. Yay. A new Canon. Make sure you get one with Google Cloud Print or something. I know you're an iOS shop over there, but the Cloud Print thing is really cool. I think you can use it with Apple as well, and it allows you to print everything wirelessly. That's what mine is currently. Yours is a cloud print one, yeah.
9:51
Cloud printer, it's got a scanner and copying, and the only thing it doesn't have is a fax machine because it's not 1988.
9:58
Who needs that? Yeah, who needs it except for, you know how often I still get requested, oh, can you fax that over? It's like, what? Yeah. Yep, I know. I was going to say, America has got some very archaic technology that you guys rely on over there for business. It's amazing. I can't use email. You're like, I'm doing this all from my phone right now. I can easily take a picture, send it to you, be done with it, or send you the email file. No, we need a fax.
10:27
So I'm going to have to go to the post office or to somewhere that actually has the fax station I can pay for and send this. I literally had to do that. Yeah, it's ridiculous.
10:38
Yeah, crazy business, man. Crazy. Hey, you have now had a chance to play Alien vs. Spinball, am I correct? Oh, yes, I have. You have? It was insta-buy as soon as I got the push notification on Android the other day. So after I gave the glowing review of the game last week, do you concur, do you think I'm full of crap, or are you on the fence? I, well, as far as loving the game, I absolutely concur with you. Like, all the games they have are great.
11:15
I think, for me, my least favourite table is Isolation. I don't know why that is, but I'm still trying to work it out. I think I need to play it more to understand why. I think it just doesn't have the same sort of flow as the Aliens vs Predator or Alien table. um i love the table it's definitely a catch and shoot yeah i think that's probably why i'm i'm a little bit sort of cold on it but um what i do like is the the the linear mode progression on aliens i think that should just be a hard setting not to actually have it have it choosable it should just be yes you're playing a movie order and that's how you're playing it because it's great like the the good thing is by doing that is you get much better at the modes like the video mode, the video drive video mode sort of thing at the beginning with the APC. I can do that easily now.
12:11
And as you move up more, you do the turrets and all that sort of stuff, that's actually getting easier and easier every time through. So you actually get better by actually getting better in the game.
12:22
Strangely enough. And I think that's a really good mechanic to use. Like, what other games have done that in the pinball world? I guess like the, some of the earlier solid states sort of had that type of progression as well where you had to do things sometimes in a linear fashion and I think with the the different modes that you have in real pinball now where you can just activate you can actually usually change what mode is selected by either using a cabinet button or like maybe the pop bumpers might change which mode is selected or something like that I think if it telling a story and we both know that Zen tables are designed to tell a story, I think it needs to be linear. And I think they made a good decision giving you a conscious decision to make it the beginning of the table for that. Interestingly enough, the new Ghostbusters table is going to be linear with its modes. And that was one of the things that a lot of people were like, ew, that's just going to get repetitive. So I think what's nice about this is that it gives you the choice. You can choose to go linearly or you can choose to jump around. I think that's a really good compromise.
13:32
I think it will only get tedious for Ghostbusters. There could be some justification for that because it's going to be set up for a lot of people in the arcade who can't afford to buy one. And, of course, arcade owners want to get their play times low as possible. So they're going to be setting everything hard. And that means that getting to see all the modes, like you were saying last time, is really going to be difficult.
13:55
So that will be the disadvantage there, I think. But, yeah, in a digital world, I guess, with Xen, you can just play it over and over and over again. So it doesn't really matter.
14:06
And, you know, potentially, when Ghostbusters eventually makes it into the digital landscape, the Stern Ghostbusters, that might not really be a problem. I mean, we're going to have to wait a while for that, I think. But, you know, we'll have to see what happens with that regard, I think.
14:24
True, true. So, all right, so you liked the linear mode of the alien table. What did you think? I liked the, for Aliens vs. Predator, I agree with you, the voice acting is a little bit amateurish. A little bit? Yeah. It's terrible. It is. It's terrible. It's actually, I made the remark on, I think it was like a hangout with you during the week. It was sort of like they were football commentating the match between Aliens vs. Predator. Right. Not really in there. And I know in the movie they were actually in there, like right amidst the action, watching these two races battle, right? I wound up watching that on Alien Day. Of all the Alien movies that I could pick to celebrate the day with, I was like, you know what, I haven't watched it in forever. I haven't watched AVP, so I threw that in.
15:14
Were there regrets doing that, or was it okay? No, it's okay. I don't think it's a terrible movie. There are certainly criticisms that can be levied against it, no doubt about it. but the main crime that they commit in that is the gestation time between facehugger to full-blown alien facehugger to chestburster to full-blown alien it takes place in like 20 minutes I mean it's ridiculously fast and it wouldn't have been all that difficult because while it's happening they're lost in the maze of the pyramid they very easily could have made it where they wind up having to camp for a day in the period. And being separated. And that would have been enough time for me to go, okay, I guess that's long enough for the chestburster to gestate. That's plausible. Because in the movie, in Alien, that thing was latched on to John Hurt. I forget what his character's name was. It was latched on to his face for at least a day. I mean, it was latched on long enough that they had to bring him back to the ship put him in med bay did some studies on the thing i mean that thing was latched on whereas in the movie the facehugger literally it attaches and within 10 minutes it has unattached and probably five minutes after that is bursting out all right yeah that's that's seriously advanced gestation for sure yeah so that's that's the the main main complaint with that movie that that i have that It just doesn't work story-wise. But it did make me... Seriously, they've done some cool things with it. Like that heat mode looks so good. It does. It looks fantastic. And it's, yeah, even on mobile it looks good. I can't imagine how good it would look on PC. But, yeah, it's very cool. That's probably the highlight for me of that table is when it goes into heat mode. and you get it for a couple of different things too, don't you? You get it for the saber mode. Is it sabers? Where it actually has the wrist things. Yeah, that's where you're hitting the lane four times or something like that will activate that. And then there's the actual mode mode one of the selectable modes that also goes into heat vision, I believe. I think that's where they go into berserk mode and he's just like I guess they call it berserk mode you just gotta shoot all the things I like to shoot all the things that's my favorite mode yeah what about isolation I don't I have a lot of trouble making the shots in that game for some reason they're tough yeah I have a lot of trouble making the not the filing cabinet but the locker to hide from the alien when I'm under pressure I just can't do it and there's the Sickbay or the... Medbay. Yeah, Medbay. No, I think they do call it Sickbay. They call it Sickbay. Sickbay ramp. That's a devilish ramp to try and get. Yes. It's a hard shot. So, yeah, that one's really for when you're feeling really dialed in with Zen games. You can go and hit that, but the other two are quite good as far as play-wise goes. I think Alien certainly wins for its integration with the theme. Like it's got all the quotes from the movie, and it's just so deeply integrated with the movie. It's basically like playing through it in real life. It's fantastic. They've really captured it there. Like I said, if they did have been able to use James Horner's music, that would have put it completely over the top. Yeah. But I do think that they did a pretty good job with the music. I didn't notice any issues. I didn't notice any issues with that music. It was perfectly, for me, it fit the game. I hadn't actually watched Aliens for a long time so I don't remember the theme music as such but it sounds like it opens with the theme music like when you're doing the launch Nope, it's still different So you could have fooled me it sounds pretty accurate to me so yeah, they've done a good job and you're right, keeping everything downplayed and really quite sort of atmospheric while you're playing the game is a great move I also love that in a lot of those games all the sound effects, like when you hit something. I just computer bleeps and bloops. Yes. And I like it when you're trying to complete the rollover lanes for the in lanes, that if you
19:57
mess it up, I think this is in the Aliens vs. Predators table, but if you mess it up, it actually unlights the lane. It does it on all the tables. I like it.
20:07
That's devilish to me. It's great. There's been times when I've had three of the four lanes lit and then within the span of about 20 seconds unlit all the lanes. And I went... Yeah, I know. I think it would have been easier if they actually had the left flipper controlling the left bank of lanes and the right flipper controlling the right bank of lanes so it only oscillated three times. And that would have been a little bit more easier to get. But yeah, I've unlit lanes so many times I can't even count it.
20:36
But I would like that element because it adds an extra bit of strategy to something that normally has zero strategy to it. which is rollover lanes. Well, on top of that, the rollover lanes are being used for your ball save, or not the ball save, the kickbacks.
20:53
That's right. So, obviously, if you made them too easy, then you'd be constantly having kickbacks and never have to worry about your left and right out lane. So it does make sense for them to unlight and make that more of a challenge to get. Yeah, I think that's good. I like it. I'm very much in favor of it. Certainly not if it was in the arcade. I'd hate their guts for it, But because it's actually not in the arcade and you're playing this over and over again, that extra longevity is a great inclusion to the title, I think.
21:22
Now, the good news that Zen also presented is that they've got some tables on sale. Yeah, they do too, don't they? Yeah, in honor of May 4th, for May the 4th be with you, they've put all their Star Wars tables on sale. I think one of them was one of the packs was like 75% off the rest of them are all 50% off and then the Force Awakens might have the first order pack that one's I believe 30% off so if you have not picked up those now is a heck of a good time to scoop those up you won't be disappointed if you haven't got any of those Star Wars tables go and get them they all play really nicely they've got the new physics in them so they've got the stronger coils and everything in them, like all the kickback, not kickback, slingshots and pop bumpers that are actually lively, and they play really well.
22:17
Yeah, they're quite enjoyable. And then because Captain America Civil War is coming out on this Friday, they've also announced putting Civil War on sale. I didn't see how much that was on sale for, but anyway discounts are abounding I could never understand that game because I've never really been introduced to the Civil War canon at all or the comics so it was sort of like okay there's a big explosion thing and now they're fighting and stuff so I should probably watch the movie and see what the heck they're talking about but I just wonder if Zen would ever do a content update for something like Civil War based on the movie? Would they actually do a re-theme or something like that based on the movie direction with the series? I know that the movie's probably trying to emulate the written stuff that they've got already, but I just wonder if they would actually tweak it slightly upon release. Yeah, I don't know because my understanding, me not being a comic book reader, but being a pop culture person, so I tend to somewhat have my ear to what's going on, but I don't know definitively. My understanding is that the Civil War comic has just a buttload of other characters floating around in it. Think about this, with the movie, Sony is the one that has the rights to Spider-Man. Disney does not. They had to come to an agreement with Sony to be allowed to have Spider-Man pop up in this movie. And the trade-off is that now in the next Spider-Man movie, Iron Man's going to pop up in that. So it's a lot of negotiating had to go on there. So I think with Xen, it's better that they stick to whatever the comic books go with, because that way they're not tied to the movies, they're not restricted by them, and they can follow the comic book storyline, which is already out and about. and probably considered by most as canon anyhow, really. Exactly, yeah. You want to stick with what is generally accepted as the true story. Not to mention, you already know if that is good, you might say, acceptable, if the fan base has accepted it, as opposed to the movie. Just think about if they made a Green Lantern movie that was based on the Ryan Reynolds movie and then everybody goes, well, that movie sucked. Why would I want that as a pinball table? Yeah, exactly.
24:59
Very good point. It's my point on why I don't like the Flintstones table. I don't want to be reminded that Rosie O'Donnell and Rick Moranis and John Goodman were Flintstones. Make it all cartoon characters and I'm happy, but you remind me of that crap movie and forget it.
25:15
Hey, ball saved. That's what I remember over and over and over. That's what it says. Every time you ball, it gets saved on it. And Rick Moranis, oh boy. Yeah.
25:28
Apart from that, that particular table is quite fun, but yeah, it's integration with the movie as well. Yeah, it's the movie. Yeah. Yeah And that can be that can be a hindrance I mean yeah Yeah So yeah maybe keeping maybe what Zen has done here is a really smart move Like just going yep we going to leave that right alone Yeah just let that ride Put it on sale so we get more sales. But yeah, we're going to leave it right there. All right. Let's let's switch gears once again. You had mentioned that you went on a trip of some sort. I did. Yeah, yesterday I decided to take a short drive up the road from where I live to a place called Caboolture, where there was a very old pinball machine sitting in someone's house. It was a Hankin Star Wars. Now, the history behind Hankin is that they were Australia's only pinball manufacturer back in the 70s and 80s, and they released Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back as a licensed table, but they didn't have the license for it.
26:36
So they just went, you know what? We're going to basically, this is how they, this is quite literally what they thought. Well, what tables are out in the market at the moment? Well, there's Firepower, and there's that really cool, like, Aliens HR Geiger table from Belly. Oh, sorry. I mean, Space Invaders. It's not really.
26:58
Well, they seem to be really popular. So let's nick those playfield designs. We'll put all the firepower stuff at the top, and we'll put the four flippers from Aliens down the bottom, and we'll just put some nice Star Wars theme. We'll put some, like, kick-out holes and dagger bar and stuff like that in there. And, hey, we've got ourselves a table. You beaut, let's release it. So they released this game in time for the movie launch back in the 80s there, and I think it did pretty well. But they're pretty rare tables now. You don't see a lot of them around because the biggest problem with them is that all the main boards and controllers in them are just no longer available or at least readily available. So this one I was told about and I was asked by one of my colleagues who I work with. This is the thing, right? Like pinball, there's only a couple of degrees of separation between pinball and people because the guy I was working with at Ladbrokes, he was a DevOps guy. but he knew this guy who had this table and he goes, oh, so you know about pinball machines? I said, yeah, because they see me wearing one of my many pinball shirts. Yeah, yeah. Jared informed me. He sends me this link to a whole bunch of T-shirts that are pinball related, and then he goes, yeah, my finger, I kind of slipped, and I wound up buying a whole bunch of them. Like, yeah, your finger just accidentally pushed the button to buy. Sure, okay. if it wasn't about silent mornings after that of going, are you sure you want to make this purchase? Yeah.
28:30
Yes. And it wasn't a hard decision. This is a, if you haven't actually seen Twitter yet, it's doubledangerpinball.com. That's a really cool shirts. Not your usual sort of pinball shirts and they have a whole lot of other stuff too, which is cool. Some of which I've actually got on my, got on my laptop here as stickers. I got flipper stickers. So I put those on my laptop. Very cool. I think the favorite shirt that Jared got was, you'll have to world's ok-est pinball that's the one world's ok-est pinball player I like that yep it's exactly me to a T really yeah that's why I had to get that one it was just perfect I'll wear that along to my tournament and put everyone to a false sense of security and then I'll absolutely cane them when I play my games I've worn my t-shirt that says education is important but pinball is important-er yeah that's even better-er I've run that one before.
29:25
So, anyhow, I went out and checked this one out, and it was a big spag. The circuit boards I don't think would be salvageable. They were stored in a wet environment, and on the back of the circuit boards, you know how on most circuit boards there's this green sort of film over them? Yeah. Well, that was bubbling on all the tracks. Now, that usually means that there's been water damage in the tracks, and that's probably not going to be a good idea to turn them on. And there were other problems with it too. Like you could see the general sort of areas where the resistors were running hot and they were scorching the boards, but that's pretty common.
30:05
And there were like, yeah, big rust holes around some of the MOSFETs. MOSFETs are the things that control and sort of switch the power between the flippers. So they're kind of important. and there was a lot of rust and a lot of the holes probably weren't viable, like the through and through holes where you put the components in. So even if you replace the circuitry, it probably wouldn't be really that good to run it over a long period. So what the guy where our work is going to do, he's going to use, he's going to adapt a system that Ben Heck used for his tiny pinball machine that he made through his Maker Network. And essentially, it's using the normal sort of pinball controller parts that you would normally use, like resistors, transistors, all that sort of circuitry stuff. But it's putting it into a different form and making it so you can just run it with stuff like, essentially, like the Raspberry Pi and stuff as a controller, which for those early solid state machines is more than adequate as a processor because you don't need anything more than that. so what I recommend that he do is where possible because this machine is quite collectible keep it as original as possible so use all the board connections like from the play field or the plugs and try and integrate that into his new board that he's making because one thing that didn't cop a lot of damage was the play field this thing like the play field is practically flawless on it it looks like it hasn't had a lot of play at all and there might be a little bit of wear around one of the drop target areas but seriously you wouldn't even know unless you really had a close look at it it's it is very good condition for his age um so i said yeah you basically if you wanted to take a different approach and you wanted to part this machine out you would get a mega load of money for that play field because it is an exceptional condition um and very very hard to get um these days um and depending on the way that Hankin separated their boards is there were four boards in the back box and more of the power related stuff in the lower cabinet and I think the boards in the back box containing all the game logic and everything I didn't take them out but they actually looked from the surface to be in relatively good condition um and that was interesting as well because the back box took a little bit of water damage as well like you could see um when you opened up the back box um the light board that's inside that holds all the little you know lights for the illumination for the back box that was all swollen and like it was chipboard and it was all swollen with water damage so it's had some water in there but pinballs being pinballs they're they're pretty waterproof if you have them done up relatively well and this one i reckon some of those boards which are as rare as hands teeth those processor boards could be viable still. So he may be able to sell some of those and get some money so he can do the repairs and the other stuff. A lot of the metal stuff in the playfield was rusted, but you can clean that up with rust dissolver and a good wire brush. Just give that a good rasping and get a lot of that rust off and you can sort of salvage a lot of that stuff.
33:27
I reckon he's got something that would probably flip if he spent enough time on it getting the rust out of it. and it's pretty exciting to see because you don't see them very often at all around.
33:38
One thing that I found as part of this investigation is there's a Mike from Homepin, the guy who's doing the Thunderbirds pin, and he set up a factory in China. Well, he's on Aussie Arcade, which is, as I was saying last week, a little bit like Pinside but for Aussies.
33:55
And I knew that he was on there. I was following a couple of his Hankin threads And I just decided, oh, look, I'll just send him a message. Because about two years ago, he did a short run of some of the driver boards and stuff for Hankins, since he has a license to reproduce Hankins stuff. Okay. And I thought, well, that's no real harm asking him. So I sent him an email and said, so, yeah, are you considering doing a new run of these boards? and goes, well, frustrating thing is I've got all the board components back in Kuranda, which is an area in North Queensland, but I really have an opportunity to get back to Australia being my operations in China now. So I can't really get my hands on them. And I said, yeah, and listening to the Pinhead Pinball podcast where they were describing just how hard it is to get stuff into China, I said, oh, and it's probably going to be almost impossible to get them into the country because of China's crazy import rules. He goes, well, I could, you know, get them sent to my Hong Kong office and then, like, physically carry them over the border, which is what you can do to get around the problem. But he says, like, I was getting only about two orders a year for them, so it's not really, at the moment, worth my while. But he said, and also, I'm struggling to get Thunderbirds, like, produced because it's way behind schedule at the moment. So it's pretty much Thunderbirds or nothing at the moment. I said, yeah, I totally get that, mate. you've got to get the pinball out otherwise people are going to kill you but he said look I'm not ruling it out though after Thunderbirds goes out I'll have a little bit of extra time to look back at some of these things that are hanging around and it's more than likely that I will get a chance to actually do some more driver rewards up which is why I've advised the guy not to just cut the plugs and hardwire anything because it may be possible that he can actually go and get brand new boards for this thing and get it back to working condition again as it originally was and that would be pretty awesome. So there was a really interesting little trip yesterday. I was quite literally salivating over the playfield because to see a playfield in that condition is really, really rare.
35:59
The only thing that was really wrong with it was some of the plastics were slightly chipped, but not to the point where they were cracked all the way through, just a little bit chipped on the edges. And some of the inserts were a little bit sunken, which you can easily correct with a heat gun and just loosening up the glue.
36:14
That's really all that would need to be done to the play field to get it back to normal again. It was really good condition. So yeah, the guys on to win it there.
36:24
What's our next thing we're going to talk about? Oh yeah! I know what we're talking about. But I don't have any good segue, so silence.
36:32
So silence is the segue. We, uh, today being Saturday, the day that we're recording this, it also is, it's April 30th, May 1st for Jared. And this happens to be the last of our tournament of the month for the first four seasons.
36:50
We went through the first four seasons of Pinball Arcade playing a table a week. There was only a handful of weeks where we skipped a week to play. Basically, we were doing four tables a month and then running a tournament at the end of each month. Here we are at the end of that. 61 tables wound up being truly 60, 61st one was Black Knight which is unplayable in tournament it's just plain unplayable well it is particularly in a tournament because it's just so full of bugs there's just no way that you can reliably count on it so anyway I'm not saying farewell forever to tournament of the month or table of the week but on the other hand I'm definitely taking a break from it myself we have thrown out the invitation to others if they would like to do anything regarding table of the week or tournament of the month that they're free to do so I will help promote it on the pinball arcade fans website and sticky their threads post on top I'll do links via twitter do whatever we can because if people want to keep this alive let's keep it alive but we have a core of about 24 25 players that have been showing up religiously every single one of our tournaments and then there's just been this you know at one point we had 54 players I think enter one of our tournaments I think that was a loss that was a really good yeah that was a really strong uh entry um and since then like i said it it significantly dropped off so uh yeah it just one of those times where it's time to take a break and let people breathe from it and this will allow me to play some more zen tables instead rather than each week going oh i gotta play this other tpa table um to that end i haven't even played i've barely touched season five yet because i've been dealing with all the preseason four and season five is virtually done.
39:07
Like I said, it'll give me a chance to catch up on the tables myself and get up to par. This was initially, as we've said, done so that I could do all my wizard goals for all the seasons to pass and get them all chalked off. I didn't get all of them done, but I certainly did more than three quarters of them. Maybe you could have merged into them. Oh, yeah. Me too. I think I have, well, discounting season five, which, like I said, I've barely touched, I think I only have six tables that I haven't fully completed.
39:42
So not too shabby out of 61. That's pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. Yeah. I've already played some of my tables last night on recording because I'm from the future. and um so most of them were pretty sort of average games i'm not really i still got one game left officially to play on um junkyard but i think i'm just getting the phone and what i what i did which is about 30 million or something like that um i had this one game on um whodunit which was i think the best game i ever played um and it was weird because the kids were both hanging off me while i was playing it like quite literally i was sitting at the table and they were huddled around me watching me play this on my tablet and they were helping me plunge and not really getting the skill shot but it didn't matter anyhow um and i ended up getting something like 15 billion or something like that i know and i just went uh okay uh i had some very good roulette playoffs put it that way tell me okay here's the thing i didn't play any of the roulette because i literally don't know that table uh i don't i so don't think of that table that when i was writing up the score entry site, I always put which tables are being played. I could not remember for the life of me what that table was. Oh, really? No, I was like, no Junkyard, no Jackpot, no 1812. What's our fourth table? I could not come up with the name of it. I had to go back, look on the website, see what our tables of the week were, and be like, oh yeah, whodunit. I completely forgot it. So I go and I play it, and I'm like, I don't even know what the heck I'm supposed to be doing. It's just like zero knowledge. And that roulette thing came up, and I was like, ooh, I do know that this is one of those things where if you risk it, it takes those points away from you. Yes, it does. And then I went, I don't even know what the shot is that I'm supposed to take or what's supposed to happen, so I refused to risk it. It was just like, why bother?
41:46
You don't really have a shot to take. you go, yep, I will gamble the money and then a little DMD animation plays and if your little ball lands in the correct red or black slot you get the money. Oh great, so it's zero skill. No, zero skill is just luck but I think you can affect the way it pays out by shooting certain targets on the playfield. There's like a red and a black target on the playfield and I think it's either side of the elevator.
42:16
So if you shoot one of those targets, I think it will kind of lock in what one is actually going to be awarded. So if you shoot the roulette award feature and actually play it, you have a better chance of winning. I will openly admit that in that $15 billion game, I had a couple of $2 billion score lost. so I lost the 2 billion once or twice and after that I had a couple of good ones where I got 3 or 4 I think it was a big score because that's the thing with the game the higher your score in the game the more you can actually risk or lose win or lose in my case it was risk or lose it wasn't win or lose but I just went I'm high enough now that I don't really care I'm just going to risk it anyhow. I managed to pay off. It was like a three billion score or something like that. I went, okay, I'll take it.
43:19
So, yeah, it's one way of playing that game. Of course, the other way is just like getting really good jackpots and multiballs because there's a number of different multiballs in that game you can play throughout the course of it, which is quite good. And high scoring rounds like Penthouse Party is a really high scoring round where all you basically do is shoot the elevator over and over and over again. and each time you get a lane in the elevator exit, it gives you about 150 million each shot. So you just, yeah, you can get a heap of points doing that.
43:51
So that was the highlight of this very final tournament of the month for me, but the rest were average games. I think I got something like 30 million on 18-12. so that's more than enough for me I won't be playing that again and what was the other ones we had Jackpot I think I got like 3 billion or something on it which is pretty low for that game because it's such a high scorer and Junkyard I think I got a paltry 30 million on it wasn't really a great game but I'm just going to let it ride because I've got a busy day today so I won't have time I did Junkyard. I did 23 million. And I had to look in the instructions because I forgot how to collect junk. And the only thing I knew, and I knew that's how this was going to go. I was like, if I don't get to space, I'm going to have a really low game. That's just how it is going to be. Because that's one of those games where you can earn a ton of extra balls, but obviously we can't play extra balls in the tournament. and so sure enough I collected a whole bunch of extra balls but it did me had to plunge them out and the plunging isn't worth any you know how there's some games where you can still at least do a skill shot and get some score there's nothing to score on most of it is fireworks all you get is fireworks right so we can add a little bit of to it or whatever but you know that's it so yeah that was a really disappointing game I've done it I scored 1 billion and I was like, that's fine because I'd done a practice run and then a table run before that and both of those were in 400 million range. So to me, it was like, hey, I doubled my score of what I previously did.
45:44
From not knowing the game at all, fine. 18-12, I didn't even do a practice run. I was just like, let's just get this hell over with and I scored 15. Let's phone it in. That's what I did with it as well. I was like, I just know shoot this ramp over and over and that's all I'm going to do. Yeah, just keep on shooting the ramp. Jackbot, I've been playing all week because I have three wizard goals left. I have the dice game, which is you've got to get it up to 20 million and then you have to do the cheat game in order to get it to double.
46:19
Yep. And then I need four of a kind, which again is you need to get three aces and then get the cheat game to get the four of a kind. And that really bugs me for a wizard goal, whereas now you've gotten it, but now it's relying on the game to grant you the cheat, because you don't always get the cheat.
46:35
Oh, right, okay. And then the final one is to get the Mega Visor, hit that 25 times, and you know, so collect the 15 jackpots, and then you've got to hit the visor 25 times, and that activates that wizard goal. Wow, so you've got to get 15 jackpots before Mega Visor a start. Yes. Wow. Yeah, that's not an easy thing to do. It's brutal.
47:07
And it was one of those things where I thought it was just get the 15 jackpots, so I finally got that, and then I didn't get the goal, and it was like, oh, now I get to hit this 25 times, and by that point... Risk training pretty much every time because it's a risky shot.
47:21
Well, and I lost control of the balls, and then down they went. So anyway, I was very disappointed with my jackpot score because I got 3.5 billion. and one of those things where it was like again, I'm so used to collecting extra balls and playing with those and getting much better scores with those that it doesn't look like a strategy rethink with the way we've set the tournament up where you not only have extra balls, it screws with you.
47:50
It really does. I had to let a number of them go in who'd done it as well and it's like oh, yeah, oh, that's right, I've got to plunge this one through, don't I? Oh, okay. And it's a bit of a, you've got to think about doing it, because you're so used to just plunging the balls until you have none left. Well, this is actually an extra ball. And there are some games, not in this particular collection, but that don't really advertise extra balls that well when you've actually got one in the shooter lane. So you have to really have your wits about you. Yeah. So it makes it sometimes challenging. Not in this round, though. It was pretty straightforward. Everything was well indicated. The good news for you is I believe that I matched up on two of the tables with you so congratulations Nice, winner You won't get fourth place on those What I do need to do though is actually post my scores because I haven't done that yet so I should probably go and do that after we finish here There you go, you should go post those scores and I do want to just my sincerest thanks to everybody for actually playing in these tournaments it has been fun to do them I've certainly gotten to know the community that has been playing a lot better.
49:00
It has been really good for that perspective. Yeah, it has been. And that's been a lot of fun. And who knows, maybe in a couple of months we'll officially start up some more table of the month kind of things. But right now I think the enthusiasm has waned a bit. And who knows, maybe those people that, like we have a guy by the name of Snorzel, or that's his screen name, he's going to be hosting one in May and, you know, it'll be a different set of rules and a different way of playing. And, you know, maybe that'll catch everybody's, uh, fancy for, you know, reinvigorate how people want to play. But in the meantime, we are going to be on a break from that.
49:43
yeah, we'll still be doing a podcast though. So you'll still have to listen to us. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. Why don't we, why don't we end this one? So we have things to talk about next week. That's probably a good idea. That is a heck of an idea. So, yeah, if you want to keep in touch with us, you can talk to us.
50:01
Let's try that again. That's all. If you want to keep in contact with us, you can do so on Twitter. Jared is at Jared Morgz. I am at Shut Your Traps. The show is at Blockade. You can also visit our website, which is blockadepinball.com. don't forget about our t-shirts represent.com forward slash blockade dash shirt we will see you all next time thanks for listening see you guys wizard of amusement.com the west coast leader in classic pinball makers of custom pinball shooter rods and buyer specifications swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table installs in less than 5 minutes with no custom tools. Even if you don't own a table, it looks great as a pimple memento to admire. Prices start at $39, but mention Blockade Podcast and receive 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com Sales, Restoration, Customization.
51:12
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