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Billionaire's Rave

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·34m 25s·analyzed·Sep 14, 2017
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.024

TL;DR

Personal updates and Pinball FX 3 release confirmed; Farsight Bride of Pinbot lighting overhaul underway.

Summary

Chris discusses personal matters (wife's car battery issue, son Sienna's new insulin pump setup) and upcoming travel to Portland. Primary pinball content covers Pinball FX 3 release date (September 26), gameplay on Miss Splosion Man table, Zen's esports roadmap, Ghostbusters digital release progress across platforms, and Farsight's lighting pass on Bride of Pinbot with dynamic lighting improvements. Hosts also discuss Ozark TV series and nostalgic portable gaming history.

Key Claims

  • Pinball FX 3 will release September 26th with Universal Table Pack

    high confidence · Chris states this was officially announced; specific date given as Tuesday, September 26th

  • Zen Studios is pursuing esports roadmap and will decouple tables to enable it

    high confidence · Direct Twitter conversation quote from Mel Kirk (Zen developer) confirming esports work is 'definitely on the roadmap'

  • Ghostbusters digital has released on Xbox One and is coming to PS4 imminently

    high confidence · Chris reports it's 'already out on Xbox One' and coming to PS4 'this coming week'

  • Farsight is performing a lighting/art pass on Bride of Pinbot with completely dynamic lighting

    high confidence · Chris and Jared saw exclusive video preview showing 'lights out, completely dark' with synchronized animated backglass

  • Rob (Flippy Floppy) has been retuning first and second season tables at Farsight

    medium confidence · Chris describes Rob 'spearheading the idea of going back and retuning all of the first and second season' with 'remarkable job so far'

  • Bride of Pinbot right flipper is too strong, making the ramp too easy to hit

    medium confidence · Chris suggests flipper tuning adjustment needed so 'it doesn't fly around' and ball 'should look like it's just going to not make it'

Notable Quotes

  • “Totally. It's dead to me. As soon as 3 comes out, 2 is dead to me.”

    Chris @ ~8:30 — Expresses definitive shift away from FX 2 upon FX 3 launch

  • “It becomes a not a question of if you're going to score the billion shot, but how often you're going to score the billion shot, and that should not be the instance at all.”

    Chris @ ~38:00 — Core criticism of current Bride of Pinbot difficulty balance; suggests flipper tuning breaks intended challenge

  • “we would need to do a bit of work on decoupling some of the tables to make that happen, but it's definitely on the roadmap”

    Mel Kirk (Zen Studios developer, quoted by Chris) @ ~22:00 — Confirms Zen's esports ambitions are officially planned

  • “Welcome to the light show, folks. For all of you that said why—this is one of those tables that is widely renowned as having one of the better light shows out there”

    Chris @ ~33:00 — Emphasizes significance of lighting overhaul to Bride of Pinbot's identity

  • “It looked great when we didn't know anything about dynamic lighting. And once we knew dynamic lighting, it doesn't look so hot anymore because it fights with the dynamic lighting currently.”

    Jared @ ~35:00 — Explains why baked-in lighting becomes obsolete with dynamic lighting engine advances

Entities

Pinball FX 3productBride of PinbotgameGhostbustersgameMiss Splosion MangameZen StudioscompanyFarsight StudioscompanyMel KirkpersonZombie YetipersonRob (Flippy Floppy)personChrisperson

Signals

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Bride of Pinbot right flipper tuning makes ramp too easy, reducing challenge depth

    medium · Chris: 'It becomes a not a question of if you're going to score the billion shot, but how often' — should be uncertain in real machine

  • $

    market_signal: Digital pinball platform release strategy: Xbox One first, PS4 second, then Steam/Android/iOS

    medium · Chris explains Ghostbusters rolled out Xbox first as 'smart move' due to console certification difficulty

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Zombie Yeti (Stern Pinball art) validates Ghostbusters digital translation quality

    medium · Chris reports Yeti saw Ghostbusters on Xbox with comments it was 'very, very well translated to digital as far as the art goes'

  • ?

    announcement: Pinball FX 3 official release date confirmed as September 26th

    high · Chris states 'I announced this this past week. Yeah. What was the date? September 26th, which is a Tuesday'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Farsight performing lighting and backglass animation overhaul on Bride of Pinbot

    high · Chris and Jared viewed exclusive video showing 'lights out, completely dark' with 'completely animated' backglass synced to playfield action

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen Studios esports push on roadmap requiring table decoupling work

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.103

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast, with your hosts, Chris and Jared. So there's these things called podcasts.
0:16
This is called the Blockade Podcast. You are listening to it, I am your host, shut your trap. He over there, halfway across the world, is Jared Morgan.
0:25
You lost the note. My what? Yes, last time I looked I was Jared Morgan. I believe I still am now, although I don't know. Okay, good.
0:38
So remember last week when I said that we were possibly not going to be having some podcasts? And that was because I was supposed to be working today.
0:48
And that was still the game plan until the other day when my wife's Fiat, the dashboard, lit up like a Christmas tree and was doing a disco dance when she tried to start the car, and the engine wouldn't turn over.
1:04
And considering I'm leaving for Portland this next week, it was like, yeah, let's try and get that fixed before I go. So I made arrangements to cover myself for today so that I could deal with her car. Fortunately, it turned out that it was just a dead battery, which is a weird thing for your battery goes dead, and yet your dashboard just goes wah. But I guess it didn't have enough power to turn the car over, but it had plenty of power to make the lights dance.
Jared Morgan
person
Siennaperson
Kimperson
Black Knightgame
Ripley's Believe It or Notgame

high · Mel Kirk Twitter quote: 'we would need to do a bit of work on decoupling some of the tables to make that happen, but it's definitely on the roadmap'

  • ?

    product_concern: Farsight developer Rob spearheading systematic retuning of first and second season tables

    medium · Chris notes Rob has 'done a remarkable job so far' on retuning effort

  • ?

    technology_signal: Farsight transitioning from baked-in lighting to dynamic lighting on classic tables

    high · Bride of Pinbot receiving complete lighting pass with synchronized dynamic animation; Black Knight precedent mentioned

    • 1:34
    Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, so replace the battery, which here was the thing. I was going to be like, well, let's try jump-starting the car and make sure that it is, in fact, the battery or whatever. Her car is parked in the garage. because of this issue and because of the way they make cars today, I couldn't even put the car into neutral because it completely locks up the gearbox. It locked up. I couldn't get the key out of the ignition. It puts like a little lock on there, and you've got to jiggle it like crazy to convince it to let go.
    2:08
    Yeah, so I couldn't even roll. Is it automatic? Yeah. Is it automatic? Yeah, it's automatic. Man, I had a similar problem the other day. when we were in the hospital, I was getting some dinner with Sienna and we came across this poor guy who, in his haste to get out of the car, had dropped his keys down the drain. Now, he could see the keys down the drain, but the problem was his car was parked over the drain so he couldn't lift the grill. And so the poor bugger, the poor bugger, he was panicking because the poor guy, he'd driven from Sydney up to the – I don't know what we could do there. so I'm talking about a thousand kilometers trip or something like that like nine hours or something and he's basically over the whole thing and then he dropped his keys down at the drain so that just like put the icing on the old shit cake didn't it so anyhow this guy like exactly the same problem because it was an automatic it locks the gearbox when you're in park and you can't get it out of park unless you put the keys in because you need the keys so So there's some advantages to having a manual, right? Yeah. You know, one of them being it's fun to drive. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I mean, your foot dies when you're in peak hour traffic. But apart from that, it gets you out of the stookers pretty frequently. So, yeah, I replaced the battery and the car starts right up. All is great. I go to work. And then I thought all was fine. And then my son informed me, he goes, no, there's a check engine light and there's this other lightning bolt thing on the dashboard. I'm like, oh. So I go in and look and sure enough, there's this little lightning bolt and turns out it's the electronic.
    3:56
    Immobilizer? I don't know. I can't remember. It's the ECT or ETC. Anyway, it's basically saying that, you know, something went wrong with your electronics. and you know you have a fault so online everybody was just saying it's one of those things where you put in the OED reader and check what the symptoms are and then you clear it and so I found a place that does it for free and sure enough checked it oh yeah common problem cleared it and he's like just drive around for 15 minutes and then it'll reset itself to its current environment and then you'll be fine so did that okay so all's well so now I can feel comfortable leaving for a week and not seeing anybody. Good on you for coming back and sorting that out because that's something that you don't want hanging over your head when you're out of the state.
    4:54
    It's not like we work Saturdays usually. Of course, figures, the one Saturday that they have a schedule that's when this all goes down.
    5:02
    The beautiful thing was I didn't really want to work Saturday anyway. yeah I could probably understand that to be able to use to get out of doing it so man I'll tell you what the last week for me has been a crazy week as well Sina is now on the insulin pump which is awesome like the the level of control we have now with the diabetes is is much better than on multi-day injection with the pens but with that comes the first week that you get on the insulin therapy through the pump you have to um do a lot of configuration to set all the levels right and that means overnight monitoring and stuff like that so okay um it's like the whole week like monday sorry tuesday and wednesday were the days of configuration and then thursday i actually made it into work and then friday because kim was so stuffed after doing the night time readings I had to actually take Friday off and work from home so I could actually just give it some rest give it a break so man it's like I've spent more time at home this week than I have at work it's sort of nuts I'll be glad when this state of flux is over and I think it'll be like next week coming it'll start to stabilize a bit so that's good good hey speaking of states of flux You know how last week we were theorizing about when Pinball FX 3 would drop? Hey, guess what? I announced this this past week. Yeah. What was the date? September 26th, which is a Tuesday, at least here stateside. That is when Pinball FX 3 is going to be a reality, and the Universal Table Pack will be out. So I think we're pretty much right on with our prediction about when we figured that that would come out. So definitely looking forward to that. in the interim, I decided, well, you know what? I should probably play these tables that are going away. It's not like they're going away. Unavailable.
    7:09
    That are going to become unavailable, and me being me going, I'm not playing Pinball FX 2 anymore. Totally. It's dead to me. As soon as 3 comes out, 2 is dead to me. Right. So I loaded up Zen, and I realized there's a whole bunch of tables that for some reason it says I haven't played. and so I was like well let's remedy that I want to get my little point total number up properly but I started with Miss Splosion Man just for the sake of it and that table really is wacky first I really don't need to hear was it Candy Coated Panda anymore I have no idea what you're talking about man never played the table at one point she sings a Spice Girls song, at least a little song. And I went, maybe that's why they did it. That's probably the reason. That would be the reason why it's certainly not on mobile for sure. It's literally her singing two lines of it, but it's unmistakable what it is.
    8:13
    But anyway, it was one of those things where I was like, God, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And then I kind of figured out what I was doing, and then I really figured out what I was doing. And next thing I knew, I was running the table and went through the entire wizard mode and beat it. Oh, wow. Okay. Went from being not very well placed amongst the friends group that I have on Steam to smoking them I think the top score had been 250 million amongst my friends and I posted 500 plus million That's going to be a long march. A long march to catch that. How long did that take you?
    8:50
    I don't know, probably 20, 25 minutes. That's not long. No, it's not long. I wound up running through the wizard mode, I think, two times during that playthrough.
    9:07
    It's an interesting table in terms of the very first mission that you have to do. It's like these glass panes pop up, blocking the lanes. And certain lanes are open, and obviously it's the only way to break the glass is by having the ball come from behind and smashing through the glass. So it's hit the proper lane and it'll go where it drops. That's where I smash the glass. Once that glass is smashed, well, that's a lane now that you need to target in order to smash another piece of glass. But unfortunately, it's a timed mode. And the first time you hit it, you're not sure what you're supposed to do or where you're supposed to aim. And then the mode ends. And you're like, oh, my gosh, there was no time. But once I got my aiming down, I was able to get through it fairly quickly. the mode after that is escaping what I had to do but it also was a bit tricky and also timed but then the next couple of modes are fairly simple they're not timed they're multi-ball modes and you can just rack up a ton of points if you can start hitting jackpots over and over and over again which having played Ripley's Believe It or Not enough times to where that's a table that if you shoot one jackpot lane, it goes dark. You've got to shoot all the other jackpot lanes in order to relight every single jackpot lane. But you've got to get good at juggling multi-ball with that. And that's exactly what this was. It was, okay, I've got multi-ball going, but I need to be targeting those specific lanes. Once I've got those lit, then everything else will light up again, and I can start all over again with my jackpots. and that was where the big money was for scoring and I had a really good run on that.
    10:55
    So then I started I was looking at some of the other tables that I hadn't touched in a long time. It was things like Rome and Pasha. No, actually Pasha I had recently played. It was V12.
    11:09
    I played Seedrace of the Deep. What is up that table? It's very boring. Those tables are just like the... It's actually not a bad thing to see those ones go.
    11:22
    But they're not going. They're staying. That's right. They did announce those packs, didn't they? Yeah, they did. The ones that I... Believe it or not, I still didn't... Because I got onto this kick of, oh, I'm going to eliminate the tables that I haven't played.
    11:36
    So therefore, I didn't put in a round of South Park, which I'll make sure I do get that in. For old time's sake. And like I said, Ninja Gaiden and Street Fighter 2, those never made it to Steam anyway, so I'm not going to be playing those. The only other one beyond that that I'd have to play is Plants vs. Zombies.
    11:58
    And I'll play some Super League just for the fun of it. Yeah. I actually on the subject of all things Zen, I follow a guy on Twitter called Mel Kirk. Mel is one of the guys who works for Zen.
    12:13
    He was saying about the just in general about Zen and the tournament stuff. And I said, hmm, yeah, based on what we were talking about last week, I was saying, I said to him in a tweet, yeah, I think this move into the rich stats and stuff is paving the way for a big push into esports. Yeah. And he said, we would need to do a bit of work on decoupling some of the tables to make that happen, but it's definitely on the roadmap. so we were right that's definitely what they're going to be doing um so yeah that was interesting to learn other news that was happening uh there was a bit of flurry regarding ghostbusters interestingly enough that we talked about last week and also there was a flurry of it of people having seen it and i guess it's getting released to xbox one and ps4 first um and imminently it's I think it's already out on Xbox One, and it's probably coming to PS4 this coming week.
    13:18
    And that's a smart move, because we know how hard it is to get these titles onto console. So it's actually better to get them on there first, and then all the other platforms which are trivial to update, like Android and Steam and iOS can follow after that. Yeah, exactly. So that's good. I think Zombie Yeti from Stern, who did the art for that table,
    13:41
    actually saw it on his Xbox. I think, and his comments were that it was very, very well translated to digital as far as the art goes. Well, that's nice hearing that from the art guy. Yeah, that's right. And, I mean, that stands to reason because, you know, they have the CAD files now. They've got all the digital assets, so they can really make them pop and make them visually appealing.
    14:05
    So, yeah, that's interesting to read. So, yes, he actually had a screenshot of it on his big widescreen TV with Ghostbusters standing next to it.
    14:17
    And I go, hmm, I don't know about you, but I'd probably be playing the one standing next to it than the one on the screen. But, you know, for comparative purposes, I guess you have to play the one on the screen. Yeah. But, yeah, the screenshot I saw of it looked pretty solid. like it looked like the stone tables had been released already. I will be interested to see how this performs on Android because even on my Shield tablet, which is still one of the best tablets for Android out at the moment, even though it's two years old,
    14:54
    a little bit on things like Star Trek, for example, I'm getting jitters and I had to close everything in the background just to make it work. So there might be a performance pass that's also being done to make it less jittery in Android, because I think they would have had to, because Ghostbusters, with all the extra stuff on it, is a pretty visually intense table.
    15:19
    But anyway, it's good to at least – for all those people that are saying, oh, it's never going to come, it's vaporware, blah, blah, blah, it's in people's hands right now, some people's hands. So there you go, folks. It's on its way. something that me and Jared were privy to see was a video disco dance going on there that's the no that's seeing the CGM alarm telling me that she's at 15.8 millimoles so she's going up because she's just had breakfast so that's how it works there you go so me and Jared saw a video of something that Farsight is working on, and that is they're doing a lighting pass, or probably a whole art pass. Who knows what it is exactly. But it was a bride of Pinbot.
    16:12
    Let's just put it this way. It was lights out, completely dark. Welcome to the light show, folks. For all of you that said why this is one of those tables that is widely renowned as having one of the better light shows out there, and people were kind of bummed, I mean, even upon its initial release, when it was all the sixth table available to us, people were like, oh, but the lights, I was hoping for more. This thing looked fantastic. I mean, just, it looked great. I was blown away by the light show on this thing. I've never actually played this game in the dark before. I've played it plenty of times for real in the arcade, but never with the lights off. And geez, that light show is a dynamic piece. I'll tell you what, they have really synchronized everything in that light show to the action on the play field in the back glass. And speaking of the back glass that something that was a little bit new as well completely animated So all the lights are in sync with everything going on on the play field That looked really good We kind of know the reason for that, but we kind of also can't mention the reason for it. Well, I think we already have in the past. So if you go back, I think so, yes. Okay. Well, if you're good at deducing things, maybe people will figure it out, but I don't remember if we did or not, and I don't want to get in trouble for saying. but yes it looked great so it was interesting because there were some people all of a sudden it kind of was related to the Ghostbusters bit but where some comments were coming once again bashing on Farsight saying what are they doing and the game is on a backslide and going downhill to which I was like what are you talking about it's better cylinders than it ever has what's your deal and And so on the heels of Black Knight, it looks like this might be the next table that hopefully gets rid of the baked-in lighting. That's the thing. It looked great when we didn't know anything about dynamic lighting. And once we knew dynamic lighting, it doesn't look so hot anymore because it fights with the dynamic lighting currently. so strip away all that the the false look and let the the engine do what it needs to do to make it look proper and i think it's going to be a stunner oh yeah this is gonna be amazing the i just really hope that um when they release it they also turn down the strength of the flippers at least that right flipper um so when you shoot that ramp it just it doesn't fly around it like it does now like it should look like it's just going to not make it and then make it on the way up even with a well-treated table again considering that was a first season release and we know that some of you on the forum might know him as Flippy Floppy we know him as Rob he's been really spearheading the idea of going back and retuning all of the first and second season and he's done a remarkable job so far so I think that it would be inevitable. I think it would be complementary to it, yeah. And yeah, it will change the way that table plays for sure, because it's if you play it in real life, the ball does not go up that ramp easily. You really have to do an aimed shot to get it up there. At the moment, you pretty much look at the ramp and it will go up there.
    19:45
    So... Yeah, it becomes a not a question of if you're going to score the billion shot, but how often you're going to score the billion shot, and that should not be the instance at all. It should be, am I literally going to lock two balls on the bride's face this time or not? Yeah, there should be a definite level of doubt whether you're going to see the billion chance. Not, I will see the billion chance, and I will score it, because that's essentially what it is now. So it's going to be fun for PC players, which the build was for. You are in for a treat when this thing comes out.
    20:27
    And that about does it for the pinball talk portion of this. This is going to be a short podcast, folks.
    20:33
    I don't know what Jared might want to spout off about, but I was going to spout off about it last week, and I didn't.
    20:39
    Folks, if you have the Netflix and you have not watched Ozark, do yourself a favor, watch Ozark. It stars Jason Bateman. he's a money finance guy that gets involved with money laundering unfortunately and this is just in the first episode gets on the bad end of it to the point that basically the cartel man is saying by the way you're going to be dead and in a fit of running at the mouth he proposes this idea of how easy it would be to launder money in the Ozarks, which for you, Jared, the Ozarks are in Missouri, and it's this massive network of rivers and lakes, basically. So there's a lot of coastal areas.
    21:35
    In some ways, it reminded me of the mangrove forests of Australia, where there's just this dense, lush, junglish forest going right up to the water. And so there's a lot of businesses along the water, and what he basically proposes is that hey, these are all cash bases and therefore he needs to want the money on. And so he moves his whole family there. And it is kind of like Breaking Bad in terms of it doesn't take long for the rest of the family to know exactly what's going on and them all complicit in it. The dangers that happen with it. But it's only eight episodes long and that eighth episode the entire time I was watching it just like jaw dropped going, oh please don't do this. No, you're not doing that, are you? It was really, really strong. So it is only a single season? They wrap it all up in like a single season or is it going to get another run, you reckon? It's getting another run because I just heard one of our crew members say that he got offered the job to go work on it. Oh, nice. so no I know they're getting a second season and essentially it's one of those deals where it wraps up what needs to be wrapped up but there's enough dangling ends you can clearly see where they'll go for a second season but yeah anyway I just want to kind of throw that out there because I know it seems like one of those things that even I was kind of hesitant to watch I was like really and Jason Bateman and the Ozarks oh boy what fun That'll be, but, uh, yeah. Worth the, worth the checkout for sure. Jason Bateman. What is, where is he from? I remember him from something. He was in Arrested Development. He was the star of that.
    23:27
    Oh yeah. Righto. Yep. Um, he's kind of, he's got a very, uh, uh, smart Alec kind of persona. Um, uh, he's been a ton of things. He started out as a kid actor. He was on a show called Silver Spoons, believe it or not, which was with Ricky Schroeder way back in the day, back in the 80s. No idea. Yeah, no, he's been an actor for many a year.
    23:51
    His sister was on a show called Family Ties. Yeah, right. So, yeah, no, that's what I say, though. It's one of those things where you just kind of like go. it's the same thought that I had regarding Breaking Bad and Bryan Cranston where I went, I'm not going to watch a show with Malcolm in the Middle's dad. That doesn't look interesting. The guy's a comedian. Why should I care? And that was kind of the same thought that I had with this and then I was like, I'll just give a shot and dang, it is a rough and tumble drama that is worth the hours. Sounds good.
    24:28
    Yeah, of course. It will probably come out here in a couple of months I'd imagine on Netflix here. Don't get the rights to it. Meanwhile, I'm also desperately avoiding spoilers for this last season of Game of Thrones, which was particularly difficult considering that the director that we just finished up with was the director of the season finale of this season's Game of Thrones. Right. So everybody was rushing up to him and asking questions and I was having to turn around and beeline away so I wouldn't hear anything. and everyone's just like just order HBO Go and I'm like you don't understand I buy the discs when they come out so I gotta wait I want the discs and everyone's like dinosaur I'm like sorry I like physical media what can I say who owns discs these days I mean really you know what you're doing though is you're doing a service for society when the robots take over the internet and we no longer have access to any of the stuff we used to have because it's been censored because robots don't like it. So you'll be able to watch Game of Thrones over and over again while everyone else will be going, geez, my HBO Go subscription no longer lets me do that. So because the robots say no It makes me think of are you familiar with Cowboy Bebop Oh slightly yes Slightly It a Japanese anime It came out in the late 80s Anyway, there was an episode where they get delivered a video cassette, and they have no idea what this even is, right? And so they go back to old Earth, because Earth has basically been, the moon exploded and pretty much ruined Earth. but they go back to old earth and somebody tells them oh yeah you got to go down to this you know these ruins and in there you might find you know something so they go hiking on this whole expedition they come back up with this machine and they go to shove the machine the tape in and it's beta and so they got to go crawl all the way back down again to find the beta machine they bring it they hook it up and they're hooking it up with this a guy that's totally into these antiques, basically. And they start watching the tape. And all of a sudden, it goes warbly, like the tracking is off. And the guy just takes his boot to the machine and kicks it. And the antiques guy is like, no, what are you doing? He's totally freaking out over this. Because it's like, oh, stupid technology is not working. Come on.
    27:06
    So yeah, that's what I imagine will happen. and it'll be like me having to go find a DVD or Blu-ray player in the rubbled mass. In the ruins. Dodging endoskeletons with guns. Right. And, you know, first I'll come back with a LaserDisc player, and it'll be like, I don't know.
    27:25
    Then I'll come back with a machine, but I'll only have RCA cables. No, no, no, you need an HDMI cable.
    27:31
    That's right. And then you'll need the special optical transference cable that's used now, but then you need to get an adapter so you can actually use that with the HDMI cable.
    27:46
    It's kind of like when I tried to explain to my kid that he's got his Nintendo DS, and back in our day, and I was in college for the Game Boy, Yep.
    28:00
    Not only was that thing not backlit, but you would have to either have a light shining on it, but if you were playing in the car before they came out with the light for the front of it, you'd be playing and it would start to get dark and you were holding it up to the car window and hoping that the street lamps would light you enough that you could still play. Yep.
    28:18
    When he was really young, he asked me, he goes, did you grow up when it was black and white? I did for Game Boy. I did put video in once I was selling it. Yeah. And, you know, everyone, it was basically like the Game Boy was like what happened when TV first came around for portable gaming. Like it was, everyone used to huddle around the Game Boy like it was the TV in the street when it was, you know, originally released, you know, back in the 40s or whatever. And it used to be like an event. I remember people at school used to hover around watching F1 Race on Game Boy just because you could play video games at school. How good is that? I don't remember anybody hovering around me when I had my Mattel electronic hockey where a single LED blip stood for your player and a blinking blip stood for the puck that was bouncing around, and somehow your imagination filled in all the other massive gaps. It's amazing what we put up with. Yeah, the Nintendo Game & Watches, man, they were like... Oh, yeah. No one ever really gathered around to watch those. They were really a personal pursuit. Jeez, if you've got one of those lying around your drawer, take it into... They're worth so much now. Right? Yeah, Nintendo used to come out with these little tiny portable handheld and again, it was these LED games and all it was was there was pre-set images on the screen and it would just light them up and that would be your animation of something moving. And those things are worth a ton today. Like there's like, if you've got one of the clamshell style, which is basically where all the Nintendo DS, the dual screens got their Genesis from,
    30:08
    like those things are, you know, three or $400 now when they were like, I think I remember buying one of them for $20 back in the day. You know, they were not expensive.
    30:19
    But, yeah, collector's pieces now. Absolutely. So, folks, go dig in your junk drawer and, you know, don't succumb to the coming apocalypse. By the way, the U.S. is kind of being hit by… Yeah, don't worry. We're seeing all of the crazy weather down here in Australia. And for once, your weather is actually worse than Australia's weather. So, congratulations. You win. Well, it's a Sony term because, okay, we've had the hurricane that hit Houston and devastated it. We've got a hurricane currently about to make landfall in Florida. But, you know, it's Florida, so it's pretty normal. Mexico just had an 8.2 earthquake that no doubt will send tsunami warnings our direction in California. so somebody tweeted out they said it's kind of like when you're playing SimCity and you got bored with the game and just decided to throw every single disaster you could at the board I saw that tweet as well it's about right actually it's like I'm bored let's just unleash hell basically so yeah our thoughts do go out to those that are devastated by all this please stay safe and listen to your local authorities because they don't say things just for the hell of it.
    31:40
    You know, if they say get out, you should probably get out. Yeah, probably. It's a good plan. Thinking you can survive the 185 mile an hour winds, not so much. No. I literally saw a video of one of the islands that got hit by the same hurricane that's coming up to Florida, of which the end total was it knocked, it eliminated like 90% of the structures on the island. But somebody was taking video and one moment, it's perfectly calm, you see a car going through an intersection and then you start seeing debris and then the camera kind of, the person stepped inside the building they were in. Obviously, it's getting worse. And they kind of pan over and you see this giant tree and the thing just starts, just branch by branch, just gets stripped and then just gone. As the eye wall comes in. It's kind of incredible to watch that.
    32:41
    Jeez, that's powerful. Yeah. Alright. Well, that's going to be it for this week. I for sure will not be podcasting next week as I will be on an airplane on the day that we normally podcast.
    32:55
    So, there you go, folks. Quick and dirty. Hope you enjoyed. Make sure you check out our website, blockadepinball.com Did I do it again? Blockade podcast. No, you didn't write this. I really should write these things down. Blockadepinball.com That would be no fun at all because everyone would see it every week when you screw it up.
    33:16
    That's where you can find all of our past shows as well as show notes and links to websites that we happen to mention now and then like we did last week.
    33:25
    You can also drop us an email. It is blahblahblockade at gmail.com if you're on the twitter and why aren't you why don't you go ahead and sign up for the show's official twitter it is at blockade or you can monitor Jared and myself I am at shut your traps he is at Jared Morgz that's it we will talk to you again soon buh-bye wizardamusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter bugs easy to install totally unique Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. Withremusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
    34:07
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.