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Let's ride bikes!

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 26m·analyzed·Jul 27, 2020
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.021

TL;DR

BlahCade delays pinball talk due to announcement delays; discusses Zen tournaments and streaming media.

Summary

BlahCade hosts Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discuss lack of pinball news due to delays in Zen Studios announcements (moved from July to August 1st at California Extreme). They cover personal gaming experiences, including Jared's high score on Safecracker and participation in online Williams pinball tournaments on Zen, then pivot to discussing TV shows and movies they've watched during downtime.

Key Claims

  • Zen Studios announcement pushed to August 1st, originally planned for mid-July to coincide with California Extreme

    high confidence · Chris Friebus, BlahCade host, discussing event scheduling

  • Zen Studios heavily invested time/money in making California Extreme go remote this year

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus, citing tweets, speculation about Zen's involvement

  • Jack Danger hosting the California Extreme announcement event

    high confidence · Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discussion

  • SafeCracker is designed with brutality similar to 1980s pinball machines, especially due to time pressure

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan, personal experience from Time Zone in Brisbane

  • Safecracker vault mechanic stops paying tokens after a certain number of vault entries to prevent operator loss

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan, observation from recent gameplay

Notable Quotes

  • “There's not a lot to go on. We will be dredging the bottom of the barrel very, very scrapily to scrape it all off the bottom of the barrel.”

    Chris Friebus @ early in episode — Justification for light pinball content due to news drought

  • “Pinball is a lot more fun when you exercise control...it's all about the control.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Key gameplay philosophy about deliberate play vs. twitchy shooting

  • “I'm going to finish this one out just because I've gotten this far but if it has a second season then god I hope not.”

    Chris Friebus @ late in episode — Commentary on 'Better Than Us' Russian show fatigue

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonJack DangerpersonPinballwiz45bpersonDavid SixpersonCoaster WizardpersonWilburpersonZen StudioscompanyCalifornia ExtremeeventSafe CrackergameMonster Bash

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Zen Studios announcement moved from mid-July to August 1st, coinciding with remote California Extreme event

    high · Chris Frebus: 'mid-July got bumped because I guess it was supposed to coincide with the California Extreme event that was going on. and that got bumped to August, and so now August 1st is when we're going to hear news from Zen.'

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade considering delaying/adjusting podcast timing to coincide with Zen announcement

    medium · Discussion of potentially holding special episode to discuss announcement together

  • ?

    community_signal: Active community-run Zen tournament scene with competitive participation (45+ players), spanning both Classic and Zen physics versions

    high · Jared Morgan describing David Six and Coaster Wizard tournaments with detailed leaderboard participation

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Player performance varies significantly between Classic and Zen physics, suggesting different skill requirements

    medium · Jared Morgan: 'I'm numero uno right now' in Zen tournament but 'middle of the pack' in classics

  • ?

    product_concern: American Pinball's Hot Wheels criticized for lack of loops, a signature Hot Wheels feature

    medium · Discussion that Hot Wheels is missing loops and homebrew developer had to add full loop to Sonic Spinball table

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.258

0:00
blockade pinball podcast hey this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris frebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan hello everybody how's it gone jared oh look all right it's going okay it's going okay uh so here's the question i just want to get this off the you guys still have covet going on right we we do have a little bit of covet going on at the moment but it's it's like something that didn't just happen in the u.s it actually happened halfway halfway across the country it did okay so it's not a hoax no it's true we've definitely got like covid is is in victoria it's taking a real stranglehold on victoria again and and australia is not some kind of a puppet of us so that this is just a matter of this happening just for our elections here in the u.s this year no okay it's not i just need to confirm that because you know based off reasons based off of reasons that I see constantly posted. Apparently this is just an us problem and not a world problem. So I just wanted to make sure that you in Australia, and to be sure, you are in Australia. This isn't us faking a moon landing or anything. No, no, I'm actually in China. This is a Chinese studio.
1:38
It just looks very, very Australian here. And I have a voice filter on, and I'm actually AI. I am actually a Chinese host.
1:49
Okay, this is good to know. I just want to clear that out because, you know, when you go on the Facebook and you read comments of people that are actually your friends with, but then you start reading comments and you kind of go, I'm friends with this person?
2:08
And you've got to be honest. Let me be clear here. I don't just friend anybody that puts a request in. No. I actually have to know you and actually have to want to hear from you. Yeah, because Facebook puts your stuff everywhere. So you don't want to see junk in your feed. Me too. I don't just follow anybody on Facebook. I don't want my feed to be messed up. No, I made that mistake of where I had a couple of people that follow the show try and friend me on Facebook. And at first I was like, sure, why not? And I did. and within a week I unfriended them. You went, nope.
game
American Pinballcompany
PAPAorganization
BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization
This Week in Pinballorganization

product_concern: American Pinball games criticized for narrow shooting lanes and slow table speed

medium · Chris discussing Houdini: 'shooting lanes are narrow. I mean, ridiculously narrow. And so, half the time, all you're doing is bouncing the ball off posts'

  • ?

    industry_signal: American Pinball games compared unfavorably to other manufacturers on playfield mechanics and design choices

    medium · Chris expressing desire to play Big Lebowski but noting Hot Wheels still better than Mustang

  • ?

    community_signal: Structured online tournaments provide motivation and community engagement that casual digital play lacks

    high · Jared Morgan: 'tournaments will give you that structure you need to actually want to turn it on and want to participate'

    • 2:49
    Well, I just realized, you know what, this is my personal business, not show business. And it just kind of got, and then I was seeing things that was then popping up and filling up my feed, and I was like, I don't need to hear your nonsense. I don't even know you other than a screen username. So, bye-bye. Yeah, no thank you. No thank you. Yeah. So today, folks, in case you're wondering about the title of the show, which is Let's Ride Bikes, that's the old ADD joke where the kids, Mom, Mom, Mom, can we watch this show? Let's ride bikes. It could have also been called Squirrel. Same thing.
    3:32
    Because we really don't have much pinball to talk about this week. We thought that we would because of the old, hey, there'll be an announcement mid-July. And mid-July got bumped because I guess it was supposed to coincide with the California Extreme event that was going on. and that got bumped to August, and so now August 1st is when we're going to hear news from Zen. So we just kind of figured, hey, we want to pop in and say hi, but there's no point in us really talking much about it, right? Trying to do something pinball-related at the moment is really hard. Yeah.
    4:19
    There's not a lot to go on. We will be dredging the bottom of the barrel very, very scrapily to scrape it all off the bottom of the barrel, and it would not really be a great show. And so here's your pinball. If I had to guess what they're going to talk about, the new tables,
    4:43
    and probably something Arcade 1-Up related, and considering that good old dead flip Jack Danger himself is doing the hosting of that nature, I'm thinking it's going to be more arcade one-up, and I'm going to guess they're going to reveal tables.
    5:03
    I think so, yeah. I don't really think, if they're getting Jack Danger involved, he's not going to be sitting there with a controller playing. He's going to be in front of a machine. He might be on a machine, you're right, But more to the point, he's also not one to do what we do, which is speculate and dig for information. Jack is there to actually announce things. Promote. He's very much the host. Yeah, he's the emcee, essentially, for this whole event.
    5:31
    Oh, what, for California Extreme? Well, I read, if my recollection of the tweets are correct, Zen has been heavily, heavily involved in getting California Extreme to go remote. So they've invested a fair bit of time and or possibly money to actually make California Extreme an online event this year. There's one tweet that was like, oh yeah, this wouldn't be happening without Zen Studios. And I was going, oh, okay. I mean, it kind of makes sense because it's held up in Northern California and that's where Mel is. And that's where John D., who was our guest two podcasts ago, from Arcade 1 up. So, yeah. Makes sense. So that's our speculation for the day, folks. Enjoy.
    6:22
    Yeah, let's see what happens in August. I won't be staying up for the announcement because it's probably going to be 12 o'clock my time in the morning. So I think I might just sleep and then read a little bit about it the following day. Or if the planets align, we'll talk about it together on the podcast. that's what i'm uh planning on uh having happened that hopefully the announcement is prior to when we normally would do our podcast but even though we might just delay our podcast until later in the day so that we can actually finally talk about something major news event yeah it'd be nice wouldn't it the planets would really have to align though because that sort of stuff is just rare for us to be able to do we've dragged our feet so long that there's a gigantic trench behind us and you could plant seeds oh yeah yeah so uh that being said the only other bit of uh pinball news that uh we're going to touch upon is jared inform me right before we started that he has some news directed specifically at somebody that is a friend of the show and has been on the show before jared go ahead friend of the show pinball whiz um i knocked you off the local top spot leaderboards on um savecracker you're welcome I had a really, really big game on that one. Probably the largest, the longest and largest game I've had on Safecracker for a very long time. And I think it was in the order of 12 million on standard games. 12 million on Safecracker is no mean feat, as PinballWiz probably will attest, because, yeah, it's very, very hard to get that score. Okay, so how many times did you raid the vault? Or get a coin, I should say. It started off really terribly. I didn't even get to the vault the first board game through.
    8:25
    And I went, okay, well, you know, the ball, I think I got dumped out the dog. So the dog got me and I went, okay, well, I'll try and shoot the dog. Like shoot the bank again to get back into the board game. Missed that, shot the ramp. got TNT Multiball, which originally I was going, that's just great. That's going to have to restart the board game again, whatever.
    8:48
    But it turns out that that's kind of really important for getting high scores in the game, because what it does is it builds your time back up again, doesn't it? As you start breaking things, it gives you a whole lot of clock time again, which, you know, if you think it runs fast when you first start the game, you're getting about five seconds per clock tile um when you start rebuilding that clock in a lot of ways it's kind of like uh uh when you play pac-man and after the first couple of power dots or like you get onto the next couple of mazes all of a sudden there's only one second before the ghost turned back to normal and it's useless so yeah yeah that's safe yeah it is it is brutal when you're trying to relight things but you know i i managed to get back into the vault again i got a vault token um and then i knew i was doing all right because i entered the vault again and i got a a vault credit um so not a vault token so it stops paying out tokens when you have so many vault entries obviously so the operator doesn't get fleeced wow i did not know that yeah so you get basically you get like a essentially assault the vault credit um lined up uh in the game so So I went, ooh, that's something I've never seen before on the game.
    10:04
    And I'm sure it's something that Pinball Whiz would have seen before with the score that he got. But yeah, it was a massive game. And it's funny because I hadn't played pinball for a very long time. I'd sort of like been focusing on other games, which we'll talk about later on in the show when we're talking about the things we've been doing and playing.
    10:27
    Translation, spoiler alert. Oh, no, this is just preloading the show. It's good to lay out so people don't go, well, this is boring as hell. I'm going to go.
    10:39
    It's good to give them a preview. How dare they if they think that we're a boring show. Come on. So, yeah, that was fun. We don't have this many subscribers. Oh, wait. Yeah.
    10:52
    So the other thing I did was I thought, all right, let's go for a little tour around the Williams collection on Steam. So I played Monster Bash, had a really good, I got Monsters of Rock on that and got the award, which I hadn't got yet. Like the, you know, you start the Monsters of Rock event, which is cool.
    11:11
    I started realizing, you know, that pinball is a lot more fun when you, I was reminded, I should say, that pinball is a lot more fun when you exercise control. And it was just more like I was doing everything right. I was trapping up balls and I was making the shots deliberately.
    11:33
    It's kind of like, you know, have some patience. Yeah, don't just like, don't play it like a shoot-em-up. Play it like a pinball machine. And I think for a lot of the time, I was playing it like a shoot-em-up. Like, you know, just twitch, twitch, twitch, have to like flick everything and play everything. And it's a very different play style. Like you have to do that in shoot-em-ups. But in pinball, it's all about control. It's about the control. So yeah, it was a good reminder of that and good to realize that also, too, I wasn't playing it on the tournament settings. Sorry, the classic settings. I was just playing it on Zen mode because, well, it's fun. I do that now and then. I'll hop onto Zen mode because it just makes you feel good and suddenly you feel like you're a pinball god and it just kind of boosts your confidence and you get farther in the game. And it's kind of like, you know what, even though I'm kind of cheating, it's kind of fun.
    12:24
    And I was having a lot of fun. like safecracker is like that game when i was playing that thing back when it was in time zone in elbert street here in brisbane that thing uh it took so much of my money when i was a young one uh it's designed to fleece you of your dollars it probably i would think more than an 80s pinball machine actually it is equal to an 80s pinball machine and its brutality because it's timed and like you're really only getting a guaranteed play time about a minute and a half if you suck and back then I was okay at pinball but it was like set up really hard because I didn't want to be paying out tokens of course so you know it was it was difficult to play so the tokens that I earned from that machine were hard fought so yeah it was it was yeah very very difficult but it was good it was good to actually have that experience last night and have actually some good games in pinball and be reminded about why you want to play pinball and why you enjoy it. Because for a while there, honestly, I really wasn't enjoying playing pinball. I've been... And unfortunately, it's going to stop for a little while. But I've been doing a weekly... Wait, is it weekly? Well, yeah, it's a weekly tournament, but it's a season of tables, which would amount to five or six plays, so five or six weeks. But anyway, it was a tournament hosted on Reddit by this guy by the name of David Six. Roman numeral 6 and he's been doing a really awesome if you guys remember when we were doing table of the week and game of the month or tournament of the month, excuse me, that's what it was he's doing that but he's using zen obviously to collect the data, which is nice, and then entering that into his spreadsheet, but basically what's been going on is he picks he's only been playing Williams tables and picks five tables and then a bonus table in case you missed a week. Or if you play all six weeks, then it's whatever your top five scoring positions are. That's a really good way of doing it. It is. And it's nice because that way you don't feel like you absolutely positively have to be there every week. And it's ten plays set up on Classic Arcade and that's it. And it's been a pretty competitive group. There's a couple of guys on there that just do monster scores and they're battling it out. Me, I'm always battling it out with Wilbur's, who often just pops up in our comments section. And this past time I beat him by one point, so I was very happy for the placement in the tournament.
    15:07
    And, I mean, my goal has just been trying to be top 10, if I can get into the top 10. And usually there's about 45 players or so. So it's a fairly robust group.
    15:21
    As soon as that week's game ends, another guy who's an Xbox user, and so it's harder to find his because you actually have to enter in his name into the filter for finding tournaments, but he goes by the name of Coaster Wizard. And Coaster Wizard runs his tournament using the same tournament that it just was, but doing it with the Zen physics. and he sets up what the passive upgrades are for the table. Okay, yeah, right. And that particular tournament, I'm numero uno right now. So apparently I'm really good at the Zen versions and I'm just kind of, you know, middle of the pack. Well, better than middle of the pack. With the classics. With the classics, yeah. But it's fun because, again, you get your butt kicked in the one arena and then you hop on with the fun physics and you kind of feel like a pinball god after a week of getting thrashed about. Yeah. I encourage everybody, if you can,
    16:22
    he's taking a break right now because he says he's moving, so it's going to be about a month, but hop on to Reddit. Go to the PinballFX3 subreddit and basically subscribe to that subreddit. And in there, you're going to find his posts about his Reddit tournament. and just go ahead and subscribe to that right now and be ready for when the next bit goes because it's a good amount of fun and it adds that competition and that's how I've been playing pinball, just by doing that. I think that would actually give you the focus you need to actually motivate you to start the computer up each week and do it. Otherwise, I haven't really found much of a draw back to the game, obviously because there's not a lot of content floating around for it, But it's just, you know, it just feels like, oh, I'm just going to go and play pinball for a bit, which is, you know, fine, you do that. But, yeah, there's no real drive for it. So the tournaments will give you that structure you need to actually want to turn it on and want to participate. And, you know, playing pinball is best done with people. That's what the machine says.
    17:29
    That's right. Pinball is more fun with... How did that phrase go exactly? It was like, pinball is more fun with others or competitive. I don't know. Anyway, I know it used to be on a couple of machines. I don't know who did that. The Data East one said participate in local tournaments, and they even had like a PAPA. I remember now. I was going, what is PAPA? There it is. Yes, it's more fun to compete. It's more fun to compete. That's what Dave put on in the comments section of our live Twitch stream, which if you were watching the live Twitch stream when we record these things, you too can comment. Dave, do you happen to know what machine that was slapped on? Was that Bally Williams, Gottlieb, Data Eastern, who?
    18:10
    Feel free to add in. Okay, while we wait for that answer, though, because I know a Google search is coming.
    18:18
    Let me Google that for you. Let's Google that. Let's move on because, you know, since not playing pinball, that's what we've been doing. We're going to talk about, before we get to number one, How did you know I was Googling? Because I could tell, Dave. It was taking time. It clearly wasn't off the top of your head. That's right.
    18:39
    Things that we've been viewing since last we talked, because I've viewed a whole bunch. How about you, Jared? Have you been watching TV? Oh, absolutely lots of TV, but nothing that's interesting.
    18:52
    Look, I'm just thankful that this morning I woke up at 9 a.m. and was able to watch a basketball game scrimmage, because the NBA is coming back on the 1st. So I was happy about that. At Disneyland World.
    19:04
    Yes, in Orlando at Disney World. Yeah. In the bubble. That's what they call it, in the bubble. All right. Well, because that's what they're treating it like, is once you enter the bubble, you do not leave the bubble, and nobody comes into the bubble. So therefore, everybody quarantined before they got into the bubble, and they went into the bubble, and then they quarantined again and made sure that everybody was clear. and now they're 99.9% sure that nobody's going to get sick, but they still test every day, they still social distance, they still wear masks when needed.
    19:37
    But unless they're actually playing the basketball game, then obviously they're not playing with masks. Because that would be really hard. Yeah, it would be a little bit difficult. Word is, it's a Stern thing.
    19:49
    It is a Stern thing, yeah. Yeah, I do remember that Stern, in the Dada East days, I do remember seeing participate in local tournaments on the DMDs of a lot of Data East games. And I also remember that it actually used to have Papa on there as well.
    20:05
    All the way back then. So it was almost like an advertisement for Papa on the machines back then. I mean, they're not wrong. It's definitely more fun to compete. It is. Just a fact.
    20:17
    Yeah, so I've been killing Netflix. Teaching it a few things, seeing if it could take a punch. You know, putting it through his faces. Yeah, I had a little bit too much time on my hands. So let's see. These are just the series that I've binged.
    20:36
    Second season of Hannah. All three seasons of Dark, which is a German show. Yeah, that's how desperate I was. I'm starting to watch foreign language TV shows.
    20:45
    That thing is, if you like time travel, you're going to kind of hate time travel after this. Because it is dead serious. like no humor whatsoever. It doesn't have fun with time travel. It instead focuses on the paradox of time travel. Oh, the bad stuff.
    21:05
    Twists it all into a little knot until your brain goes. Oh, wow. And it's three seasons. That's all it is. Three seasons. But oh my God, thank God it's only three seasons. Cause seriously, I would get. Chills. Oh, just absolutely. My, my, you know, the brain matter was just oozing out of my ears afterwards. Um, Way too much science So I had to kind of go into lighter fare after that i watched uh first season well it just came out um new show uh but show called warrior nun guess what that about um nuns of the warriors yeah hey that's what it says on the box pretty much um i watched It's a show called Cursed, which is a retelling of the Arthurian legend, but it's basically prior to Arthur even going on his quest, it's all about the gal that's going to become the lady in the lake, and she's got her hands on Excalibur, and Merlin doesn't even have magic right now because he's kind of been stripped of it. I don't know. It was interesting. It's based off of a Frank Miller comic, but it's kind of reminded me of more fluffy fare. It never quite goes... It's not Game of Thrones, basically is what I should say. It's not deep storytelling, but it's interesting storytelling.
    22:40
    Apparently, I'm just noticing here that good friend Ksenia apparently didn't like it when I said that I was watching a German show, and that's how desperate I was because he wrote in all caps, HEY!
    22:53
    Yeah. And then I watched the first season of Umbrella Academy because the second season's about to come out. So yeah, I did all that in like two weeks.
    23:06
    Which is many... I don't even know how I fit that many... A lot of watching. I don't know how I fit that many hours of TV in. And then movies, because I wasn't done there. I watched Old Guard, which is the Charlize Theron movie.
    23:21
    Greyhound, which is kind of interesting. That's Tom Hanks, World War II, crossing the Atlantic, escorting ships with the U-boats, you know, laying in wait, which was rather interesting.
    23:40
    Hamilton, and I'm not a musical guy, but I work at Disneyland, and people won't shut up about that thing. So I figured I needed to watch it. And hey, it turned out it's pretty good. Okay, cool. And then I watched a movie called Palm Springs, which is with Andy Samberg. And it's his Lonely Island crew.
    24:05
    So it's comedy. Think of it as Groundhog Day, but more adult version. Okay. So real quickly, they understand it's Groundhog Day, and then they just mess with that. So it's like they understand the premise, and they're going to tweak it even further. So that was kind of fun. That's cool. And then I watched, let's see, 3D movies. Watched The Meg in 3D. And if you've never seen The Meg, have you seen The Meg, Jared? That's a giant shark movie.
    24:35
    Jason Statham. Oh, no. No, I don't think I would have seen that. You lost me at Jason Statham, I think. Oh, I love Statham. it's a silly silly movie that knows it's silly and therefore makes it way better because it's not taking itself seriously and I gotta say in 3D that was even better I don't say that often that the 3D makes anything better but that was it earns its stripes on that and then I watched Life of Pi in 3D which that's like demo reel material right because I'd seen the movie before and I just kind of went whatever and then while i'm watching it in 3d it was like oh now i understand what the big deal is because damn he used it um right so it was amazing yeah and then uh last but not least currently i'm watching uh so i'm done with the german show now i'm into a russian show russian show never thought i'd be watching one of those it's called better than us and interesting concept which is it takes place in the future bots are everywhere uh you know to help uh they obviously follow the three laws of robotics and uh the bots are anything from your standard just it looks clearly like a robot to human no not well no i guess you could call it uncanny valley they clearly look like robots their movements are stiff they look kind of plasticky um they're not gonna fool anybody as being real but not quite uncanny valley then yeah yeah yeah But one gets introduced as a prototype that can...
    26:16
    Its whole purpose is to read human emotions and react to human emotions, and the laws of robotics have been removed from it. So therefore, it's actually able to kill.
    26:27
    It sounds like iRobot, or riffing off iRobot. It kind of. It's kind of a riff on a lot of your robotics themes. And I thought, oh, this is right up my alley. Because I really enjoyed iRobot as a premise. It's very interesting. Yeah, as a premise, it's interesting, yeah. And I just watched iRobot recently, too.
    26:46
    So this was right up my alley, and I was like, yeah, let's go for this. Let's watch this. Unfortunately, it's turning out to be more like a soap opera.
    26:56
    Oh, okay. I think it's 16 episodes long. It's padded. It could have been eight episodes and been tight and bone-torn. And really good. Really good, yeah. And instead it's just like, oh, the robot got kidnapped again. Or, oh, the guy's family got kidnapped again. Oh, geez, Luis, can you people just like – how many times – Can we wrap this up, please? Where I really started to get concerned was all of a sudden there was going to be a competition.
    27:29
    Because basically this robotics factory, they want to get their robots. there's a state program where basically it's we're going to retire everybody early and we'll let the robots do your jobs for those people that we retire so it's work until you're like 45 and then you don't have to work anymore we'll pay your retirement and the robots will do the rest of the work that you normally would have continued to do and so they want to introduce these new robots because it'll be like well these can do what humans can do with that same you know same manner And so it's a really big contract, and so they've imported in this one prototype that was kind of illegal for them to get, and then it quickly gets... Interesting. Well, I shouldn't say it. The robot all of a sudden latches onto a little girl and then attaches to the dad and then imprints itself as it now being part of their family, and so then it will protect its family at all cost. So again, interesting premise, but at one point it literally, because the Roblox company was bidding for the contract, they were going to have this robot competition like American Idol. And I just went, oh my God. Oh no, please. Really?
    28:45
    Yeah. so I'm going to finish this one out just because I've gotten this far but if it has a second season then god I hope not I'm not going to watch the second season it's just too much to ask of me so go ahead folks let's see over in the comments section what do we got here have you seen Hollywood no I haven't seen Hollywood I think that's a Ryan Murphy production I'm done with Ryan Murphy partly because I've worked on a few Ryan Murphy shows and I know how the sausage gets made and I realize that that's why I don't like a lot of his shows. Not because I was there, but because I see how the process is and realize it's not a good process. It's a bad sausage. Sometimes the sausage is good. Sometimes the sausage is really horrible.
    29:36
    Grizzly. Yeah. So what else do we got here in the comments? Anybody poking up? If it's movies, somebody said Disney Plus, they've gotten recently. And yeah, that's about all we've seen there. Well, you big sausage. Exactly.
    29:55
    So yeah, go ahead and pop in our Twitch comments. Yeah, not you at YouTube. Although you could. You'll be late to it. Yeah, you'll be late. You can still comment, though. We'll read them. You can't. Yeah, we do read them. We do respond. But as I've been watching... Chris does. Yeah. Yeah, it's me. It's not Jared.
    30:12
    I hate... Oh, my God. because of all the YouTube videos that I've been watching, I really, really loathe the ones that start right off the bat. They start the video and be like, make sure you comment and smash that like button. It's like, shut the hell up. It's like, what first is the opening thing? Oh, my God. But that being said, we should mention, because we have kind of a sponsor. They're kind of sponsoring all pinball broadcasts. Podcasts. Which is really good of them. And so we're going to make mention of them. Twip, which is This Week in Pinball. It's a site that basically is an aggregate of what is going on in pinball for that week.
    30:59
    And they have been really supportive of all of us that do podcasts or streaming video or vlogs about pinball. we mentioned on our Twitter feed before to kind of vote us up so that we can appear on the front pages of sites that have gotten reviewed rather than not being reviewed you guys did that thank you for that if you haven't done that feel free to but no give him support he even gives out awards every year called the Twippies and Jack Danger normally takes out the one for streaming god damn dead flip but anyway go check out their site and see what you see it's worth a look i even wrote an article way back when that i still link people to which was all about the loss of license or the switching of license of the williams from farsight over to zen so that's where that is yeah uh Hold on, what's this? Have you tried the Oktoberfest in Finland that you can play remotely? Oh, the pinball machine?
    32:13
    No. I haven't, no. I didn't even know about this. I wouldn't do that because, well, latency on the Australian internet would mean I would be draining in five seconds. So it's his eligible.
    32:27
    Yeah, you know, that's a great idea. It's an interesting concept. Yeah. Certainly. I don't know. That would be weird. I have to look it up. I might just look it up just for the fact that I've not played Oktoberfest. Have you done it, Jay William?
    32:45
    He gave it a go. There are prizes. Wow, prizes. A new car. Oh. Suddenly I'm having those Bally Game Show or Smash TV pop into my head. it's all about the game show with Keith McTee Mugs and Steins very good that's all good maybe I have played October is that American Pinball I played their Houdini I didn't like Houdini it's the tables play slower they're not fast tables but the shooting lanes are narrow. I mean, ridiculously narrow. And so, half the time, all you're doing is bouncing the ball off posts and not having the ball go anywhere. And I didn't care for that.
    33:40
    And I want to say that I did play Oktoberfest, maybe. Unless there's another one they had before Houdini. I don't know. Maybe it was... I don't know. I know I've played two of theirs.
    33:52
    I still want to give... I really, really want to play Big Lebowski. American Pinball also do Hot Wheels as well. Dude, that looks pretty sweet. I do got to say. There's no loops. The thing that people are saying about it, there's no loops. That is true. It actually took a homebrew pinball developer who's actually making a Sonic spinball table to actually put a full-on loop in a pinball game.
    34:21
    Because it certainly needs a loop. There is no doubt about it. It's got to have a loop. Yeah, come on. It's Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels' trademark is the loop. That's a massive oversight. But it still looks better than Mustang.
    34:35
    Yeah. Because there's an actual reason to have little toy cars on your table for this one. That's literally right, yeah. Yeah.
    34:47
    Okay, let's talk about, though, since we've talked about my viewing, which was massive, obviously. What are we playing, Jared? I'll let you go, because my list is rather large. I'm playing some... I've gotten onto a couple of really good shoot-'em-ups and also something that's pinball-related, so we'll do the shoot-'em-ups first. So for a while on my wish list, I've had Darius Burst's Chronicle Saviors wish list. And with the scene sale recently, it came down to a reasonably affordable price because this game's expensive. And there's a reason for that, because it's really, really big for a shoot-'em-up. So what they've done is they've taken the full-on Darius Burst arcade release and they've done a complete like-for-like port over to Steam. So this is the big dedicated arcade, which probably never really made it out here. It was big in Japan, but it was like this massive super widescreen display that was sort of big and tighter games back in the arcade at one point. but you actually sat down in a booth. It supported four players, and you could actually do a four-player Darius Burst game fighting all the fish bosses that are in the game because that's what Darius is all about. It's all about the fish bosses at the end, and they're very hard. So they ported that over, so you can play that on free play as much as you want and get killed over and over again like me. Or you can play the CS, the Chronicle Saviors version of it, which is almost like a goal-based progression. through the levels that are already in Darius Burst, the arcade version, but rather than having it presented on a really huge widescreen, they've zoomed in on certain parts of the level. So you play through the certain parts of the level and then go and fight a big fish boss at the end.
    36:37
    And it's an incredible game. It's got an amazing soundtrack and the levels, the CS, the Chronicle Saviors play style that you play in, it actually teaches you how to fight the bosses, which you need to know because these bosses are brutal. They've got massive lasers. They've got bullet hell, basically, that come at you. I think Dariusverse, for people who know the bullet hell genre, it's like a somewhat accessible version of bullet hell. There are some bullet hell games that you've just got no hope. Well, I don't. I'm not that good at them. I'm terrible at them because I get my bullets confused with their bullets and my ship confused with everybody else's ship and next thing I know I've crashed and I'm like wait I thought I was over here and yet I crashed over here oh boy and we're dead and then your ship gets respawned back in the game and you're dead again it's brutal and then god forbid if you play with another person and you got two ships on the screen and then you swap sides oh my god it's game over for me instantly the thing with the thing with darius burst and a lot of the the darius games is the idea with it is you can actually flip your ship around so you're you're shooting forwards and backwards so you actually rotate your ship with a button and that's important because the the boss changes size so you have to fly over the other side of the screen shoot this way at him so almost like uh defender yeah it is it's quite like that um yeah exactly like in defender uh zania um so So it's a really challenging play style. And the bosses themselves are really interesting to look at because they're all fish-like creatures. And they're really detailed, and they're just loaded with cannons and guns and bullets and stuff. They even flick off their scales at you, and the scales are bullets. So really inventive boss, like mega boss battles in this game. So I would highly recommend wishlisting this one and wait until it comes on sale later on in the year and get it because once you've got the core Darius Burst game, you can also download a whole lot of other retro Taito shoot-'em-ups like Raystorm, for example. If anyone's a shoot-'em-up fan, they'll know Raystorm. It's called different things in different markets, but Raystorm I think is what it was called down here. But it's that one with the – it's a top-scrolling shoot-'em-up with all about the rays that, like, target the ships below you and you lock on. It's a lock-on weapon game. and it was massive in the arcades when i was in the arcades i loved it so you can basically buy this the buy the game and play it through darius birth darius birth cs but it's been upscaled and remastered so you can you can just go nuts with all the um the dlc in this game as well it's it's really a great package if you like shoot them ups so do that one and also if you want a really challenging shoot-em-up which which has a really interesting play mechanic you can get another one called para but power roomie and it's a really inventive shoot-em-up because you've got on your steam control you've got your three buttons right so your xamb so each one of these does a different color of laser and depending on the enemy you can either drain their energy or you can attack them hard um with it so you've got to choose the right color for the enemy whether you want to drain it or whether you want to attack them hard and it's a really really challenging play mechanic um i don't have that kind of controller jared you oh well you could do it with that one i think it would support that one yeah so i do have i do have a 360 controller i hate using it yeah just just me it's an odd one um uh but the the game itself is amazing it uses um unity i think is its engine and it's just like the visuals are insane on it if you've got a decent video card yeah it's very pretty um and it's really quite challenging as well it's not bullet hell but the mechanics of the game make it really challenging because you're not just shooting things i mean you can shoot things but you're not going to win the game if you do you have to actually be quite strategic and what weapon you use and what bosses and that takes a little while to learn so from an accessibility perspective i haven't really been playing that one as much as darius burst because darius burst is just press and hold that fire button and don't die and that's the sort of shootout that i really like right tighten that sphincter cross your fingers go that's pretty much it so yeah they're the two shoot-em-ups i got but the other one that i got is an is an interesting take on pinball and it's called super high ball now i i found out about this game from the um digital pinball fans forum because somebody posted about it um the idea behind the game uh is you're using flippers to make your way through essentially what is a puzzle level um so it's it still rolls like a pinball okay i think i saw the demo or video of this it In some respects, it reminds me of Pinout, but it's kind of like next generation of that.
    42:04
    It is. It's very much next generation. Pinout was just more like flipping up the screen. Flipping all over the screen. It's flipping all over the screen. And the thing with this game is that it only lets you use the analog triggers in the game. And there's a reason for that, because the flippers aren't like an on-off flipper. They're a variable pitch flipper. So the idea is you can't just like flip like normally, like you would in a pinball game to move through levels. You actually have to think about the angle of the flipper to actually get you through the level, which makes it really, really challenging.
    42:41
    You know it's really challenging because the achievements in the game are based on you dying. So how many times have you died in this game? Well, you get an unlock for that. You get an achievement unlock. Oh my God. That kind of frames what this is all about for you and it it is a really really hard puzzle game The pinball aesthetics themselves they okay but just the sheer difficulty of it and the fact it's more like a Twitch-style puzzle game, whereas not Twitch as in the stream servers, but quick reactions, you need to know how the level's built so you can actually get through it really fast. It's designed for you to actually play the game over and over and over again. Right, so die over and over and any small increment is a victory, basically. And the good thing about it is the designer's been smart and he's put regular checkpoints in there. So you get through a really difficult bit and then there's a respawn point for you after that really horrible part. So it's not frustrating from that perspective. It's just really difficult. and I got to the point where I was determined to finish it but at the end of it, you can go through and not die once. Not die once. Whatever, mate. There's not even a hope that I would not die once in this game. It is just very difficult. But if you like puzzle games and you like the pinball aesthetic, then this one might be worthwhile checking out if it's on sale. Like, it's interesting. It's in early access at the moment. And I think it's going to get more levels as the time goes on. He does seem to be actively developing it. So check it out. See what you like. I think there is a demo available. You don't have to buy the full game. You can just try a level demo and see if it's up your alley.
    44:38
    So give it a go. You might like it. Super high ball. Give it a go. Instead of super low ball, which is what old guys have. Yeah. So, me, well, the newest thing that I just did, I have a good buddy of mine who has been begging me and begging me to play Witcher 3.
    45:02
    He thought I would start playing after I watched the Witcher series. I didn't. I enjoyed it. But I was like, I just don't really want to do an RPG.
    45:10
    And lately I've been in the mood to play something, and I was like, what am I going to play? This more long form? And so I was like, okay, fine. I'll play Witcher 3 but the caveat is he's been refusing to watch Cowboy Bebop so I said I'll play Witcher 3 if you watch Cowboy Bebop so we'll see if he keeps his end of the bargain or not so I just downloaded that and have been just getting into it and trying to remember that it's an RPG there's supposed to be lots and lots and lots and lots of dialogue and yes collect things which I've just not been in that headspace for a very long time. So that's kind of tricky for me to get into. But the other thing is that I've been messing with the old one-up cabinet that I've been borrowing a long time. What have you been doing with that? Well, I might have downloaded a few games.
    46:13
    Off the internets? as is. Yeah, you know, because, you know, it is running MAME. Yeah, right. You know.
    46:24
    I hadn't wanted to go down this rabbit hole, partly because, again, I'm just borrowing this, and the guy that I'm borrowing it from made a big... all the games that he had on it already were all his, legally owned. He purchased, and... but, like, he'd purchased cartridges of Sega Genesis, Nintendo, and then he was ripping them into digital format and then putting them on here rather than just going to a main site and downloading. Wow, he was doing the full tomato. No, he was doing the full tomato to say, I personally legally did it the way that you're legally allowed to rather than just grabbing it easily and quickly off the internet.
    47:10
    But in terms of... And so his cabinet, it's got it broken down into, like I said, Sega Master System, Genesis, NES, Super NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, PlayStation, PlayStation 2.
    47:28
    I'm trying to think if there's any other consoles. Oh, then Steam or Windows, as he put it. So that's where I then wound up importing all of my pinball onto this thing, because it does have side flipper buttons that he installed. And then he's got the arcade, so your regular ROM game arcade games.
    47:51
    Now he had some on here to begin with, like I said, because it's a Street Fighter 2 cabinet, he already owned the three Street Fighter games that come with the arcade one-up. So it's Street Fighter Championship Edition Turbo and Super Turbo, I believe, are the three there. And then he had also bought Asteroids, Defender, Joust, Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus.
    48:25
    That was it for those. He had... Oh, and Gauntlet. Okay. He had on there, like part of his purchases was Rampage and Tempest, but he was saying that was the version of MAME that he was running that wasn't allowing them to function.
    48:49
    So even though we legally owned it, the MAME was saying, no, it doesn't work and was a bad version. So we couldn't run those two games.
    48:57
    Well, I started playing a lot of Pac-Man and enjoying Pac-Man. And then that got me going, but I'd really like to play Ms. Pac-Man. And he had Ms. Pac-Man in one of these, like he owns all of the Midway Arcade and Namco Museum discs that were on PlayStation and, mainly on PlayStation and Genesis had one also. Right.
    49:22
    And so I was having to go into those, wait for the virtual disc to load, and then go through all the god-awful menu systems that are in a PlayStation 2. God, they're terrible, aren't they? Oh my god!
    49:37
    You're like, all I want to do is play the game. I don't want to go through your virtual museum that takes me 30 seconds, and then I've got to rotate the machines, and, oh, no, that machine's locked because I didn't get a high score on this machine over here yet. Oh, just kill me. Yeah. It is hard. Yeah. So, you know, I kind of was like, well, maybe I'll find the Ms. Pac-Man meme and just put that on there. We'll just try that. Give it a go. So I tried that, and what do you know? Hey, it worked really good. And now I can literally, from the time I push the start button on the cabinet through the time I'm playing, is 15 seconds. So it's the same as dropping in a quarter, more or less.
    50:21
    And that was great. And then that got me going, well, there might be... Why don't we try looking for a ROM and get Rampage working properly?
    50:31
    I couldn't get regular Rampage working properly, but I could get Rampage World Tour working properly. So I was like, hey, there we go. We'll do that. and then I was like, well, let's try and get Tempest up and running and it turns out that it's one of these things where you have to have all the ROMs and it reads from all the ROMs at the same time in order to make the game work so I got the game working but that's when I discovered you need a spinner wheel you cannot play Tempest with just an 8-way joystick it doesn't work because you yes you can make it work you don't go left or right and it goes around left or right but it goes like really fast you can't finesse it to each of the individual sections like you should be able to it really just jumps to the the quadrant of the controller right yeah yeah so that's hard i mean i mean and and it's at this point that i realized how we have gotten so used to these analog sticks just expect them to do everything because they're analog they can be steering wheels they can be uh you know spinny discs they can do whatever we need them to do and they'll register that degree of you know slow or fast depending on how hard you do it and i'm so used to just expecting that when i went and programmed into controllers for tempest i figured out this will be nothing it'll work great it's great and then no you need the roms don't understand this concept of uh slowing down based off of maybe how hard you press or something like that doesn't work that way so i in order to get it to actually function i would need to buy a spinner control uh so that immediately in my mind started going well i guess i'm not going to be downloading arkanoid and i'm not going to be downloading uh any racing game because you know right without a steering wheel um and then i realized i probably shouldn't download anything like you know marvel madness or anything that's a trackball game, you know, Missile Command or Centipede, because it's going to run into the exact same issue on that. But I did start going, well, what games do I remember? What games do I want to play? So I put a notice out on the various forums saying, hey, what game should I download into this cab? what are the classics that I should have that I remember. And immediately people started like basically any game that they could think of, they threw up there, which I don't want to do because I don't. The idea of one of these cabinets, and I think we've talked about this before, there gets to be a certain point where you have so many choices that you then don't make a choice at all of what to play. So I was going to be a little bit picky. well now I have 57 different titles there and that's not including the Neo Geo titles that were already on so for those that have been paying attention I thought I might run through real quick on what I added hold on looking over here, mouse works for Arkanoid, yeah mouse does work but again I'm playing on an arcade one up cab so I don't want to have to have a mouse you know at the ready and attach to it. I want the controllers there. Now, I looked up on Amazon. They do sell USB spinner controls and track balls. And I do have a USB port available to me on this. So if need be, I probably could build an attachment that could slide onto the cabinet front or whatever, and then I can do that. But I haven't gone there yet, especially since the damn things are expensive. Yeah. Yeah, they're not cheap. No, no. I mean, basically, they're ranging from anywhere from, you know, $40 for your basic cheapy deal to $100 for arcade quality.
    54:37
    That's a lot. It's a chunk of change. Yeah, yeah. That's a chunk of change for something that I'm kind of like, ooh, this is fun, but it's a whim.
    54:46
    Well, that's right. Yeah. That's, yeah, look, that's, look, worth messing around with, right? Like, you've got to, otherwise you're never going to not do it. Yeah. You have to give it a go. So anyway, here's the Neo Geo titles that also he had already purchased, and these were all legit.
    55:04
    People were asking me about them, and I kind of, I don't have much of a history with Neo Geo titles. Did you play much of those in the arcade, Jared?
    55:12
    Yeah, I did. Neo Geo back when I was playing them was more about the shoot-em-ups. There was a lot of shoot-em-ups and that sort of thing, which is really where the Neo Geo games excel.
    55:25
    So I was playing a lot of... What was the name? Alpha something was the shoot-em-up. I can't remember the name of it. The folks in Twitch might know what it's called.
    55:39
    But a lot of the shoot-em-ups, There was a lot of odd games on there, too, where they're now incredibly popular. But back then, they were just like you could buy the cartridges as an arcade operator for next to nothing because nobody wanted them.
    55:57
    And it was good. I mean, it's funny because when I worked in the arcade and we got a Neo Geo machine, it was just kind of like, oh, look, a multi-cade of knockoff. Alpha Mission. That's what it was, yeah. Oh, Alpha Mission. Okay. Yeah. Because there was a lot of fighting games. on Neo Geo. And I was like, well, if I want to play a fighting game, I'm going to play Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, not your fighting game. And then, of course, it turns out that they cranked up some good fighting games. King of Fighters, for example. You know, that was like, how many revisions of that game was there? Like, it's 15, right? Something. So here's what I have of Neo Geo games, for those who are curious. Art of Fighting 2, Baseball Stars 2, which is actually a lot of fun because it's just the most basic baseball, but it's slamming home runs, so that's cool. Yeah, that's cool. Blazing Star, which is a shoot-em-up.
    56:49
    Brickinger, which I have never heard of. Garou, Mark of the Wolves. I think that's the one. Oh, yeah, that thing. King of Fighters 2002. The only one that I remember playing was this one, King of Monsters, which is essentially WWF with Godzilla and King Kong. Oh, yeah, I remember that. With the city being your ring. Yeah, I used to trash the city. It was great. Yeah.
    57:15
    The Last Blade. Metal Slug 2, 3, X. A lot of Metal Slugs there. Neo Turf Masters, which is a golf game. Again, simplistic golf, but fun all the same. Samurai Showdown 2 and 5. Shock Troopers and Shock Troopers Second Squad. And then Twinkle Star Sprites, which is also a shoot-em-up, but it's a two-player competitive shoot-em-up where it's split-screen, and so based off what you do on your screen, you're sending baddies to the other person's screen. It's sort of like a puzzle shoot-em-up. It's really odd. It's like the two-player mode in Puzzle Bobble where you dump a whole lot of orbs for your side and they end up on the other player's side. That's just such a fun way to play Puzzle Bobble. If you've never played a two-player version of that, I used to play that heaps with a mate when we had it on PlayStation. yeah um playstation one is such a fun game to play with two people so uh yeah so the rabbit hole that i went down i pretty much have everything that i could ever want to play now uh that i knew of and that was my other thing it was like look i have to have actually have some familiarity with this thing to to download i'm not just going to download for the sake of it um but here's the list, Jared. See if you approve. And you want Twitch, you can join in too. Here we go. 1941, 1942, 1943, and 1943 Mark II. So all shoot-em-ups.
    58:45
    Top scrollers. Vertical games. Burger Time. Commando. Which is, oh my god, that game is so frustrating.
    58:58
    I just remember Commando just eating my quarters alive and me never even getting past the first level. Is Commando a little bit like Contra? No. Or Operation C, as it was known outside of Japan? No, it's literally, think of a shooter, a shoot-em-up. You're the little guy at the bottom going through a jungle, and all the enemies are coming down trying to shoot at you, but you can kind of circle them and drop grenades and fire at them. Ah, yeah, right. That's cool. It's a bullet hell game. No doubt about it. It's bullet hell with a person instead of a ship. Basically, yes. Yeah. And the ability to guide where your bullets are, whereas the ship ones you had to get an upgrade to shoot sideways. This one you just angle your guy and you shoot that way. Oh, yeah, right. There was some shoot-'em-ups, sorry, as a minor distraction. Some shoot-'em-ups like Air Duel that had a helicopter that allowed you to angle your shots in a certain way. It was critical to actually beating the game. But, yeah, that sounds similar to the Commando.
    60:02
    Um, that being said, I will say, folks, I did not download Contra. I looked at the video and realized that was one of those I hated in the arcade. So no, no Konami code for me. Sorry.
    60:15
    Um, moving on, uh, Dig Dug, a classic, uh, Donkey Kong, which was the game I loved as a kid, but suck at and never got good at and still suck at. Uh, Donkey Kong is so hard. Like, the precision you have to have to get up those ladders. I tried to play in the arcade. How do people even get past the first level in this? And yet there are people who can, like, not blue screen the game, but they can, like, kill screen the game. Well, yeah, it's that old documentary King of Kong. I mean, it's... Let's go far out, guys. You just play too much of this game. Donkey Kong Jr. which I remember more from ColecoVision than from the arcade but I love Donkey Kong Jr.
    61:02
    Final Fight everybody knows Final Fight right? yeah which was awesome but it's also massive quarter suck because the operators always jacked up the bosses so that you could not get through even your first boss on one quarter you would always have to drop another quarter into play. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
    61:26
    Because it had to be there, Galaga and Galaxian, because I'm not going to put Space Invaders on because Space Invaders blows.
    61:35
    But you do need the classic ships dropping down, so you might as well go for the upgrade, and that's why I went with those two.
    61:45
    Right. Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3. Had to have them. yes uh nba jam nba jam tournament and ngm hang time sorry arcade one up i wanted to know if i wanted it and it turns out you do well you know maybe thinking of nba anything as again because this show is all about tangents there's a local a local um pinball store that's got a fast break on the floor at the moment. And I think I need to go and play it because it's an amazing specimen. It's been beautifully restored. So, yes.
    62:25
    Anyhow, continuing. Qbert, which I did not realize was a Gottlieb game. Oh, really? I think it was Gottlieb. Gottlieb Electronics. Yeah.
    62:38
    Robotron. That game's hard. Yeah, that game is hard. somebody had asked me if I'd put on Berserker and I went well that's what Robotron is but just on steroids so why would I want to play Berserker when I could just play Robotron and get killed over and over again yeah and then even more on steroids than that is Smash TV which I also put on here and those I said screw you player 2 because they have to be played with joysticks you can program them in to play with key buttons but it is makes the game just impossible horrible yeah and so i was like you know what this is gonna be a case where it's screw having two players i'm gonna have the one player experience with uh and so i did that for robotron and for uh smash tv yep um then we have let's see here where am i on my list ah super pac-man i know it's a terrible one but I had to. What's wrong with it? Super Pac-Man is... It just looks like ass.
    63:49
    Right. It's not a pretty-looking game, and the only fun mechanic of it is that some of the pellets make you giant, in which case the ghosts can't eat you, but you can still traverse the map, and then you do have power-up pellets all the same, which then you can eat them up, but the whole point is you're to eat keys and those unlock gates to open up more of the pathways through everything. So, okay. I mean, it's kind of interesting on that level, but it is not great, but it was more that I needed to have it just for the completion of sake. Um, fair enough Fair enough Yeah Uh where am I Oh Xevious Oh Oh Exevious yeah And then I downloaded Zaxxon just because But unfortunately, that's the one ROM that the sound is not supported on. So there's no sound, which kind of, I don't know, it kind of takes something away from it when there's just no audio. Yeah, I wouldn't play it. And then people started recommending some more, so I had a second wave of downloads. That's why this list is now going back in the alphabet here. Congo Bongo. You remember that one from Sega?
    65:05
    No. Congo Bongo is a 3D think Donkey Kong. You're a little jungle guy. A little ape goes through the top. He's throwing down barrels. There's monkeys at various points. So think of it kind of like how Crystal Castle with the 3D-looking pathways with pits, and you're climbing up them and going, and you've got to kind of go down and go around and go up and jump. I don't know. It's kind of a mixture of a couple of different games of the era, but I do remember enjoying that as a kid.
    65:40
    I put on Frogger. I hate Frogger, but I got a lot of flack for not putting on Frogger. so I was like fine I'll put Frogger on for you people same thing with Ghosts and Goblins I suck at it I do remember playing it but I don't get any enjoyment from it but I got again peer pressured into you gotta have Ghosts and Goblins on there and I'm like okay fine I'll put it on there I'm not going to touch it but yeah Golden Axe which I always got confused with Goblet oh yeah Golden Axe is good. Golden Axe 2 is a little bit better, I think. But it's still a great game. A great horizontal beat-em-up. That era of beat-em-ups that Konami and all those manufacturers, mostly Konami, they were really into the horizontal beat-em-ups. Well, it's funny because a lot of these are already on the Genesis on this machine.
    66:39
    Right, yes. He had a lot of these on there that were of that nature the horizontal beat-em-ups um i remember aliens versus predator in the arcade yeah i looked i looked at it overheat overheat all the time i looked at that as a video because you know me being a huge aliens fan and i saw the video of it and i go i remember this and there's no way in good conscience i can put it on here oh really you went into it i i can't i can't get into it no it's just it's too much of a bastardization um it's not true to form i can't play it uh i put on their a game called gravitar which is a vector graphic atari game uh that's like mazes but using the asteroid ship kind of mechanics so it's rather difficult to thrust and not crash and navigate through and yeah but i was like yeah i like some of these vector graphic games you gotta have that going on uh graphic game oh it's odd you're gyrus yeah gyrus which is essentially tempest but works with the joystick it does i had that on the floor um networld in one of those bubble cabinets it's like a cabinet with like this bubble dome over the top to make it look like you're going around the screen in a globe. It's an interesting effect. It looks really cool. What was the vector graphic game you were going to mention? There's one from Atari called Stun Runner. It's sort of like a driving game.
    68:23
    I don't know how it would translate to arcade because it uses two axis of potentiometers. So you've got essentially a steering wheel, and then you've also got these triggers that go up and down. Oh, so it's... It angulates it. Right, so that's basically what the Star Wars cabinet is. Sort of, yeah. And it's an amazing driving game. It's vector graphics, but there's something about it that you go, yeah, this totally is fine. It's a really wicked game. Came in a really nice dedicated cabinet, which I still see floating around. But, yeah, cool game. But I don't know how you'd use it. You'd probably have to use two analog sticks for it. Well, that's why some of these, like, I didn't put Spy Hunter on here because too much has depended upon that steering wheel. Yeah. With, you know, how that integrates. So, I mean, you know, there's certain games you just kind of go, screw it, it's not worth it. Unless I played it on a controller, in which case I'm like, well, but that's not the point of this cabinet. Yeah, that's right. So, Lode Runner. I didn't even know that was an arcade cabinet. I only remember playing it on my friend's PC.
    69:29
    I couldn't understand that game at all. Oh, you're so, oh my God. in college i spent so many hours playing load runner no idea how to even play it like i i had it i think i had it at one stage on one of the like 16-bit consoles or 8-bit i think it might have even been on out of game boy i had it oh yeah totally i was going what what is this like i tried to work it out without reading the instructions for five minutes in one of those demo units on in the um the retail store i went nah i'm not buying this this is rubbish and yet it's really straightforward it's go around collect the little dolls or idols and that'll give you an escape ladder that escapes the level you've got little guys chasing and running around after you and you defeat them by blasting holes into the ground that they fall in and you can run over the top of them so it's a combination of puzzle and uh collecting and just traversing out of there i don't know yeah see that was there's no way i would have worked out you had to blow holes in the ground to trap the enemies and walk over it. That's like completely alien as a concept. It's like, so hang on, I'm supposed to walk over this hole with an enemy in it?
    70:38
    That doesn't seem natural at all. Or you could blast a hole and you could fall through it, so that's how you'd get to lower levels.
    70:45
    Right. And the whole point, though, is, and you get bonus points, though, if you don't kill any of the guys, because if they fall in multiple times in the same hole, the hole will eventually close up, and then it'll spawn somewhere else. but the object is to not kill any of them because you get a massive bonus if you don't. Right. Which is kind of interesting for a video game concept. It's like, no, no, no, peace. We want peace.
    71:09
    Don't kill everything. Save everything. And just basically, essentially, it's Metal Gear Solid. You're not supposed to kill anyone. You're supposed to just stealth your way through the level.
    71:20
    Did, let's see, I downloaded Mappy. I have no idea. Mappy is basically you're a warehouse security guard who's a mouse, and cats are trying to steal things or whatever. That makes sense. I don't know. That sounds exactly like what a cat would do. It's a Williams game, and, you know, whatever. Had to have it. Mario Brothers. Not Super Mario Brothers. Just Mario Brothers. Which, unfortunately, the sound, again, the sound isn't quite. The only thing you hear is you running, but none of the other game sounds are in it, which is kind of annoying. Yeah, it is annoying. I got talked into putting Moon Patrol on here. Oh, that thing is nuts.
    72:03
    That thing is... Moon Patrol is one that I remember from the Apple IIe. That's what I played on that thing. And I looked at the video game and I was like, why would I want this? But somebody was like, you can't have a cabinet without having Moon Patrol on it. I'm like, okay, whatever. Says the person who really, really liked Moon Patrol only. I looked at that thing in Netherworld I went, no way like number one like just looking at the thing that made me laugh was the fact that the demo that they played, the rolling demo that just plays in the track mode I'm looking at it going, that's insane I'm not playing that it didn't entice me into the game at all I went, I'm not going to be able to beat that that's way too hard all it is is just bouncing over holes and shooting enemies that float above you. Whee!
    72:55
    It's only jumping and shooting. You know what it is? It kills you. It's in Circus Voltaire, the kangaroo on the unicycle. It's that game. And it's about as advanced as that game. It would be better than, put it this way, Moon Patrol would be better than that video mode, that's for sure. But not by much. Because that video mode's the worst video mode in pinball, and that's saying something because there's also Harley-Davidson version 3. Oh, God. So I'd rather play that than play Rooney jumping over blobby things, because it's just horrible.
    73:38
    Yeah. Dave here is arguing the case for Moon Patrol, saying it was one of his favorite games, but yes, it's way too easy for too long. It doesn't get hard until almost the second loop. That's bad for operators.
    73:53
    Good for the kid on a quarter budget, bad for operators. Yeah, the kid on a quarter would be stoked with that. Yeah, not for the operator who has a kid sitting on there for an hour.
    74:03
    I'm almost done with the list here. Oh, I've been playing a lot of this. NFL Blitz, NFL Blitz 99, and 2000. All hard drive games. Dude, I love NFL Blitz. Yeah, that was the thing. I didn't realize that I had to download an extra piece to link in that it was a hard drive game. Because I downloaded ROMs that said ROMs are working, but nothing was popping up. I was like, what the heck? And then I read further and was like, ooh, you've got to have this other element too. And that hard drive, that was a problem with that series of games. The hard drives died all the time on them. Because back in the 1990s when this game was released,
    74:40
    hard drive technology was A, expensive, and B, really fragile. So putting a platter-spinning hard drive in an arcade game that's getting bumped around, not a great idea. No.
    74:54
    Moving on. Popeye, which is a Nintendo and looks like a Nintendo game. Punch-Out, also Nintendo. Yeah. Simpsons.
    75:08
    Yes. Like the side-scroller Simpsons. Yeah. Great game. Turtles? Come on, tell me. Root Beer Tapper. I wanted it to just be regular Tapper, but the regular Tapper ROM wouldn't work. So instead of having it say Budweiser on the back, it says Root Beer Tapper. But it's just Tapper. Tapper is, again, one of those that stressed the hell out of me, and I didn't like it. But people were like, you've got to have Tapper on there. I'm like, okay, fine. Tapper is, like, that's one in the arcade that I played once with. Nope. Too hard. It was another one that I played on the Apple II. truth be told um okay you said turtles yeah i put both turtles games on there good excellent work uh and then tekken 3 yeah tekken 3 that was like i remember watching the attract mode on that thing constantly when i was working in the arcade back when it was released it was just everywhere that game yeah you weren't in arcade unless you had tekken 3 basically and and of the three being Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Tekken 3.
    76:14
    Tekken 3 I can jump right into and actually do things without knowing how to do them. Whereas the other two, I have to Google to find out how to do special moves. Right. Which was always frustrating. So that's why I was kind of like, I need Tekken 3 on here because I think that one, I played a lot of that, I enjoyed it, and I felt like I was actually doing something.
    76:35
    So that was that. But yeah, so in total now there's 76 arcade games on this thing. That's a fair arcade you got in one box there. It is. It's a pretty big arcade.
    76:49
    Plus all the machines you got in there too. Right. All jammed into one box. Yeah, jammed into one box. And then I figure once I am done borrowing this and I need to give it back, I'll just delete everything off there before handing it over. Sanitize it, yeah. Yeah, sanitize it. Yeah. Remove the filth.
    77:09
    The internet-backed-up filth from this game. Yes. Somebody asked me, why don't you have... Oh, good God. Why am I just completely drawing a blank on it now? You know what I'm missing. Puzzle game. Dropping down shapes. Tetris. God, I'm like, it starts with a T. and I just said I recognize Tetris' place in history I recognize it as being a good game I recognize its influence on many things I hate it much the same way that I hate U2 and don't want any part of it I recognize them as a good band I recognize them as a quality band I recognize their influence their sound drives me up a wall so yeah yeah it's definitely one of those the other thing that works that i remember only because it was in the arcade i worked in was arcanoid but that definitely requires a track yeah the spinner wheel yeah yeah you really do for that one it's uh it's like there was this one guy who had this weird play style with it so the one that we had had the spinner wheel in the middle and then buttons either side of the wheel so it was ambidextrous you could play it with the right hand but this guy crossed his hands over like this and was playing it wheel this way and will that way i don't know why he did it it was a really weird dude and i used to always go and watch him do it and he was a great player okay you're weird mate all right you're a strange bloke and no i'm not putting track and field on this because i don't want to break the machine smash those buttons well because i was i asked jared about if he knew of track and field you were like what i don't know that game right isn't that what i showed you the video of oh no no no you knew no no no somebody else said i was doing this too and so i showed a clip of track and field and they just went holy crap how did operators you know put up with that i'm like i had to have basically a big box of buttons in the machine that they just swapped out the other one that you'd um you wouldn't like either is uh it's a it's a japanese style game called bish bash bishy-bashy special. And it is such a... It's classic Japanese. It is just insane minigames that all you're doing is you're playing with three buttons, a red, green, and blue. And in the game, they're like these big dome buttons. And I don't know how they hold up as well as they do in the arcades, because these scenes like, you get drunk people on going, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Just smashing them to death. And I just go, I don't know how the domes don't crack and crack and disintegrate but these must be i don't know they must have used an experimental plastic that's used in space shuttles or something like that on these buttons because they hold up and it is such a fun game to play with three people you just smash the buttons and have a glorious time making burgers and assembling robots so you go like you know the robots floating on the screen and you go like red green blue it goes and it goes big japanese animation and it's fantastic because like i would love to have crazy taxi on here but again you need a steering wheel for that oh you do yeah it's and and then uh god i was looking at it tron and discs of tron talk about specialized like not only do you have the joystick and the joystick does turret rotation also and it has the buttons on you know for firing but it's also got an arcanoid spinning wheel so really yeah well and yeah so the talk that's one that uh arcade one-up should just commit to and just go all in on yeah even though it's kind of a crap game like in tron there because there's four different games that you play in tron only two of them do you ever want to play the other two suck um so being you want to play light cycles and you want to play the tanks. The other two, which is some weird spider web thing, and then Master Control, which is kind of like an Arkanoid-style game, but they're both terrible.
    81:23
    And then the other standalone machine was Disks of Tron, and Disks of Tron is pretty cool. Okay. So if they did that as a thing, that'd be good. And then... What was the other one that I was thinking that you absolutely... I think I'm just thinking just the driving games that Arcade 1-Up needs to get on those and start doing some of those. They could get a partnership with Sega. That would be pretty good. Oh, yeah. I mean, just if you had two steering wheels on there for that kind of play, that'd be great. Because there's a ton of driving games. Yeah. Just imagine having a Daytona in a cabinet. And that's just it. You'd have a Daytona. You'd have one that's a Daytona, you'd have one that's a Crazy Taxi.
    82:11
    And then I don't know what the sub-games, the other two games are, but there's so many driving games that it would be hard to... Oh, I know what the other game was that I was thinking that there's no way of putting in. Afterburner.
    82:23
    Oh, yeah. Because Afterburner has a very specific... I mean, it's joystick moves, it's a thrusting...
    82:32
    Yeah, it's a joystick plus a gun plus a... It's an analog joystick, too, from memory. Yes, that's what I'm saying. It's an analog joystick, so it's not just a tilt forward, back. It's a full slam it side to side kind of experience.
    82:50
    It's one hell of a mechanism when you take that thing out. It is some serious hardware in that machine to make that thing work. Yeah. So anyway, again, for those of you who are curious, that's what's in the cab now. and I'm still only playing about four games.
    83:10
    It's been a lot of Blitz. It's still a lot of Pac-Man. It's still NBA Jam. And that's kind of, then it's just whatever whim I kind of go. I tried having my son play a whole bunch of them and he just kind of went, Dad, these games suck.
    83:27
    He goes, why would anybody want to play these in an arcade? What was the appeal? Because they were there and that was new. Well, we had a discussion just the other day about what was the appeal of an arcade. And I said, you've got to remember, man, parents would just drop you off of these things. And you were now in kid world, unsupervised, with a roll of quarters.
    83:51
    Like, it was the best ever. Yeah. And then I said, in half the time you were there, you were just watching over somebody else's shoulder. Because there was no internet. There was no YouTube videos of these being played. if you wanted to learn how to get good, you needed to find a good player, and then you needed to glom on them and watch them play. And then I talked about how there was the whole etiquette of, you know, if somebody wanted to play two-player with you, well, they're now playing for your quarter unless you lose, and then they become the champion of the machine, and people are buying their games for them. I mean, there was that whole etiquette of play that went along with it. But you just don't get it these days. No, no.
    84:29
    So from a discussion point, it's been kind of interesting going through all that. It would have been.
    84:35
    All right. Did we go off on a tangent enough there, Jared? I think there was definitely some excellent tangential conversations happening today. So we definitely delivered on our mission today. That was the mission.
    84:51
    So again, folks, next week, stay tuned. Hopefully we'll come on at our regular time for recording, assuming that the Zen announcement is done before that. Otherwise, we'll delay until after the Xen announcement and then record after that. But you're going to definitely want to tune in live so that we can get your reactions and comments and stuff of that nature. So, as usual, we say thank you so much for viewing. We appreciate it. We like having you guys in the comments and joking around with us. And as you already pointed out, if you give us a comment on Twitter, if you drop us a note on YouTube in the comments section there, I will always try and do some kind of response happy to have the dialogue with you guys beyond that Jared what do we got next episode it's most likely going to be targeted stuff and things I was going to say it's not going to be general stuff and things but it'll be stuff and things for sure it has to be alright he says it that's what it is alright folks until next time buh-bye