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BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·44m 30s·analyzed·Jul 16, 2017
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

BlahCade hosts visit Portland arcades and discuss Farsight's emulation challenges for TPA.

Summary

Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discuss their pinball arcade visits in Portland, Oregon, highlighting two excellent venues (Ground Control and QuarterWorld Arcade) with extensive classic and modern pinball lineups. The conversation pivots to Farsight Studios' emulation work on Black Knight and Firepower, detailing the labor-intensive process of recreating bonus count audio and the challenges of balancing Stern's business interests with player expectations for the Stern Pinball Lab app.

Key Claims

  • Portland area has 743 pinball machines in operation

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus citing location data during arcade visit discussion

  • Los Angeles area has approximately 400 pinball machines

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus correcting his own stat, comparing LA to Portland numbers

  • Ground Control arcade in Portland offers 50 cents for Bally/Williams machines, 75 cents for Stern/JJP, $2 for five games

    high confidence · Chris Friebus describing pricing at Ground Control arcade

  • Norman (Farsight audio engineer) spent 10 hours recording 200+ bonus count instances for Black Knight emulation, with similar scale required for Firepower 2 (400+ instances, 100 more still needed)

    high confidence · Jared Morgan discussing Norman's emulation work and audio recording process

  • Farsight is deploying 20 machines for a pinball league at locations

    high confidence · Jared Morgan mentioning Farsight's league expansion initiative

  • Ghostbusters (LE) version is very close to completion for Stern Pinball Lab app

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus citing Stern tweet about Ghostbusters progress via Pinball Arcade forum announcement

  • Stern Pinball Lab is Stern hiring Farsight to make games; Pinball Arcade is Farsight hiring themselves

    high confidence · Chris Friebus clarifying the business relationship and control structure between Stern and Farsight

  • Black Knight left ramp in emulation has the same difficult angle/geometry as the real machine

    high confidence · Chris Friebus describing gameplay experience after playing emulated Black Knight beta

Notable Quotes

  • “So I went to this place and I was like, I'm not going to play any of the Williams and Bally machines that I've played dozens of times or whatever. I need to play machines that I haven't gotten my hands on.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~18:00 — Illustrates the collector/enthusiast mindset of seeking novel gameplay experiences even at well-stocked arcades

  • “Remember, Stern Pinball Lab. This is Stern hiring Farsight to make the game. Pinball Arcade is Farsight hiring themselves to make the game. [...] Stern is the client.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~36:00 — Key clarification of the business relationship explaining release delays and content strategy differences between platforms

  • “If you make it easy, this table's a bust. It's got to be brutal because that's what it is on the real machine.”

    Jared Morgan (quoting Norman's design philosophy) @ ~58:00 — Reveals Farsight's commitment to authentic difficulty tuning for Black Knight emulation

  • “Black Knight, I think he said there was 49 numbers, and then plus you got your multipliers. So it winds up being 200 and some different instances. And he had to go by hand, basically, and set it up, trigger it, record it.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~65:00 — Demonstrates the manual labor intensity of recreating audio-driven game mechanics in emulation

  • “It reminds me of what these guys do Q&A on video games, where it's like I had to run my character into every single segment of wall in every single room, and then I had to do it because now I had the pistol in my hand, and I had to do it over again.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~72:00 — Analogy highlighting the tedious, systematic nature of emulation audio recording for bonus mechanics

  • “It feels like what it should have felt like all along... the bonus count, it's completely different to what it was. You can tell that every single time you get a bonus, it's going to sound different now.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~64:00 — Affirms that emulation improvements deliver noticeable gameplay quality gains

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonNorm WurzpersonGround ControlvenueQuarterWorld ArcadevenueFarsight StudioscompanyStern PinballcompanyBlack Knightgame

Signals

  • ?

    venue_signal: Portland, Oregon arcades feature exceptional pinball collections: Ground Control has 17+ machines including rare Jersey Jack titles (Wizard of Oz, Hobbit, Indiana Jones) at 50-75 cent pricing; Quarter World has 40+ machines including Dialed In, Ghostbusters, Medieval Madness, and Attack from Mars. Regional supply is abundant and player-friendly.

    high · Detailed arcade lineup inventories provided by Chris Frebus with specific pricing models and venue logistics

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Farsight's audio recreation process for bonus count mechanics is extremely labor-intensive: Black Knight required 200+ manually recorded instances for ascending tone multipliers (49 base numbers × multipliers); Firepower 2 requires 400+ instances with Norman already spending 10 hours and facing 100+ more recordings. Each multiplier combination must be individually recorded and triggered because the original sound chip functionality cannot be algorithmically replicated.

    high · Jared Morgan's detailed account of Norman's recording methodology and time investment for bonus audio implementation

  • ?

    technology_signal: Farsight's Black Knight emulation maintains original hardware difficulty including problematic left ramp geometry. Design intent was deliberately preserved: developer Norman reported that designer insisted on keeping brutal difficulty to match original machine experience. This required precise playfield geometry and shot angle tuning.

    high · Chris Frebus reporting difficulty matching real machine behavior; Jared Morgan quoting Norman on designer philosophy ('if you make it easy, this table's a bust')

  • ?

    product_concern: Farsight's source machines vary significantly in condition: Firepower 2 beta showed untouched playfield with visible wear, yellow mylar, rubbed-off paint, and faded graphics requiring extensive art pass before release. Genie was similarly deteriorated. Questions about whether machines receive cosmetic restoration or if playfield overlays are created remain unanswered.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.134

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, aka Shut Your Trap. Joining me, as always, halfway across the world, Jared Morgan. It's me. I'm here. It's a little bit rainy here today. Great skies, because it's sort of wintry. today. Wintry. Yes, and Studio North Lakes.
0:35
I am live on location, folks. I'm up in Portland, Oregon right now starting to shoot a TV show on Monday for a week before going back down home to LA.
0:48
We're apparently in the two good months of weather here in Portland. Okay. So it's fine, basically. Yeah, it's not too hot and It's sunny and no chance of rain.
1:01
It was interesting. As I was walking around the city today, there was a tour group that went by, and there was this big fountain that some kids were playing in. The tour guide had stopped and was talking, and he had himself on a microphone so basically anybody could hear what he was saying. He said that unlike virtually every other city, in Portland, every single fountain you're allowed to play in because they've built them to code to be safe to play in. And the reason for doing that, I guess this went back to like 1973 or something like that. But back then they decided that, you know, it's so dismal and rainy here and kids are always locked up inside that during these two months, and this is where I got the two months of good weather apparently, that it's nice and hot. They want to encourage people to be outside. And so they were like, you know, we've got fountains around the city, let's let people play in the fountains. And so he said that virtually every single fountain that you see in the city, you're allowed to go in. Alright. So they built it in such a way that it's not going to be dangerous if people fall in, they can't drown, basically. It's not deep enough. Basically. Alright. That's really good. See, in Australia, we just don't have fountains because it's drought. So... Well, you know, that is the other thing. Me coming from California, or especially Southern California with the drought,
Firepower
game
Firepower IIgame
Ghostbusters (Pro)game
Ghostbusters (LE)game
Geniegame
Dialed In!game
The Hobbitgame
The Wizard of Ozgame
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Replay Effectsevent
BlahCade Podcastorganization
Roger Sharpeperson
Mike Lindsayperson
Free Gold Watchvenue

medium · Jared Morgan describing Firepower 2 playfield condition from beta screenshots showing wear patterns and requesting clarification on Farsight's restoration practices

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight Studios is expanding into location-based operations: deploying 20 pinball machines for a league at arcade locations. This represents business model diversification beyond digital emulation and suggests confidence in physical machine quality and venue management.

    high · Jared Morgan stating 'Farsight has put 20 of their machines out in the wild... they're doing a pinball league'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern Pinball maintains strict client-side control over Stern Pinball Lab app release timing despite Farsight having tables ready for launch. Ghostbusters LE is described as 'very close to being done' but release timing is determined by Stern's business interests (operator equipment sales, seasonality) not Farsight's completion status. This creates community frustration but serves Stern's broader commercial strategy.

    high · Chris Frebus clarifying the client-contractor relationship: 'Stern is the client... they're the ones with the game plan' and explaining Stern must balance operator and licensing interests

  • ?

    design_innovation: Black Knight emulation improvement demonstrates Farsight's commitment to audio fidelity: bonus count now features distinct ascending tones for each multiplier combination rather than generic repeated sounds, achieved through manual recording and triggering of 200+ discrete audio instances. This represents significant quality improvement over prior scripted version.

    high · Chris Frebus comparing before/after: 'the bonus count, it's completely different to what it was. You can tell that every single time you get a bonus, it's going to sound different now'

  • ?

    community_signal: BlahCade hosts demonstrate collector/enthusiast prioritization of novel gameplay experiences: Chris deliberately avoided well-known titles at Ground Control to seek unfamiliar machines (Hobbit, Pabst Can Crusher). This reflects community desire for depth and variety over casual replayability of canon titles.

    medium · Chris Frebus: 'I'm not going to play any of the Williams and Bally machines that I've played dozens of times... I need to play machines that I haven't gotten my hands on'

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade took a gap week to extensively interview Farsight's Norman in preparation for Replay Effects seminar. Norman will provide transparent but NDA-compliant information at the event. Hosts obtained detailed confidential information that cannot be publicly disclosed, suggesting significant off-record revelations about emulation roadmap, technical challenges, or business partnerships.

    high · Jared Morgan: 'we found out all sorts of information that is killing us that now we can't mention because it doesn't fall into public purvey' and discussion of deliberate NDA-compliant transparency strategy

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Black Knight emulation perceived as intentionally brutal with narrow, difficult shot geometry (especially left ramp). Jared predicts difficulty may become attractive over time for challenge-seeking players despite initial frustration. Game's brutality is consistent with original hardware and represents deliberate design preservation.

    high · Chris Frebus on shot difficulty and Jared Morgan predicting growth: 'it might be one of those games that does actually grow on you... because of its brutality'

  • $

    market_signal: Portland and American venues feature robust Jersey Jack Pinball availability (multiple locations, 2 wide-body machines at Ground Control), while Australian venues rarely stock JJP titles. This reflects manufacturing distribution patterns, operator preferences, and regional market segmentation.

    high · Jared Morgan: 'we just don't really see the Jersey Jacks on location down here at all. So, yeah, to play them, you pretty much have to go either to a private collection here or sort of interstate, or, sorry, overseas, where they're everywhere'

    • 2:25
    you come up here and yeah, there's water and there's tons of green. And I even saw like a permanently on drinking fountain. Oh really? You're just going. It was just, well, it was like, you know, it was just this little bowl thing and just bubbling and there was no handle. So it wasn't like it was stuck on or anything. It was just permanently bubbling with water. And I was like, wow. Okay. Look at that. Waste that water. Go ahead.
    2:48
    As a Californian, you're probably just feeling like going, Oh, put a bucket underneath there. We can use it on our lawns or use it in our gardens or something. Yeah, I know. I know. When you go to somewhere which has plentiful supplies of water, it's a very strange feeling to see it just running away. It's like, wow, you guys don't know how lucky you have it. You know, it's strange for me just also being the hotel I'm at is right in the downtown Portland. not quite the hub center hub of it but i mean if you do a circle i'm like on the outer edges of the circle but it's literally a half mile walk for me to go into the middle of downtown portland and i'm used to suburbia where houses and even if you want to go into you know the city proper or whatever of your suburb, it's a sprawl. There's no way in hell you would walk. There's just no way.
    3:50
    So it's different for me to go out and about in a city and walk around because this is what people do and have restaurants and stores and everything. I just went to a movie in the middle of downtown. It was like walking, and I was like, oh, hey, look, there's a movie theater inside this corporate office building, I guess. okay, let's go watch a movie.
    4:14
    It's strange to me. It's kind of interesting. It's kind of novel because I certainly do walk around. I did the same thing when I was in New Orleans, a very walkable city. I actually did the same thing when I was in Sydney, Australia with my wife on our honeymoon where we just walked everywhere. We didn't take a taxi or anything.
    4:33
    But it's also I would never – I don't know. I like suburbia. What can I say? You like suburbia. you like to be driving around I like the driving around but I also like the clear designation of shops and stores you might say you know here I'm constantly I've got my phone my google maps and it's constantly telling me what's coming up and what's where and you know you like to know this is where I eat this is where I sleep and live and this is where I shop this is where I sleep and live and down the road I can shop as well and all I have to do is walk yeah yeah it's a bit like the north lakes too where i live like it's a it's a planned community but inside the suburb itself there is a major shopping center and there's ikea and there's also costco um so you can't really walk that everything is not really walking distance you do have to actually drive or take public transport um and because of public transport here it's just buses in the actual suburb itself is really car because the bus service isn't great. It's every hour.
    5:41
    So, yeah, it's sort of, in a way, it's annoying. I like being able to just walk down to the shops and get something. But, you know, you have to always drive there.
    5:52
    And I don't know. I'm sort of a bit the other way, I guess. I think I probably enjoy, you know, the kids and I could walk down to the shops, get something and walk back again. but the closest shopping center the little community shopping center is a good 30 minute walk away so it's just too far well my very first day here I beelined it because I found out that it was only again half mile away 12 minute walk was an arcade called Ground Control here in Portland so in the Portland area there are 473 pinball machines in operation. Wow, that's a lot. It's staggering. How many pins per capita is that? Did I say 473? I mean, 743. Yeah, 743 is a larger number, isn't it? Yeah, the larger number. The 400 number was what I was thinking was Los Angeles. When I talk about Los Angeles, I'm talking about the spread of Los Angeles from, I mean, huge. This is basically all concentrated in Portland, downtown area of Portland and stuff. But I went over to this place called Ground Control. A couple of the people on the Pinball Arcade fan forums had recommended that I check it out. And I'm just going to read you the lineup that they have and see if this sounds like a place you'd like to go to. ACDC Pro, Adam's Family, Game of Thrones, The Hobbit, Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure, Kiss, Metallica, Monster Bash, Pabst Can Crusher, Scared Stiff, Simpsons Pinball Party, Star Trek Next Generation, Tron Legacy, Theater of Magic, Twilight Zone, Walking Dead, and Wizard of Oz. That all sounds pretty nice. I particularly like the sound of those Jersey Jack machines. It's not a shabby lineup. It's a pretty nice lineup. We just don't really see the Jersey Jacks on location down here at all. So, yeah, to play them, you pretty much have to go either to a private collection here or sort of interstate, or, sorry, overseas, where they're everywhere. The funny thing is I'm so spoiled by the pinball league that, so I went to this place and I was like, I'm not going to play any of the Williams and Bally machines that I've played dozens of times or whatever. I need to play machines that I haven't gotten my hands on. So I played the Hobbit.
    8:10
    Yeah, so I played the Hobbit and I played the Pabst Can Crusher. What did you think of Pabst? you know it's a little more fun than an EM just because there's more sound going on and it's livelier if this is what an EM is supposed to play like you know with the bounciness of the rubber and the strength of the flipper then sure EMs can be fun because we're talking Babs only has the little 2 inch flippers but Um, but, uh, yeah, it was kind of, it was kind of like, okay, this is, it kind of feels modern, but obviously the layout is pure EM. Um, I was playing the Hobbit. It's kind of boring. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. They just, I don't know. I, I thought it would be a little more exciting. And I, again, I think this is with Jersey Jack doing these wide bodies on Wizard of Oz and Hobbit. I think that's kind of, the mistake. Oh, really? See, I like Wizard of Oz as a game. I think it's got heaps of stuff to do in it. See, I don't like it. I love it. Yep. So I probably would really quite like Hobbit if I ever lay eyes on it. It'd probably right up my alley.
    9:32
    Yeah. The good news with this place was all the Bally and Williams tables were 50 cents. Oh, that's good. And all the Stern and Jersey Jack were 75 cents. That's pretty reasonable for today's prices.
    9:49
    Yeah, and then set up, of course, if you plop in two bucks, then you get five games. That, I think, was across the board for everything. Of course, I only cashed in five bucks worth of quarters, so I was feeding the beast the way I used to.
    10:06
    But, yeah, it was pretty cool, but it wasn't... Like I said, I guess I'm hungry for games that I haven't played. And I was really hoping I would come across a dialed in, which, nope. A little bit fresh still, I think, probably. A little bit fresh. And I was hoping to find a Batman 66 or a Ghostbusters. And it looks like this is what I'm going to do tomorrow, I believe. So one of the deals with Portland is they love their bicycles. Like, a lot. and they have these little bike rental kiosks all over the place, sponsored by Nike, essentially. Oh, okay. And you plunk in for $12. You can have the bike essentially for the day. They say 160 minutes worth of riding. And you can ride it to wherever, and then they have these spots all over the place that you just park it, and somebody else can obviously take your bike but there always more rental bikes there Yeah So I going to take that I believe because there a place I want to go to It two miles a little bit over two miles away from my hotel I just don't feel like walking all the way over there. It's called Quarter World. Yeah. But it's called Quarter World. And check out this lineup. Avengers, Baby Pac-Man, Ballet Game Show, Black Rose, Centaur, Circus Voltaire, Congo, Demolition Man. Oh, they do have dialed in. Hello. I'm definitely there. Elvira and the Party Monsters Flintstones, Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters Pro Gorgar, Guns and Roses Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, Medieval Madness Monster Bash, Pinbot, Party Zone Revenge for Mars, Rob Zombie Spook Show Simpsons, Tales of Rabin Knights, Theatre of Magic Walking Dead, The Who's Tommy Pinball and X-Files Oh jeez, that's an amazing lineup I would go there for sure Next time I head over to the States, I'll be going to Portland I think because, geez, that's amazing. Yeah, so I'm definitely going to hop on a bike and tackle that tomorrow. I would love to be able to play another Belly's Game Show again. It's so cheesy and good, that game.
    12:17
    Keith McTeith in there, the announcer in that game, if you've never played it before, he will laugh. It is classic 80s game show stuff. It's so good. That's one of those tables I'm not sure if I've played it in real life. I know for sure I've played it on PinVR or PinM. But it was so familiar to me that I've got to believe that I've plunked a quarter or two into it at some point. I mean, I'm sure I have. Because, you know, you go to Showcase Bonanza, which is basically the multiball. And it's so well, like any game for that era, the music is great. and it is very, very well integrated, the theme.
    13:00
    What were some of the other ones you brought out? There were some other older ones of that era as well, I think. But barely Game Show was the one that stuck out to me. I went, ooh, Game Show, yay. Yeah, well, of that era, so, well, there's Party Zone, which is kind of of that same era.
    13:18
    Oh, that's what I was going to ask you. it'll be interesting to see what your thoughts are of Ghostbusters Pro after you played it. And that sort of ramp assembly that kind of is the catch-all for every single ball that goes up to the upper level, it's kind of, I feel it's really poorly, it really does feel like a pro, if you know what I mean, compared to the full-blown LE. It's like, oh, yeah, they've just gone, right, what's the minimum amount of stuff we can do on this just to make sure the ball doesn't fly off the table. Okay, let's just let the ball do that. Whatever. Don't care. It's a pro. So, yeah, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that. I still have not been able to play an LE version of Ghostbusters yet, which apparently we may be able to do very soon.
    14:07
    The pinball arcade, there was an announcement the other day that Stern retweeted, saying that, oh, yes, Ghostbusters is very close to being done and everything like that, so that could be cool.
    14:20
    Yeah, You know, suddenly the thread about when we'll receive Ghostbusters was getting some heat, and I kind of joined in into that conversation. I want to just, I'll reiterate it here, too, in the podcast. That is, folks, remember, Stern Pinball Lab.
    14:38
    This is Stern hiring Farsight to make the game. Pinball Arcade is Farsight hiring themselves to make the game. That's right. So Stern Pinball app, when Farsight may have tables ready, they may want to release things, they may want to do bug stuff and everything. It's up to Stern.
    14:59
    They're the ones that – they're the client. Yeah. Yeah, they're the client. And if Stern wants to push something out early, then it can get pushed out early. If Stern says, no, we're holding on to it, even though it's complete and ready to go, they'll hold on to it. So it's one of those things where we get the frustration that you might be having with wanting stuff, feeling like the Stern app has not had any life to it. But just remember, it's very much actively being worked on.
    15:32
    But Stern, they're the ones with the game plan. It's got to work for their scheduling. Yeah. they want control over when a table which is essentially in the case of Ghostbusters will be the LE version and essentially will be made available inside the app and they have to balance it out with operators who bought these $9,000 machines and they've got them at a location like there's a lot of people and a lot of different moving concerns that need to keep happy here so it's sort of a bit of a tough thing to work around. I wouldn't like to be in far side shoes having to balance that. It would be hard. Very hard.
    16:15
    The thing also to keep in mind is that this might not necessarily be a bad thing either. That with releases being held or not coming out as frequently as everybody likes because the truth be told the client might wind up asking for things that benefit all of us. And since they are a client it's something that Farsight has to do as opposed to a TPA where they go we would like to but we can wait. Yeah, because we've got other things we can do.
    16:59
    It's a good point because I mean, yeah, clients they have an idea about what they want the ad to do and you know they're opening up the checkbook for it so it's it's pretty hard a contract manufacturer essentially to ignore the checkbook the lure of the checkbook so you know yeah i've been on many commercial shoots where we have what we call the client area so the lounge for the suits that are uh the marketing people or whatever whoever is responsible you know that's hiring for the commercial right so you got your director coming in and he'll map out everything that you're about to do set up the shot, they'll do a couple of takes, director will be like, I'm happy then he's got to go check with the clients and the feedback that comes back from the clients sometimes you're like, really? that's why we're having to do another take because they're looking at all these little tiny minutiae, they could care less about making an art piece they're making something to sell their product, so if hair is out of place. If a pepperoni isn't perfectly centered where they want it on that slice of pizza, nope. We need a new pizza. Let's do another take. And that's basically what Farsight is dealing with.
    18:14
    Yep, they want another slice. They want a better pepperoni. They've got the product that people want to use and know how to make it, but the client wants to still be represented in the best light possible. and again, there's plenty of commercials I've shot and I didn't see them again for, like, we shot it, and then I didn't see it air for six months. Yeah, right. Even though it was, you know, totally ready to go.
    18:45
    It didn't come out for six. Yeah. Hey, you mentioned to me you guys got a new beta for Android. Yeah, we did. We have got our hands on the Black Knight emulated version and also 5H2.
    19:04
    Now, have you, on Steam, have you had a chance to play Black Knight yet? I had a chance to play the emulated version, yes. Before I got pulled again. Wow. It is very good. It is very good to see that thing emulated. Boy, there's a lot of different stuff in there. Yeah, it's certainly no longer the black mark on TPA. It feels like what it should have felt like all along. Yeah, it's got a lot more audio in it, I think. There's a lot more speech calls happening.
    19:38
    Like, the thing talks a lot more in game over than it did in scripted version. Like, you know, all the canned responses, they combine them in very, very different ways to get a lot of speech out of the game, which just wasn't in the scripted version at all. So that's one big difference I noticed. the thing that I found interesting was that those drop targets still overweigh every other sound in the game like it's, they are just like always sounding blocking out all the other audio in the game which I actually thought might have been a byproduct of scripting the game but it doesn't seem to be the case it seems to be that it is part of that game that the drop targets overshadow everything else so that's fine So, yeah, I think the table is really, really tough. And I think the reason why it's so tough is it's that layout that we were talking about last time. Everything is being placed in weird positions, like the left ramp is just so, so hard to get, like so hard to shoot. I don't even know the angle that I need to use to approach it. I've still not really worked it out yet.
    20:47
    It's so weird. It's such a weird, weird angle. And everything else seems to be working fine. There were a few minor things that I picked up in the beta, which I'm pretty sure are going to be addressed, so I won't even bother mentioning them here.
    21:02
    But, yeah, that ramp, it's just, it throws out the geometry of the whole table for me. Like the left loop shot that you have to take, where you would normally shoot for the left loop, it's just ramp. So you've got to now adjust the way you would shoot for that shot. and the lock hole, the upper right lock hole, not the one where the rollers are, but where the ball would normally be locked on five power one, that is very hard to get into as well. Like it's another hard shot. So it might be one of those games that does actually grow on you, even though it's sort of like arguably the lesser of the two from a features perspective. it might be one of those ones that it might actually grow on you because of its brutality and if you want a really tough game and you want to just really get stuck into it and see how high you can get that bonus going it might actually redeem itself over time, I think it's one that you just it will grow on you, I think In his effort to try and convince me that it's a quality machine Norman was telling me that it gotten really narrow shots It does And he wanted to make sure that when they were tuning it when Rob was tuning it that he maintained that difficulty because he was like, if you make it easy, this table's a bust. It's got to be brutal because that's what it is on the real machine. So what you're saying seems to indicate that, yes, indeed, they at least captured that aspect of it. I remember playing it when I was over at Free Gold Watch back in 2014. And it was really... That ramp is just as hard to get in real life as it is in the game. So they really got that tuning down with it. I could never get it up the ramp in the arcade, ever. And I fluked it once. Oh, wow, I did it. Achievement unlocked. I actually got the ramp. In fact, I reckon they should make that an achievement on its own in this game. because it is truly that difficult to get. It should be like, that's a wizard goal. Get it off the ramp.
    23:14
    Apparently, Norman was also telling me something, you know, obviously Norman deals with the sound on the machines as well as many other things. If he only had to deal with sound, he would be completely happy, but that's not the case.
    23:29
    But he was telling me that and this started with Black Knight. The bonus count at the end So, you've got the, you know, going up the vertical strip down the center of the play field, you've got these numbers, and you're lighting them throughout the game. Then when you drain the ball, that's your bonus count that adds up. And totally, you hear these tones, just basically different increments. Yeah, ascending tones. Ascending tones, right? Well, that's not emulated. There is no emulation for that. So he has to go and activate every instance and record that instance.
    24:12
    So with Black Knight, I think he said there was 49 numbers, and then plus you got your multipliers. So it winds up being 200 and some different instances. And he had to go by hand, basically, and set it up, trigger it, record it. Set the next one up, trigger it, record it. and that's going to trigger it and record, right? So he's recording each bonus pattern. So if it's a multiplier of 10 times 2, then he has to set that up as an individual sound file. He can't trigger that and actually, because in the game, it would have been controlled by the sound chip and it would have actually modulated the sound based on, yeah. So he has to record each thing as a separate track. yes and I can't remember what the other table was that he said that had the exact same bonus count and he had to do that for also well along comes Firepower 2 he's got 99 possible multipliers so it's 400 and some different instances he spent 10 hours recording and he still had 100 more instances to go it's like What it reminded me of is what these guys do Q&A on video games, where it's like I had to run my character into every single segment of wall in every single room, and then I had to do it because now I had the pistol in my hand, and I had to do it over again. That's essentially what he was having to do. Oh, yeah. That is terrible. But I'll tell you what, his efforts have paid off in Black Knight because the bonus count, it's completely different to what it was. You can tell that every single time you get a bonus, it's going to sound different now, rather than like it did before, which is pretty much exactly what it sounded like.
    26:17
    So there you go, folks. There's something to look forward to in hearing. It's those little things, right? Yeah. no you were also mentioning something else about uh firepower 2 in this beta that i've never seen in tpa yet oh yeah this is probably lifting lifting the the veil a little bit here but the the first version of the beta that we got to see actually had an untouched play field in it so a play field that had just been photographed it even had some of the old like when they photographed it they may have removed the flipper bats and stuff but it had sort of i guess you could call them ghost images of the flipper bats and everything on there and i was going when i first saw it i went uh wow this playfield is super rough uh is this like the final version of the playfield like i've been seeing flipper bats and stuff like that and to close off the bug report i said surely this has got to be a placeholder there's no way you release this normally and i said oh yeah this is definitely going to be a big case of before and after with this particular the table so they haven't yet done the art pass on it so i've got a whole pile of screenshots of it um in its untouched form and i'm going to compare them with the the actual finished product because i'm really interested to see just how much the art team actually put into these tables to get them looking half decent it's really it's really interesting because you realize that Farsight doesn't have to buy pristine machines. They're going to do an art pass on all of them. Yeah. I know that in the case of Genie, it was rough as guts. Genie was really rough. There was a couple that I saw when I went and visited one of the times and I looked at the machines and I was like, wow, that's not what I expected to see. I expected to see this gorgeous machine and it looks like it was a routed machine. you know yeah just on the play field lots of rubbed off paint yeah so i mean there's a lot of like this you can see the tables showing it's got lots of yellow mylar on it and there's lots of um there's on the left loop um there's like a noticeable area of wear on there and like all the black is sort of like sort of a whitish looking black like it's sort of it's got this sort of a faded look to it um and you know there's you can see the clear division where around the flippers you've got the mylar protection layers on the in lanes that they're like you know they've got the black sort of marking around where the edge of the mylar is it's like really apparent um and just like the the wood grain is dirty like the color of the wood is dirty it's like yeah you can tell this is an old 80s machine um so i'm gonna be very interesting to see what the art team can do with it because to my eyes it's pretty wrecked well it makes me wonder too do they ever spruce up the machines afterwards or do they just make them work yeah I don't think I reckon if you went up there today that genie would still be that genie that you saw when you went up there and saw it in the meeting room like it they wouldn't spend any time touching up the play fields because to them it's not worth their trouble.
    29:42
    But maybe it's worth their trouble coming up now because we've gotten word that Farsight has, they're putting 20 of their machines out in the wild. On location. Yeah, on location.
    29:56
    They're doing a league or something, aren't they? Yeah, they're doing a pinball league, yeah. Starting up a pinball league. So if you have an art team that's already done art passes on all these play fields and making them beautiful, it wouldn't be difficult to make an overlay and make your play field look nice. If you could create a one-to-one CAD of the play field and then get that printed out at one of your printing places, there would be, for a one-off job, there wouldn't be any reason why they could do that, really.
    30:33
    That's something we're going to have to ask them the next time we talk to them. Have they done any kind of restoration to the machines? On the tables, yeah. And I'm talking, look, I know that mechanically they've done restoration, but I want to know art-wise, have they done anything? It would be an interesting question to pose. I think for those ones that, this is my assumption about what they'd be doing for their league tables, I reckon they probably have enough tables in their nearly, you know, well, let's call it, it wouldn't be 100 because some of the tables they had on loan. So let's call it 70 tables. I think they've only loaned less than five personally oh is that right okay so it'll be close it'll be close to that then so out of those tables there'd be specimens in their collection that would actually be pretty good still so I'd say that for the location base what they do is they do a mechanical pass on them they probably LED them and then they put them out because the play fields would be good enough that they wouldn't have to actually do anything to them and for those ones that are actually more rough as guts like genie and you know Firepower and those ones that maybe, what would you call it, play as condition.
    31:46
    You'd probably keep those in the studio and just keep those as sort of all for the game. And who knows? I don't know who would be up in Big Bear that could actually do restorations. They'd probably have to ship them away to get them done.
    32:01
    I'm sure they've got some pinball contacts. They might have just a couple of pinball contacts. I mean, Roger Sharpen and all those dudes probably know a few people. Yeah. I think Norman is pretty well connected as well, from what I understand. He knows a few people. Yeah. Particularly when it comes to sourcing tables. So, yeah. Tell you what, folks. Speaking of Norman, he and I've got to believe that Mike Lindsay is going with him. Replay Effects is coming up, I believe, next weekend, out there somewhere in Pennsylvania. Oh, is that right? And Norman is going out there to basically have a one-hour seminar.
    32:44
    And if you're wondering why we took last week off. Gap week. It was because we spent that time with Norman basically grilling him with questions that you, the audience, in a live situation might grill him with.
    33:00
    To prepare him for the onslaught, basically. Yes, to prepare him for the onslaught. and we found out all sorts of information that is killing us that now we can't mention because it doesn't fall into public purvey. But I think the good news is that where possible, Norman going to be quite transparent with what he going to be saying That the feeling that we both got I think Chris that the reason why he wanted us to actually do this is so he could actually provide just enough information about the things that potentially are a little bit off limits, but still give you guys answers. Exactly. Rather than on the fly have to say, I can't say anything about that, in a prepared way he can give information without giving away information, you know what I mean? That's right. Without bridging any NDAs, basically. Exactly, exactly. So I would definitely encourage you, if you have plans on going to Replay Effects, to hunt down that seminar and take a listen, and then let us know what is said, because then we can blab about that. Actually, we might actually have Norman after the fact come back on and basically give that seminar live here on the podcast so that you guys can hear that kind of information. It's been a while since we've talked to Farsight. especially in the past.
    34:19
    Yeah, I've got a feeling that just with the complexity of running this AMA, I don't think there's any plans for Farsight to be recording it. Yeah, no, I don't think so. Because sometimes it's just too hard to organize that when you're trying to present. But yeah, I mean, that's not going to stop anyone going there with a handheld recorder and having a chat. So, you know, if you want to do a bit of guerrilla recording, go ahead and do it. because they're not going to stop you doing it. Nope. Yeah. And then send us the link so that we can listen.
    34:54
    Yeah, totally. Totally. I think that is virtually all the pinball that we had this week. Yeah, it's sort of a little bit light on after the massive dump of information from Zen last week. Well, then I haven't been paying attention much this week because I've been here in Portland getting ready for the show. Yeah, that's right. which unfortunately because of this show guess what's getting put on hold firepower yeah but the good news is I'll have money to deal with it after the fact but well this is fine this is good that you'll be able to throw a bit more cash at it because you probably do need to throw a bit more cash at it at this stage well cash would be imminent yes because there's all sorts of parts that I need to buy and fixes that I'll need to be doing so I just remembered one more thing this was actually relating to Zen I had a Zen about a week ago tweeted out a screenshot of a turtle it seems to be the office turtle playing a version of Zenboom Pinball 3 but it was a blurred out table and I went hmm that just looks like Secrets of the Deep I would have thought that you might have actually used the opportunity to leak out a little bit more vision of one of the new tables and they went ah very good spotting yes it is uh secrets of the deep and yes we will be over time trickle feeding out some more information about it um and then i said well while i've got you what are the plans for android with this whole thing i said i know that it couldn't be a one-to-one match of course with zen pinball 3 and all the graphics and all that sort of thing but you know the multiplayer your stuff would be really welcome on Android. And the language they used in the response was picked up by somebody else who responded to the tweet thread. And the person who responded said, so are you saying that there is actually going to be a Zen Pinball 3 for Android based on your response? And no response.
    37:03
    So that could be interesting. They may be actually doing, like, essentially using Steam and console as a proving ground and getting everything done. And then they'll actually trickle out to mobile platforms. They were a little, I mean, that's what they did before. They were slower to get onto iOS.
    37:25
    They didn't jump on board right away. I think they maybe released, like, a couple of tables and that was it. And they were doing, you know, before they started doing the massive dump. But, yeah, no, I think that they're definitely using the consoles and Steam as the proving ground and then can go from there. But I also believe wholeheartedly they're going to be on mobile. It's just – Oh, I think they will be. Yeah. It'll just be – it'll be a slightly different offering, I think, though, slightly different. Yeah, it may not be quite what you're used to, but I – like I said, it just – My gut tells me, with as much as they're pushing the community aspect of pinball with Pinball FX3, what better thing to do it on than mobile? Exactly. And do it like what all these mobile games do. I play with my son, this Clash Royale, and it's so easy to connect with him and be in a clan and just send a message, hey, you want to play? Yep, boom, we're playing. And we're playing. It's job done. And there's no reason in my mind why you can't be doing that with Zen Pinball. I'm not talking about having two pinball machines side by side on your screen and seeing how it's playing. I'm just talking about the simple, we're playing at the same time, and we're seeing the other person's scores going and doing it that way. Typical pinball battle. That's really good. Or even just connecting via – and I don't know if it was this way for you on Android like it is on Steam, but just the constant, hey, you're approaching so-and-so's score. You've beaten so-and-so's score. Here's the next score to try and go for live while playing. Yeah, those are great. Like that sort of – that really goes, oh, I'm really about – or you're just about to beat your top score. Only three million points to go and you're like, oh, I'm so close to doing it. I've literally, because of that feature, I have had a bold drain, like, right as soon as I saw that message, because, you know, what I do, my eye flicked up to see what it was, and then the bolder rained on me. Yeah, yeah. And whereas if that happened with me playing TPA, I might be like, eh, you know what, I'm done. I'm going to find another table. I'm reloading that table on Zen. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm like, oh, damn it, I was right there. Let's go. You know, so. Yeah, exactly. Totally. Yeah. And I think it's interesting as well that on Android, the Zen Pinball on Android has a lot of different entries in Google Play Store. So every time they release a branded pack like a Star Wars pack, they'll release a Star Wars Pinball pack. Same with, you know, the Fox Studios one and Marvel. And they did the same with the Bethesda Studios pack as well. But the difference with that one is that is the platform that they introduced the competitive play on.
    40:21
    So it's only that particular version of the app that you could use and play head-to-head with other people. There's your beta. There's the beta. But that was a while ago. That was before all this was announced. Yeah, of course it was a while ago. That's why it was a beta. They don't do it like TPA where it's, hey, guys, we're going to have a beta, which is immediately going to roll into the actual release. Zen is going, hey, let's try this out. Let's take a couple months and figure it out. Let's basically do a test case and get the data on it, and then based on that data we work out how we proceed from there. And we won't make any promises. We're just going to introduce it, have you all guys give us your feedback, and we're mums the word, whether we use it again or not. It's like, ooh, thank you for your time. Yeah, very, very, yeah. it's a very different business approach, isn't it? But you're right. That's exactly what they were doing. So based on that alone, you can pretty much just be assured that they're going to be bringing it to Android. It's just they will just have to re-release everything. Yep. But yeah, it's going to be good. I can't wait. That thing keeps innovating. I love how the fact they keep innovating. And really, I think the customer research is really solid as a business. They really do look at the numbers quite a bit. like I'm talking from a product-oriented perspective here.
    41:44
    It's clear that they're actually a data-driven business when they're making decisions. So it's pretty cool.
    41:50
    All right, well, we're going to end this because Jared apparently is two-timing on me and has another podcast right after this to do. Well, it's not really a podcast. It's a video chat with one of my former workmates who's setting up a Minecraft server-side mod that will help people learn how to manage their type 1 diabetes. while they're in hospital by playing Minecraft. So same to kids. And I'm going to be lending my technical writing slash product management slash community building skills to that project because there's a hackathon coming up for it. So it should be a lot of fun. So I just want to sort of get a bit of a chat with the founders and see what their plans for it are and we can work on strategy. That's what we're doing. All right. Well, fine. Go be that way. folks why don't you go ahead and follow us on Twitter at Blockade I just took a look at our followers and the list is actually growing a little bit more than I expected so that's cool it's amazing what happens when you get enough followers because then it just exponentially multiplies we like that so follow the show at Blockade you can follow Jared at Jared Morgz or you can follow myself at ShutYourTraps on the Twitter you can check out our website blockadepinball.com that's where all of the archive of shows is as well as show notes and timing breaks and links to websites that we might have mentioned last but not least you can fire off an email to us blahblahblockade at gmail.com if you have any show suggestions or comments please communicate with us. We enjoy it. Yeah, have a chat.
    43:36
    Okay, well, until next week, maybe, depending on if I get out of town or not, and I'm sleeping or not, I don't know. We'll... No promises. No promises, but hopefully we'll be back next week to do more of this stuff. Until then, bye-bye. Bye.
    43:56
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    44:11
    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.