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Episode 32 - Flip Flip Pew Pew

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 47m·analyzed·Apr 9, 2017
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

P3 system lacks killer app; Batman 66 impresses with code depth and flow improvements.

Summary

Tony and Dennis from Eclectic Gamers Podcast discuss their recent experiences at Texas Pinball Festival and other gaming activities. They provide detailed impressions of the Multimorphic P3 system (praising its innovation but noting the lack of a 'killer app' beyond Lexi Lightspeed), share extended gameplay impressions of Batman 66 (noting significant improvements over Batman Dark Knight with intricate code by Lyman Sheets), and discuss various other gaming projects and purchases.

Key Claims

  • Multimorphic P3 system is now more competitively priced relative to other pinball manufacturers due to recent price inflation in the industry

    high confidence · Tony discusses how P3's $10k price point now looks more reasonable compared to collector's editions and limited editions from Jersey Jack, Stern, and Dutch Pinball

  • Lexi Lightspeed is the only traditional pinball game on the P3 system currently available

    high confidence · Dennis states 'Lexi is like the only traditional pinball game still with the system that I'm aware of' and both hosts emphasize need for additional games

  • Batman 66 has more code depth than expected at current release stage and is significantly better designed than Batman Dark Knight

    high confidence · Tony: 'Compared to Batman the Dark Knight, Batman 66 is way better. It's a way better player.' Notes intricate tracking mechanics and risky shot design

  • Lyman Sheets programmed Batman 66 code and is known for high-level competitive play sensibilities

    high confidence · Tony: 'The programmer on it is Lyman Sheets, who's known for, he's a high-level competitive player. His code's generally the most well-received. He's the one who did the Walking Dead code.'

  • Minor villains in Batman 66 are not yet fully implemented in current code

    high confidence · Tony: 'The main thing that's notable that's not in the programming right now are the minor villains. They don't really do much.'

Notable Quotes

  • “Through no action on their part, the P3 platform is now much more competitive because the other pinball manufacturers have decided to increase their margins so much.”

    Tony @ ~18:00 — Indicates how industry-wide price increases have inadvertently benefited Multimorphic's positioning

  • “They need the awesome killer app. And then I think they reach that level where they're competitive, coupled with the inflation on the traditional pins.”

    Tony @ ~20:00 — Identifies P3's critical need for a standout game title beyond Lexi Lightspeed

  • “Compared to Batman the Dark Knight, Batman 66 is way better. It's a way better player.”

    Tony @ ~35:00 — Direct performance comparison establishing Batman 66 as significant improvement over previous Stern Batman iteration

  • “It moves a lot faster. The rotisserie thing that they're doing with the bat phone and the ball locks and stuff, it's a really cool mechanic.”

    Tony @ ~37:00 — Specific gameplay mechanic praise indicating thoughtful design improvements in Batman 66

  • “They've made a lot of lucrative things really, really dangerous.”

    Tony @ ~39:00 — Notes Batman 66 design philosophy of risk-reward mechanics in shot selection

Entities

MultimorphiccompanyStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyDutch PinballcompanyLyman SheetspersonGeorge GomezpersonTonypersonDennispersonCarrie Wingperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Private Batman 66 gameplay session organized by local winner showcased machine to skilled competitive players including Carrie Wing and Jason

    high · Dennis describes 9pm-3:15am gameplay session at Gavin's home with multiple area players attending

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Batman 66 with Lyman Sheets code likely to feature competitive depth through risk-reward shot selection and multiplier tracking mechanics

    medium · Tony discusses intricate combo tracking, bonus multipliers, and risky shot positioning that rewards skilled play

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Batman 66 pitch-and-bat tuning issue where majority of balls drop between flippers; hosts question if intentional or implementation flaw

    medium · Tony: '50% of the balls went straight down the middle between the flippers' and notes similarity to Dennis Nordman zombie pitch-and-bat performed better

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Batman 66 implements risk-reward shot design philosophy where high-value targets are positioned as dangerous or difficult to hit

    high · Tony: 'They've made a lot of lucrative things really, really dangerous' and 'scoop that's the Commissioner Gordon shot now, and it's sort of offset to the right from the middle, so it's dangerous if you want to try and boost your bat phone'

  • $

    market_signal: Industry-wide pinball pricing increases have inadvertently improved P3 system's competitive positioning at $10k price point

    high · Tony: 'Through no action on their part, the P3 platform is now much more competitive because the other pinball manufacturers have decided to increase their margins so much'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.323

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, April 9th. It's episode 32. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're going to talk to you about pinball and video games. And once again, tabletop is going to die on the vine. Poor little tabletop. Well, we can talk a little bit about Can't Con, I suppose, at the end, but we don't have any games. I don't have anything big and special. I haven't played anything. I had that light dose of the con crud when we came out of TPF. Our listeners really embraced that during episode 31, in fact. Well, I went and we got back on Sunday with Monday morning very, very early. And we recorded on Monday And I was off work on Monday I went to work on Tuesday and I had the crud Then on Wednesday I went to work Got in a car, drove to Wichita Spent the night in Wichita For some classes and stuff And then drove back on Thursday And on Friday I was still feeling kind of down in the dumps And then I woke up Saturday morning And I felt like somebody hit me in the face With a sledgehammer My sinuses were terrible, oh they were so bad I slept a huge chunk of the day, and then Sunday I was fine. It was gone. So, good. Yeah, I don't know. It was weird, but it... Had to break you before you could be up right there. Yeah, it was pretty bad. But other than that, not a whole lot's been going on. I've survived another trip around the sun. Happy belated birthday. Thank you. And I'm 24. You sound 23 Time is being kinder to you than it is to myself Yeah Add a decade or so onto that Or a decade and a half onto that Let's go with O's though I've been playing some games That don't involve spreadsheets in space Though only a couple Because I've been doing a lot of spreadsheets in space I know, and I know one of them we're going to hit on in our video game segment. Yes, we are. It'll be fun.
2:29
And then I've been, I finished a couple new audio books, and one of these days I'm just going to have to do a big audio book roundup because I'm waiting until I've got two series that I'm reading, listening to, that are on book two, and book three is out in book form but not in audio book form, and I don't really want to talk about them until they're all out and done. because they're very funny and very enjoyable, but I'd like to have them all out before I recommend them to people.
Gavin
person
Jasonperson
Batman 66game
Lexi Lightspeedgame
Batman Dark Knightgame
Cannon Lagoongame
Walking Deadgame
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
Project Pinballorganization
Highway Pinballcompany
Pinsideorganization
Solar Fireperson
  • ?

    personnel_signal: Lyman Sheets' competitive player background influences Batman 66 code design with intricate multiplier and risk mechanics similar to Walking Dead

    high · Tony: 'The programmer on it is Lyman Sheets, who's known for, he's a high-level competitive player. His code's generally the most well-received. He's the one who did the Walking Dead code.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: P3 head-to-head game positioned as proof-of-concept rather than primary revenue driver; limited practical applications for home market

    medium · Tony questions home adoption: 'How many homeowners are going to buy two of this?' and speculates head-to-head designed more for arcade/location use than home collectors

  • ?

    product_concern: P3 system's game library consists primarily of Lexi Lightspeed as the only traditional pinball game, with Cannon Lagoon, pitch-and-bat, and head-to-head games serving limited niche purposes

    high · Tony: 'Lexi is like the only traditional pinball game still with the system that I'm aware of' and both hosts emphasize critical need for another strong game title

  • ?

    technology_signal: P3 system represents modular hardware approach emphasizing ease of storage and game swapping for home environments

    high · Dennis: 'It's entirely modular. It's even easier to store than the entire playfields are' compared favorably to Highway Pinball's swappable playfield complications

    • 3:01
    But otherwise, I haven't been doing a whole lot. What have you been up to? Well, now, I do have one other question. You didn't make any major purchases when we were in Texas. Oh, yeah. So I know we're a three-part podcast. I'm wondering if you happen to buy anything that maybe relates to one of our other segments. I did. Since I didn't buy any pinball machines or anything, when I got back, Micro Center had a really good sale on 24-inch monitors. So I added a third 24-inch monitor to my battle station here. So I've got three monitors now. Unfortunately, it was a really good deal on this new one. But where my old ones are several years old and they're LCDs and the new one is an LED, You can definitely tell which one the new one is by look, even though the bezels are almost identical.
    3:51
    But the new one's a lot brighter. So I'm going to have to, that means I've got to replace the other two now. But we'll get to it over time. Yeah, that's true. It'll happen eventually. And 24 of it is just way too bright. But at least you have it centered so that it's balanced. Yeah, that's what I did is I centered the new one. But, yeah, I've been wanting three monitors for a long time now. And now that I have them, I know that three monitors are amazing. And I have no burning desire for a fourth monitor. I'm very happy with three monitors. Surely. You were happy with two monitors for a while as well. Well, no, from the minute I got two monitors, I wanted a third monitor.
    4:35
    Yeah, I wanted a third monitor the day I got my second monitor. My thing, thinking up for a fourth monitor now is that my desk, even with my new huge desk, is pretty, I don't want to fill too much more of it with monitors the way things are setting now. So I'd have to start going vertically. And I'm already getting annoyed comments about not having my own place or my own room where I'm causing issues for everybody else. So I'm going to try to stop my spread from taking over too much more of everything. Well, that's pretty nice of you. That makes sense. Yeah, I can see you drawing the line at three. I've so far drawn the line at one.
    5:17
    Once you go to two, you'll realize that it's almost impossible to use a single monitor. At work, we've got single monitor computer. About half of our computers are double monitors, and the other half are single monitors. and the single monitor computer is annoying me so much because it's like I can't do half the stuff I want to do. I mean, I can. It's just really annoying. Yeah, you'd just be crippled. You can't accomplish next to anything. Inefficient. Yeah, see, because now I can do spreadsheets in space on two monitors and still watch Netflix on a third. Or I can do spreadsheets in space on three monitors, which has happened at times. Or like I've been doing a lot of stuff Well like right now because now I've got our notes On one page I've got our Recording stuff on another monitor And then I've got the third monitor Set up so I can look up anything That I need to look up during the way instead of Bouncing back and forth And I've also got a nice little thing Going like when I'm playing normal Games that don't require two or three monitors That I can still do Have information up on one monitor and watch Netflix or do something else. It's really nice. Cool. Well, I'm glad you like it. It sounded like you were pretty sure you would. Yeah, I knew it, and I'm pretty happy with it. Well, I did not buy any new monitors or much of anything, really, but I have been working on a few things. So I did last weekend was the 403 monthly pinball tournament, which I went to and out at, which is not atypical for me. But I did pick up an interview that we're going to drop in during our pinball segment, so that was good, and we'll hit on that when we get to that part.
    7:03
    Video Game Front has been a mix of things. I finished Final Fantasy XV, finally. I just can't, you know, I started it, it was all right. It took under 30 hours for me to win. I think I was somewhere between 27 and 28 hours. and that was me pushing pretty much straight through after about the 18 or 20 hour point, I guess. I did have to grind a few levels to beat the last chapter, because you need to be around level 45, I think, to pull that off, and I was at about 39 when I quit doing side quests. I just needed to get the game off my plate, because I wanted to start other things, but I just don't like leaving games in limbo, and it was good enough that I wanted to finish it, but I kind of had to make myself just punch through it, which I have done. So it wasn't like, say, old Final Fantasy VII where it was just soul-inducing and you didn't want to do anything else until you'd finished all the awesomeness of that one.
    8:08
    No. But it wasn't so bad that you were just going to let it go. Right, right. No, it's a very competent game. I didn't enjoy the combat in it. They've gone with an active combat system, which I think was smart, but I didn't find the combat fun. I didn't enjoy doing it. It feels like I'm just holding down the B button most of the time and letting my character, you know, it looks cool, but I'm not doing a lot. It's not like a hack and slash game where I'm comboing and such. It's more like the combos are automatic, so it didn't rise to the level that I wanted it to be combat-wise. And then there's a lot of time spent in the car. you're driving around from place to place. Sometimes you're allowed to fast travel. A lot of times you're not. I actually had a travel. I probably should have just fast traveled to somewhere first and then did the rest of the journey, but I had a link up and it wouldn't let me fast travel it. Ten actual minutes in the car, just sitting there, and the characters are just supposedly talking. You don't hear them. You can listen to music. It's got a lot of padding in it. The smart thing that they did with this in response to, I believe, 13 is the big criticism of XIII was totally linear up until one section at the end of the game which you could then go back to and do all the high level stuff this time they made it extremely open world and it really is it really feels it, it feels it maybe more than any of the old Final Fantasies even did but it's like okay well but you're not going to be high enough to do a lot of those fights you know you've just got those sort of invisible barriers that you'd expect where you'll be punished because you'll die trying to do it. But I thought that was smart. They did a lot of smart things. It looks great. It's well voice acted. The characters are the characters you'd expect out of a Final Fantasy or most JRPGs, actually. So, I don't... If you like JRPGs, I think you'll probably find this game worth playing, but it didn't blow me away. That's just sort of the case of what it is.
    10:09
    That's been kind of the case with Final Fantasies for a while, A.V. I wonder if Final Fantasy is just done. I mean, here's, you know, that's an interesting question that, you know, maybe we could dive in depth at some point on. My theory is the problem with Final Fantasy is they're spending way too much time in between games. This game had been announced like a decade ago. That is just, it's not, they're not good enough for that. That's Duke Nukem Forever Plus lifecycle stuff, and it doesn't make any sense. They're just not that good. They're not good enough when you compare it to a Tales game like the Asperia and all that. There are other very, very competent, very well-received JRPGs that are not taking this sort of development cycle. They are not good enough to warrant it. So what I think they need to do is start spitting out a game every two to three years and show that they can put out competent, quick games and then kind of go from there and see what they need to do. But you just can't build up this much hype and then drop something like this. It wasn't Duke Nukem forever. It's not bad. It's just, there's no, you look at this and you're like, you don't think it took 10 years. You just don't. So, anyway, it was all right.
    11:23
    And I've started a couple other games, which I'll go into in the video game segment. But I do want to note, one of them that I've started, I just started it yesterday, is Battle Group 2. I actually got a copy of that from the Link Cable podcast. They sent me a Steam code. and I assume it was that I answered a question they had on most underrated title screen in video games, which was a great question because it made me spend way more time than I should have. I should have been working and instead I was trying to think up, oh well that's a really good screen. Oh, everyone knows that. I need an underrated one. I'm going through and I'm looking at clips trying to figure out which games had really good video game title screens, not intros, but just the title screens. So anyway, I went with Spec Ops The Line because it was really awesome how they did it. But it was an interesting question. And that made me think, you know what, we should probably poach that idea. I've seen a few other podcasts do it where they, I mean, it was just like, you know, you get humble bundle codes or whatever, and then you can give away games. It's cheaper than sending T-shirts.
    12:25
    That's not a bad idea at all. So anyway, I'll go into the game, though, later on. And then let's see, a couple other pinball project stuff. I did buy a mod for my Star Trek at TPF, and I finally put it in. The install guide for Measel Mods was great. It was no problem, except I made a boo-boo.
    12:46
    I never on Star Trek lifted the play field all the way up and rested against the back box, so I was being super careful. I've got my moving blanket out. It's draped. I've got it all lined up. I'm making sure the cords aren't catching. Lift it all the way up. Smack, smack, smack, smack. I forgot to pick the balls out. Oh, no. I had to take the balls out. Every ball fell and bounced over onto Superman's glass, and each one smacking it. I'm thinking, oh, gosh, that's going to shatter. That's the biggest piece of glass I have. It's going to be expensive. It did not break. It did not chip or anything. You know, tempered glass is supposed to hold up to a few good smacks, but I just thought, oh, my gosh, how stupid could I be to not take the balls out? I mean, I do that from time to time in single ball games where I'll not put it all the way back, but I'll lift it enough, and on the older games in particular, that it'll roll out and go to the back of the play field and be like, ah, I forgot the one ball in the trough. But no, this one, every single one is, oh, it was annoying. But other than that, mod went in fine. I also ended up having to take that glass out of Superman anyway because I ordered some stand-up targets. I had a broken one, and just the plastic was broken on the stand-up. But Atari used, they had to be special, so they used octagon shapes. And they're not the easiest thing to acquire. But someone had parted out an Atari Space Riders, which is the only other Atari game I know of that used white octagon stand-ups. So I bought those off eBay or won the auction. So I got those, and I replaced my broken one after I cleaned them all up. So I have a couple spares. And so that's pretty good for that. and then I guess the last thing, back hopping over more on the video game side I know I've mentioned a few times I'm on, I'm one of the volunteer staff over at the True Achievements website, which they track games mostly Xbox games, but they actually have a couple other sister sites, True Trophies for the PlayStation people and True Steam Achievements for PC and I've been on the genre excuse me, the game information team for years, I think since 2014, and I was brought in to help do genre assignments. And they finally moved to a multi-genre system for all of the sites. So now it's not having to shoehorn every single game into just one genre, which was great. And it sounded like the plan was to move over towards community voting and community deciding to set all of that stuff. Sort of, I guess, akin to how Steam does it. And I thought, I can finally retire from this because, you know, with the podcast and everything, I'm busy enough. I don't need to be on staff anymore. And so I offered, I told them, don't feel like you need to shoehorn me in to keep me on game info. I don't want to do flagging on achievements and stuff. It's not interesting to me. And they sent me a message back and I thought it would be thanks, you know, thanks for your service. Okay, no problem. And it says like, no, we, the community has been messing up on the genre assignments. They're inconsistent. We need a team to maintain, maintain integrity to the I'm still doing it. So I said, yeah, I'll still work with that because that's fine. But anyway, I'm glad they finally went multi-genre. It's going to solve a lot of problems. But I've just been so busy since getting back from Texas because there was this litany of games that would be like the 360 version and the Xbox One version weren't put in the same genre. So you just had to, there's been a lot of fixing. So anyway, so that was quite an intro, but I'm done with it now. and that means we can go on to pinball which is what the listeners want that's what they want it's what they need it's what a lot of them want we have a lot of pinball listeners and we appreciate all of you pinball people and so we will give you what you need and you know what I was looking at our one note list here holy cow can I please have one I get it for the pinball people I love talking about pinball but you know what we are a mixed gaming podcast why is there so much pinball news again we've had one episode so far in 2017 that was not super heavy in pinball and this one I can already tell is going to be heavy pinball again I'm not going to say feels bad man I'm just going to say feels busy man I think this is something we're going to see a lot of this year unless this year is front loading all the pinball stuff this year is going to be kind of heavy I think you're right I guess the hobby's grown enough that there's more news than it was a year ago when we were looking and it was like, you know what, we probably won't be able to talk pinball heavily all the time. And we didn't. But let's go ahead and dive right in. First thing that we need to go ahead and hit on is we had one of our listeners on Pinside, his handle is Solar Fire. He asked us what our thoughts were on the P3 system, the multimorphic P3 system, because we didn't talk about it during our TPF episode. And so he was curious if it was just an oversight or if we hadn't actually played it. And so, anyway, so here we are. I have played it before. I know you have played it before. Yeah, I would call it an oversight. I would have called it an oversight because I played Lexi the Lightspeed last year, and I played it again this year. I played the, oh, I don't remember what the cannon. Cannon Lagoon. Yeah, Cannon Lagoon. I played that last year and this year. I played the pitch and bat game this year The only time I ever saw the head to head game Where there wasn't like a bunch of people there playing Was one of the times when I was wandering alone So I didn't play it And the The little pinball training game Is something that I would really actually kind of like For my kids I think that would be a pretty good thing I didn't spend a lot of time there Because we spent a lot of time there last year So I just kind of touched them And played them a little bit and I didn't spend a whole lot of time there, and I didn't even really think about it because there wasn't a whole lot of change from last year. I do like what they are doing.
    18:54
    I think the combinations that they've put together and the ability to switch stuff up is going to be a very good thing going on.
    19:03
    But all in all, it's pretty much the same as last year, except for they're in production now, which is good. and I don't know, none of the games are, I think once they get another game besides Lexi, that'll be, that's going to be the important thing, when they get another big, true pinball game game. Did you get a chance to try the pinball tutorial? Yeah, I played it. When I, at that time, there was nobody on the head-to-heads, there was nobody on the pinball tutorial game while I was walking around by myself, So I played it some, a little bit, and it's just neat. It's a little, I don't think it's something that I would be all about all the time, but for learning skills and stuff, it seems okay. When I played it, I was mainly thinking about my kids more than anything else. Right. It's something for them. And I think a lot from what I've seen, I've seen some people comment on the tutorial and mentioning that, you know, teaching new players basic techniques and intermediate techniques as they move along.
    20:12
    I got similar. You actually got more time in it this year than I did. I only did the pitch and bat this year. Last year I played Canyon Lagoon and I played Lexi Lightspeed. I really liked and I enjoyed Lexi quite a bit. Canyon Lagoon reminded me more of a tutorial style thing, actually, because of the, in terms of I thought this will really teach you about trapping up and shooting or aiming on the fly because of how the boats work.
    20:39
    So, yes, I did go up and I did explicitly take time to take a look at the cabinet stuff now that they're in production, what the final version looks like, because it was very prototype looking in 2016. I think it looks good. Cabinet looks great. I heard good things about the head-to-head game, but I didn't get any time on it. I didn't try the training game. The pitch and bat I did not care for.
    21:03
    I think I've read that they're planning to make it so that the ball doesn't randomly pitch out from different areas. I didn't mind that part. This is the one I was playing. 50% of the balls went straight down the middle between the flippers.
    21:17
    And, you know, maybe they wanted me to nudge the machine to try and hit it. I just wasn't expecting that out of a pitch and bat. So I'm going to guess that was how it was tuned and that wasn't on purpose. But it made it frustrating. I mean, I'd also played the Dennis Nordman zombie pitch and bat, and I thought it was a lot better. So that, you know, just comparative wise, I just didn't like it as much. But overall, I'm pretty much in the same boat as you.
    21:43
    In 2016, I remember when we talked about this, my big concern at the time was the $10,000 price point. I was having trouble imagining that people would be comfortable, even if you got two games with it, and you could rationalize what's $5,000 a game. It's still $10,000 for one cabinet, and I just really questioned whether or not people would be able to justify that. I do not have that concern anymore because pinball prices have inflated so much over the last year that now this looks even more like a deal than it did then. So you get these various games, however many come with whatever arrangement you choose to buy, and you're going to sit there and you're going to be like, okay, well, but you look at the collector's edition and limited edition game runs of things from Jersey Jack and Stern at this point, or Dutch Pinball and its Bride of Pinbot 3.0, or excuse me, Bride of Pinbot 25.
    22:38
    And this all of a sudden is in line with all of that. So through no action on their part, the P3 platform is now much more competitive because the other pinball manufacturers have decided to increase their margins so much. So that's good for the P3. What's bad is the same thing you brought up. I still think they're lacking what I would call from the software side a killer app. They need some game that just blows people away. They don't have the killer app. Lexi Lightspeed, I hear positive things on. I don't think I've ever read anyone who said they loved it, though. And currently, it feels like, I mean, we got the canon game. We got the head-to-head. We got the tutorial thing, and we got the pitch and bat. But Lexi is like the only traditional pinball game still with the system that I'm aware of. So where are, you know, we need to see the other titles. And what they really, I mean, they really just need one more, but it just needs to be awesome. They need the awesome killer app. And then I think they reach that level where they're competitive, coupled with the inflation on the traditional pins, that people will be like, well, you know what? You get Lexi and you get this new super awesome game that plays amazing. It's better than Tiled Ant. That's what they need, I think, for it to really, really be successful. But we'll see how many of the units they're able to move. I think a lot of people might be holding off, though, because there isn't a killer app yet and you don't want to. It's a great idea. I still love it. It's the most innovative thing in pinball. but I really want to see another traditional pinball game come out, and I want it to be better than Lexi. Yeah, that's something that I think we can both agree on. They need another game. Lexi is an okay game. That's the most I'll give it is it's okay. It's nothing wonderful to write home about. It's nothing terrible. It's very in the middle, and it does a good job, I think, of showing off what the system can do without being something that really stands out.
    24:53
    So I think as a first game, it makes definite sense, but there needs to be another game. There needs to be something else, something to really grab the people and make the purchase fully worthwhile. because, yes, I like the pinball trainer as an idea for people who don't play pinball or for, like, my kids and stuff. But, again, I'm not spending $10,000 for a pinball trainer. I'm not spending $10,000 for a bat and ball game that I can promise you I will never play. And same thing with Cannon Lagoon. Cannon Lagoon is kind of interesting as a learning thing, but I would never, it's not something I would turn on and play typically as my first choice of what I was going to play. so and the head-to-head game requires you to have two machines so there's twenty thousand dollars yeah that'd be so interesting on location but but again that it's a lot that's a lot it's a lot of investment and they've definitely structured this to be more oriented towards the home environment right as of the the whole idea i mean that's like that's the greatest thing about it that's what where i think they've done way better than highway has about you know highway and its swappable playfield idea was a decent concept, but I don't push it in a way that I think really makes sense. The fact that you had to upgrade the system from full throttle for Alien to work and just other things, complications that cropped up. And this is entirely modular. It's even easier to store than the entire playfields are. You know, that's the niche. The head-to-head doesn't meet that in my mind. How many homeowners are going to buy two of this? I just, I don't see that. But if they were thinking that this might be a way to maybe some arcades might be in on it, you know, I could kind of envision it. But again, there's just not enough applications. I think that might be more proof of concept than anything, though. I not sure they I not sure the head really designed to move units And I heard it was fun And we seen that in the past with pinball trying to do it Like NBA fast break I believe allowed head in some linked way But, you know, that was a lot less money. I don't forget there was the joust machine back in the day. Oh, sure. And someone had a Gottlieb, I think it was soccer-themed or football-themed at TPF. I didn't get time on it, but I saw people playing it all the time. That was head-to-head, you know, staying on opposite ends. And so, yeah, there's some pretty cool ideas you can do with it. But, you know, $20,000 to be able to do just the one cool idea, it's not going to, I don't think that's a motivator. And I'm not sure it was meant to be. It's just, but it's not.
    27:31
    So, anyway, that's P3. Let's move on to another game that's all right or good, depending on your perspective. And that would be Batman 66. Tony and I were invited along with some of our other area players we have a local, his name's Gavin he won a Batman 66 as part of a charity raffle I think it was Project Pinball Charity but there are a couple others that do these sort of things anyway, he won a Batman 66 so it was a game that I didn't think we were going to ever see on location it's not on location, but we know someone who has one so he invited people over to try it and I was able to attend because I had the week off after Texas So I didn't have to get up because he invited people over at 9 p.m. after he was off work and taking care of everything with the kids. And it was so good that I did have the week off. We did not leave until 3.15 a.m. Wow. So, yes, I was very tired the next day, but it was a lot of fun. I wasn't able to go because that was the day before I left for Wichita. So I figured I should spend some time with the family since I'd only been back home for two days. I was about to leave him for another night.
    28:44
    And Gavin really lucked out because, besides me, he actually got a couple of our area players. Carrie Wing, who I'm going to have the interview with later, she came, and so did another player of ours, Jason, an area player who's also exceedingly good at pinball. So he actually got a couple of people who know how to blow machines up. And I never finished ahead of Carrie or Jason. I think I took third on one game, and the rest of the time I was fourth. so anyway I just wanted to give some quick thoughts about Batman 66 because I got to have a number of games on it actually I was pleasantly surprised I know the code isn't very far along compared to a lot of other releases that Stern has had and that's been a big criticism about Batman 66 that the code has been slow to come out there actually is already quite a bit of depth to this game and so I guess the first thing I want to say though is Compared to Batman the Dark Knight, Batman 66 is way better. It's a way better player. So when George Gomez was going out and saying that he was improving the flow compared to Batman the Dark Knight, that was true. When he said he was trying to make it play better, that's true. The game, comparatively, I can't imagine anyone saying that Dark Knight plays better than Batman 66. It's just a better game. It moves a lot faster. The rotisserie thing that they're doing with the bat phone and the ball locks and stuff, it's a really cool mechanic.
    30:12
    They have a hurry-up mode, but instead of the bat car thing where you just keep hitting the ramp over and over and over and over, if you want to keep charging it up, they've got a scoop that's the Commissioner Gordon shot now, and it's sort of offset to the right from the middle, so it's dangerous if you want to try and boost your bat phone and stuff. And it tracks that. It tracks your combos. It tracks your bat phone, hurry up cash in and all that. They've made a lot of lucrative things really, really dangerous. And the programmer on it is Lyman Sheets, who's known for, he's a high-level competitive player. His code's generally the most well-received. He's the one who did the Walking Dead code. So it already has this intricate stuff where you can take risky shots and build up multipliers. You can light particular shots for extra bonus, where we're talking 2x, 3x, 6x. You can get all sorts of fancy stuff going on with that. The main thing that's notable that's not in the programming right now are the minor villains. They don't really do much. And there are lights, there are inserts to indicate, like, Season 1, Season 2, Season 3. That stuff's not incorporated yet. So Gavin gave me a total rundown on his understanding of the software and walked me through all the basic modes and stuff. and Jason went and got into the wizard mode while he was there and set Grand Champion, of course, because that's what he does.
    31:33
    And so anyway, it would be enough that, you know, if I were to enter a charity contest and it'd be like pick Aerosmith Premium or Batman 66 Premium, I'd actually have to think about it now. I haven't had a ton of time on Aerosmith, but with alignment on code with Batman and what I've seen in the game so far, in a home environment, I think that could be, it's got a lot of legs on it. I think you could have a lot of fun, and it's going to have a lot of depth. So, anyway, I was impressed. I thought, wow, this actually plays a lot better than I expected. And I like the LCD integration on Batman better than I do on Aerosmith. Really? You think it works better? I do. I do. It just feels like you're in the movie, or the TV show, excuse me.
    32:23
    Aerosmith is good, too. of the animated thing. It's just, again, we've had this talk before. You know, Aerosmith's the music pin. It's not taking me on a journey. It's not telling me a story. And Batman is kind of trying to tell me a story. I'm playing the TV show. It's got some funny animations in and of itself. The Bat-fan, they've patched it so it's not always honking at you. That's actually timed. So you have to hit the Bat-fan while it's beeping or keep hitting your Gordon shots to make it more and more and more valuable. But if you don't hit your Gordon shots and you don't hit your phone, phone turns off. You got your own phone back on. It's not the safest shot in the world. So, you know, make your choices well. But anyway, yeah, I think it's actually a pretty good player.
    33:01
    I almost, I get it with the theme, but, you know, I kind of wish this, I think it's going to have enough depth that it could have really warranted, from a player standpoint, making a pro version and putting it out en route. I'm not surprised Stern didn't, given the theme just isn't appealing enough for that. But, yeah, I think it's a pretty good player. Awesome. I look forward to getting a chance to play it at some point. I believe that we do have one. One did end up coming to 403. I'm pretty certain I saw 403 do put an update up on the Facebooks earlier this week that they have. They've got a Big Lebowski and a Batman 66 now. I'm trying to look it up. I'm not surprised about it. Yeah, I knew about Big Lebowski coming. Of course, that is an excellent segue, Tony, because Dutch Pinball is next on the agenda. I try. So you tried very well. And as those who listened to the last episode know, there has been a lot of drama surrounding Dutch and their contract manufacturer, ARA or ARA. We call them ARA. I don't know if that's right or not.
    34:07
    Anyway, just a little brief update. There has been some new news. The manager at ARA who was involved with working with Dutch Pinball is gone now. I read that he was terminated, but I don't know that for a fact. And no one knew if he was terminated that it had anything to do with the Dutch Pinball contract. Since that happened, though, Dutch Pinball and ARA have sat down and had a meeting together. Dutch reported back indicating that they think the discussions did happen and they felt the meeting went well, but that they have not reached an agreement yet on resuming production for the Big Lebowski. I mean, online on Pinside in particular, there's been a lot of excitement. Obviously, there's a sense by a lot of the community that the manager might have been the roadblock at ARA. This, of course, got spun to the degree that the manager was fired from ARA because possibly he was taking money and exploiting this contract in violation of what the terms said. Based off of the results of the meeting, I don't know what your impressions would be. My thought is if this doesn't immediately result in resumption, that ARA and whatever the issue was with the manager, at least it wasn't wholly the notion that the manager somehow was just outright breaking the contract, but they actually think that they have cause to continue to hold things up. Yeah, I think it's the same thing. I mean, we don't even know that that's why the manager was terminated. It could have been anything. and they just have a new person in there wanting to start their negotiations back up in their own way. So it could be anything.
    35:50
    I'll be interested to see. I know that I'm still of the opinion that if Dutch does not get the Big Lebowski back in production and the 40 or 50 machines, whichever it was, that ARA has completed shipping. I was going to say by the end of the year, but I'm going to be honest. If they don't get those completed machines come mid-year, come summer, I think that it's pretty much going to be a guarantee that Dutch isn't going to last unless that stuff gets spun back up. I mean, it's just, they're taking such a hit, and we talked last time about the joke that is the Bride of Penbot debacle, and I think they're flailing, and I think anything that can get their production back started is the only thing that is going to be required for them to continue in existence, because I don't think anybody really cares about Bride of Penbot, and the only people who care about anything are the big Lebowski owners, and all they've done so far is make their brand look terrible and make people not trust them to buy from them again. They're hurting themselves very badly the longer this lasts. You're right. Yeah, you're definitely right. I mean, overall, this minor update, it is good news in the sense that we've heard that Dutch and RR are actually sitting down and having a conversation again. And that's good because when the presentation was given at TPF, Dutch made it sound like they were just sort of in a holding pattern, but not even moving forward in terms of through the legal system and trying to litigate these boxes back yet. But I don't know if they're waiting for RR to blink first or what. But given that, regardless of the reason for the departure, that the manager being gone means that they're back at the table, that is a positive. Even if, you know, there's still obviously disagreement. They haven't struck anything yet. And we don't know if they will or not. At least we see a window of opportunity. But you're right. This Dutch is in the position of weakness as far as I can tell. They're a small operation. Aura is a contract manufacturer. They have other contracts, presumably. They had to gear up to do just the pinball thing. So, and the Bride of Pinbot 25 is a terrible idea. It's probably the worst idea I've heard in pinball since I got into pinball. I can't believe they thought that it would sell at that price. With the number of units they ended up announcing, 150? Holy cow.
    38:32
    But what else can they do at this point? I guess they could make Bride of Pinbot kits again, but what's the demand on those? I mean, if Cointaker still had one at the start of the TPF show, I just don't imagine there's a whole lot of demand. I think what they probably should have done is kit another game. Take another game that could have used the DMD and some rules changes and such, but it was fairly popular, so there was a big market, potential market, and do that. But as small as Dutch is, they can't just have designs and stuff falling off the tree. And that, I think, shows with Bride of Pinbot 25, because what happens for your game number two when you had all this work and trouble with Big Levowski setting aside the contract manufacturer? all the frustrations and struggles that they've had over the years. What do they do? They turn back to the one thing they know, Brian of Pimbot, and they try and take from the apple tree once more. And it's like, you can only feast off that tree so many times, it's going to run out of fruit. And I think we're out at this point. The moment you decided to act like the apples were gold-plated, and you made them look like monk fruit instead, so now they're ugly. I posted on our Facebook page the link to the flyer design of Bride, and I kind of poked fun at it. And, you know, there was some positive reception to that poking of fun, and I'm not surprised because it's ugly.
    39:57
    But anyway, overall, though, this is positive, but you're right. If they don't get this moving, I just don't see how they stay in business. I just don't because Bride of Pimbot 25 is not going to be the bailout. It's too much money, it looks too weird, and they're making too many of it to be limited in the way that they think it is. And again, like we said last time, Bride isn't even the best of the Pinbot series of games. It's probably the worst of the Pinbot series of games, honestly. I agree with you. It's the one they know. They've never done anything with Pinbot or Jackbot. So, I mean, what else could they... I sympathize in the sense that, in that, what else could they come up with, really? The thing is, I have to imagine that this 25 had been in the works for a while. That's the game number two they had been talking about with R before the holdups and stuff. The only thing I think might have been different is maybe originally they really did plan for it to be truly limited to, like, 25 units. But because of all these issues, they decided, well, maybe we could get away with 150. Stern got to do that with the SLEs on Batman going to 80. And it's like, you're not stern. And Batman SLE looks great. They didn't take an already iconic art package and turn it into abomination. Yeah, and that's something they did. They ruined that art package. They took what was a good art package and made it bad. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. But anyway, I am hoping that the resolution is worked out with Aura and the rest of the Bicklevaskys get to come out into the wild. But I guess we will know relatively soon because I just can't see this limping along forever. And before we move on, to ruin my segue completely, it wasn't Pro 3 that got the games. It was a different place I'd seen online. I was completely wrong. My segue is a complete waste. I got your hopes up for nothing. I got my hopes up for nothing. Is it a location not in the area? Yeah, it's not in the area.
    41:58
    Trash. Worthless. I know. I have too many things that are all tied together in my social stuff that I peer through and I don't spend enough time. I just kind of scroll through it a lot of times. Well, I forgive you. You will find that I am kind.
    42:18
    Kindly, I will handle our transition. Our transition is actually going to be to the interview that I did. When I was at the 403 Club last week for the tournament, Carrie Wing was there. For those that don't know Carrie, we actually interviewed her last year when she won the Papa Circuit event at Cactus Jacks. And she was noteworthy beyond, obviously, the very difficult challenge of winning a Papa Circuit event, which not everyone does, but that she was the first woman to ever win a Papa Circuit event. So a little bit of history made there.
    42:51
    The IFPA had their 2017 Women's World Pinball Championship. I think that's the formal proper name. I know I get it wrong in the interview, so apologies up front. And Carrie finished second to Helena during that. Tony and I watched a lot of that live while it was happening. Actually, a lot of people watched it live, and a lot of people in the Kansas City area, because we play with Carrie all the time, watched because we wanted her to win. And she came very, very close, obviously, by finishing second. So I sat down with her. I have a brief interview that we're going to drop in here. It's under nine minutes long, so it's pretty efficient. We're going to go through a lot of those matchups, and she's going to give her thoughts about what it was like to play in that environment. I want to extend our thanks to Carrie for sitting down with me and for her awesome finish. Second place is nothing to sneeze at. And also thank her for bearing with me because I brought my pocket recorder. We did it, and then I realized I had the recorder on pause for the entire interview. So she kindly did the interview twice. and it was quite embarrassing for me to have to do that. But unfortunately, it appeared I thought it was running and the levels were running, but the recording was not. So I also have to apologize to the listeners for the sound quality. We did it at a bar, did it outside, but there's a lot of noise as people go in and out. And so I did my best to strip out the background noise. I think I stripped out all the background profanity, which I, of course, really have to watch for because we are a clean podcast. But with all that said, here is my interview with Kerry Wing, second place finisher of the 2017 Women's World Pinball Championship. This is Dennis with the Eclectic Chambers Podcast, sitting here with Kerry Wing once more. Thank you, Kerry, for being with us. You are the second place finisher of the 2017 National Women's Pinball Championship.
    44:43
    And I just wanted to run over a few of the highlights of that, because it was really interesting to watch the streams on Twitch. Unfortunately, the recording appears to have been lost, so no one else will get to see it because they didn't archive it off. But this was the first time I'd ever watched this sort of thing going alongside the Nationals. I've seen some other tournaments before. I just wanted to run through real quick your matchups. Really up until the finals, you went pretty efficiently through these brackets.
    45:12
    Your first matchup was with Anna, who is an East Coast player. Or New York's. From what I heard, she's from the New York and New York City area, and she has played in the Super Leagues, but she told me, like, she wanted to earn her points outright because there's kind of a controversy among the New York Super Leagues. They do, like, a weekly thing with 70 points, which the rest of us in, say, Kansas can't go to. Right, right. We've actually covered, one of the few competitive things we've covered on the podcast is Super Leagues. Oh, really? Because they've been nerfed. Their points have been broken. So she told me she wanted to earn her points honestly, so she stopped doing it secretly. Oh, interesting. Which is interesting, yeah. And basically, I could tell she was a good player, but she kind of had a hard time in Dallas, and I ended up throwing a 4-0 against her. Right. I could tell she was a reasonable player. Yeah. We only got to see one game. That was on the Playboy. She was very close to your score. She just drained a little too fast. She needed one more bonus count. Got her shot. So match number two was against Zoe Brable out of the West Coast area. I always forget if she's Seattle or Portland. Right. You used the defending women's team. No. And very, very good. Co-hosts the Tilt Through, which is a competitive pinball podcast. My personal favorite. and she highly praised you back when you won the Papa Circuit event down at Cactus Jacks in 2016. So she knew who you were.
    46:54
    That was the one where you had the victory on Road Kings. That's the one everyone saw, and they started associating you with Road Kings. In part because the commentator was obsessing over the lane change on Twitch. It's like, we used the lane change. Was that with Bob Matthews from Syria? I think so. He came up with the answer. He asked us to do the whole screen. Why are we not doing the lane changes? I'm sorry. I don't know. For whatever reason, I've been playing pinball forever. The game I had just come from, I want to stay with a food cart or something. So the lane changes were obviously. Okay. Which is my only excuse, but there really is no excuse. But in road kings, you have the top two lanes and you have your in lanes. And that's where you're changing. And I had never played road kings before. that I had looked up the rules and knew what to do, and I was going through all the time blocks, and I just kind of, I guess, just counted the lane changes. Yes, yes. And everyone but me was like, oh, my God, why are you doing lane changes? He was so adamant. He was so, he was very, I mean, it was funny just because, because you could win it without the lane changes. You had a strategy where you avoided the center shot. Right. That was my key strategy. And that really worked out for you because you would go and you'd get your road and your kingstone out. And then you would do your ball locks and get your multi-ball out. And there's some time block system to it. And it all added up to be plenty of points for you to secure that victory. Do you remember what games Zoe won on?
    48:24
    I don't. I wish I did. There are so many in the world. It's kind of a blur from that week. Yeah. She won one game, and I ended up doing four of them. Right. I believe. Cardell's another. Yeah. And once again, I would tell you, she's a really good player. I tried it. I had to dig into it and won that day.
    48:43
    Yes. So, then you got to move to the semifinals and that was against Sunshine, who isn't a player I'm familiar with.
    48:51
    East Coast, though. I understand she's from the East Coast and she plays every weekend from what she said to me. She goes to 10 ball tournaments every weekend, so she's very experienced. But, from my experience playing her, the more I played her, the more frantic she got. Okay. And she really talked to the games, which was interesting and kind of cool, actually. We did not hear that on the stream, but we could see some of the frantic. I wish I could now, too. If something went well, she was like, well, thank you. And if something didn't go well, she was like, come on, come on. She was, like, talk to the game. And she was kind of interested in it, like, she was really into it. but things just did not go her way that day and the more frantic she got the more calm I got right, right, and on that one again Road Kings once more shined through as one of your stronger performances in terms of score because then you got into the finals and it was Helena who has been a long term extremely high ranked champion.
    50:03
    And obviously, as you ended in second place, she did secure victory. It was 4-1. Your win was on Broke Kings, as we've come to expect. Which is weird, but yes. And the flip a card not go so well. I didn't do too well. She called that flip a coin, and I was like, I got this. I play short flipper games all the time, and I just didn't play that well. I got like 2,000 something And she beat me And then there was the The other EM That I keep blanking on Big deal And you looked perfect You played amazing So I almost rolled it I got like 930 Yeah you played amazing too I played You had to play first I got like 930,000 And I was like Against most people That would win And then she played Second player And she beat me With like 950 Yeah it was like It was a 20,000 point It was a 20,000 aiming And I worked on a big deal At one point It was somebody else's And I worked on it and I didn't play it that much. And as soon as I found out that was in the lineup, I was like, why should I play that more? It looked fun, from what I could tell. Is it not? Okay, never mind, I want to see. You would think, looking at it, You made road teams start to look fun. I started to look fun, and I found it. I started to look fun, and that's the spin ball. Oh my god. I didn't find much of it, or anything. Yeah. Our big deal, you would think you would go for the drop target. No, you just go for the left shot up to the in lane. You just keep doing that over and over. Okay, that would get tiny tires. Which is what both of us were doing. And ironically, like, in the Women's World Championship, you couldn't play extra balls, but we, like, didn't play any. On Big Deal, you could have gone for extra balls, and I was kind of doing that, but I didn't really get any. Okay, okay. So that was kind of sad. Yeah, I think that's a Josh Schock philosophy. If there's extra balls, he likes them played. I didn't even do that until I got there. because when I was looking up the rules beforehand, anything about Extra Ball Special, I was like, okay, disregard is determined. You're going to do it. Right. But it's weird. And then when I got there, he was like, oh, you can play Extra Balls. And I was like, oh my god. That's really cheap. And it surprises a lot of people, but yeah. Officially, IFPA rules are completely silent on Extra Ball. Right. It's really weird. But, you know, so many places have house rules. Because the games will take forever. I know. They'll take forever. And the final game was CSI. I know. And I played the first game. And Helena really lit that thing up. I mean, her stack multi-ball basically secured her victory. So based on what she did, I was like, okay, I'm going to have to stack multi-ball. Right. And I just did not. And I was so frustrated because I got like two million something. It was so frustrating. Because I was like, that's one of the worst games of pinball I've ever played. And it was the last game of women's world championships. So, I don't know, my thought was Maybe next year I could make another run at it Well, you didn't win the trophy But you won cash And we do like that So I was like, she definitely deserved it But next year I'll come ready Awesome Well, thanks for sitting down with me Alright, that was my interview with Carrie Wing Thanks again, Carrie, for sitting down with me And congratulations once again Yes, thank you and congratulations Tony couldn't make it, but he was going to anticipate any interview. He would have had far more interesting questions.
    53:31
    That was the day that Con Crud doubled up on me double hard. I split most of that day. When that interview took place, I was asleep.
    53:41
    We actually ended up having to do that after 9pm She kept as she does winning I think she took second at that tournament She just we finally we were waiting for a lull And she just doesn lose is the problem It's a problem. It wasn't a problem for me. It's a problem that I wouldn't mind having. I went to and out well before having a chance to face her. So it wasn't a problem for me. I have my own problems. Speaking of problems, let's move on to a topic, a recurring one for us. Skip B, Predator pinball fiasco. I have an update. Not much of an update, but I do have an update. There has been some additional news. The main thing has been that VirtuaPin, which was the supplier or the contracted supplier or the arranged supplier for the cabinets for the Predator project, they have submitted a request to have the default judgment set aside. This was done also by the Predator, or I should say the Skip Beat owner, Kevin Kulik, his mom. She also had asked, and I think we may have touched on this before, but if not, she had asked for her default judgment to be set aside on losing the trailer that he has been claimed to have bought for her. And that default judgment request was accepted for her, and that they'll allow her to come back in and actually defend against losing it. I do not know yet on, I don't think a decision has been made yet regarding the default judgment set aside for VirtuaPen. The trustee has countered that the reasons given to set aside the default judgment that VirtuaPen is asking for are irrelevant and not actually based on any law and that it should just be rejected. So we'll see if that happens.
    55:27
    In addition to that, there has been a motion for sanctions made against Amanda Kulik, who is the wife of Kevin. That issue is she has a house, which there's a money trail that I don't think this is contested, that he bought the house for her. He's already admitted that. And it was at the last minute when they were signing, they made it so it was just in her name. So the trustee believes this was done to shield assets. And she had submitted a variety of affirmative defenses, which is, yes, I admit that I own the house. I admit that these things happen, but here's the reason why. An example I've seen of an affirmative defense is, yes, I admit that I shot and killed this person, but they broke into my house and I was protecting my family. That's an affirmative defense where, yeah, no, I did what would normally be seen as wrong, but I had a good reason to do it. So the trustee is asking that those affirmative defenses she's given, that there aren't any good. He wants those dismissed and sanctions made against her as well for what's going on. It's a really interesting read. I have those documents in our research folder that we have for Skip Bee because those that have listened for a while know I have research folders on some of these companies.
    56:45
    And so there's a link in the show notes where you can go and you can read all the legal documents. It's really interesting because it's like the defenses and stuff were she wrote, and a lot of them aren't citing any law. They're just kind of like, well, that's my husband's thing, and I don't know. I don't see why this would apply to me. It's his fault. It's like so the trustee kind of tears all that apart because it's like that's not based on law. The law says she can't do this. This thing is made up. It doesn't exist in law. She's decided the wrong thing. And, you know, it's kind of that story, why should you use a lawyer? It's so you don't make mistakes like this. So, anyway, it's all very, very strange. But for those that are wanting to keep up on the predator shenanigans, there is some additional legal documents that were put up on PennSci, but I keep them in the research folder so you don't have to mess with the thread. You can just go in and take a look at them. Yeah, that's one of those situations where I don't even understand how they can think that they're going to get away with that one. That one of all of them seems, the house seems the most like hiding of assets compared to everything else. Yes.
    58:01
    Right, because the paper trail of the money being transferred into the personal bank account and that exact amount of money being used in the cashier's check to do the down payment, plus the prior admission by Kevin, coupled with the fact that his name was on the house until the final documents where it was then removed. Yeah, you know what? I'd wish him luck, but I don't.
    58:25
    I can see arguments done for the other stuff. I don't really know if VirtuaPen's got an argument because they got that machine for that specific thing. I think the problem that VirtuaPen has, As far as I understand the issue, and full disclosure, I've used VirtuaPin before. I have a cabinet that I bought from VirtuaPin to build my virtual pinball cabinet. Also, I've used them to buy pinball legs before because I like the pricing better. This was before I was aware of any of this, but just full disclosure, I have used them as a vendor. I've not had any bad experiences with them. That said, my understanding of the problem that VirtuaPin finds themselves in is The accusation by the trustee is not so much that Virtuapin got paid to make the cabinets and the money was essentially stolen by Kevin on the predator behalf because that wouldn't be Virtuapin's fault. The issue is that the trustee claims Kevin never got the 250 cabinets he sent the money to Virtuapin for. So since you didn't deliver product, you need to give the money back. And I don't know what Virtuapin's defense to that is. Obviously, with the default judgment, they didn't levy a defense, and now they're asking for the opportunity to do so. So that's the situation that I think, you know, that they got and made an arrangement with Kevin so they'd buy a CNC machine and get paid a certain amount, even if it was more than what they would normally ask for. I think the issue in this case isn't anything to do with that dollar amount. It's just the fact that if you were contracted to deliver something and you didn't deliver anything, then you failed on your end of the contract. And since the trustee's trying to claw back as much money as he can to pay the creditors, he's looking at VirtuaPin and saying, you got paid up front, but you didn't do everything. You only gave him 10 cabinets. You didn't give him 250. So we need a refund on that. And VirtuaPin has not ever sent the money back to Kevin. So the question is, why does VirtuaPin think it doesn't need to provide the cabinets or provide a refund? That's my understanding. Well, it was a bonus. They just got a bonus. It's because they're nice people. Well, they had a bonus. It sounds like the bonus is going to be going back. So I guess it'll be extra nice when they end up refunding the money unless that default judgment is set aside. Normally, setting aside default judgment is pretty atypical. And, you know, this is the same judge that was handling the bankruptcy stuff that oversees all this. I kind of understood when the mom and the trailer thing came up and her argument was convincing enough that he was willing to set that aside and let her come and defend. I don't know if he'll extend the same leniency to a vendor, especially since the dollar amount was much more significant because it's six figures.
    61:08
    But we'll see. Let's go to our final pinball topic, one that both of us can actually talk about and not have to do anything involving a whole lot of legality at the very least. And that is a little bit. Hopefully. It's come up in some of the discussion. But the IFPA, International Flopper Pinball Association, has announced that they are planning at the start of 2018 to introduce tournament fees. So what are these tournament fees? It will be $1 per player per tournament. The fees will be 100% paid back into the field. The way it's going to work is 75% on every dollar is going to go back to the state championship prize pool for the state that the money originated from. And 25% will go to the national championship prize pool. So all the money will be paid out as prizes. It's not administrative fee money for the IFPA, but it is designed to elevate the purses for those SCS and NCS events. And the SES event was that event that I ended up barely qualifying into back in February that I briefly mentioned where I think I finished 11th and was the 15th seed. Currently, the way this works is, at least for this last period, the 2016 period that we played out in February, is everyone who competed in state had a $20 entry fee. And then I believe the winner of it got $100. And a portion of all of our $20 fees also went to nationals to handle that purse. So the discussion from Josh Sharp, who's president of IFPA, when he announced this, is that they want to increase the prestige of the event. They think that upping the purse amount is going to get better media coverage, that it's almost embarrassing to be able to say you won a state pinball thing when you're talking to the media. and then they ask you, well, how much was the purse? And the purse for winning was $100. They think that it'll look better with higher dollar amount and that they need the higher dollar amount to have a better chance to leverage sponsorship to increase the purse size even more. So that's the summary of it in the grand 30,000 feet overview. Tony, what are your thoughts about this? Because it is a pretty significant departure from the current system. It is a big departure, but honestly, I think it's something that will end up being good in the long run.
    63:37
    seen as the fees are being 100% paid back, and it will help raise the tournament's desirability for people to play it and stuff, especially the national tournament, because people go there, but it's not like it's one of the important tournaments out in the pinball scene.
    63:58
    The dollar a player per tournament, I think it's just going to be seen how the various locations cover it, Do they increase their cost, or do they just reduce their winnings, the winner with the winner's win? Win? Yeah.
    64:19
    I don't know what you're talking about. The local tournament payouts. Yeah. Do they reduce the local tournament payouts by the little bit to feed the extra dollar, or do they increase their fees? Either way, I don't see it either as being a huge thing compared to what I think we'll end up getting in the end for the actual championship games. I mean, that 75% going state championship prize pool, just looking at the tournaments we play in, I mean, it's not unusual to have 18 to 30 players at two tournaments a month, 12 months a year. And if 75% of that's going to the state championship prize pool, that's going to do some major changes to that prize pool. And that's in Kansas. That's not even that big of a state. I can't even imagine what's going to happen to the prize pools for states like New York or California or Oregon, where they've got huge turnouts and lots and lots of players all over the state. Yeah. I mean, in terms of what the IFPA has expressed as their desired effect, I think it's going to have that. it will definitely generate quite a bit of money for those prize pools. And, you know, I get the motivation.
    65:41
    It must be – I kind of feel bad for IFPA sometimes, you know. Even I, when I think about IFPA – what are the two main pinball groups? There's IFPA and there's PAPA, the Professional Amateur Pinball Association. And whenever anyone asks me what the difference is, my little one-sentence description is, Papa is about big, massive tournaments. IFPA is about assigning points for little tournaments. I mean, they assign points for the big tournaments as well, but that's just how I think of it. IFPA gives you a ranking system. That's what I like about them. I love the stat tracking. But when I think major, significant, respected tournaments, I think Papa. The Papa Circuit events, Papa World Championships that's been going on this weekend, and Pinberg, which is at Replay FX, which Replay Foundation is what controls Papa. And for those, and I did not know that, I mean, Papa is 501c3. IFPA is a for-profit LLC, but I don't believe they make any money. You know, I don't know. They probably get some administrative money from their sponsors. But anyway, so I feel a little bad for IFBA because they do all that, I mean, all that tracking. I mean, we follow when we have our tournaments and see our listings and stuff. And, you know, it takes time because it is volunteer-driven. They've got all these people. They're running all these, what did they say they had in 2016, 3,000 tournaments that they had to assign points to? I mean, all of that work. And Nationals isn't the most respected tournament on the scene. it's not. It's not even the second most important one. Maybe you can make an argument for third, but Pinnberg and Papa World are bigger events. They're more respected. That's where the serious competition is. And so I sympathize with IFPA probably feeling frustrated that they do all this work, maybe in their minds more work than these other tournament setups require, but they have this big national championship, and it's not the premier championship in the U.S. It's not. So you increase the purse, though, and then maybe people take it more seriously. So there's that. Beyond the whole media and getting the sponsorship, which I believe as well is something they're being driven towards.
    67:59
    I have a couple of concerns, and I expressed this, and Josh Sharp responded to me on Pennside. One was charity events. I really, the dollar is applying to everything with Whoppers. I am very perturbed that they're subjecting charity events to that condition. And the reason is that I think it hurts the optics for the charity event. Currently, if I go to Flip Off Hunger or whatever, they advertise 100% of your entry fee goes to the charity. That's how it works. But you won't be able to do that anymore. So you either run the event without doing the IFPA sanctioning and not award Whopper points, which means you don't win over the people who are coming just for the Whopper points. And I have no problem exploiting people who just want Whoppers to help charity. I'm fine with that. It gets you better numbers. Or you decide that those better numbers are worth it, and you say, okay, we're also going to collect a dollar and give that to the IFPA, which is not a charity. So we can't list it as a charitable contribution in any way. We have to some way demarcate that, or we have to get a sponsor cover the IFPA fee, which is something that has been talked about that's going to happen in Kansas City for the charity events. It's just it creates additional hurdles for the tournament director or the charity event organizer, depending on how you approach it. I have a problem with that just because it only disadvantages the charity, the new system. It only disadvantages it. And the response from the IFPA was that they had some issues in the past with how people were exploiting a loophole with the charity thing. I don't know because I didn't follow it back then. So I understand they have a concern. I'm not sure that that concern is the same concern that would apply anymore. But anyway, I'm a little bothered by that. Yeah, it's one of those things where I question how much of an issue it will end up being or how often it will turn into something where it turns into a, since it's just a dollar a player, if they'll run the charity event and everything that's gathered for the charity event goes to the thing and then the tournament runner just will run like a, not necessarily a side event but just have like a tip jar type thing out looking to cover it or just cover it themselves depending upon it, the tournament runner or something, I'm not sure. I don't think, I don't really think that this is something we're going to see hurt the number of IFPA tournaments total. Really? Because IFPA is expecting that the numbers will go down. Oh, no, I think they'll go down some But I don't think it's going to break the IFPA But I think a lot of the small tournaments Might disappear, you know, the tournaments That have like, you know 10, 15 people Might disappear, but I think For the most part, you're not Going to see a major, major change I mean, I don't think any of ours are going to Change, I don't Think any of the ones we attend are going To cease to be IFPA events Not that I've heard anyway So, but this is something I mean, this doesn't go into effect Until 2018, so We're going to see a lot of arguing about this Over the course of this year And it'll be interesting to see what Other Thoughts people have And the various responses The IFPA has Yes, and that's where a lot of the Discussions have been driven I agree with you regarding For us, the Kansas City area This is not a big deal. I believe the I mean, I've I shared a link regarding the the announcement from IFPA from our podcast page to the Kansas City pinball group on on Facebook. There has been a robust discussion going on over the week about that. General consensus is it's not a big deal from our perspective. The dollar amount is not a big deal. the tournament directors, the discussion so far has chiefly been probably keeping the fee the same in our case and just sending $4 to the prize pool per person for the local event rather than the $5 currently. Not everyone's really keen on it.
    72:34
    One of the issues, though, in terms of what's driving discussion in other areas is that not everyone does it the Kansas City way. So the big example that keeps cropping up is Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, most of the tournaments are free. So now you're moving from a free system to a now-you-have-to-pay system. There have been claims by some people in Wisconsin that Wisconsin law won't allow them to do this, that this would count as the sort of prize pool thing in their state counts as some sort of gambling winning and would be illegal. and so now I haven't seen any of the laws cited they insist they're very sure that they're right but I still I'm a little surprised that I've not seen statutes cited but this has come up with the MGC which is a it's a show pinball show Midwest Gaming Classic which was going on I believe this week or last week and that they used to do prizing at their event and then they were told they had to stop that they were breaking the law and it's just regardless of the reason in and of itself, you may have a legal hurdle there, which would be frustrating. And I am, you know, I do not know what the law says in Wisconsin. I've seen some people cite some stuff and I'm still a little confused about what's going on there. But I am confident that IFPA, as small as an organization as it is, did not review the law in all 50 states and all the Canadian provinces to know whether or not it was safe. So there may be some that are precluded from participating anymore because of that. But there's also the issue of if you exist in an area where your events do not cost, you obviously now have this additional challenge to say that you want them to start costing. IFP isn't going to make you. You could let people opt out. They're fine with any scenario, but the opt-out situations bother people as well. And opting out is something that has been discussed here for Kansas City. But if, for example, we were to go to a 403 tournament and we do an opt-out provision and you finish sixth, but players one, two, three, four, and five opted out, in IFPA, you won the tournament. That's how it's going to show up. You'll get the Whoppers for the win. But your Whoppers will also only be based off of the number of people who paid IFPA. So if it was a 60-person event that only 30 people played, the TGP calculation, which is the, you know, they have a whole efficiency thing to determine how many points are going to be awarded, that's based off of the number of people who paid them, not the number of people who actually went. So the tournament director's calculations or planned calculations to try and get as close to 100% as possible may be thrown out if there is a lot of opt-out because the number of players is a key component to the formula.
    75:21
    So we've got complications regarding that. And something you brought up at the very start of this segment was the issue about how much we generate, which one of our area players who's big in the tournament scene, Steve, has speculated, I think, that the amount we would probably, if we continue doing what we've been doing with the volume we've been doing, that we might send, say, $400 a year to nationals. but I've seen someone out of the Seattle area estimate that their scene would generate over $2,000 for nationals that's for nationals that's not even what they generate for the local that's what they generate for nationals it would be three-fold for nationals for state, so six grand so this was an issue and I asked this to IFP as well it's a for-profit LLC, they can control this It's just a question of blowback.
    76:19
    I'm curious. Currently, SCS is 16 players per state. Everyone gives in their $20. The amount, thus, every state contributes to the national pot is identical. With a 25% rule, though, you're going to have places like Seattle, like Portland, like Pennsylvania, which hosts Pinberg and the Papa World competition. they are going to spend a lot more money than we send. And we here in Kansas will probably spend significantly more money than some of these other states that barely run anything whatsoever. So it's a question, you know, we're moving from a, I hate to do the, well, no, I don't hate it, but let's do a political comparison. We're moving from a Senate structure to a House of Representatives structure where it was one person, one national positioning, and it was okay because everyone was giving the same amount of money, but now you're doing proportional money representation, but IFPA has made clear it's still going to be one person per state. So I'm curious if, I don't expect this to be a big issue until it actually comes up, but I'm wondering if some of the more pinball populated areas are going to grouse longer term over basically subsidizing the little guys, whereas you were moving from a system where everyone was equal. Yeah, I don't know. We'll have to see how that works out. I mean, it's, man, I really just, at the part of it, it's like, well, that's nice because it's going to make the national worth actually competing in. And at the same time, it's like, yeah, but if somebody from Rhode Island wins and, you know, throughout the course of the year, Rhode Island put in maybe $50 total. And then Washington put in, as Blake said, several thousand. I mean, that's just how it works out. But I can see where that would leave people feeling like they were on different ends of the scale. But at the same time, everybody is paying the same thing, and it's just a matter of how many tournaments you go to, how many of those single dollars you're playing in. And it's not Rhode Island's fault or Kansas' fault or New Mexico's fault that they've got a smaller player base than Washington or California or New York. So I don't think it's going to be a huge deal in that case. I don't think there's going to be too many people who get overly upset by it. But I could be wrong. I could be entirely, entirely wrong on that. I can see people with pitchforks and torches now.
    78:58
    Well, you know, it may not end up being a particularly big deal. It was an interesting question to me. I'm curious. I don't expect that until 2019 when the 2018 championships are going on. I don't expect it to be a huge issue until it's actually seen in action, seen how much money is raised.
    79:20
    I think the bigger issue in the broader debate, which I think is the most interesting aspect, is what this does for competitive pinball. Now, the IFPA trying to increase the prestige of the national event, I think this serves. They've expressed that as their goal. I don't know if this actually helps advance trying to get more people into playing competitive pinball, because at the end of the day, it is an increased cost, and it's an increased cost that really only benefits 16 people per state. And you can always run events that are not IFPA events, but part of the sell that some people have employed as a strategy is, come to this event. You're going to be internationally ranked. No, you're not anymore unless you go to one and you pay your dollar. It's just a dollar. So on the one hand, yeah, not a big deal. On the other, though, is pinball, are we at that point where we're okay with that? And it's debated. Some people are okay with that. I think our area will be okay. Our tournament scene will be fine, I believe, with it. But I don't think it does a lot to encourage new people into playing pinball. I think it does the prestige thing So I could see it getting better media coverage And maybe you know you could say well that the long game You get the better media coverage And then people are oh yeah cool I reading about pinball all the time I want to go try that out So it can work that way. But in the more word of mouth way that things have been flowing, I don't know.
    80:56
    And then we've got, you know, obviously the thing going on like with Wisconsin and such is there's talk about setting up their own sort of state tracking system. By and large, outside of nationals, the ranking, rating sort of thing isn't a huge deal. Like, you don't need it to go to Pinnberg. You don't need the points. You go, I mean, other than maybe mandating that you be in a division or something if you happen to have a certain amount accumulated at certain events, you know, they've got certain thresholds or keeping you out of novice or whatever. It's just, you don't need it to participate in very many things outside of state, state nationals. So, you know, they're thinking maybe they'll create their own system and move forward that way. You know, I mean, that's just a question of how much work they're willing to do. I don't think that's the idea. Honestly, if you wanted something, if this really, really bothered you, I'd say you want another point system and you want it to be national. You go to Papa and you say, Papa, you need to create your own point system and try and get them to do it and use that point system to encourage the, you know, one approach and IFPA point system. And you get points, you could do both points. I mean, unless one group banned another, which nationally I can never really imagine it happening. I mean, imagine IFPA saying we're not going to give points if PAPA's awarding PAPA points, PAPAs, we'll call them PAPAs, for the same event. And then PAPA says, fine, everything on the PAPA circuit is no longer worth IFPA points. You just lost your main source. Good luck with that. But I just don't think there's the, broadly, I don't think there's the interest. I don't think this is a big enough deal. My only main thing about the idea, and I'm glad that the IFPA has announced it this early. The only real thing that irks me, actually irks me, and I don't just think it's an interesting debate, but irks me, is that they are refusing to indicate a clear line in the sand about where this will be seen as a success versus a failure. IFPA has been saying that if it doesn't work, they're going to do something different. Maybe create a pro and an amateur point system, maybe just undo entirely. The only example they have expressed that would be a sign of failure is if the IFPA number of tournaments drops by 90%, which is a hurdle so low it's flat ground. There's no way it's dropping 90%. So when pressed, I saw, I believe it was Josh Sharpe had expressed, well, it's going to be a gut feeling thing. I get it, but I really dislike that. I really dislike that approach. This should be able to be – there should be a measurable target. It should be expressed publicly, and that way everyone can see. I get it. It's a for-profit LLC. They can do whatever they want. But that said, this relies on a lot of volunteer tournament directors. That's where all this burden is falling is on the tournament directors. That's why the system is chosen is so it doesn't increase IFPA's workload. It increases the fills of the world, fills our main tournament director here in Kansas City. And some of them are going to be cool with it and some of them aren't. I'm fine with trying it, but I really would like to know what the real measure of success is so we can see if it works or not. Everyone can see. We don't have to rely on someone else's interpretation. Just let us see. That's it. And if they lose a lot of tournaments because of the extra workload on the tournament directors, I think it's something that we will hear about relatively quickly. Yeah. I think we'll know within the first half of 2018 if it works out. I think so, too.
    84:30
    Also, just as a quick note to IFPA, because I know they're listening, making huge announcements that completely change how your things work on April 1st, First, probably not the best way to start something. You know, I heard that he did that deliberately because he thought it was funny.
    84:53
    And, you know, I can appreciate that sort of trollish sense of humor. So, yeah, I probably wouldn't have done it myself. But but OK. Well, yeah. Yeah, because everyone thought it was a joke at first, of course. So, you know, I don't know. The idea was it was going to cut the tension. But if that was the goal, fail. Yeah. Definitely Alright, well let's go ahead and hop over to Less Fail and More Pew Pew into our video game segment. Let's open with what we often must open with and that's Overwatch but we don't have a whole ton to talk about this time. Nope, I have not played Arisa yet thanks to Spreadsheets in Space I haven't even played that much Overwatch in the last couple of three weeks I have played Arisa, she's terrible Is she terrible because you're bad at her, or is she terrible because she's terrible? I'm not bad at any character, so the latter. Okay. Except Widowmaker, I am bad at her. A couple of the games I've played, I've seen some Orisa's being pretty darn annoying.
    85:57
    No, oh, she can be frustrating, but the reason why I say she's bad is that she's just a blend of the other tanks. So, it's the jack-of-all-trades master of none in a game where everything is about being the master of something. there's nothing about her that she does better than anyone else her shield is worse than Reinhardt's her graviton is worse than Zarya's her gun mechanics are worse than the DPS characters so you don't need her for that her fortify ability is worse than Bastion's ability to just go into it's that that's her issue so I think at the lower level like the level I play at, she can be frustrating and fun and interesting. She definitely, I don't mind her in quick play, but competitively, I mean, she's got some interesting gimmicks, but I think she needs to be just the best at something, and then maybe she'll actually be picked in the meta. You know, we're talking getting her in the meta.
    87:03
    The thing that I thought we should go ahead and note was Lucio. They are on the PTR. They're working with a number of changes to Lucio. I just thought we'd go over those because it's designed to be pretty significant. I'm a bit surprised because they hadn't touched Lucio in quite a while. But the plan, as I understand it, is they want Lucio to be less of a mandatory meta choice, but also at the same time make him more fun to play. Wait a minute. Wait, wait. Who says Lucio's not fun to play? You know what? I don't know. This is Jeff. Jeff says so. But Jeff Kaplan, the guy who always comes out with all the Overwatch discussions. Yeah. You know, I don't know if it's a common complaint, but I mean, I guess maybe in a lot of gameplays, he's sort of strategically hanging out in the back and not being to do a lot. I don't know. I enjoy Lucio just fine. But anyway, I do agree that there is still a sense that you often need him. I see more teams going, now that they've made the Mercy changes, I'm seeing Mercy in play a lot more. But generally, it's her swapping out for Ana. instead of actually being the Lucio substitute. So here's just a quick list of what they're planning to do. His sonic amplifier, that's his pew-pew gun.
    88:22
    They're testing making the projectile go increase its speed from 40 to 50. And when he does the boop, his alternative fire, the right click, it's now going to consider vertical orientation when knocking characters back. So you can aim up a little bit more and actually boop them up over, you know, like up over that lip of the wall sort of thing. That's something that he desperately needs. Because I've had a lot of boops fail because somebody caught a knee-high wall.
    88:53
    So you see, he's getting more fun already. By the second. All right. Crossfade, the song. The area effect is going to be decreased from 30 meters to 10 meters. That is a massive change. And that's the change that's going to try and take him out of being mandatory. They had announced in the PTR they were doing a temporary in-game visual to illustrate the radius, which only Lucio and his teammates could see, so they could see if they were within the new range. That's actually gone over so well. There's been a lot of pressure, and I think Blizzard has already indicated they're inclined to actually move that into the main game, so you actually see a radius so you know if you're within Lucio's range all the time. Oh, that'd be nice. Yeah, I would like that. I think they're going to do that. They want to change it up from how it looks in the test, but it sounds like they're going to go ahead and move forward with that.
    89:46
    The healing song, they're going to modify so that the heals per second is going to be increased by 50%, and that applies as well when he does amp it up. So within that 10-meter radius, he's going to do 50% additional healing than what he currently does. but they've cut his healing over time so much that this still isn't going to move him back up to what his original healing was if I recall I know most of the changes historically were to the amp it up version at least which they've done significant nerfs to so I guess they're thinking that he can go ahead and have more healing again though once you have to hug him because now it's hugs it's time for hugs his ult sound barrier they're going to decrease the radius it's currently 30 meters the same radius as the current song they're going to drop it to 20 so it's going to be bigger than his regular radius but it's not going to be as big to put the shield up on everyone and the final changes involve his wall ride ability to run along the walls they're going to increase his movement speed by 30% when he's on a wall and whenever he jumps down off of a wall he's going to get a speed boost I like that I mean I wall ride as Lucio a lot just for fun but having it actually speed you up is going to be real nice, especially when you're at those critical moments where you're trying to maintain a contest on a point. That increase in your speed will be nice. Yeah, he's going to be ultra-super annoying now, but very fun to play. That's their plan. He's going to be fun, Tony. You're going to have fun. He was already fun. So anyway, that's all I had on Overwatch. They're planning to make some Lucio changes, So support players, be aware.
    91:31
    All right, we're going to hop over into the games we've been playing. We got a number of them to do. Well, three of them. We're going to talk about Battle Group 2, which is the game I mentioned in my intro that the Link Cable podcast gave me. Thanks again, guys. It's a real-time strategy game. It's almost like a shmup or maybe more like an on-rails game, except because you don't control the avatar. You're a naval ship, like a battleship. Or after the first part, you're actually two ships. And what you do is you shoot down enemies and their incoming attacks. But it's strategic because you have to lead all these targets. So they're shooting missiles and stuff at you, and you have to shoot them down. But kind of like Missile Command, you need to figure out where the attack's going to hit, which one's going to hit you first, and prioritize all of that. It's got powers and stuff to help you along, and you can do upgrades and such as you play. So it's all very, very quick to manage. It's not like a RTS where I'm spending 20 minutes building the village to build the units or anything. The upgrades and ship unlocks and stuff all take less than a minute in between the stages.
    92:37
    The game itself, plot-wise, is extremely cheesy. The bad guy is a rip right out of Cobra Commander, the hood version, not the mask version.
    92:47
    And like the very first mission, you're going along in this huge ship, which you lose. You have to start using a smaller ship. and you lose it because the bad guy's like, I have hostages. And you're like, we will stop you with our ship. And he's like, no, I will kill this VIP unless you give me your ship. And we're like, we must give him the ship.
    93:04
    You gave him the ultimate ship? What's wrong with us? But video games, that's what's wrong with us. So anyway, I'm on mission number 15 at this point. I've done one major boss fight, which was actually way back. I thought I would have hit a second one by now. I haven't played a strategy game in a while. So XCOM 2 is still on my stack, and I think I might do that one once I finish my next game I'm going to talk about. But I like playing this. You know, it's like a simplistic RTS. I'm not having to invest a lot of time per level. It's like less than five minutes to do a level. And so it's just really quick and easy. And because of my newer computer, I actually get to play it on the Super Ultimate graphics, which aren't the most super and ultimate because it's a pretty simple game. But, hey, for once I actually get to have it set on Fantastic and get to enjoy it. Well, I looked this game up when you were talking about it in the thing, and I have to say, A, it's definitely an interesting-looking game. But, you know, it reminds me of a game I used to have on the PlayStation 2 just from the whole, you know, ships with crazy weapons and stuff. It was called Worship Gunner. It was Naval Offer Worship Gunner. Oh, man. That was probably one of my favorite PlayStation 2 games. He played it constantly, and it's a series that never continued. But this looks kind of similar-ish, except for being all top-down schmuppie instead of letting you actually control your ship. But I kind of like the aesthetic. Yeah, and I would have liked a little more control to it. It's very isometric, and that's why I did more of my shmup on-rail shooter comparison aspect, because that's ultimately how it plays out. The strategic element is entirely focused around you trying to read how the aircraft are flying in and how their missiles are coming and making those determinations, trying to get them where maybe you could get them both with, like, two planes with one shot. Some stuff takes more than one hit. And it's pretty challenging because the major limitation is the ammo. You reload ammo at a set speed, and there are upgrades and such for it, but you only have so many shots that you can bank. So you can actually run out of bullets and be stuck waiting for your cooldowns, and all the missiles are flying at you, and it can be very stressful. I had one moment where I had like 15 missiles coming at me, and I was dry. And I ended up, I was able to take out a bunch of them, you know, waiting and stacking as best as I could, but I still almost lost both my ships because of it. Wow. Anyway, so that was just a little surprise thing there that I hadn't expected to be playing, but I had it. The game I've been mostly playing is Far Cry Primal.
    95:52
    I mentioned that I got it back in October for my birthday, and I never got to it because I was playing the other games first that I got. And then I had Christmas games, and Final Fantasy XV has been a major roadblock for me, along with Gears of War, which I've certainly finished, and some other stuff. Anyway, Far Cry Primal, just in a nutshell. I'm about a fourth of the way through the game, according to the meter, as of last night. I put in a ton of time this week. I love this game so much more than Final Fantasy. It's sad. I was just barely wanting to turn on my Xbox and play Final Fantasy. I was like, I'll just watch YouTube. I'll just watch Twitch. Now I'm like, no, I'm going to play Far Cry Primal. It's time to go hunt some saber tooths. So you're a caveman in this game. The big gimmick that they've got in it is you can tame a bunch of the predators. So, like, I run around with a saber-toothed tiger because I can ride him like a pony, a little pony with fangs. And we go around and we eat mean things. And you go on vision quests and such. Mechanically, it's completely like Far Cry 4, aside from, really, the taming mechanic in a lot of ways. I mean, you don't have all the guns. Far Cry 4 was, I really liked Far Cry 4. I swear they even make the eagles and owls, even the owls, I swear, are the same sound as the eagles were in Far Cry 4. Well, isn't it basically just like on the Far Cry 4 engine? Wasn't it something they just kicked out real quick? You can tell. It's like some of the Saints Row games where you totally see its origins, its engine.
    97:24
    It's just the setting, though. I think the setting is better. I think it's 10,000 BCE setting. I think it was a great idea. I like having all the you know really be afraid of all these predators that are out and around they make it dangerous to go around at night which was different than 4 was and it's just that sort of sense of vulnerability you're not dealing with 50 different guns to manage but you're managing spears and clubs and bows and so I'm using a lot of bow work of course so I can do things at range it's just I think it's better than Far Cry 4 I think they pulled it off better I think it feels less famey Far Cry 4's missions felt very samey to me. This, obviously, to a degree, they're not that different of missions, but the world aesthetic is very different. So it's like you'll go out into the northern regions and it's cold, but, hey, you're a caveman, so the cold matters. You actually need to find fires and stay warm, and you need to upgrade your clothes or you will die. So it's making me think about things in a much different way. And in Far Cry 4, being afraid of the wildlife was a joke in the sense that it was dangerous. There was very dangerous wildlife, but I couldn't ever stop laughing. Like, eagles would swoop down, and then you'd hear people cry, eagle, and then the eagle would kill them. It's like, no. But in this, it's like, okay, these are very bad eagles. They're almost saber-tooth eagles. Eagle! Or, hey, look, there's a huge mammoth. It's big. It's obviously going to be hard. Oops, I didn't realize I was fighting it near its herd. Now I have five of them. Go get them, saber-tooth. Saber-tooth has trampled to death.
    98:59
    Feels bad. So anyway, I'm having a lot of fun with it. So anyway, if one is into sandbox open world first person perspective games, I do recommend this one. I actually recommend it more than any other Far Cry I've played. And I've played 1, 2, and 4. I've never really played any of the Far Cries. They're not been something that I've had on my list, but it sounds like a pretty decent series. I've always heard a lot of good things about it. What's the other? Uncharted. Uncharted are the ones I played. It was Uncharted. I've actually never played an Uncharted game. They're very well respected, of course. I need to play more games, apparently.
    99:42
    Well, tell us about the game you are playing. Well, the game I am playing is a really simple little, it's a roguelite adventure game. It's called Renowned Explorers International Society. It came out in 2015 And it's a It's I know there's a descriptor for this game Style but it's one of the Games where it's made You're designed to go through multiple playthroughs Because every time you play through it You unlock a couple more things You unlock a couple more people A couple more Things to help you out So you can do better and better with each playthrough And it's got a really good ability to adjust your difficulties, but what I like about it is, have you ever played FTL? No, I've heard of FTL. FTL is an amazing roguelite, and it's really hard, and this game is like FTL in a lot of ways, except for it is easier,
    100:47
    and it is a bit more its combat system is more interesting because its combat is based around like moods and attitudes. Um, so when you get into combat, it uses your, the typical, um, uh, rock, paper, scissors type combat, um, where, you know, blue beats red, red beats green, green beats blue, uh, kind of like you'd see in, um, Fire Emblem games Or It's pretty common This is strong to that but that's strong to this Uh Type triangle except for in their case In the case of Renown Explorers It is your choices are Red is aggression And green is Friendliness and Blue is despair And you actually The mood changes, and based upon your team's mood versus the other team's mood, it changes what bonuses are active in the game, and it changes how everything reacts and the kind of bonuses you get at the end of the match after you win your little round of combat.
    102:10
    And what's really fun about it is that you can be friendly, and your opponents will leave the field.
    102:19
    Say your opponents are big into despair. If you're really friendly to them, they will go, you know what? You're right, and they'll leave the field of combat. And you don't have to kill everybody. Or you can break their will. I mean, if you use despair, you break their will, and they will flee because you destroyed their self-esteem and made them think the terrible things about themselves, and you literally break their will. But what it is is you take three, you choose a team of three explorers, and you explore different zones looking to become a famous, the most famous explorer in the world. Renown even. Yes, exactly. And you're basically kind of Indiana Jones-ing it type thing, looking for old artifacts and this and that. Except for it's even Indiana Jones, you know, set in the 30s. And this is more set in the 1800s. And it's very kind of steampunky. And it's just a fun little game. It's not like it's super hard. It can be super hard because you can set it to Iron Man mode where you don't get any restarts and you can crank the levels up. but I haven't beaten on the classic difficulty. They have the classic difficulty like XCOM does, which is hard.
    103:45
    But it's just a fun little simple game. I mean, you can cut through a run in it in no time, an hour or so, or even faster if you do really bad.
    103:57
    And then you just start another run over and you choose a different team and you change your team's synergies so they work together a little better here, a little better there, and what moods work best for you, and you choose which things you go after based upon your settings and how you've got your team synergies worked out. And it's just, I mean, the art is really good art. It's not like, you know, blow you away massive amazing art. I mean, it's just a simple game.
    104:31
    But the art, it's kind of fun, cartoony art. The stuff is fun, and what they've written into it is fun. There's a lot of chance stuff built into it. But for a roguelite that's not as hard as, like, FTL and looks better than FTL, it's a lot of fun. It's definitely something I would recommend to people who are looking for a nice game that they can just, you know, play a little bit and leave and come back and play a little bit more later and not have to worry about it too much. It's not some deep, in-depth thing. Looked at it really quick. So, all right. So I would say that's sort of turn-based strategy style. Right, yeah. It's very much of the most of those. I mean, FTL is the same way.
    105:14
    It's one of those games that is very much about managing. It's kind of like the Fire Emblem games. It's about positioning on the field and working your team together in combat. I don't know if you've ever played a Fire Emblem game. Nope. Apparently I don't ever play anything Hell yeah I feel as though I've spent more time lately Playing Games on my phone or my tablet Than I have a lot of other stuff anyway I've been playing The Fire Emblem On the tablet which I don't remember the name of It's Fire Emblem Heroes I think And Of course Star Trek Timelines I've been playing For a month or so now Quite a bit during downtime in Texas, if I recall. Yeah, I've been playing a lot of it. And so that's the kind of stuff I've been playing a lot of lately and spreadsheets in space. But I, again, not going to bore anybody with that because that would take hours to talk about. Well, we're almost done. No games to go over in our tabletop segment. I do want to note that I did get my tickets for Can't Con. Yeah, we'll be at Can't Con. Yep, and I did actually submit for our promotional budget, what limited funds we set for that. We are going to sponsor CatCon, or we should. I've sent them the money. So people might see us in the program book. It's just our way to help the local area a bit. And, yeah, I need to still get the days off of work. But since I just got back, it's not a big deal. I basically just need the Friday. Yeah, I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to take the Friday and spend Friday and Saturday there, just like I have for the last few years. That's my plan. So we'll be doing that, and that's the show. So for those that would like to reach out to us, ask us questions, criticize us, ask us to cover things, you can always email us, eclecticgamerspodcasts at gmail.com, or reach out to us on our very active Facebook page, which is facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're also available on Twitter and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And, okay, that's it. Episode 32 is in the books. Goodbye, everyone. See ya.