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Arcade 1UP Interview Thoughts

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 4m·analyzed·Jul 6, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

1UP Arcade vs AtGames pinball cabinets: closed ecosystem vs streaming model.

Summary

Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan discuss their recent episode 200 interview with Arcade1UP representatives, analyzing reactions to the lack of Wi-Fi connectivity on the upcoming pinball cabinet and comparing 1UP Arcade's walled-garden approach with AtGames' competing subscription-based streaming cabinet. Key tensions emerge around product philosophy (plug-and-play vs. modding), the appeal of curated game libraries vs. decision paralysis from massive game collections, and technical feasibility of streaming-based pinball given latency concerns.

Key Claims

  • 1UP Arcade's pinball cabinet will launch without Wi-Fi functionality due to licensing agreement restrictions

    high confidence · Chris states Mel from Zen explained 'online leaderboards are next level' and licensing drove the Wi-Fi decision; notes Star Wars cabinet had same approach

  • 1UP Arcade has USB firmware/software update capability via port that may not be readily accessible on the final product

    medium confidence · Chris references Gen 1 board replacement issues; Patrick Walton noted USB accessibility may require opening cabinet on some 1UP models

  • AtGames is developing a competing pinball cabinet with 32-inch screen at ~$600 price point with streaming capabilities

    medium confidence · Jared describes AtGames cabinet as streaming-based with subscription pay-per-hour model; larger screen than 1UP's estimated 24-inch

  • Farsight has licensed 22 Gottlieb pinball titles (excluding L and G games) for AtGames cabinet distribution

    medium confidence · Chris states Farsight partnership will provide Gottlieb library on AtGames platform

  • 1UP Arcade cabinets feature custom-encoded software and haptic feedback specifically tuned for the hardware

    high confidence · Jared notes Zen has custom-designed software to fit monitor/cabinet specifications and encoded haptic feedback; reverse-engineering concerns discussed

Notable Quotes

  • “They're only going to be focusing, for this round, a standalone unit that's designed to be just something you have in your lounge room. You don't have to worry about configuring.”

    Chris Frebus @ mid-show — Articulates 1UP Arcade's core product philosophy: simplicity over configurability

  • “I'm happy with Zen's product. I'm happy with Zachariah's product... It just was simple. It worked. You didn't have to think about it.”

    Chris Frebus @ mid-show — Explains preference for curated, plug-and-play digital pinball experiences over complex configurations

  • “It's too much choice. You're getting decision paralysis.”

    Chris Frebus @ mid-show — Identifies core UX problem with having 50,000+ game options on modded arcade cabinets

  • “I think it won't take... I don't think that would have gone down the path of a generic plug-and-play controller, like, you know, emulating an Xbox controller. So getting that to interface with something like a Raspberry Pi and have it work properly with full feedback and everything like that... that's going to be a bit of a reverse-engineering challenge.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-show — Technical analysis of why modding 1UP Arcade cabinets with custom controllers will be difficult

  • “The whole idea of streaming is kind of a non-starter for the pinball portion of this venture.”

    Jared Morgan @ end-show — Critical assessment of AtGames' streaming architecture for latency-sensitive pinball gameplay, particularly from Australia

  • “We need a director for the show. So Chris and I can just focus on the show, and then someone else can do vision switching with OBS and manage all that for us.”

    Jared Morgan @ opening — Humorous but pointed critique of production complexity for multi-guest broadcasts

  • “I really like that. The size of the cabinet, but geez, the software blows.”

    Chris Frebus (quoting Toy Shop cabinet modder) @ mid-show — User feedback on Toy Shop cabinet quality issues despite hardware appeal

Entities

1UP ArcadecompanyChris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonMel KirkpersonDavid McIntoshpersonJohn DpersonPatrick WaltonpersonZen StudioscompanyAtGamescompanyFarsight StudioscompanyToy ShopcompanyOBS Ninja

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: AtGames employing subscription-based pay-per-hour streaming model for Farsight titles; creates ongoing cost friction vs. 1UP Arcade one-time purchase

    medium · Jared: 'What they are offering as a product is a subscription-based, pay-as-you-play model... charge per hour for if you want to stream games to the cabinet and play it'

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade Podcast experiencing stonewalling from AtGames (no response to contact attempts); suggests uneven access/communication between manufacturers and content creators

    medium · Chris: 'We're not exactly up on the time, like we get our information about AtGames elsewhere because they're not sending us material. They're literally stonewalling us... not even getting a single response back to an email'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Modding community actively reverse-engineering 1UP Arcade cabinets but facing significant technical barriers; custom feedback/haptic controller integration not generic/accessible

    medium · Jared discusses reverse-engineering challenges: 'I don't think that would have gone down the path of a generic plug-and-play controller... that's going to be a bit of a reverse-engineering challenge'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Tension between 'all-in-one machine' with unlimited game libraries and simplified curated experience; Chris articulates preference for constraint/focus over choice paralysis

    high · Chris: 'It's too much choice. You're getting decision paralysis... I find myself basically... there's about five tables or five games that I play, and that's it' despite having 250+ available titles

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.194

0:00
Hey, this is the Blockade Pinball Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, aka Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, Jared Morgan. Well, hello everybody. How's it going? You know, it's 4th of July here in the States. but uh before the july day yeah you know you're like what the heck's that i don't know i know what it is of course the independence day we know because we spread our movie yeah we it's where the aliens come down and like shoot you is that what we get to look forward to because 2020 hasn't been enough i mean i get it at this point i'm i'm expecting anything but uh you know yep that's how it is so uh so yeah hey there folks it's uh it's a nice hot summer day here in the states and jared it's probably winter for you right it's very much winter um for me here this morning it's going to be hard um to sort of equate this to fahrenheit but it was it felt like one degree Celsius here this morning. It was actually about four or five degrees Celsius in the morning when I woke up, but it felt like one. And that's close to freezing. Yeah, yeah, I can't remember.
1:33
So whatever close to freezing is over there for you, that's how cold it is. Well, 33 would be close. 32 would be freezing. So let's call it 37 degrees. Okay. Yeah. We'll call it that. It's cold. It's hot as all get-up for me in Sun the Cow. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, so, hey, folks, I don't know if you noticed, but last episode was episode 200. Two-hundy. And good times were had by all, and I just got to give a big, huge shout-out thanks to, first off, David McIntosh from 1UP Arcade. He came on and gave that initial interview, and we thought that was all that we were going to be having. and then as I was recording that I got a message from Mel Kirk who's the COO over at Zen you all know him and he goes, hey, I've got this guy John D who also works at 1UP Arcade and he wants to come on and it was like, sure!
2:35
and if you didn't notice we've, see look at this we're doing a little split screen action right here, Jared and And we switched to a different video service, I guess you might call. Yeah. That's not Skype, which is great. Yes. Because Skype was causing all the audio delay lagging that was going on for Jared that was driving everybody mental. Oh, yeah. More than mental. It was terrible. So I did some research and everything, and I came across this guy that has a program for OBS, which is the on-air broadcasting program that a lot of Twitch users and everybody use. And his thing is called OBS Ninja. And that allows you to import cameras directly. And even more importantly, it allows Jared to actually see what's being broadcast. Because before, he had to deal with my secondary camera and not see anything else that was going on. Yeah, that's right. So I'm actually watching the Twitch feed now, and I'm sort of monitoring from a video perspective what's happening on the Twitch feed, and also so I can chat to all you folks in the chat. Because I wasn't doing that last week because it was like brand new and shiny, and we all were deep in interview mode. And all you guys were giving us great feedback in the comments about audio is going screwy and everything, but none of us were looking at it. So sorry about that. So maybe not the smartest idea to try out new software when you have guests. But on the other hand, we wouldn't have been able to have hosted four people in Skype and had an actual broadcast that worked. Even half as well as how it worked on our 200th episode. So that's saying something about Skype and NDI feed. It's like great in theory, not great in practice.
product
Visual Pinballproduct
Pinball Arcadeproduct
Street Fighter cab (modded)product

licensing_signal: Licensing agreements explicitly driving design decisions (Wi-Fi restriction) and platform availability (Gottlieb title count restrictions)

high · Chris references Mel's explanation: 'online leaderboards are next level' and licensing-driven Wi-Fi decision; Farsight providing only 22 Gottlieb titles (excluding L and G designation games) suggests licensing scope limitations

  • $

    market_signal: Both 1UP Arcade and AtGames pricing at ~$600 price point in direct competition; market commoditizing premium pinball cabinet experience

    medium · Chris: 'The estimated price of the 1UP Arcade cabinet... Around that, I think. In competition with the estimated price of the 1UP Arcade cabinet, right?' [AtGames at ~$600]

  • ?

    product_strategy: 1UP Arcade deliberately positioning as walled-garden, curated, no-configuration system vs. AtGames' unlimited customization/streaming approach; two competing philosophies in same price tier

    high · Chris: '1UP Arcade are just so confident about their brand and their approach... They are only going to be focusing, for this round, a standalone unit... You don't have to worry about configuring.' vs AtGames allowing PC integration and bring-your-own-ROMs

  • ?

    technology_signal: AtGames streaming-only architecture fundamentally flawed for latency-sensitive pinball gameplay, particularly unviable in regions distant from servers (Australia)

    high · Jared: 'The whole thing about streaming only works if you have servers in the country... And I will guarantee you that AtGames will not be having one in Australia... the whole idea of streaming is kind of a non-starter for the pinball portion'

    • 4:26
    In theory, true. And I don't know. Anybody that's paid attention to the show long enough knows that this has been an ongoing problem. I mean, God, we miss the days of Blab, don't we, Jared? Oh, Blab was so good. Oh, such a good service. I wish Google or somebody big bought them out and just turned that into what is now Meat because it was just so good. I mean, it worked right out the gate for us. We didn't have any issues at all with that. I think probably Zoom is the closest thing to it now. Yeah, but I don't know. Zoom has its own control. I don't know.
    5:03
    I know people are using it and making it work, but it didn't seem like a... Well, part of the problem is that if you go any longer than 45 minutes, you have to pay for it. Pay, yeah. It forces to keep the episodes short.
    5:20
    We don't need to do that, do we? No. so anyway I just want to say a huge thanks to those guys for joining us for that episode 200 and if you want to know why when you watch the YouTube video or listen to the audio that Jared posted why there's these weird non sequitur jumps and talking it was because when I came out of the interview with David for some reason my mic got muted and Mel's mic was doing this massive feedback. And so I spent about 10 minutes trying to problem solve. And that's why I didn't look over at the comments to see that I was on mute.
    6:04
    And meanwhile, everybody within our chat could hear me just fine. So we didn't, we were none the wiser. So conversations were being had that none of you would know about. So, so I think in short, what we actually need is just a director for the show. So Chris and I can just focus on the show, and then someone else can do vision switching with OBS and manage all that for us. Because that would be sweet. Right, so that I'm not having to pat the head and rub the belly at the same time while I'm doing all this. That's right. Because no one can do that, really. You try, but it's really hard.
    6:42
    Joe Rogan doesn't have to put up with this. No, that's right. you know I mean he's only got what is it 6 million 14 million viewers or subscribers something you know like that and I know we're over 100 so there you go surely that's enough we just need to get syndication now what we need really what we need is we need a sponsor and then we can you know say that these guest cameras it's all sponsored by that company and then we can place the blame on them Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. That's how it works, right? Yeah, I think so. We need to sell advertising slots in the show now. Like, you do live drops in the show. Oh, no, no, no, no. Don't do live drops. Those are too difficult for me to figure out.
    7:30
    Oopsie, look at that. I even hit the wrong button right there. See, this is what's... All right. What are we going to do today on the show? Well, we figured that what we had planned for the second half of the show for episode 200, we could kind of roll into today. But one of the things that got cut from the episode was Jared's kind of comments, because he had not seen or been privy to the interview prior. No, my scintillating comments that got cut from the show. Yes, I hacked those things right out.
    8:02
    So some of the things that I gleaned from it, and this is, you know, I'm going to, it was only a week ago, but, you know, that may as well be a year ago for me at the moment. so one of the things that struck me from the whole show is that and this is interesting because I shared the show in a couple of places last week including the Arcade 1UP Facebook page and people were surprised to see sorry not the official one the unofficial one that Patrick Walton manages not Patrick Walton yeah, P-Dubs yeah sorry Patrick, I always I have to double think, you know, because P-Dubs is such a departure from Patrick Walton it does my head in every time so yeah, anyhow, I shared it in there and really lots of people were focusing on the fact that the thing won't have Wi-Fi when it's released which is kind of like they've only got one cabinet right now that has Wi-Fi at all so i mean it was kind of a pipe dream i was hoping that maybe that everything from now on would go wi-fi but i'm not entirely surprised but go ahead the interesting thing was and this was a chat that um patrick and i were having is that what was interesting is that when um rk1up were looking at what toy shop were doing they were shouting rather loudly about who would make a cabinet without wi-fi and uh it turns out they will so you know it was it was you know i get this things change and the direction of what you want to do with the product changes but it was a little bit amusing to sort of see that anyhow that aside um the yeah the lack of wi-fi was confusing a lot of people and like they were going well why would they do that why isn't it online and i said well you know it again i don't think these people actually watch the video if they just read my my very extensive notes and drew their own conclusions from that so maybe i should just not write notes um people watch the show in full but um they uh they seem to be like locking on the fact that, well, you know, when I said that it was relating to the agreement struck in the license that they decided not to go with Wi-Fi because, you know, online leaderboards are, you know, using Mel's own words next level.
    10:38
    So they were going, well, you know, it can't be a licensing related thing. You know, it's just, why would they restrict access to Wi-Fi based on a license? Well, you don't know, you see, because licenses are hard.
    10:56
    Well, especially since you're talking about, well, I mean, Star Wars is all the same license, so like on the Star Wars benefit was that way.
    11:05
    Who knows what the deal is? But there's where I think NBA Jam is specific for the reason why they have the Wi-Fi. Yes. So that you can actually play with another person at the same time as you're going. meanwhile there are other cabs that they announced at the same time uh those aren't wi-fi so i don't know they don't need to be because there's literally no reason for them to be and the only reason why people are screaming about wi-fi is because of leaderboards and they want online leaderboards um the the other thing leaderboards you know and the other thing too is like well Well, if... The other thing, of course, is updates. But, you know... Well, and he addressed that by saying that... USB. Yeah, they have the USB, and they learned their lesson the hard way with Gen 1, where they were having to replace the entire board. And they'll have it there for firmware and software updates of that nature, if need be.
    12:11
    What I think Patrick was saying, as well, is that the whole USB concept is interesting, interesting because he said while it may be on the board itself he said that on some of the other cabinets that rk1up produced the the usb update slot isn't something that's made readily accessible like you have to sort of clamber inside the cabinet to get to the board and then plug the usb um into there so what will be interesting to see is when this thing comes out whether that usb port is actually accessible or not um without having to you know dive deep into the cabinet yeah i wonder if that has anything to do with it so i've been watching a lot of youtube videos now related to all the one-up arcade mods that people are doing and i've watched a couple about you know people been stalling raspberry pi and everything and again i wonder if maybe that is Arcade 1 up making it not so easy to just hot load a USB stick with I don't know, I don't even know there's the potential of being able to hack in I guess is what I'm saying The other one that you know the other cabinet that AtGames is producing Which is kind of what we're going to talk about a little bit, so don't go hog wild yet Jared so I won't go hog wild but it's saying that they let you bring your own ROMs like special sort of ROMs but they let you bring your own ROMs and put them onto your arcade cabinet so that's their strategy for that I don't know if arcade one I think arcade one of them more like a you know a solid state if you like when you refer to solid state as you can't change anything on it right it's not designed to have uploads or like any sort of user content uploaded into it yeah so okay so that was what you gleaned off of the facebook page after posting it with uh the wi-fi thing what else what else did you get out of this so out of the whole interview it sounds like um that the thing i'd like to hear is that arcade one-up are just so so confident about their brand and their approach to this products like there's they know exactly what they're doing they know the market um they have 100 confidence in how they've gone about the product production and they have all their supply chain sorted out and they're just ready to go basically that's the thing that gives me a lot of confidence is is that and the other thing too like aside from just the the confidence in the brand the their steadfastness with what their product direction is as well so they they are only going to be focusing on for this round a standalone unit that's designed to be just something you have in your lounge room you don't have to worry about configuring and this is a point that was brought up in the facebook um group as well it's like some people actually don't want to stuff around with wi-fi and have to deal with that like they just want to turn the thing on stop playing and to me that's why you spend 600 bucks on this thing right yeah but it's it for the longest time it's why i was not a pc gamer it was just so much easier to i put in my disc i play my game i don't have to worry about configuration of graphics or anything else of that nature i'm not worried about what the frame rate is it's not this this is what you have with console and then the same thing happened with pinball where i you know what got me into digital pinball back in 2001 2002 was visual pinball right it was just such a pain in the butt to go through all the steps to get it going and and functioning and and like i had my laptop finally dialed in great and then i would go and try and play on the PC and I was like oh wait I got to copy over everything to this one It was such a pain. You really had to work hard for it, didn't you, back then? Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I know people say that it's so much easier now and everything, but the problem is that now I just don't really want to dive into it at all. I'm happy with Zen's product. I'm happy with Zacharias' product. I'm happy with, you know, what everybody's put. I was happy with Farsight's product. It just was simple. It worked. You didn't have to think about it. They did all the heavy lifting for you, so all you need to do, turn the thing on, and providing you have everything initially configured, such as your graphics settings and everything to your liking, and to the specs of your video card, you literally just plug and play the thing and go and enjoy. In a lot of respects, it's also, you know, I use an iPhone as opposed to an Android platform phone. And I have a friend that swears by Android, but here's the difference. he loves to tinker he likes to crack into things and set the programs up exactly the way he wants them to function whereas if you're an ios user too bad this is the this is the program this is how it's going to function and unless you plan on jailbreaking your phone and you know no one voiding the warranties on everything um you you have to take what you get so i'm definitely more of the hey so long as it works i'm cool i don't need to futz and customize and get in there yeah that that's true i remember those days on android when i was putting custom roms on every second week um but i got to the point where i just didn't care anymore and i stopped doing it because it was it's like again you had to really work for it and stuff didn't work right and it was just like you're constantly chasing your tail and that's what it felt like a bit with um with visual pinball back in those early days it really did feel like when you whack a mole problems right you whack one mole and then another one pops up that you got to try and fix yeah and uh i remember my first introduction to um vpin was buying a pre-compiled disc from somebody on i think it was ebay or something like that where that's where they yeah it was like they actually all they said this is free they made it very clear that this software is free you can download it for free and you don't need to pay for this, but if you don't want to spend the time doing that, here it is for $20. Right, they were selling you a CD-ROM that just happened to have content on it. It was already essentially with detailed instructions that you do this, you extract this here, you put that there and you start playing. And it's true. It really did make it a lot easier to get into vPinball initially. And now I think, I can't really speak to the onboarding experience with vPin now, because I haven't touched it ever since, well, Pinball Arcade came around.
    18:59
    So, yeah, I'm not really a good person to speak to about that and how easy or not easy it is to set up. But anecdotally, it sounds like it's a lot better now. So one of the things that I – well, there's two things I picked up on. I'll touch upon the first one because the second one is going to get us into the AtGames product. i think i know what you might be referring to there let's push on possibly uh no the first thing that that struck me was with these pinball cabs that zen is working on the software specifically to fit the monitor that they're using and there's a reason for that and that is most of Zen's original tables are wide-body pins. They sure are. Yeah. Very wide in some cases. In some cases, exceedingly so, yeah. So I think they're, I don't know, I'm very curious to know what they're going to be doing graphics-wise. Are they actually physically moving ramps so they actually are visible the entire time and not going off the edges, or what they're doing with that. But they're also encoding for the haptic feedback, specifically with what arcade one-up is doing all these steps that they're doing with this makes me wonder uh if somebody does raspberry pi one of these things so that they can put in their full zen arsenal uh how that's going to function because it's not going to fit necessarily the same way and it's not going to play the same way as what arcade one-ups product is going to play no definitely not it's going to be um and people will mod like they they will take this thing and they will try to mod it but the challenge will be that the the way that zen as you say has custom designed the software to fit on this cabinet and most importantly custom designed an interface and feedback mechanism board most likely to connect everything together including the button interfaces and everything that is going to be the interesting thing to reverse engineer because i think it won't take i don't think that would have gone down the path of a generic plug and play controller um like you know and let's emulating an xbox controller for example um so getting that to interface with something like a raspberry pi and have it work properly with full feedback and everything like that and also you know the fact that the board also probably can supply the voltage for the solenoids that give you that feedback you know that's going to be a bit of a reverse engineering challenge for a software engineer yeah yeah to install it not look anything providing you know how it works and you can you can sniff it and put oscilloscopes on it, you can reverse engineer it, but the real question is, will it be worthwhile doing? Will it be worthwhile spending the time? Right, because this is the other thing that I've noticed with watching these videos. People are swapping out basically everything but the shell itself of these arcade one-up cabinets. Some people are even swapping out the monitors. Most of everything I've watched is keeping the monitor, but partly because for these arcade one-up machines, they are a 5x4 screen, which good luck finding one today. That's an odd size, that's for sure.
    22:42
    Without having to window it or go through whatever you need to do. So a lot of people are keeping the monitors, but they're swapping out arcade sticks and buttons and putting in new speakers. I mean, basically the minimum cost for any of these swap-outs is about $150, and it just goes up from there. So there again, you come back to the idea of, well, if you're buying the pinball cabinet for the cabinet and that aesthetic, how much are you going to have to spend in order to make it function how you're dreaming of it? Or is there another product out there that might just meet your needs better? Because especially with the pinball product, you need steam. And that's not just a Raspberry Pi. That's a computer.
    23:36
    That's a big dumping box. That's a PC with a decent spec. Yeah, exactly right. It's very interesting. On the subject of modding, I also read in the – this was the Toy Shock page where people were modding all their Toy Shock cabinets. Oh, okay. And I think one of them – you know, some people have gone to quite great lengths to mod the cabinet, and they've turned – they've actually turned the cabinet itself – they just use it as a shell, basically, because it was the right size for them. but and and you know that size pinball machine isn't really something you just go to a like a cabinet manufacturer and say hey could you make that for me like they're not really available so this person um you know went to the trouble of doing it but in the comedy goes yeah look i really like that the size of the cabinet but geez the software blows and like it's like those those gotley tables boy they are rough and like you know well i'm still seeing problems and i'm sure that they resolved this allegedly in the next version of the board they're releasing and uh and etc but like the the lag is just really it's like you can't unsee it once you see it.
    25:00
    It's amazing how many of the reviews for that up on Amazon mainly, where people are like, there is a little bit of lag, but you get used to it, and then it just plays fine. And I'm like, and yet they're still giving it a five star. And I'm like, that's an interesting approach to go, here's a noticeable flaw,
    25:21
    and you get used to it. Yeah. It's just like, my car has a really uncomfortable seat, But you get used to it.
    25:32
    It makes this howling noise whenever you make a right-hand turn, but after a while, you kind of look forward to it. You get used to it. Hey, look, it gets people off the road.
    25:43
    So the other thing that I was thinking about was just in terms of people wanting to have lots and lots of tables on their pinball table. is something that I'm experiencing using this Street Fighter cab that I have that has been fully modded to the point that it even has pinball buttons. And yes, I have mapped everything from Xen and TPA and Demon's Tilt and Zachariah and Pinball Wicked. It all works in there now. Yes, great. but it's also got there's a bunch of arcade games on there mostly Neo Geo but there's a few and then there's also just a whole mess of PS1 and PS2 and games like that right and what I'm noticing is it's too much choice you're getting decision paralysis exactly and I find myself basically there's about five tables or five tables, five games that I play. And that's it.
    26:51
    Beyond that, it's kind of, you know, it's fun to flick over and look at some of these things. But, and I think because the guy that's long-term lending me this, he actually owns all the software, made sure it was legal for him to rip it over by talking to the software companies that were responsible for it and, you know, looking at his user rights and all that jazz. So I think there's maybe max 250 different games or titles on this thing. So then I'm watching these videos, and they're talking about having, you know, 50,000 games or whatever. 50,000? What? We're talking every single Nintendo, every single Super Nintendo, every single N64, every single PS1 game, every single PS2 game, every single Sega Master System, every single Sega Genesis. I mean, it's ridiculous. And that's not even including the arcade ROMs. Oh, right. Of every single arcade game that's ever existed on the planet, basically. And that's where I do think that, yeah, it's, like you said, paralysis of choice.
    28:04
    And once I realized that there was only about five games I wanted to play, I started playing this thing more and more. and now it's down to the point that I somehow have become obsessed with Pac-Man again and yeah that's a like Pac-Man when I was in Netherworld and I had a mate who was really into vintage games he got me into Pac-Man he goes yeah it's not as easy as you think hey because I've never really played the thing that much of course everyone knows what it is but when you start playing it you realize just how devilish the game mechanic is right I mean, I basically, because this is the actual arcade board, I've memorized the two or the three patterns that I'm supposed to be using.
    28:51
    And even having them mostly memorized, there still becomes brain flubs when you die. I still haven't gotten past 50,000 points. I finally saw the Galaga ship for a bonus fruit to eat, and that's about as far as I've gotten.
    29:05
    And then I threw in, because the other ROM that comes with it is Pac-Man Plus, I believe. I started playing that and I completely sucked at it because there is no patterns that you're able to follow.
    29:18
    But it's kind of interesting to just kind of sit there and veg out and do and play. But again, knowing that I'm not sitting down and going, okay, which of these 250 am I going to play now? It's, hey, am I either going to play Pac-Man, I'm going to play Asteroids, Defender, Joust, you know it's a pretty small list that that i'm that i'm dealing with so that is where there becomes the question of like you said you want the all-in-one machine but at what cost so i think there's where arcade one-up is doing one version of things and they're going to have their custom software and then if you want to have the all-in-one here comes part two yep at games at games we've we're we're not exactly uh up on the time like we get our information about at games elsewhere because they're not sending us uh material um they're literally like stonewalling us it's not even getting a single response back to an email which you know is disappointing wait did you send an email i didn't send an email oh you didn't send an email no i did not no i thought you might have because i suggest i did find an email address that we can use um but i didn't actually bother sending it but uh no although we did get stonewalled in one other aspect in that uh uh well i won't go into into the the people that know know that they got a certain uh request sent to them and uh we at the blockade did not get contacted yeah which is interesting um but jared why don't you kind of touch upon uh what at games is is doing so at games is from what i've seen in all of the facebook groups i mean what they are offering as a product is a subscription based pay as you play model for their games if you don't bring your own steam library and import that into the game or when I say import that, essentially it means plugging your own PC into the cabinet and use it as a, essentially, a controller cabinet like you've got sitting behind you, Chris. Okay, hold on, hold on, let's back up because I think we forgot one critical piece of information, what we're talking about. AtGames is making a pinball cabinet. Yeah, so AtGames are making a pinball cabinet, yes. And that pinball cabinet is going to feature a 32-inch screen as opposed to the 24-inch screen that I believe that's going to be on the arcade one-up cab and yes yes um it's also going to be i believe streaming ready so that uh you can and with wi-fi so that you can uh basically at the push of a button start a twitch stream of your gameplay and be able to go from there uh the price i believe they were gunning for is about six hundred dollars i think does that sound right Jared It around that I think it in competition with the estimated price of the 1UP Cabinet Right.
    32:27
    And what they're saying is you can play any game that you want pretty much because, yeah, you're going to have to dump your own PC into it. That's right, yes. but the other thing that we found out is that farsight actually uh has been licensed from at games i believe or has entered into a uh partnership of sorts with them much like they've done with toy shock and this is where i'm kind of blown away that they're even able to do this um that they're going to do this uh they're going to let you play i believe they're saying 22 pinball tables, which would basically be all the Gottliebs, just not the L and G titles. Yeah.
    33:16
    But there is where it became, well, wait a second, how are they going to manage to do that? And this is where I think Jared is talking about the subscription. Okay, now that I've got them up to speed, go Jared. Yeah, so this whole subscription model thing is interesting. What I've heard, again, unconfirmed, because I haven't released a lot of information, is that it'll be a charge per hour. for if you want to stream games to the cabinet and play it.
    33:42
    So I don't really understand. So A, for you to be able to stream games, it seems like they're going to be using the pinball cabinet almost like a Roku or something like that. Wait, wait. So what you're saying is it's not that the software is even built into the cabinet. It's not like there's a board of the software running. It's going to be a streaming service. I think so. I actually think this thing is going to be like Apple Games Studio, whatever they call it, where you're streaming games to the system. Oh, I don't think pinball lag time is ready for that. Well, look, I'll tell you what, it won't work well down here in Australia with the jump. Yeah, Google Stadia, that's the one. Thanks, Pinball Whiz. the whole thing about streaming only works if you have servers in the country that you are living in and I will guarantee you that AtGames will not be having one in Australia so that means that we're going to be subject to the hop over the ditch to the US and then back again to stream this stuff and even with like NBN as well on a decent NBN tier with no problems that's not going to be a fun time you talk about flipper lag on the toy shop cabinet get ready for more flipper lag well that's what I'm saying because I've tried I tried doing not playstation now but it was basically the ability to you could log into your ps4 on your pc and play ps4 games and I tried doing that with I tried doing it with both TeeFee and with Zen and it was unplayable. The lag was just too severe.
    35:36
    I tried doing it as well when I had a Shield tablet, Shield Android tablet. You could use their streaming service and this was back when NBN wasn't even a thing. We were still using, not dial-up, we may as well have been dial-up, ADSL 2 Plus. and you could stream games like from a server and play it on your on your tablet which was pretty amazing at the time but boy was it laggy as hell uh it was not a fun experience and that was just on games that were like at the time pc games not even pinball games it was like you really had to make a lot of concessions in your mind to go i'm i'm playing a pc game on my tablet this is cool and i say cool like cool because it was not i look what i can do it's not that i want to do it it's what i can do i can stream this laggy game to my tablet it's fantastic but you know if you're paying 600 for a dedicated appliance that's supposed to let you do this and let you play bone busters clacking away at you with the amount of lag that it will have,
    36:53
    I think it's just a shite sandwich, if you ask me. It sounds like to me this is basically so they can say, yeah, we come with games.
    37:06
    And rather than advertising the sheer fact that you are being a shell to bring the stuff into and play. So you can advertise, hey, at $600, yes, you can actually play a game, not at $600, oh, and now add in the cost of your PC. Interestingly, I think that's how they got around the whole problem of having competitive products in the market because what they're doing here is they're not installing software on a bespoke board inside the unit. They're making their library, their content library, accessible to another company. In other words, it's like having it with Steam. It's just not Steam. So therefore, they're not in conflict with Point Shock. It's steaming, but it's not Steam.
    37:59
    You know, I tell you, Farsight is dancing on a razor's edge. i mean i get it they're you know people ask us all the time why don't we talk about fireside why don't we speculate if our site because this is why because we we declared them dead over a year ago um then they were done with pinball any evidence to suggest otherwise exactly and every single time something kind of emerges we just kind of go So, I mean, prime example of that is just with Toy Shock putting out their cabinet. And there's no slam on Toy Shock, but with Firesight licensing their software to them, it's like, well, what about our CUDA? Yeah. I know our CUDA is right now not making anything due to the COVID situation, but it's still one of those things where you were in an agreement, you were in a thing with them, and now you're basically pumping out a... Undercutting them? by like about a factor of 10 with this product. Like, come on, mate. Like, that's pretty dodgy. And not only that, but the software that you're using looks suspiciously like the same software that was being put into the Arcuta machine.
    39:19
    Well, yeah, well, it was. It's certainly not Steam on the Twitch. It's definitely not Steam. So, I don't know. And then, here again, we go back to the conversation that we had with David McIntosh, and it was near the end of the interview, you'll notice he had a moment where he said that he just, when I questioned how 1UP feels about an overcrowded market. Oh, this competition. Yeah. Yeah, and he basically was like, we're fine with the competition. We just want everybody to do it cleanly. Not be dodgy, in other words. Yes, and there's a reason. There's a good reason for that. And that is, if one company is being dodgy, it makes the people that hold the licenses leery of working with another company. But if everybody is above board in doing it properly, then those licensors are more willing to deal with that. And that's specifically something that Arcuda was also a big champion of, that all the cabinets they'd made previously, it was with full cooperation of the license holders, and they wanted to maintain doing that. so it's kind of interesting seeing I really like what Arcuda set out to do they really did set out to do things right and try to go down the path of getting the approvals the problem with doing this is these things take a lot of time so they spent the time, they got the approvals but unfortunately they weren't operating on a level playing field and literally every other company in China went, ah, no, let's not do that. Let's just go and do the thing and make the cabinets and basically copy everything. So, yeah, and then they were left just holding the cap and going, well, okay, that's two years of work down the drain. Let's start again, I guess.
    41:23
    It makes me think of, Jared, is that, you know, these little things that you and I love to play with, the fidget cubes and we went into the whole deal of how antsy games was there your antsy labs was the first one to make one of these and then the knockoffs came which was hey look i bought the knockoff and yes and then all of a sudden you still weren't they still weren't available in the market and all of a sudden this one came and when i got it from a kickstarter and i love this one but it was immediately cease and desist and they were no longer able to uh even sell these and all that you see in stores anymore what antsy games did because they got their patent they really enforced it hard exactly and that is not what's happening in the digital pinball market where uh once a piece of tech gets out there china just goes and then jenna comes around goes hey do you want to buy something and the other companies go hey that looks good where'd that come from i don't know i don't care let's go hey don't worry about where they came from you don't need to worry about that let's just buy the thing let's do a deal yeah yeah it's super super legit legit so here's here's here's my thing then when it when it comes down to when if you're like i said the the one-up cab apparently is coming soon when they say fall i'm guessing August, September. That's kind of when I believe this is going to be approaching. Probably September. Because that gets it into the stores prior to holiday, which gives a little ramp up of sales and then gives them knowledge for how much they need to build in time for holiday. And probably enough time for them to do minor iterations for them to then roll that into what they release internationally according to what John Dee was saying where Australia could theoretically see these around Christmas time.
    43:21
    So that would make sense, I guess. Yeah. Now, at the same time, in that same period of time, supposedly we're going to see wave two of Toy Shock's machine. Or when I say wave two, I should say 1.2. So that's still the original 12 and 1, the Gottlieb tables that they previously did in the Haunted House cab. but now you'll be able to pick one of four skins and it'll have the updated bezel the updated uh plunger and the 60 frames per second uh play on that and then at the same time i believe at games is also coming out now do you remember what time what their time frame was jared yeah i can't remember um i mean whatever it's going to be between fall and christmas right they're going to need to target that market if they're not silly right right so otherwise going to be yeah left left holding the hat basically yeah so i mean if you're going to be in the market for one of these things they're all right around the same price point so now the question what do you buy if you ate for your 600 exactly and that's where it's well what is it you want yeah if you want to bring in all the pinball tables that you already have and you're cool with connecting up a PC to these things. And again, based off of what's in the 1UP cab that I have there, it's got a PC, it's got a controller board, it's got... The AtGames isn't going to have this. AtGames is probably going to be more closer to plug-and-play with your PC, I've got to say. I think you should probably consider almost... And this is the other... This is the questionable thing. What they're doing is they're kind of doing what Arcuda is doing with their interface for games. This is the thing that makes it really uncomfortable because the whole idea with Arcuda is you can take anything and plug it into it and it just starts to work as an Xbox controller and off you go. It's kind of exactly what this arcade one-up thing is.
    45:36
    No, the arcade one-up thing is. Yes, they're not. Okay, thank you. And that's not really sitting with me very well at all.
    45:44
    Because you feel that it's somebody looking at what Arcuda was doing and directly copying it? 100%. That's exactly what they've done. Like, they have copied the idea almost to the letter, except, no, not even, I was going to say no, but they haven't actually got screens. Oh, yeah, what they have. So it's basically exactly... okay but the only thing that i'm going to say with that is that one people that did put money down for arkuda wound up having to have that money refunded and that was two years ago uh still no product so i mean there is an issue of hey whoever puts product on the market so if you're in the market at this time arkuda's off the table so it's one yeah it's not even there um so and that's Yeah, I keep saying that with Arcuda as much as I love them. They have trouble releasing product, and that's a big problem when you're trying to sell something.
    46:44
    Yeah. Anyhow. So there's the choice. If you're somebody that wants to heavily mod and do this, then the AtGames cab is probably going to be for you.
    46:53
    Yes, absolutely. Yeah. If you're somebody that is looking for aesthetics of a pinball machine with the artwork that goes with a pinball machine, okay now you're looking at both at game or uh this is getting confusing isn't it you're looking at i'm having trouble with it like it's like yeah you're looking at either the toy shock uh cab with uh got lead tables or you're looking at the arcade one-up with now again artwork is not finalized yet according to david so who knows if the we keep on referring to it as the attack from mars cab because that's what they showed at CES, and it was full artwork of Attack from Mars. And based off of other arcade one-up cabs, they pick one of their things based the whole cab off of that, and then, yes, they have the additional games.
    47:48
    So odds are, yeah, it's still going to be an Attack from Mars cabinet, or you can have something with Star Wars art or something with Marvel art.
    47:56
    So again, there's your aesthetics on that end, and then you've got to go, well, hey, do you want to play Gottlieb Tables or do you want to play one thing that has Williams and some Zen originals?
    48:11
    Well, yeah. And to do that, you're going to have to get multiple units. So there's going to be multiple expenses of $600.
    48:21
    So do you have deep enough pockets to collect them all Right which adds up Well based off of some of the homerooms that I seen people making arcades Some people have deep enough pockets right like them all right which adds up well based off of some of the uh the homerooms that i seen people making some people have some people have deep enough pockets yeah yeah they kind of do i was laughing because one guy that i was watching who has every single arcade one-up machine was sitting there going yeah i don't think i'm gonna get one of the pinball machines i'm like dude you know you are don't even don't even play or not yeah it's gonna happen whether you realize it yet or not you're gonna be getting one of these things because all he's gonna take is getting your hands on one you're gonna be like hey that's that's kind of cool that's cool we must have them all yeah yeah it's it's gonna be a thing but i don't know look it sounds like this is the this is the tricky thing so with um arcade one up um And it seems that perhaps in future waves, you might see internet connectivity added to this thing. But you don't know, because there's certainly been no official announcement yet. there's been hints and I certainly highlighted those hints in my show notes from the last episode where I inferred from what the what everyone was saying that yeah this may not be the last time you actually see a round of pinball cabinets from this company but if you are willing to make that bet and wait for arcade one up to release their product line And I would imagine if you are an Arcade 1-Up fan, you would not want to mix in stuff from Act Games or Toy Shock into your collection because it needs to just be on brand.
    50:09
    So that's a decision you're going to have to make as well. Do I hold off the Wave 2 or do I just take it as it comes and give the man the money?
    50:20
    Which is hard to decide too, considering what the first two generations of the arcade one-up cabs are compared to what they look like now. One of the things everybody points out to is how much better the screens are now as opposed to what they were for their first two gens of releases. The buttons have gotten better because that was one of the first things everybody was swapping out. The joysticks and buttons. It's kind of like, well, why would you buy something that's an arcade cabinet if the buttons are crappy? Exactly. So I'm hoping all those lessons that were learned from those are getting applied to these pinball caps that we're going to get top-notch buttons, top-notch screen. I would very much doubt that they're going to start from scratch with all the lessons they've learned and not apply them to the pinball line because that just makes no sense at all. They would absolutely do that. They would produce something that's essentially got all of their product knowledge rolled into these things at once. And I think from what you've seen on the limited video coverage you see in the cabinets, they look pretty robust. And that's one thing I hear from Arcade 1UP customers, that their cabinets are actually well built. So I think we can expect that same build quality with Arcade 1UP for sure. Yeah, I mean, the materials used for the cabinet itself, you're basically building it on IKEA furniture. that's how it's assembled and it feels solid once you're there it's solid once you lock them all together but it's still like particular MDF board that they used to make them but I mean you're not expecting 6 ply because you don't need the weight it doesn't need to be that heavy and that's also the attraction of them like they're easy to move around you don't have to actually worry about getting specialist equipment I just noticed a comment here on the thread with somebody saying, yeah, they're an addiction.
    52:23
    He started in April 2019 and currently has 12 of them, most at the reduced price when sales go on. And that is a good point. If you have the market, I don't know if we'd see this to an extent here in Australia, but certainly in the domestic U.S. market, I'd imagine with the supply that you get in the retailers,
    52:42
    you probably could, if you're savvy enough, pick them up at a reduced price. And that might help those folks who want to get all three cabinets when they release. So that was one of the YouTube videos that I watched.
    52:55
    In the U.S., there's basically only one retailer that carries them in store, and that's Walmart. Costco carries them during the holidays. But other than that, it's all online sales. Walmart, at any given time, seems to only carry two of the cabinets. apparently as well what's that best buy online oh yeah no no online there's all sorts of shoot home depot carries them online oh really yeah so so no online you can get them all over the place but physically in store you walk in you pick it up you walk out it seems like one is the only one and they only carry about two different cabs at any given time and uh what people are noticing is when the next wave of cabs comes in, Walmart wants to blow out what they have, and they have no qualms about knocking the price. Price drops down to about $50.
    53:54
    What? Yeah. So how much do they buy outright? Typically $300. Whoa, that's a steep discount. Yes, and then not only that, but people, and I've thought for myself in terms of what lowest price offered was on something, and somebody was even able to show receipts of this. One dollar for... Yeah, exactly. That's what a friend of the show, RDK14, says in the chat. Some got a cab for one dollar. Yeah, they basically picked up the Asteroids cabinet and the Defender cabinet. Those were the first two releases. Nothing else was done. You couldn't get an app on the App Store for that. You got yourself a whole cabinet that you can use. I mean, you'd have to be pretty much smiling like a chessier cab. But most recently, people were able to get the Star Wars cab for $50.
    54:47
    $50. See, when you're talking about that money, then that's a no-brainer. You just shut up and take it. Guess what I've got a watch on now. I'd imagine, yeah. Because I know what two cabs are being carried currently, and honestly, I don't even care. is like hey if you go down to that price i'll you know how can you say no and believe me then they'll be going back up on craze list uh yeah well look one person's problem is another person's profit in this case right yeah so point being keep your eyes open and see what happens but that is where i'm curious that's why i asked the question is the pinball going to be going into retail or is it only going to be online i think it is going like what we inferred from the chat says they're going to have partners, retail partners, to sell these things. So I think look in a Walmart near you for a big box with branding on it from Arcade1Up. But as far as AtGames goes, all we've seen or heard about this thing is through a spreadsheet.
    55:53
    Which there was a brilliant tweet. I forget who it was from AtGames. It was from John D. on his Twitter saying that he would be fired if he put out a spreadsheet and let it be announced on a Twitch stream.
    56:15
    Yeah, that's right. Yes, that was a summarized version of the tweet. Yeah, summarized. It was summarized with some bits redacted. But if you go to John D's, it's Dynamom on Twitter, you can see it for yourself.
    56:38
    So, yeah, it was interesting. But, yes, getting back to my point, because I'm great at going off tangents, the point was we don't even know what these things look like. Oh, yeah, from ad games, right. No idea. And on the concept of the idea about what cabinet do you buy for branding or like for the aesthetics of it. Well, who knows with AtGames? Who knows what it's going to look like? Will it just have the regular Legends branding on it? What's the... Yeah, we don't know. So you can't really... If you're making a decision now or planning ahead on what you're going to buy,
    57:17
    you can't really factor in what AtGames is doing because you just don't exactly know what they're going to be producing.
    57:24
    Yeah. So it's all a wing and a prayer. Did we help out at all today? I don't know. TLDR, wait until a little bit closer to fall when a lot more details are going to be out. But for now, it'll get your gears turning as to what you might want to do with your theoretical $500 or $600 if you have that just lying around going sharp and I really need to spend it. If it's screaming at you, just spend it. Yeah. Yeah, and it's one of those things, too, where I think I mentioned it before.
    58:04
    I don't know where I had this conversation last week. It might have been in the podcast. It might not, but it was right now with having one cab, that's easy. You can put it anywhere in the house. It doesn't take up much space, whatever. If you've got two, well, you kind of want them relatively close, but they don't have to be side by side, but you might want them somewhere, but you can still be spread out a little bit. If you get three, you have an arcade now. No, they have to be together. now you have to have the proper space for him so it starts to get more and more complex my wife just popped her head around the corner and gave me a look he's like no you're not short answer no you're not chris well i think i think ultimately if that if that happened uh this thing behind me would suddenly turn into something else um yeah yeah and this this room in here would become that so yeah pretty much yeah uh yeah bye-bye little mini controller cabinet see you later you know i'm looking at my room at the moment where i do the podcast and um over if you switch to my camera chris over like to this side actually no it's that side um i don't know which side it is because i'm reversed um i'm doing like that why is the a thing in the street it's over there there's an empty space it's right near my window um and i'm looking at it now i'm going i could probably at a pinch fit a um uh an arcade one-up cabinet in there because of the size and this is the this is the thing right this is why these cabinets are attractive because they will fit in the bedroom with other stuff in them if you need them to yes um so it could be a spot i'd have to clear out some stuff which i'd be happy to do because it's just a chunk room at the moment uh and yeah it would go there and then between meetings exactly as john d said between meetings you just flick it on have a bit of a game and then flick it off and get back to work like and that's definitely the thing that i'm noticing with again with me playing pac-man i push a button i start playing i'm done and you push the button i walk away it's not me having to come on turn on the computer get it up sleep mode loading up steam getting going plugging in the controller loading up the game and then playing you know i mean we're talking sure that'll take you two or three minutes but it's still time yeah yeah how long does it take to boot the the cab yeah uh because the computer basically gets put into sleep mode with the push of a power button um it's 15 seconds wow okay so you're playing in about 30 seconds yeah absolutely wow that's That's about the same amount of time as you fumbling around for a quarter in your pocket and walking up to an arcade machine. Pretty much. Over in the comments section, RKD14 also said it will show her a Ms. Pac-Man cab. You mean like this?
    60:56
    And look, if I flick it on, it actually functions with joysticks that work. So, yeah. Yeah, it's the nice one. Yeah. I would love to have just an entire row of these. Of these.
    61:14
    I tell you what, as far as ability to fit into a small space, you've pretty much got that market slowed up right there with those, eh? Right? I mean, I could just line up the desktop. It's funny because these were all the rage about a year and a half ago.
    61:30
    Yeah. They have, I think, four different... I know there's a centipede with rollerball. Oh, with a trackball? With a trackball, yeah.
    61:42
    Miniaturizing that is no mean feat. No. Because that's a very, like, if you have a look at one of those trackballs below the surface of the machine, in like a centipede, it's a big unit. So, miniaturizing that and making it actually accurate wouldn't be easy.
    61:59
    Yeah. So, it was one of those things where like, oh, that'd be really cool to have a whole bunch of these. These were $20 a pop. $20? Yeah, but they look good. It does look good, and it's playable. It's just really tiny. Yeah. It's the kind of thing that if I had a Tron machine, I'm sure I would plop this into it.
    62:22
    Yeah. The Tron pinball. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That'd be pretty sweet. All right. Well, I'm saving things, Jared. It is an hour, and I'm saving things. because there's more that we can talk about. Just purely based off of Mel's statement that we have. That deserves a whole episode of its own. It does deserve a whole episode of its own. For our trademark blockade speculation that you'll come to the show for,
    62:56
    because just like the milkshakes, our speculation bring the boys to the yard. Yeah. What we're hoping for is Zen said that they would announce the next tables mid-July. And so that's why we're doing this podcast this week, so then we could probably take off next week, or if need be, come back next week, or wait an additional... Anyway, the whole point is hopefully next podcast we'll actually be talking about something tangible, and then we can tie that into the statements that were made there. Yeah, that will actually dovetail in quite nicely. yeah so if you're wondering what the plan is that's the plan uh that we probably are not podcasting next week we'll go back to a two-week schedule unless something gets announced yeah that's right but we just couldn't help ourselves this week no well i didn't want to get too far away from uh from the interview and just kind of touch upon those things and too far away from the ad games stuff because literally that info has been out for i think about a month now it has been But it just hasn't felt right to talk about it. Yeah. Hasn't really fit in. So, yeah. Well, that we were saving our 200th episode for something interesting, not just us talking about, well, you know, Jared.
    64:12
    Stuff and things. Which is exactly what we'll talk about next time. All right, folks. Thank you so much for tuning in. We appreciate it. We have fun doing it. Hope you guys have fun listening, watching, and or whatever it is that you do on that front. until next time bye-bye bye-bye oh split screen bye-bye bye-bye see you see you see you bye