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BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·58m 53s·held·Mar 28, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

BlahCade covers Zacharia Pinball Steam release, cabinet mode analysis, and Zen Volume 3 mobile progression mechanics.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss Zacharia Pinball's new starter pack and campaign mode on Steam, including the design differences between original Italian layouts and modern remakes. They explore the Zachariah EM remakes' mechanical authenticity, preview Spacey's Arcade's cabinet mode analysis, and dive into Zen Pinball Volume 3's mobile progression system, with Chris beginning detailed tracking of monetization mechanics via spreadsheet.

Key Claims

  • Zacharia Pinball starter pack costs $5 and includes eight table variations (retros, recreations, and remakes)

    high confidence · Chris, discussing Magic Pixel's community manager Mart's request to promote the starter pack

  • Zacharia tables are being prepared for Xbox release; Switch version already exists

    high confidence · Chris, citing Mart's communication about platform releases

  • Jeremy Williams from Tested considers Zaccaria to be the best VR pinball offering available

    high confidence · Chris, referencing Williams' recent video comparing VR pinball offerings

  • Pinball Arcade is working on a mystery table with female subject matter (possibly Elvira), potentially as a Kapow Games boutique release

    low confidence · Chris reporting unverified forum rumors about an Elvira 3/Woe Nelly reskin, explicitly calling it rumor and asking for source verification

  • Zen's Williams cabinet mode has subtle immersion issues, such as the camera shaking when the table is nudged

    medium confidence · Chris, citing Spacey's Arcade (Greg O'Rourke) video analysis of cabinet mode design flaws

  • Zen Pinball Volume 3 mobile version has significantly higher progression costs than Steam version

    high confidence · Chris, reporting personal experience with 100 Zen coins required to upgrade cards to level 4, contrasting with his earlier PC experience

Notable Quotes

  • “the Zacharia tables are hard for me to get into because they're so foreign... The layouts are not like anything that was being done stateside.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~7:00 — Frames the core design philosophy difference between Italian Zacharia machines and American pinball conventions

  • “They've kept the theme but they've made them more accessible... it shows that the studio understands pinball layout to an extent that they know the canons that people expect”

    Chris Friebus @ ~12:00 — Praises Zacharia's remake strategy as evidence of deep design competence and player-centric iteration

  • “once you actually get into the table, then it's all great... but the menus suck.”

    Jeremy Williams (via Chris) @ ~28:00 — Summarizes a key UX weakness in Zacharia VR despite otherwise excellent table implementation

  • “I have no clue what I'm doing... Oh, look at the jump rope. Oh, look at the speed pole.”

    Greg O'Rourke/Spacey's Arcade (via Chris) @ ~50:00 — Captures first-time player wonder with Champion Pub's hidden toy mechanics

  • “I'm now in the same boat as everybody else now... I'm going to have to have a hundred Zen coins to upgrade to four? Holy crap.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~70:00 — Marks Chris's reversal on mobile progression criticism after experiencing high unlock costs firsthand

  • “I'm not going to do that purely based off of feels because that just annoys me... we need facts.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~75:00 — Signals commitment to data-driven analysis of Zen monetization mechanics

  • “It sucks you in... it's what it's designed to do... very cleverly designed in the way that it unpacks the gameplay”

    Jared Morgan @ ~60:00 — Articulates Safe Cracker's design philosophy and psychological engagement loop

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonGreg O'RourkepersonJeremy WilliamspersonMartpersonMagic PixelcompanyZacharia PinballproductZen PinballproductZen StudioscompanyPinball Arcadeproduct

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Zacharia Pinball confirmed launching on Xbox platform; already available on Steam and Nintendo Switch

    high · Mart (Magic Pixel community manager) requested mention of upcoming Xbox release; Switch version existence confirmed

  • ?

    design_innovation: Zacharia's remake tables successfully adapt Italian EM/solid-state machines to modern player expectations while maintaining thematic integrity

    high · Chris and Jared both note remakes are more accessible than originals; Jared credits studio's understanding of pinball layout canon

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Zacharia EM remakes feature historically accurate flipper configurations (dual-flipper sets with series operation) that were experimental in early Gottlieb/Williams designs

    medium · Jared details four-flipper EM layouts with series operation matching early experimental designs; notes this creates distinctly different gameplay

  • ?

    content_signal: Spacey's Arcade (Greg O'Rourke) producing detailed technical cabinet mode analysis identifying subtle immersion breaks in Zen's Williams Pinball

    high · Chris praises O'Rourke's identification of camera shake on table nudge; notes hour-long videos with post-production quality

  • $

    market_signal: Zen Pinball Volume 3 mobile version has significantly higher monetization barriers than Steam version; 100 Zen coins required to upgrade cards to level 4 (vs. Chris's earlier easier PC progression)

    high · Chris reports personal experience of higher costs on mobile; explicitly notes reversal of earlier criticism; plans spreadsheet tracking of daily challenge economics

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.177

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pimple podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan no it's pretty much all the way across the world, really. No, you're halfway across the world.
0:30
Oh, yeah, I guess. I never disputed it before, but it's like I'm down the complete opposite end of the world. Yes. The bottom end. You are the... I shouldn't say you're the longest plane ride that I could possibly manage. I think I'd have to go... If I flew to Rome or the Middle East somewhere, then it would be just slightly longer. For me, it would be London. Europe is the longest plane trip. I think the continental US is about 19 hours from here, all up, if it was a direct flight. And then it's like 21 hours to Europe, I think. Okay. When we went, and I'm on the west coast of the States, so when we went to Australia, it was a 15-hour flight. Okay, yeah, it might be 15. I think I did, when I went over, I did a hop over to New Zealand because it was in New Zealand I flew on. And that added a little bit of time to it, but it was still better because you got a bit of a break to walk around and stuff. Which, for the record, folks, if you've never been on a 15-hour flight, they suck. Yeah, they really do. There's nothing positive. Unless you're in business class, then they're great. Right. Because I've been on both.
1:51
we, we kind of, we've kind of come to the conclusion that if we ever take a flight that is that long again, that yes, we're going to upgrade out of, out of economy and, and just for your own sanity, because you can't sleep. I mean, you can get a little bit of sleep, but it's not going to be great. And then the problem is, is even if you slept for eight hours, you've still got seven hours on a plane. Yeah. And it's miserable. You can't get up. you can't stretch you got that clammy grimy feeling you know overtaking you it's just the worst and then you're like yeah when you first get on the plane you're like oh cool i got the little tv screen in front of me i'll be able to watch all these movies yeah after about three movies you're just like okay i'm done yeah all right let's get off this thing now i don't want to be on the ride anymore and now now it is it is not fun but you know you just gotta the thing is that with long-haul plane travel, you've got to – actually, I think some people, they prepare – they know they're going on a long trip, a long-haul flight. There's actually ways that you can prepare for the flight that make it a lot more enjoyable. So you can actually get into the sleeping pattern that you want to basically get into in your destination. Oh, okay. You can do a whole lot of – there's other techniques you can use as well that allow you to actually relax more on the flight and even in terrible economy, you can actually have a pretty okay experience on there. Yeah. So it comes down to preparation, I think, when you're doing those long-haul flights. But if you're like when I went over to the US that one time, yeah, it was horrible. Like I was operating on, I still think it was the best way to go, basically get off the plane and immediately start drinking.
Kapow Games
company
Spacey's Arcadecontent
Theatre of Magicgame
Champion Pubgame
Safe Crackergame
Woe Nellygame
Scared Stiffgame
Pinsideorganization
Digital Pinball Fans Forumorganization
BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization
  • ?

    rumor_hype: Unverified forum rumors suggest Pinball Arcade is developing Elvira 3 as a Woe Nelly reskin via Kapow Games as a boutique release

    low · Chris explicitly states source is unknown, found no Pinside discussion corroborating rumors, asks community for sources, calls it 'just rumor'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Potential licensing complexity if Pinball Arcade acquires Elvira digital rights, as Zen already has digital licensing agreements that may conflict

    low · Chris notes existing discussion about Zen's licensed IP preventing TPA access to certain Stern tables; questions licensing implications if Elvira confirmed

  • ?

    product_concern: Zen's Williams Pinball cabinet mode has identified UX flaws that break immersion, including camera shake on nudge and inaccurate ball speed physics

    medium · Chris cites Spacey's Arcade video identifying camera shake issue; Greg O'Rourke acquiring real Theater of Magic to do side-by-side comparison revealing ball speed discrepancy

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Chris reverses earlier dismissal of mobile progression complaints after personally experiencing high unlock costs; now committing to data-driven analysis of monetization fairness

    high · Chris states 'I'm in the same boat as everybody else now'; acknowledges earlier criticism of 'whiners' now applies to him; explicitly choosing facts over feelings for evaluation

  • ?

    platform_strategy: Zen Pinball Volume 3 demonstrates different monetization models across platforms (Steam vs. mobile), creating unequal player progression economics

    high · Chris's direct experience showing mobile version significantly more expensive to progress than PC version; notes he earned all tables on Steam but faces major costs on mobile

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Safe Cracker demonstrates sophisticated playfield-to-boardgame interaction design where physical pinball shots affect board game progression in non-obvious ways

    medium · Jared describes subtle interlinks between playfield actions and board game state; notes design encourages experimentation due to credit abundance in arcade

  • ?

    machine_intel: Greg O'Rourke had never played Champion Pub digitally or seen it in real life before Spacey's Arcade Volume 3 video, suggesting deep bench of lesser-known tables reaching new audiences

    high · Chris notes O'Rourke had never touched Champion Pub or Safe Cracker in any form; captured first-time reactions to table toy mechanics

    • 3:43
    And you don't actually get jet lag because you just basically get drunk. Right. You put yourself into a different state. You just replace tiredness with drunkenness. Right. And it's fine. And, you know, if you're going to San Francisco, they've got great beer there, so why not get drunk on great beer? There you go. And delicious Mexican food.
    4:07
    That's just called California. Yeah, that's just called California. That's quite true. Yeah. It's not just San Francisco, believe me. Um, so we've got a couple of things that we're going to, uh, touch upon. Um, again, it's one of those smorgasbord, uh, episodes here, but,
    4:28
    we're going to, first off, let's, uh, do some Zachary, uh, stuff. Um, Mart kind of wanted me to, Mart is the community manager for magic pixel. And he kind of requested, Hey, can you mention one more time about the Zachary a starter pack, um, which is five bucks to buy. You get basically eight variations of tables. Um, and you're getting some of the retro, you're getting some of the, uh, rematch or recreations and then one remake. Um, and for five bucks, it's a heck of a way to, uh, to sample it. It's funny because I kind of, I was having a little back and forth and I was telling him, I go, you know, for your free tables, and this is me taking a page out of Zen's playbook. I said, you know, for your free tables that you offer, you should really offer one of the remake tables because me, even being a pinball nerd, the Zacharia tables are hard for me to get into because they're so foreign.
    5:37
    Well, they are. They're very Italian. Yeah. They are not. And it's not just, I'm not talking about language translation here. The layouts are not like anything that was being done stateside.
    5:53
    No, very bizarre. Like ramps and weird positions and things. Even the slingshots cover up part of your flipper. Yeah. So the ball lands different. The way you shoot the ball is different. It's just awesome. The geometry is so, so different. So if you were used to, you know, if you had recently purchased or, you know, had been into Zen, had been into maybe Pinball Arcade before, maybe you didn't get a sampling of that, but you're like, hey, I want more digital pinball. And so you're like, hey, what's this Zachary thing? Oh, my gosh, they've got a ton of tables. Yeah, let's go. Let me try this out. But let's say you're not much of a solid state fan and you're definitely a DMV fan. well you're going to throw in one of these you know you're going to try out the the free table and just kind of be like what is going on here this is bizarre and so that's why i was like if you pushed one of the remake tables then you get the dmd the late the layouts are a little more what people are used to kind of modern they've they've done something very clever with that haven't they with they have the remakes in that they've they've made them they've kept the theme but they've made them more accessible right um and that's the real the thing about the remakes is and i think i said this in the past it actually shows that the studio kind of understands pinball layout to an extent that they know the essentially the canons that people expect in pinball machine layout but they're not afraid to kind of experiment and try some unusual angles that probably you've never seen in production games before. If anything, some of the angles on the remakes remind me of some of the early Marvel Zen originals. Yes, yeah.
    7:45
    They're unusual in the way they play, but they don't feel wrong, if that makes sense. Whereas some of the original layouts of the Zachariah tables, they just don't feel right for me. They just don't. And what's even funnier is there's certain tables that have – like they did some crazy mechanics on their machines. Zechariah mechanics were probably on par with ruggedness to System 80 Gottliebs and Gottlieb Premier, to be honest, because their mechanical systems and those pinwall machines are so bulletproof. But because we don't have any frame of reference for what we're visually seeing in these 2D representations, you'll get kind of confused. You'll be like, oh, that's a raised playfield, but it's completely clear. I wasn't aware of that. And then you're like, well, where the heck is the ramp that even would get me up to that thing? And then you find it's not a ramp. It's a horseshoe throw. you know it's that kind of stuff where it's just you don't have the visual language to understand some of these things and so yeah it because i know the very first time i ever tried zacharia pinball the digital i tried it for a couple minutes i was like oh this is so not for me i try the remakes and i'm like oh my gosh this is fantastic what was this you know how come i didn't see this table in real life and then i find out that no it's just completely things so So anyway, that's what I was encouraging. But all that being said, if you can fork over five bucks, you'll get a good true taste of what they've got. Yeah, absolutely. You and the mix. And the great thing about the way they've structured the in-app purchases for this product line is that if you don't want all the retros, if you don't want all of the originals, you just buy the remakes. Yeah. And just go with the remakes if that's all you want. And it's just really logical pricing. And then more to the point, if you then decide that you're a completionist and you want it all, they have their gold pack and their platinum pack. But the cool thing is the price of that pack goes down based off of any table you already own. See, that's very nice. You don't have to worry about doubling up. Right. I think even Zen can suffer from that a little bit. in that if you buy some of the big packs and then you want to go and buy some of the other extra Marvel packs, you do actually double dip with some of the IOPs, and it's just how it works. So it's cool they've been able to do that.
    10:20
    You can buy what you want when you want and not feel like you're getting screwed over. So it's cool. So all this is basically to say that we've got quite a bit to discuss about, Zachary, and I've got to know, Is it Zacharia or is it Zakaria?
    10:39
    Zacharia. Okay. Because I've heard it elsewhere said that, and I was like, wait, have you been saying it wrong this entire time? I think I've even heard Zacharia being said in the game itself. Okay. So in the speech. Okay. In the very, very early digitized speeches. Right. Zacharia pinball. anyway we've got our hands on like I just got my hands on the campaign mode Jared had never played it on PC, on Steam I was completely new to I played some of the demos on there and I will say that of the demos that I played you do get a fairly long play of them because they score quite low and I think they've made the score limit quite generous yeah um so yeah i did get to play some of them um i also got to play um uh the remake stars phoenix um and and and heard what sounds like a very familiar voice i'm just not quite sure but uh welcome to stars phoenix that's right yeah yes that's right so that was interesting i thought which one did he do the voice for i have to listen to that i went all right okay there you go yeah that's the one people um was it real quickly because you like i said you just uh took a glance um with them on steam what was your what's your kind of impression around just first impressions oh look i i knew what the originals played like based on my experience on Android. So I wanted to focus mostly, I just really only had about an hour and a bit, like it was late in the evening and I just wanted to have a quick go before today. And so I focused on a couple of the remakes, Magic Castle, because it's such a well-known table, probably the most well-known brand in all the Zachariah tables. So I focused on that one. and the Time Machine, I think. It's the other one too. And then I went into the retros. So the ones that are essentially EM remakes of the Solid State Machines. Right.
    13:00
    And I think the retros are good, but I'm going to need more time with them to actually understand what's going on. And I know that they do actually have proper rule cards for them on the apron. So if you go into a table explore mode, you can actually see the rules that you need to meet to do it. They're not just random. They're not just games with a DVD, not DVD, a DMD added. Right. There's actually a way to play them. So I will need to spend some time on those. The thing I liked on first impression is that you get a live, you get a live representation of where you are on the leaderboard. So that was kind of neat. Like you're playing, you go, oh, I'm now 265th. oh, now I'm 235, and you keep seeing that little clue that you're actually progressing up higher in the leaderboards, and I like that. I like the fact that you get an understanding of where you're sitting.
    13:52
    So, yeah, I think Magic Castle remake was interesting in the fact that it seems to be very heavily weighted on the pop bumpers. So if you can get the pop bumpers down, the way you do it is the pop bumpers will give you 5 million if you count them down to zero but you can shoot certain targets on the table that will reduce the number of pops you need to get that 5 million so if you do that you can you can pretty much open the table up and just start scoring heaps on it um the other one that i played was i think it might have been time machine Yeah no no it was Shooting the Rapids the one with the American Indian on it Yeah That one I was playing it in simulation mode because it just felt better to play all those in simulation mode But I was having a lot of trouble making the ramps when you enter the mode because you've got this sort of spinning platform and you shoot the ball into the spinning platform on shooting the rapids and that starts a mode. The first mode is you've got to shoot the ramps three times. And for some reason, I just could not shoot those ramps at all. I could not dial myself in. And I just, like, I was in regular play, like the non-simulation mode. You could shoot the ramps and make it around. But every time you made a shot up there, it just, like, it got halfway up the ramp and just bricked and came back down again. It was very strange. So I don't know. I'll have to work out what's going on there. um but so i sort of went off those the the remakes a little bit and wanted to check out some of the other offerings and i went into the as i said previously the the retros yeah and so the for those who haven't seen the retros are essentially ems um and they're laid out in classic em style and the the thing that um i was talking with you before we started recording is I think Zacharia and their table designers really have a good grasp on what is EM when they've done these remakes. Because there's some EMS with four flippers down the bottom, like two sets of two. And they operate with like all the right flippers will flip in series and the left flippers will flip in series. And you see that on some of the earlier EM designs from Gottlieb and the early Williams EMs where they were just experimenting with different flipper layouts and stuff. And that was kind of crazy.
    16:35
    And so they've done that in these EM remakes. And it makes for a very, very different gameplay experience on the EMs. I think I forget which one it was that I played. I think, again, I went with Magic Castle and Time Machine. And I think it was Time Machine that just the whole top of the play field is just pops. And not passive pops, but active pops. So the ball just jiggles around there for what feels like ages. And then when it eventually makes its way down to the bottom of the table, you're basically in serious peril. Right. It is so dangerous. With all EMs, all the points are at the top of the field, and once the ball is down at the bottom, you're just like, ah, crap. Danger, Will Robinson. Yeah. Yeah, it's real. It's brutal. So they really got that aspect of it down. But it's just very interesting. There's some of the mechanisms, I guess, on the EMs are probably bordering on not physically possible in real life. there's i think the stars phoenix em has a star it's basically um a collection of sources up the top of the playfield that's in a star configuration and they're so tightly grouped that they're just i don't think would be room for the mechanisms underneath the playfield so there might be if you made a special mechanism for them but the basic mechanisms that you use for sorcerer ejects and stuff like that. I just don't think they'd be able to group them all in that area. But it makes, again, interesting gameplay because the ball will eject from one and then sometimes end up in another one of the star quadrants. And it sort of essentially juggles the ball around up there. So there's lots of interesting gameplay to be had in these older EMs. And I think I'd probably like to delve more into those because there's something about them. They've got this feeling about them that just feels really good. So I think I'm going to be looking at those probably more than the remakes, I think. Okay.
    18:42
    So like we said, we're going to kind of delve into this stuff more deeply. Hopefully it'll be the next podcast that we do that in. The other thing that we want to do, they're preparing to have it come out for the Xbox.
    19:02
    So they've already got it on the Switch, which I wasn't aware of. I'm going to have to take a gander at that.
    19:08
    So they have it for the Xbox. They don't have it out for PS4 yet. But Mark wanted me to kind of convey hey, if you guys got questions specifically about the Xbox, but I'm saying, hey, just how about in general don't ask about the Google Play thing. We already know the answer is. So let's not deal with that. But just in general questions about Zachary.
    19:37
    What are some other tables that could be released, for example? Are there any other tables that could be released? Right. Do they have a plan for other companies? If you have questions about their VR, which, by the way, so there was a new video that Jeremy Williams from Tested was in. It was basically him trotting out his Pinsim cabinet. because since the time he did that first video, there's been a couple of more VR offerings. And he specifically mentioned the Zachariah VR. And he was like, I think this might be the best VR. Oh, wow. I've seen, he says, it's really, really phenomenally well done. And then he goes, but the menus suck.
    20:27
    Right. So he goes, but once you actually get into the table, then it's all great. Yeah. Right. So obviously the menus aren't made for VR navigation. Yeah. So if you've got a question that you would like us to pass along and then they'll get back to us and give us an answer, you can head over to digital pinball fans forum there. I've created a thread that is asking that if you don't want to bother with that, go ahead and throw questions up to us on Twitter or email us. Yeah. So at blockade, if you want to send it to that or if you want to email it's blah, Bob Lockhead at gmail.com.
    21:05
    Okay. Moving on. I wanted to kind of comment because we're always like, is there any news about pinball arcade?
    21:18
    So they've been kind of dancing about with just the same piece of news. And so we're going to just report anything that ever happens regarding it. That's all we've got. Word came out that this mystery table that they are working on that apparently is a table that is not yet made. No. And, yes, they were working on artwork for a woman's hair. So, of course, again, everybody's sitting there going, well, Elvira. So here's my question, and I've been looking for it. I was looking for this. I don't know where the rumor came from other than I read it on our forum that it was Elvira 3 is going to be a reskin of Woe Nelly I went over to Pinside there's no such discussion of that for that case they don't even know who the designer is like there's debate among them of who the actual designer of the table is they did say that it's probably going to be a boutique table so when I say boutique that means it's not going to come out as pro, premium, and LE. Instead, it's going to come out like what The Beatles is, where it's that silver gold, or gold, platinum, diamond, or whatever. So it's probably going to be Kapow that is actually going to be doing the work on it. So Kapow Games are the ones who do Beatles and Big Juicy Melons and all those ones.
    22:44
    But again, that's also just rumor. So I'm dying to know, folks. where did this because I know we perpetuated it a few weeks back so I want to stop that perpetuating if we don't know where it actually came from where is this rumor coming from give us your sources send us a link please because I want to know whether to get my hopes up or just discount it immediately wipe it out of my mind because it will be completely wiped out of your mind if it is another reskin we've had enough of that layout The only interesting thing that comes from this, though, if it is Elvira, is what does that do licensing-wise to Xen? We've already had a big discussion about all the licenses that theoretically Pimble Arcade won't be able to touch on Stern due to Xen already have digital rights to them. So if TPA wants up the digital rights to Elvira, does that mean that Elvira is off the table? Or is it a fact that since those tables aren't actually called? Well, Elvira in the Party Monsters is, but Scared Stiff isn't. I don't know. It's one of those things. Truth be told, I never was much of a fan of either of those tables. So if it takes a while for them to come, then it takes a while. Yeah. Scared Stiff is basically it's a System 11. It's a beginner's table. It's a System 11 in a WPC body is what it is. Yeah, but it's also a beginner pinball player's table, which is fine. I mean, that's all fine and dandy. But when you're playing it at home digitally, it gets old real fast.
    24:30
    Yeah, once you've got Scared Stiff, you've essentially got the wizard mode. Yeah. And that's it. That's it. You're done. There's only so many times you double entendres are funny.
    24:41
    Yeah, that's right. which would be interesting like you know if we are speculating that it is alvaro think about the amount of double entendres they could jam in with the amount of memory they have now like they could just go to town with the amount you should i would think that you would never have to listen to the same double entendre again in the same game with the amount of storage they have now with pinball So Cassandra could just go nuts with her call outs, basically. Yeah. I don't know. We'll have to see what comes with that. Okay, moving on.
    25:22
    Spacey's Arcade, Greg O'Rourke Spacey's Arcade, he posted a new video, and it was basically showing off Volume Pack 3.
    25:30
    And, folks, he threw a lot of love our way, Jared. He really did. Oh, did he? Very nice. because it basically came down to, if you actually want to know what's supposed to be going on in these tables, go listen to Chris and Jared.
    25:46
    Thank you. Don't come to me for that. So, yes, we'll accept that. Here's where I'm going to throw it back his direction. Folks, if you want to know about cabinet mode and what to expect out of cabinet mode and what you should want out of cabinet mode, watch his videos. He hits on stuff that I'm like, oh, I never thought about that. That's a good point. Even something as simple as this. Because he's basically been saying that though Zen has made a cabinet-style offering for Williams Pinball, it's still not true cabinet mode. And the community in general hasn't swarmed in to make it so. But one of the things he was talking about was, when I nudge the table, the table shouldn't shake also.
    26:32
    Yeah, the vision shouldn't shake. And that's a carryover from us just in our normal screens. Yes, yes. So that's one of those things where I was like, I would have never thought of that. Thought of that, yeah. Wouldn't have ever come up.
    26:50
    So that's – Yeah, that's the point. Yeah. The little things, the subtle things that break the illusion, right? Right. The other interesting thing is he just recently acquired a real theater of magic. Oh, okay. So he turns this one on first, and immediately is like, oh, I don't like the lighting. It's like, this doesn't look like mine. It's lacking the dark. It's lacking the pizzazz. And then he shot the inner loop, and the ball came to the wrong flipper, according to him. And he immediately was like, whoa, no, that's supposed to go to the other. you know, it's the kickouts wrong. Yeah. So it was kind of interesting. He's going to do a side-by-side video of the two, probably do overlay. Like, Oh, because he's also got a real, uh,
    27:50
    he's really got a gripe about the ball speed. Oh, in Zen in Zen. Yeah. I personally love and see all my comparisons for ball speed are to what? was happening in TPA. And my thing with TPA is with the ball, it seems to always move at an equal speed until it hits an object. And then that'll change the speed. Whereas with Zen, you can noticeably see a ball reach an apex and then speed up as it rolls back down. So,
    28:20
    um, it's, it, like I said, he brings up, yeah, he brings up a lot of points that, um, if you're any at all into cabinet mode or, You've just got to check him out. Yeah, check him out. Yeah. Well worth it. His videos are usually an hour long, and they're pretty entertaining. Yeah, he's got a lot of post-production done on it. He's got green screen. I know. I wish we had his post.
    28:44
    We're just in the studio. If anybody wants to be an intern, wants to practice doing stuff for YouTube, making videos look cool and presentable so that we can get a mass following that would be great yeah it would be great you could put kangaroos jumping around the main street of Brisbane behind me because that's what actually happens here and Chris would have palm trees and California burritos floating around behind him right exactly Yeah So one of the things I want to highlight and this is great turns out he has never touched a champion pub and he was calling it championship pub, which was kind of funny,
    29:37
    champion pub or a safe cracker. He's never touched them, never seen them in real life. Oh, in real life. Okay. And more to the point, it sounds like he had never even played them digitally. Oh, interesting. So he starts flailing away on Champion Pub, and it's that – if you've ever wanted to see somebody's first reaction to sing something, it's in there. And he was just like, oh, look at that. And he's like flailing away. He's like, I have no clue what I'm doing. It was – Oh, look at the jump rope. Oh, look at the speed pole. Like, all these little features in that table. Well, the funny thing is because he doesn't have – he turned off the event cams. Oh, right. So the jump rope thing happens and he's like, oh, I was supposed to do something.
    30:19
    The same thing with the speed bag. He's like, oh, I forgot that I was supposed to... Do a thing. Then he throws in a safecracker. And a safecracker, it's a love it or hate it table. That's all I can say. I never hear just, oh, it's alright comments. It's either I love that table or I hate that table. And within 30 seconds, he's in love. Oh, good. and so it was really kind of fun because he was just so excited about it um and he was just like i gotta dig into this one and find out what the heck is going on it sucks you in it's what it's designed to do yeah in the like it is designed to pull you in give you it's very cleverly designed in its in the way that it unpacks the gameplay because of the way that board game you interact with the board game and the way it just taunts you and just it's it's very much that oh just one more yeah i'll just do one more um if you if you if it appeals to you that's the reaction you get from it it's yeah i just want i reckon i can get that vault this time if i just do this one thing um and there is a lot of subtlety to what you do on the play field and how that affects the game as well which is a really nice interlink between the two gameplay modes in the game so it's there's a lot of stuff you can do to make your board game experience a lot better in that game um and the only way you're going to find out about that is to just play the thing and experiment because you've got no problems about credits because it is hungry in the arcade you will just burn through your your coins in a rapid fashion um in the arcade okay moving on from there so This past week, Zen released the Volume 3, obviously, and it also hit mobile, which we had not had a preview of. No.
    32:14
    I was very curious to see what was going to happen because, as we all know, I made a big old stink about how easy it was for me to unlock the table, and you all are a bunch of whiners.
    32:27
    We were beaching and moaning about it, weren't we? Then I was like, okay, let's see what happens. am I now in the same boat as everybody else? Ladies and gentlemen, I'm in the same boat as everybody else now. So, welcome.
    32:44
    It's quite shocking to find out, oh, wait a second, I'm going to have to have a hundred Zen coins to upgrade to four? Holy crap. Okay, I guess I won't be spending a coin per card flip every single time now. I'm going to be hoarding those.
    32:59
    They're basically like unobtainium gold for you now. and you don't do anything except hoard them. So now here's the advantage that I have. Since I already have all the tables, the other ones fully starred and upgraded, I'm only earning parts for these three tables. Yeah, you're lucky. Okay, so I'm good there. Yeah.
    33:22
    But I played the first day that I had the app, I was busy and I only played the first two daily challenges. Yeah. And but it kind of I was like, OK, I'm curious to know, like, how in the weeds am I going to get on this?
    33:39
    I'm diving down a rabbit hole, folks. And I'm going to take you all with me, basically, because I'm going to have to decide, was I wrong to be bad at you for being a whiner or am I going to become a whiner myself? and i'm not going to do that purely based off of feels because that just annoys me at a certain point we need facts yeah and so ladies and gentlemen when it comes to facts i am now making spreadsheets watch out chris has got a spreadsheet i've got a spreadsheet so here's what i'm doing i am now tracking my daily challenges i am going i've got all four of them that i can do so basic advanced pro and premium and i'm going to as best as i can try and max them out um yeah and i don't care how many tickets and not no not re-trigger them if so it's only a 24 hour cycle yeah um so only what you get basically for free without spending any money yes yeah yes and however many tickets i have to spend on the pro and premium that's how many tickets i have to spend in order to complete them. That's what's going to happen. I am tracking also, so I'm also tracking what challenge, so like today, I have for the basic challenge, it's a one ball with Black Rose. For the pro challenge, it's a one ball with Attack from Mars.
    35:17
    So I'm tracking also what challenges are being put up, what tables were being put up because I want to see if there's any kind of pattern that we can start devising.
    35:26
    Let's see if there's that. I also am curious to see if everybody is playing these or is it randomized for what people are playing. I'm then tracking each time we get the five cards to flip what each card flip is. Apart from the ones that you don't see because you don't flip the coin. Right, so I'm going to flip four out of the five. Flip three for free watch the video not going to flip the the point one yeah um so i'm going to track what it is that i'm earning and i thought oh man i was so excited because on the the first two challenges that i did today the card flips matched yesterday's card flips exactly and i went oh oh is this something you know if this is the case then we can know exactly what to expect out of the card flip and it fell apart you know two challenges instantly yeah so i was really bummed because I was like, thought I was onto something.
    36:21
    I'm also keeping track of what are the scores you need for the five star, the 10 star and the 15 star. That has already yielded some interesting results just real quickly in terms of like, okay, let's say to get the first five star, you need to score 5 million. I'm just going to general random, right? So when you go 10 stars, I expected that it was the same score pattern that when you hit 5 million, that was when you were at the five star and it was, you know, roll over. Yeah. Nope. That's not the case. The scores actually go lower. They go lower. So by the time you hit that 5 million, now you're flipping star six or seven.
    37:05
    Oh, okay. So there's this ramping of, of what the score is that you need. It is kind of interesting how, it was really quite shocking. The really shocking things was on a couple of them, like the 10 star yesterday on the pro survival mode of medieval madness. 10 star, you needed 19.2 million points. 15 star, you needed 20 million points. What? I need another 800,000.
    37:39
    Oh, 800,000. That's it. Yeah, that was it. that's where I'm like what is going on this is weird and so I'm going to have to again I'm tracking every single time I play one of these look I was playing Black Rose today I was at three stars I hit the jackpot it immediately went to five stars and I was so far beyond what the five star score was I never even got a chance to look at what it was I kind of had to guess at what it might be so there's some of these scores that I don't know definitively what it is so what you're doing get this data, what you're doing is when you get up to say 14 or 15 stars, you pause the game. I'm looking at what I need. And take a look at the quota. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So that's already popping off some interesting results. Other interesting things. I earned seven Zen coins yesterday. Wow. Okay. Which was way more than I thought that I was going to earn. Yeah. That's quite a lot. Yeah. I won 685 tickets in the card flips. However,
    38:47
    I basically went into the negative by 625 tickets. That's how many, or excuse me, it was 685 tickets that I won and I went into the negative of 625 tickets for all the times I played premium and pro version because it's, was it 15 tickets for pro and 25 for premium. Wow. So you have to work out whether you sacrifice three extra goes at the daily challenges versus one go on premium.
    39:23
    And I guess what's going to be interesting there is what's the payoff? Exactly. What is the payoff between one go at a pro or premium challenge versus three goes at the dailies? now what I have noticed is when I've been playing the premium and to an extent the pro the ticket counts that you win are higher it's in like the pro and premium that's where I'm winning 75 tickets ah right so I earned 5 table parts in premium so the numbers do increase a little bit on that aspect what I'm dying to know is so let's say today I play Black Rose one ball in basic. If I play one ball Black Rose in premium, are the point total higher? The point requirements, are they higher? Oh yeah, are the point requirements higher and therefore the payout higher? Exactly. So that's something I haven't been able to confirm that I've been kind of curious about.
    40:32
    So I'm also keeping track of how many table parts I earned. Like I said, I earned seven. I'm going to be keeping track of, because I had to pay, I upgraded two tables to two-star, so that was 1,500 tickets that I had to spend right there. Yeah, that's correct.
    40:49
    It's going to be interesting to see where that all goes. This is a quandary I've got at the moment. I know I've got three tables to get up to two stars eventually. I've got 3,000 tickets saved up. Of course, I'm all the tables that are two star at the moment are tempting me to upgrade to three. And I'm going, nah, I'm not going to upgrade you yet. I'm going to wait until I've managed to scrape together the table parts. Cause I, yesterday I got two lots of three safe cracker parts. So I've got safe cracker unlocked now.
    41:23
    And that was really surprising. I wasn't expecting to get three in one, three in one drop went, wow. Okay. So, and it's true that, um, as another forum member pointed out, your parts do carry over because I had six parts. And then now I'm one of 15 for the level two unlock. And see, now this is the first time I was able to confirm that for myself. Yeah, that's right. Which is nice because I know that I've definitely got a good backlog of parts for when I eventually upgrade some tables to three. Right.
    41:53
    And the thing is, I think at the moment, there's not really much benefit in upgrading tables to three because the chances of that table cycling in to a daily challenge, because it is purely random what ones get cycled in, is one in six. So you're better off just saving your coins if you get to upgrade all the tables. So at least you get them appearing in the daily challenges and you have more games to play. Right. I think that's probably a good tactic. That's pretty much probably a very obvious tactic to use. But if it's not apparent, I would suggest doing that. I should also note that it only took me two days to get all my tables up to two stars. Because you have those extra two challenges unlocked. Because I have the extra two challenges unlocked and because I'm only earning table parts for those tables. Those tables. So here's where it gets interesting.
    42:50
    Because, you know, people can get in the same situation that I am by simply buying the tables. Taking advantage of the in-app purchase option. Exactly. So here's what... We're going to pretend that that's essentially what I had done with the first pack, right? Yes. Or the first two packs. So here we come, table pack three. I'm getting the little offer, hey, do you want to spend $10 and just unlock them all right now? I'm saying no.
    43:17
    Yes. I've now got between now and when that next table pack drops... To see how far you can get. ...to max these out. Yeah. Because if I don't max these out, then I'm really in the boat that everybody else is in where I'm collecting a ton of parts that I don't even need anymore. That's right. Because I need a specific. So if it becomes a thing where I'm able to truly, by playing every day, all four challenges and collecting what I'm getting, if I'm able to truly upgrade these before the next table pack drops, then in my mind, there's no point in me spending money. Yeah. And I'll tell you why. Because as soon as I upgraded every single table, I pretty much stopped playing the app. Yeah, right. It wasn the drive because you have it on Steam I have it on Steam which is where I rather play it anyway Correct It is a better gameplay experience than Steam And so the mobile is just purely I feel like farting around with a game Well, I have other mobile games that are not available on Steam. So I just put my time back into those instead. Yeah, that's right. So I actually am enjoying the daily challenges. They're good. I'm fine with it. And I pointed out to somebody because one of the complaints everybody says is, oh, yeah, there's nothing so much fun as watching a 30-second video and then going into a one-ball challenge and losing the ball 15 seconds later. Yeah, it really does suck. Yeah. So let me tell you what really sucks, folks. You go and you play the skill side of the app, and you're playing a dollar game.
    44:50
    An actual cash money game. Actual cash money. You put your dollar down, and then you drain the ball 15 seconds later. Tell me which one you're going to be a little more mad about. Yeah, it could be the cash money one. It could be the cash money one. I'm immune to the videos at this point. I'm immune to it. I'm immune to your problem if you're on iOS. Yes, yes. Now, the fun part about that is if you win, oh, it feels so good. Oh, yeah, it would. You're like, I won a dollar!
    45:17
    You step away from the table and you go and spend your dollar on a sloppy. Well, I'd have to first cash it out, which I've yet to do. Yet to do. So instead, to me, it's more fun to just have the money sitting there so then I can play other schools apps also. That's right. I've tried out a couple of other ones there, too. So anyway, that's what I'm I'm absolute rubbish at making spreadsheets.
    45:49
    So. This will kind of work for me, hopefully, but it's not none of it is automated. It's not like I'm going to pull the data. It's purely a chart. It's not a functioning spreadsheet. It's just a grid. I'm using it as a place to write things down. Exactly. Transfer my handwritten stuff into the computer so that it stays nice and neat. You could probably share it with someone like a Google Form. You could actually have a Google Form, but you need to know. I'm doing Google Sheets.
    46:19
    A Google Sheet, yeah, but a Google Form is a data entry, so you have a standard way of entering the data. But again, don't worry about it because it's just you using this data. The thing that you're going to have to do is you're going to have to crunch numbers. And that's going to be hard if you don't have a spreadsheet laid out in a way that will actually allow you to extract the data. Now, I know someone who probably could help you with that. Sven? Yeah, that's right. Because he did a pretty good job at doing the tournament software for us when we were doing that. Please email me, Sven. then I've got a new spreadsheet for you to hack about with. Yeah. And you'll probably be able to do a pretty good job at getting it to the point where you could extract data from it and, and probably upset Zen a little bit because you're breaking apart there.
    47:10
    I know. I want to break it apart. I want to find out what's going on. So the next time we talk to Mel, I can be like, okay, this and that and that. And what do you have to say about that? Well, yes, you kind of worked it out. I know you guys have data also that's probably much better, but from a user perspective, here's the data I'm seeing.
    47:31
    It's funny. For those that don't remember, I was doing a monthly pinball tournament. We were doing table of the week, and then we would do tournament of the month, and tournament of the month would basically take all the tables of the week that we had done for the past month and throw them into a tournament. and it was all on the honor system and people would submit their scores to me and then I'd enter them into this spreadsheet. And the first couple of times I did it. Took you like three hours. Oh my God, it would take me three hours. It was just nuts. It was just so burdensome. And so then Sven came and helped me. Sven also goes by the name of Ksenia.
    48:14
    And he came and he was like, well, what is it you're trying to do? and I sent him some stuff and he's like, okay, let me work on that. He comes back and I'm like, holy crap, that's so much better and streamlined. And then we worked on it some more. He got to the point where 15 minutes after the tournament was over, I was posting stuff to the forum.
    48:37
    Yeah, it wasn't just me getting the scores back. It was me because all I had to do was go copy, paste, paste, boom, done, gone. You know? Yeah. Even later it out so it was in a format that you could paste to the forum.
    48:50
    Incredible. Mad skills in the spreadsheet. So yes, good on you, Sven. Might need that again. Because I know what he would do. He would make it all macros and drop down. He would.
    49:12
    He'd basically analyze all the different possibilities. You could have the modes. what categories of unlock you get, whether it's cosmetic, whether it's a thing,
    49:23
    cosmetic boards. So on YouTube, I said, welcome to analytics. And that's basically what we're trying to do here, except for I don't have a clue how to actually do analytics.
    49:33
    I know what it is in theory, but actually, look, I don't do baseball. No. But, you know, if anyone is out there who is not just Sven. If you're a number nerd, talk to us. Then, yeah, I think Chris would like to hear from you. Exactly. The thing is, what would be then interesting is if we had a standardized way of recording the data, then other people could join in. And that's the other thing. The more data we have, the better we would be. Then, essentially, you could really piss off then. Because then we would actually have cross-sectional data based on different potential user buckets from Xen. And we could kind of unlock the way they're doing things. Yes. So there you go. For those of you that are angry about how the mobile app has been taking place, here's your chance to issue revenge. That's right. Don't get mad. Get even. Yeah. Or get recording. Yeah.
    50:39
    Log your data. So that's all I really have to say about, which is a lot, right? About the mobile version of the app, because that's all I've been playing is the tournament. And I've only had one daily challenge that was a new table.
    50:58
    And I haven't touched them since unlocking them to just even see how they generally play. I'll probably do that this coming week. but uh so yeah i'm gonna be i created a special thread over on digital pinball fans you can follow along at home yeah uh every after every seven days i'll kind of post a summary of what's going on um i'm not going to post the the sheets unless somebody again makes something awesome that's easy to post uh and we'll just i'm gonna keep track of this all the way until the next either until I max them out or all the way up until the next table packs release. And see where we go from there. Because, again, it might become a case where it's like this is impossible and the more you fall behind the really farther behind the worse it's going to get. I think my limited time offer to upgrade to the latest three pack is probably expired now. So I opted not to do it because all you really need is to get the tables to two stars to actually be able to play the daily challenges on a wide cross-section of games. And I think for me at the moment, honestly, that's all I've got the time for anyhow. Like I'm finding that resetting the daily challenges for 25 tickets is fine for me. and the time I usually have to play on the train on the way home or on the train on the way to work, which is essentially the only time I get to play it. So, you know, I'm not really – it's not my primary platform to play Zen on anymore. If it was, I'd be taking it a lot more seriously. Sure.
    52:44
    But it's, you know, it is – it's a distraction for me, not the primary way I enjoy Zen. And if it was the primary way I enjoy Zen, I'd just be paying for everything. I'd just be upgrading it wholesale and then just playing it like normal. That's if, if it was my primary platform, that's what I'd be doing. Yeah.
    53:06
    Okay. Um, I'm out of breath. I'm getting all worked up there. Uh, so I think we're going to, we're going to call it for, for this week. And, uh, like I said, next week I believe we'll probably have, it'll be quite Zacharia heavy, heavy. Yeah. so that's something to look forward to something we would look forward to is if you went over to redbubble.com and bought a t-shirt because then I'd get a little email saying you have a sale and then I'm like who bought it and where did they buy it from and all that jazz it's cool or a cup or a mobile phone holder or any other number of different merchandise options you can get from redbubble there's lots of different things you can buy so stickers even Who's even? Yeah, cover up your Apple logo on your computer with a Blackhead logo instead. It's a much better choice.
    54:01
    Much better. I'm also going to be, and I'll just kind of put this out there, I'm going to be going visiting my friend that carved out all the wood for the microcab there. Oh, yeah. And probably try and finish this thing off. I got one thing I need to troubleshoot on it. Once I troubleshoot that, then it might be back into the idea of, hey, do you want me to build you one? because it's not going to come assembled like that. I'll tell you that much. It'll be a flat pack. It'll be like Ikea, but with electronics.
    54:31
    I'll do all the soldering for you, and then you'll just have to plug in the wires in the appropriate spots, and you'll have to nail gun or screw the cabinet together. However you want to do that. Then you can paint it however you would like. It'll be awesome. um yeah but yeah that's I and I honestly don't know if there's any interest in it at all because it is going to be expensive so yeah it will be expensive yeah I mean it's again it falls into that category of if you're doing it for yourself as a hobby it doesn't matter how much time you put into it doing it for a living or doing it for profit doing it for profit and time is a valuable commodity kind of matters yeah time is where you basically turn go from the positive income to a negative income. Exactly. But as the boat that I would be in, which is, I don't have a single power tool. I don't have a table saw. I don't have a miter saw. I don't have any saw. I got a hand saw. That's what I got.
    55:30
    So, you know, the flip side is, well, hey, if you wanted one of these, what is your option? Going and buying all those tools?
    55:38
    Well, now you're really into it. So maybe it would be better to have somebody that already has it all mapped out do it for you. Yeah, that's right. Just saying.
    55:50
    And, hey, if I get responses from people that are listening to this that are like, yes, I'm interested, US-based only because I have no idea how shipping... Oh, you don't even anticipate shipping it over. Number one, if you're shipping wood, you would have to actually have it treated for international export. So don't even... Oh, yeah, there you go. What you could do, though, is you could upload the plans, and then people who are interested in replicating those plans locally, you could then sell the plans. Well, they can just do that by going to the tested website. I mean, he's got all the plans. So you just basically use his plans, essentially. Right. Okay, well, there you go. So they can go and do that and find a mate with some power tools. but find a chippy basically if you can find a chippy mate which is a person who is a carpenter in Australia a chippy because you know chip wood chips of wood come off find a chippy and get them to basically cut everything out for you I mean that would be what I'd do if you wanted to do it yourself because yeah I mean you've got to have straight lines with this stuff otherwise it looks like crap when it all goes together. I did measure mine to match an actual pinball cabinet height with all that jazz.
    57:21
    Yes, mine will be built differently than somebody that uses his plans. Even his plans, his initial plans were for foam core.
    57:33
    He then had a carpenter friend do it because you got to remember when you're dealing three quarter inches, that makes everything else, the numbers. It ain't 2D on a Photoshop kind of deal. Yeah, exactly.
    57:48
    Not as easy as you think. No, no. So anyway, if you're at all interested in this and knowing that it's going to cost a bundle, feel free to contact me. It might motivate me even more to get this done. All right. We already gave out the Twitters. We already gave out the emails earlier in the show. We did all the social. We did all that. So, hey, folks, thanks for listening. We appreciate it. And we'll talk to you again next week. Bye-bye.
    58:20
    WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter bugs. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com, sales, restoration, customization. don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some pinball