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Williams Pinball Vol. 3

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 15m·held·Mar 19, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Zen's Williams Vol. 3 physics dominate Pinball Arcade despite minor bugs.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss their early-access impressions of Zen's Williams Pinball Volume 3 (Steam version), covering Theater of Magic, Champion Pub, and Safe Cracker. They praise the physics improvements over Pinball Arcade as deal-breakers for those versions, highlight visual fidelity gains, and note minor bugs and design choices. They also clarify that Magic Pixel's Zachariah Pinball delisting was Google's decision, not theirs, due to updated app store requirements.

Key Claims

  • On Theater of Magic and Champion Pub specifically, Zen's physics are deal-breakers compared to Pinball Arcade, making those versions worth repurchasing

    high confidence · Chris and Jared, discussing their sweeping general statement about the Williams Vol. 3 release

  • Magic Pixel did not request the removal of Zachariah Pinball from Google Play; it was Google's automated decision due to updated app store terms and requirements

    high confidence · Mark (Magic Pixel community minister) via Facebook, relayed by Chris from direct communication

  • Theater of Magic in Zen shows insert lights correctly as text-only without visible rectangular plastic, matching IPDB photos rather than some machines in the wild

    medium confidence · Chris, comparing Zen version to IPDB.org photos and worn physical machines

  • Champion Pub, the right outlane in Pinball Arcade acts as an excessive vacuum, while Zen's version plays as a normal outlane

    high confidence · Chris and Jared, comparing physics behavior across versions

  • Dan Under (an Australian boxer) does not appear Champion Pub despite appearing in Pinball Arcade; Jared has played ~20 games without seeing him

    medium confidence · Jared, noting discrepancy between versions; they call for community verification

Notable Quotes

  • “Yes yes yes you do and 100 yes. You do. And while the visuals are, look, they tip, in my mind, they tip heavily in Zen's favor, but it's not like the visuals were utter junk on Pinball Arcade. however on two of these tables specifically on theater of magic and on champion pub the physics are deal breakers”

    Chris @ ~06:30 — Core thesis: physics improvements justify repurchase despite Pinball Arcade visuals not being poor

  • “In the previous two volumes, I was able to really sense a difference between Zen mode and arcade mode in terms of how the ball reacted. In this particular volume, I'm not seeing that much of a difference. I think I'm seeing it in rules.”

    Jared @ ~18:00 — Signals that Vol. 3 may have narrower physics gap between Zen and Arcade modes than previous volumes

  • “It reminds me of in, there were certain tables in Pinball Arcade when they first did dynamic lighting and this you may not have seen much of it jared no where things would look like they were dipped in toxic waste and were just unnaturally glowing for god knows why”

    Chris @ ~21:00 — Explains his criticism of glowing flipper bats in Theater of Magic enhanced mode

  • “I went and got Tiger Saw multiball, the balls are clear. So they're completely – all you can see is an outline of them. I've got a feeling it's probably a bug.”

    Chris @ ~24:30 — Identifies potential bug in Theater of Magic Tiger Saw multiball visual effect

  • “Champion Pub, first off, it looks fantastic. Amazing. Yeah. Where you really notice it is, and I noticed this in the preview video when I showed it, but as you're playing it, you really notice it. It's the rear of the playfield details look great.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~28:00 — Champion Pub visual quality consensus

  • “In Zen's version, it's reacting just like any other normal outlay. It's not an automatic drain monster. No, it's not.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~33:00 — Confirms Champion Pub outlane physics fix; major gameplay impact

  • “Where you feel like you're actually rocking the ball and punching the ball. Yeah. I had no idea that's how it actually should feel. because I've never really played a champion pub before.”

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonMarkpersonPinballWiz45BpersonZen StudioscompanyFarsight StudioscompanyMagic PixelcompanyWilliams Pinball Volume 3productTheatre of MagicgameChampion Pub

Signals

  • ?

    product_concern: Theater of Magic Tiger Saw multiball displays clear/invisible balls with only faint outlines, making them hard to track; likely a bug as it doesn't align with vanish multiball logic

    medium · Chris: 'When you go and get Tiger Saw multiball, the balls are clear. So they're completely – all you can see is an outline of them. And I've got a feeling it's probably a bug.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Theater of Magic enhanced mode features glowing flipper bats that reduce shot timing clarity and visual contrast with glowing balls; Chris disabled enhancements due to this

    high · Chris: 'the flipper bat is glowing this bright white... it takes away the contrast... makes timing your shots hard because you've just got this massive glow happening... I've taken to turning off the enhancements on this table precisely because of that.'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Theater of Magic Zen physics enable previously difficult shots (right orbit, clock building) and dramatically change score progression; Chris scored 500M in Zen vs 2B in Arcade on first attempts

    high · Chris: 'I think I don't even think I hit 500 million before I was done... I go over to Pinball Arcade just to see a thing or two. Next thing I know I'm at 2 billion.'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Champion Pub right outlane in Pinball Arcade acts as excessive vacuum; Zen version normalizes it, changing player strategy from favoring right flipper to balanced play

    high · Chris: 'In Pinball Arcade, there is the right out lane. That is the KO crunch. Vacuum... In Zen's version, it's reacting just like any other normal outlay. It's not an automatic drain monster.'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.225

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris frebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world bright and shiny early morning for him jared morgan hello there somewhat early morning my my alarm clocks namely my two children didn't wake me up this morning so this is for those of you watching the video this is uh me with five minutes after waking up from sleep so that means you're extra you're extra frosty you know you you you've got a brain just full of information to spout forward full of things yes and and i'm full of things some may even be interesting.
1:00
This is what drives my wife mad because I'm... I'm not going to say I'm a morning person, but I'm one of those people that has no problem. Once I'm up, I'm up. It's not an issue. Whereas she very much needs an hour, an hour and a half. To spin up. Yes.
1:18
And it's one of those things where my alarm goes off and I'm like, sitting up, walk right out of bed, gone. I don't do any of the lingering about, hitting the snooze bar. Oh, no. No, that's not for me. No, I don't do that either. I get in trouble if I do that. That's right, yeah. Yeah.
1:38
Oh, commentary, yes. Oh, commentary. She does have a point there. I can't stay up past 11 o'clock very well. I pretty much always am falling asleep watching a movie, as I did last night. Right. Okay, fair enough. Fair call. And that's despite the time change. It doesn't matter that we have the time change, which technically means I should have not fallen asleep until midnight. No, it's just my body knows. Oh, it's that time. That's what the clock says. Time to go. You're out. I think I say. Exactly.

Jared @ ~38:00 — Highlights speed bag mechanic improvement in Champion Pub

  • “I really wanted the boxer's face to change the boxer's face is here that would have been really good such a missed opportunity”

    Jared @ ~44:00 — Feedback on Champion Pub enhanced graphics: missed opportunity for facial expression changes

  • “No Dan Under. And how many boxers have you gone through? Oh, a lot. I've actually played quite a bit on the champion poll. I've gone through about 20 boxers. Okay. No Dan. No Dan Under. Interesting.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~47:00 — Raises question about missing boxer character in Champion Pub

  • “sadly we did not ask as well for our app to be removed this was a decision made by google there is also no way to update an app when it is removed we would have to create a new app for that and there's a bit more that comes with the app than just replacing the black glass”

    Mark (Magic Pixel) @ ~02:00 — Clarification on Zachariah Pinball delisting; contextualizes app removal as compliance issue

    • game
    Safe Crackergame
    Pinball Arcadeproduct
    Zachariah Pinballgame
    Internet Pinball Databaseorganization
    BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization

    gameplay_signal: Champion Pub jump rope and speed bag mechanics feel more responsive and physically accurate in Zen vs Pinball Arcade; physics now enhance rather than hinder gameplay

    high · Jared: 'That thing was janky as hell in TPA. It just didn't feel right... you actually sort of feel like you have some actual control with that thing.'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Champion Pub enhanced mode features animated boxer with subtle facial expressions and body language (looking over shoulder, ducking); animation stays within mechanical interaction bounds

    high · Jared: 'The boxer will kind of look over his shoulder at you while you're playing and then duck back down. It's really cool... it's still within the limits of the original box's movement range... it will still interact with your ball and knock the ball away'

  • ?

    product_concern: Champion Pub appears to lack Dan Under (Australian boxer character) that was present in Pinball Arcade; Jared has played ~20 games without encountering him

    medium · Jared: 'In any game that I've played, I have not seen Dan Under yet... I've gone through about 20 boxers. Okay. No Dan Under. Interesting.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Champion Pub enhanced mode missed opportunity: boxer's face should change expressions during different fight states but doesn't

    high · Jared: 'I really wanted the boxer's face to change the boxer's face is here that would have been really good such a missed opportunity'

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Google Play delisted Zachariah Pinball app due to updated API/library requirements; developer cannot update without creating new app; compensation efforts underway

    high · Mark/Magic Pixel: 'The google terms have changed since then and so are the requirements for the app. This would require an overhaul rather than a simple fix... The manager is still trying to figure out a way to compensate players'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Theater of Magic Zen version corrects insert scale and placement issues present in Pinball Arcade; illusion text now legible without rectangular plastic backdrop visible

    high · Chris: 'the scale and placement of certain... the tiger saw, um, the launch ramp, they're not scaled properly in pinball arcade. And here they're now correctly placed... you can read them clear as a bell'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Champion Pub Zen regular physics mode maintains challenge parity with arcade mode; chest (safe) shot requires precision aiming, not auto-aim

    medium · Jared: 'Even with the zen regular physics, you've still got to aim... you've still got to shoot that thing with an intent to get in the hole... In the previous two volumes... I was seeing it in rules. Oh, for sure, the rules.'

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade obtained early-access Steam version of Williams Vol. 3; mobile version not yet reviewed; minor bugs already identified by community (PinballWiz45B)

    high · Chris: 'we got early access to this. We did not get early access yet to the mobile. So we'll be just like all of you seeing it for the first time when it's released to the public.'

    • 2:08
    Exactly. So we're going to we're going to get right into we've got all sorts of stuff to talk about today. The majority of it predominantly being about Zen. and the Williams Pinball Volume 3. I went and did a deep dive on some old Zen stuff. But before any of that, let's do a little bit of correction or response, however you want. I don't think it's necessarily correction. I think it's clarification, if you will. Yes. Regarding Magic Pixel and the yanking of Zachariah Pinball off of Google.
    2:53
    yeah that's right so um i was working late on some stuff last one night and uh it must have been at my steam chat was open and a friend of the show mart came onto it and started having a chat with me about it and um it was really good um for him to to jump on he heard the podcast and and being the community minister wanted to respond so i'm grateful that he actually reached out so um he provided on facebook if you followed the magic pixel facebook account he provided some information on there in response to somebody's um post about delisting the android app and um he actually repeated it for me um so i didn't have to go chasing the facebook post which is nice so uh from from the facebook post this is um what mark responded to this person um after their comments so he said sadly we did not ask as well for our app to be removed this was a decision made by google there is also no way to update an app when it is removed we would have to create a new app for that and there's a bit more that comes with the app than just replacing the black glass the google terms have changed since then and so are the requirements for the app This would require an overhaul rather than a simple fix.
    4:18
    So in addition to that, he said the manager is still trying to figure out a way to compensate players who purchase something in the old app. If we do find something, then we will announce that here on Facebook.
    4:33
    So that's a bit of an update. It looks like that it's not just as simple as changing out the back glass and then uploading it. is probably something to do with the way the app is actually made and the way that they actually need to then update libraries and all that sort of stuff in the app. It makes me kind of think about, you know, if you're a homeowner and you had done any kind of construction on your home or whatever you had to or whatever that required permits, right? You had to deal with those permits at the time, right? Now, let's say it's 20 years later and you go to do something else and however your thing was done back then isn't up to code today. So God forbid if you fix anything, because now you've got to bring everything up to code. Yeah, exactly right. That sounds like that's what is happening with their app, that it was fine for Google back then, but now since Google has changed terms, you don't just get grandfathered in. You've actually got to update. You've got to change it. Yeah, it's probably things like API levels and stuff like that they often have to, that Farsight always had a problem with on Android, like catering for the lowest common denominator. Yeah. And I think their engine for that app was actually that good that there was a lot of legacy devices that were still able to run it. It was a very efficient engine. So I think that's probably something to do with it as well. So I'm happy to actually hear that, that it's a little bit, well, happy and sad that, of course, it had to get removed and not uploaded again. But there's a lot more context now. and it sort of paints a different picture of the situation for them. So, right. It's easy for us to comment and speculate and throw out the wise and whatnot when we don't have to deal with any of the contracts and dealing with Google, which a lot of developers tell me or have written many, many a medium article about just how terrible it is when your app gets taken down. Like there's just, there's no recourse. it's just like words down and too bad see you later uh yeah frustrating apple's very different in that way um they if they do delist your app you get notified about it and they they essentially talk to you about it but basically google just like robots and they just automate the whole process and you just you can't talk to anyone about it right so it's just terrible all right So there we have, we, we wanted to make sure that we got that in, uh, at the top rather than making you people wait all the way to the end. Cause they didn't know what they were waiting for. So where are you going? They don't have no idea. Okay. So something that people have been waiting for has been the Zens newest release, which will be, uh, the Williams pinball volume three, uh, for the record, what we were talking about today is our impressions of the steam version of Williams pinball three. We got early access to this. We did not get early access yet to the mobile.
    7:31
    So we'll be just like all of you seeing it for the first time when it's released to the public. That'll probably be what we talk about next week. So everything that we're talking about today regarding Willingness Pinball Volume 3 is what is the Steam version of things. Yeah, and as you say, Chris, it is the press early access version of it, which means that anything we say in this commentary may very well change as far as things that we've identified that are strange or somewhat odd. Yeah, we didn't get to do a beta disco around. No. And it's kind of unfortunate because, leave it to PinballWiz45B, he's already found a couple of things. so they're minor and that's the funny thing any of the problems that we're finding, they're minor yeah, the edge case minor stuff, they're not like wholesale problems like oh there's textures missing or there's like everything is the wrong color or you know it's more of an issue of like, hey you know the game board of Scared Stiff that's not it here I was thinking SC and I immediately went scared. Oh, safe cracker. Yeah. Candy's insert light is supposed to be yellow while the dog's insert light is supposed to be red. I mean, it's that kind of, Oh, geez, I wouldn't even pick that. Oh, you kidding me? No, no, I, I always say I pick on things that are related to lighting. Uh, and when I say lighting, not what lights are lighting up the visuals of what the lighting is doing. Yeah. yeah what is it in what is it illuminating let's talk about you know that way um i i focus in on that kind of stuff i focus in on uh certain graphical details mainly regarding the models that are on the the machine itself um i don't pick up on hey the sound is two milliseconds uh slow from when it should be firing or, you know... I do. Yeah, see, you do, and that's why I'm saying it's... I play everything with headphones. It's really good that we actually have these different focal points because it means that... This is the same for any sort of open beta because you get all these people who have an affinity with a certain aspect of the game, and that's how you get the really targeted feedback. So it's good that we look at different things when we actually play these things. so i'm going to give a sweeping general statement and then we'll start going into uh our impressions of each and every uh one of the three releases and i'll see if i agree with your sweeping general statement sweeping general statement for those of you that are wondering do i really need to buy this when i already have these three tables on pinball arcade yes yes yes you do and 100 yes You do. And while the visuals are, look, they tip, in my mind, they tip heavily in Zen's favor, but it's not like the visuals were utter junk on Pinball Arcade. however on two of these tables specifically on theater of magic and on champion pub the physics are deal breakers yeah when you play zen and then go and try and play pinball arcade um and then there's something that i noticed this go around specifically with safecracker regarding the sound so these are and and the sound is vastly improved so these are some things that we're going to touch fun. But first off, let's just give an overall general fuss. Let's start with the big one, Theater of Magic. Theater of Magic, the one that was season one in Pinball Arcade. Not just season one, this was Starter Pack. The first four tables that they released which were Theater of Magic, Black Hole, Tales of the Arabian Night, and Ripley's Believe It or Not. And boy, did we ever see that it was like that. Um,
    11:51
    look, if you, if you're able to track down a side by side image of the two tables, one of the things you'll notice right away is that the scale and placement of certain, like the, the tiger saw, um,
    12:07
    the, the launch ramp, they're not scaled properly in pinball arcade. And here they're now correctly placed. They're the correctly, the size that they need to be and where they, you know, in relation to the angle of view that you're looking at.
    12:25
    That's noticeable thing. Number one, noticeable thing. Number two, look down at the various magic illusions that you're trying to light.
    12:36
    And now you can read them clear as a bell, but the other weird thing, and I don't know if it's that I'm just completely used to this in Pimble arcade or that I think I've seen this way also on tables out in the wild, but I can clearly see the rectangular insert plastic that then the decal was put over the top of for the illusions. So I fire up a Zen and there's no rectangle at all. It's just the name of the illusion. And when it lights, it's only the light that is, or the only the name that is illuminating. So I went, Whoa, did Zen pull a little, you know, extra magic on that because it was both in the enhanced and in the standard version of the, of the table. So then I looked up the table on, uh,
    13:23
    IPDB.org. Yeah. Uh, internet pinball database. And I looked at the photos there and sure enough, it's, you're not seeing the square, the insert square. You're just seeing the text. So I don't know if it's one of those things that the machines I played have been worn or, uh, there was a different versions of it out there in the wild, or what, but all I've got to say is Zen did a fantastic job because you're totally legible. You can read all the inserts. Yeah, there's zero problems with understanding what you're going for now, which is kind of important when you're actually shooting for certain things in that game. You know, sometimes.
    14:05
    The other thing that I noticed with it is that the back mirror... mirror. Oh, yes. So clear. Very clear. Works quite wonderfully. Now, there was a while where on Pinball Arcade, the mirror was gone. It bugged out. I just checked it when I was comparing the two, and it's back. So they did get that up and running again. Yeah, that's good. It was out of commission for I want to say a solid year where there was no mirror. And I think on mobile, it was just cut out from the low level of detail version. Because for a while on Android, I think the first two seasons going into the third, we had all of the low level of detail, low LOD models in the game. And the thing, like, Black Hole was missing half of its plastics basically. And Theater of Magic, there was so much detail missing from it, like, you wouldn't believe. So, the mirror adding extra complexity to the processing like you know reversing the image and everything yeah that was gone from the low load version so when we got the high load version we just went wow okay there's so much stuff missing from the old version yeah um beyond that visually i i mean honestly farsight did not do a bad job at all with theater magic and they've they kind of tweaked the lighting a little bit uh recently uh when i say recently in the past two years um they've gone back and done a little bit of things they've done a retune on it from when it was originally released.
    15:44
    That being said, the physics of Zens are phenomenal. You can actually feel and control the ball now.
    15:54
    And your shots, my big test, my first test that I did was trying to shoot the right orbit. Because that was always really tricky to do from a caught ball in Pimble Arcade. and got it, shot it, nailed it. And I was just like, thank you. Now, you know, this is good. You can do the clock. You can actually build up midnight madness. Exactly. The other thing that you'll notice real quickly is that,
    16:22
    and this is kind of, again, goes towards the physics in general that are in Pimble Arcade. The ball, when it starts rolling towards your flipper, it rolls at a constant speed. And it will be kind of slow. Like if the ball is doing a slow roll, it'll maintain that same slow roll all the way to your flipper. And then you get that same slow roll, but you'll noticeably see it accelerate as it comes down. And it's just that little, because there's a lot of that midfield floaty of the ball. Yes. Because it'll start rocketing between the slingshots for a while. Yes. And then suddenly, finally slow, and then drop down. so between the control of the ball and then the nature of the physics with the ball it completely revolutionizes how that table is played and my example for that is my first go around in and and i was playing both the standard zen version and the uh arcade version arcade version yeah and i really it was kind of weird i wasn't noticing that much of a difference physics wise between the two. The main difference is how high of an angle the flipper goes.
    17:38
    But I did my game and I think I don't even think I hit 500 million before I was done, right? I go over to Pinball Arcade just to see a thing or two. Next thing I know I'm at 2 billion.
    17:54
    It's that whole thing of and this is what I love about what Zen has been doing. You know when you see that replay score? that's actually a gold now it's not just a gimme it's something that you're like i gotta beat the replay score at least yeah totally it's it's not easy to get up to i i have been playing all the three games i've decided just to be playing on the the regular mode um not not the arcade right i did try safecracker and arcade and quickly realized that was a silly idea and then went back to the comfort of Zen and actually were able to play the game.
    18:32
    So, yeah, I've been enjoying... I think I'm conditioned now for the Zen mode because I've been playing it so much on Android.
    18:39
    And so yeah I find it tricky to switch over to the other version Yeah But I think I did try Arcade on SafeGrey We can go into that when we are Yes, we'll get into that. When we do that separately.
    18:55
    The one thing that was weird also is trying to hit the chest itself, the revolving case. yeah um it's tricky now you if you you know hit the edge boom you're you're balling out it's not going to go just magically in won't suck in yeah exactly precise yeah yeah so you can actually you can brick the shot and it's tricking a lot you're gonna yeah yeah exactly particularly i would imagine the advanced physics um the arcade physics yeah uh you'd be like having a hard time shooting that thing right. And again, that was one of those shots that in the pinball arcade version, it was just so easy. It was just second nature. Oh yeah, oh great. I can get those jackpots, no problem. Yeah, shoot the general direction of the case and you'll get the shot. Right.
    19:51
    Even with the zen regular physics, you've still got to aim. Oh yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's not a gimme, it's like they haven't actually dialed down the difficulty in their regular game mode. You've still got to shoot that thing with an intent to get in the hole.
    20:11
    That's what I'm saying. In the previous two volumes, I was able to really sense a difference between Zen mode and arcade mode in terms of how the ball reacted. In this particular volume, I'm not seeing that much of a difference.
    20:26
    I think I'm seeing it in rules. Oh, for sure, the rules. Yes. The rules are the thing that became apparent. We'll talk about more of that in a safe crack discussion.
    20:38
    So the other important thing to talk about is the enhanced visuals. Of the three tables, honestly, I think that Theater of Magic is the weakest. Yeah. So what you got is you got the female magician standing in the middle of the play field, and she kind of waves her wand, and that's about the extent of what she does, until you do certain illusions, and then she might vanish or disappear. but... Right. So you've got her there. You've got a top hat on top of the spirit ring magnet. And you've got the wand, now a magic wand, on the launch lane.
    21:20
    Now, those are all just kind of like, okay, whatever. We kind of know what to expect in terms of what they're going to do for enhancements.
    21:28
    The two big things that they did, one of which I'm cool with, the other which I'm not. So the cool thing was they made the balls glow at various points in the game. Yeah, that's cool. Which is cool. Glowing balls, hey, it adds a cool little visual flair. Yeah. That I'll find at Indy. They made the flipper bats glow also. I don't like this at all. No, I don't mind. The glowing flipper, and I know why I don't like it. Why? It reminds me of in, there were certain tables in Pinball Arcade when they first did dynamic lighting. and this this you may not have seen much of it jared no where things would look like they were dipped in toxic waste and were just unnaturally glowing for god knows why you know oh there's a light in vicinity sure make the top of the piece you know the plastic glow but the lights underneath it it doesn't matter make it glow um right okay so the flipper bat is glowing this bright white and in and of itself i the reason why i kind of don't like it also is it takes away the contrast it just becomes you know this glowy thing but then now you have a glowing ball coming at it too and the two it makes timing your shots hard because you've just got this massive glow happening and you don't necessarily see exactly where on the bat the ball is as you know to time your flipper shot. That kind of bugs me. What I wish they had have done instead was, uh,
    23:01
    you know, make the flipper, uh, like a clear plastic. And inside of it is, you know, maybe some of those, uh, you know, plasma bolt, you know, the little lightning bolt things, you know, inside of it, or make it the magic, the magic pixie dust, you know, glowing inside of it. Um, or if you didn't even want to go that you want to just go with a solid flipper bat, put the, you know, the, uh, the card classes on there, you know, Diamond Spade, Club, Heart, or put little white rabbits. I don't know, just something. I guess I just don't understand why the Flipperbats are glowing. It doesn't jibe with me on this particular one. And I've taken to turning off the enhancements on this table precisely because of that. Oh, wow. So you're going without enhancements also because of the Flipperbats. I'm going without enhancements, yeah. And the other thing I found was weird with Theatre of Magic was that when you go and get Tiger Saw multi-ball, the balls are clear. So they're completely – all you can see is an outline of them. Oh, see, I have an activated Tiger Saw multi-ball, so I didn't see that. Yeah, they're just like clear glass orbs that only have a very faint outline to them. And I've got a feeling it's probably a bug. Maybe. because I don't see any reason why you would have a TigerSaw making the balls clear. It doesn't seem to fit, so I can only assume it's a bug. It would make sense if you're doing vanish multi-ball. Oh, maybe because it is... I don't know. I did see the TigerSaw spin. The TigerSaw does spin, so yay for that. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe they've gone vanish multi-ball because it is make the balls vanish and you shoot it up there and then the ball just disappears because it gets caught in that saucer that's hidden behind the Tiger Saw. Maybe that's what they went with the clear balls. Maybe they're vanishing balls. I'm going to have to pay attention now. I'll pay that, I guess, but it's weird because they're very hard to track.
    25:06
    Because all you're seeing is this faint outline of the ball. I don't know if you ever played the Alien vs. Predator table when it goes into camouflage mode, but there's a certain point where your flipper bats go completely clear.
    25:21
    It's a treat! It's like the hear me, feel me, see me mode where the blind goes over the flippers. It's crazy. That was interesting. I found that even with the glowing bats and everything, I could still make shots fine.
    25:40
    I think I've I'm sure it won't last for long, but I did transfer score by about double on there. So I'm fine with the glory bats. I wasn't really trying, Jared. I've just been... Oh, yeah, right.
    25:56
    I tried out the three challenge modes for all three tables. For a field of magic, you're going to have the same encounter that you've had on other tables. It's not like it's particularly trying, but you do have to work at it to get the 15 max. Yeah. It's not a walk in the park. No. Let's move on then to Champion Pub.
    26:28
    Champion Pub, first off, it looks fantastic. Amazing. Yeah. Where you really notice it is, and I noticed this in the preview video when I showed it, but as you're playing it, you really notice it. It's the rear of the playfield details look great.
    26:49
    Everything's so crisp up there. The whole table is really crisp. Again, all the inserts are easily legible. Yes. Where it really shines, though, is, again, with the physics. Yes. In Pimble Arcade, there is the right out lane. That is the KO crunch. Vacuum. It was a total vacuum. I mean, just like obnoxiously so. If your ball is going anywhere in that vicinity, just nudge. Because it's your only hope, basically. Yeah, basically. In Zen's version, it's reacting just like any other normal outlay. It's not an automatic drain monster. No, it's not. Which changes how I approach the table, interestingly enough. Yeah, because there were certain, especially when you're doing the boxer, I was just trying to make everything go off my right flipper. Because if I did it off the left flipper, there was a chance that it would hit the boxer on a funny angle and then go straight for that out lane. Oh, right. Making the old A angle. Oh, yes. So I was always just doing everything off the right flipper to save myself that way. And so now I'm finding that, hey, I'm not even concerned about that out lane so much anymore. You're smacking him around from both sides. Exactly. So that's a vast improvement. The jump rope.
    28:14
    Oh, that thing. Yeah. That's totally different and a lot harder. And a lot harder. It's harder, but it's not harder because of a wonky interaction with it. It's just harder because the physics make it harder. Yeah. But now you feel like the jump rope is actually knocking your ball out of place and not just like some arbitrary, it was close and all that triggered that your ball. Oh, yeah, exactly. That thing was janky as hell in TPA. It just didn't feel right. And the same thing goes with the speed bag. Yeah, that's so quiet. Where you feel like you're actually rocking the ball and punching the ball. Yeah.
    28:55
    I had no idea that's how it actually should feel. because I've never really played a champion pub before. Oh, okay. Compared to Pimble and Cade's version, you're just basically flailing away with the two fists up there and hoping that your ball doesn't get out of the area. But now you actually sort of feel like you have some actual control with that thing. Exactly. Yeah.
    29:20
    The other aspect of this is me where it comes to lighting. Oh, wow. My only effect. Oh, it is. isn't it? Jesus. So when the, when the box are turned around, he's properly lit up. The lights up at the jump rope are probably properly writing the area, throwing light on it and stuff. And now when they go off and come back on, it doesn't seem like it's a glitch. It seems like, yes, this is coded into, into the, the game itself. Even the, even the, the uppercut ramps, they even look like they have dimension to them. Yeah. They don't just look like a green piece of who knows what. Yeah, a green piece of what? You can actually see the curve to them, and the fact they actually do have a curved surface on them. So it's so different. Like, the way that they've done the graphics on it is just superb.
    30:14
    Then there is the enhanced graphics. I've been playing with nothing other than enhanced graphics on every table. And I don't plan to do any other way myself. And it all comes down to them animating the boxer. That boxer. Even when you're not, when you're just doing the heavy bag, right? And the boxer is there. The boxer will kind of look over his shoulder at you while you're playing and then duck back down. It's really cool. And so then when you do turn him, just the way his arms are moving and everything, it's really, really great animation that they did on him. and it's great animation but it's still within the limits of the original box's movement range right so so it's still like it will still interact with your ball and knock the ball away which is what those arms are supposed to do they're actually supposed to like repel your ball so you couldn't uppercut him right as he shifts his body and yeah the yeah that'll happen yeah my my only complaint with that and it just feels like a missed opportunity and we've said it before I really wanted the boxer's face to change the boxer's face is here that would have been really good such a missed opportunity the other kind of interesting thing and this is one of those that I don't know for sure I'm just again used to what happens in pinball arcade is that I'm facing the same boxers in the same order yeah I think that yeah I did So you start off with the Irishman, and then you get this Santiago guy after that, and I haven't gotten farther than those two. You get Big Bang Boom, and then you get Steve-O. But when I was playing, when, again, I was sampling in Pinball Arcade, I was getting different boxers every time. Including Dan Under, which has made a non-appearance in here. So, yeah, there's no Dan Under in any game I've played. In any game that I've played, I have not seen Dan Under yet. Now, why is that? I don't know. They hate Australians.
    32:24
    I wouldn't blame them, really. Interesting. No Dan Under. And how many boxers have you gone through? Oh, a lot. I've actually played quite a bit on the champion poll. I've gone through about 20 boxers.
    32:38
    Okay. No Dan. No Dan Under. Interesting. We're going to have to make an inquiry about that. I see that Pinball with 45B is in our comments section. And so he being the chief organizer of bugs, you got one there. Go add that to your bug list and ask if he's in there or not. Yeah, that's right.
    33:02
    What else do I want to say about Champion Pub? Just that when you shoot the U-turn ramps, they feel really chunky and really good. Like, it feels like a good shot now when you shoot them. like it on tpa it sort of felt they felt really janky when you shot them like uh obviously the physics was having a bit of trouble the way they implemented the physics for the turnaround didn't really mesh very well okay but this actually feels like the ball is traveling out the back of the the u-turn and coming out and sort of it's not the same path that it comes out every time either like it sort of it will tend if you shoot it on a certain side it will actually come back on the other side. It actually has proper physics on it, so they feel good to shoot now. And I'd never really bothered with them because I think they were quite hard to get as well in TPA. I always had trouble getting it. And the other thing that I've noticed too is the main jackpot ramp up to the speedball. Not as easy as you used to, huh? That's a big steep, tall ramp. There's no way you're vacuuming that anymore. I used to be able to spam that to no end. Like basically getting those jackpots up to you know, deluxe Jeff pock, no problems at all. But now it's like, Ooh, okay. It's actually coming back down at me again. Yeah. It's, it's nice to actually see that. That was a big complaint with that table. Yeah. So having that is great. Okay. Last table to talk about first impressions on, which is safe cracker. Now safe cracker. Well, this table has a soft spot in our hearts. So yes, I've been playing this a lot, um,
    34:37
    a lot. And, and I will say, I haven't even switched back to regular graphics mode on it. It's all been interactive fully because this is another table where they've just gone to town with the, I think more than theater of magic for sure. Oh, absolutely. On it. Like they have just really put some fine detail. For me, this is the winner of the enhancements. And funny enough, by a very short margin, because that boxer is pretty amazing. Yes. but where it excels is all the time that you spend up at the game board which could be a very boring visual experience Zen has added in the burglar I thought we'd see the guard, we don't get to see the guard but we get to see the burglar and his animations are fantastic and really cool to watch I see what they mean when they were saying he's very cartoon style oriented he is, like he's got the all i hear when it with a certain modes where he's like when he gets caught it's like exit stage left and off he goes out the door it's wonderful just knowing that deep is the one that had to do the or did the motion capture i'm just picturing him you know in a green room wearing a green suit or you know with tennis or a black suit with tennis balls all over it doing these movements and just cracks me up. Yes. It's very funny. Because it is, like, the motion is realistic as well. Yeah. You can tell that it's been motion captured. Yeah.
    36:10
    If you're playing now just back on the regular play field, TNT Multiball is really cool because there's just explosions happening all over the table. Yeah. And that's pretty rocking. I like that a lot. That's awesome, yeah. The only thing about the Enhanced that I don't care for is the Flipperbats. Again, something about the Flipperbats. Just go around. They made them green. No, I think that's fine. They're not offensive to me, but it also just kind of makes me think, I don't know, Monopoly or just, oh, it's the color of money. I don't know. Yeah, well, that's totally what they're going for there. I can see exactly why they – because, you know, the Return Lane plastics are green with money all over them. Yeah. Well, now they have donuts all over them because that's what TPA or what Zen did was for the enhancements. They put a pile of donuts instead. Yeah.
    37:01
    And sprinkles. And sprinkles, yeah. It was very good. It makes me, though, really wish that we had the ability to customize the enhancements. that let us pick the rubber color, let us pick the flipper bat color, so that if there's anything of that nature that we're just kind of not cool with, but we love everything else animation-wise, and that what we being able to do in the mobile app So why is there a mobile app and not allowed on PC to have full customization I get that it's a monetary thing or an incentive, but technically isn't the mobile app, you know, it's a whole different beast than sitting at your home. Just have a think. They're probably using the data they're collecting from the enhancements to what they bring back to Steam. so what are the favorite flipper bats that people are using what are the most purchased enhancements you know I would put money down that within maybe six months or so we'll start seeing those things become options in Steam I hope so you know what they do they A-B test the crap out of everything so that's what they're clearly doing and I reckon we'll see them in Steam yes So I could definitely, as far as the difficulty of Face Cracker, Face Cracker? Face Cracker. Of Safe Cracker goes, I can really sense the difficulty between the Zen single player mode and the advanced mode. It is way harder. Way harder. harder like the first time you start the board game in the zen um mode the the regular yeah um it's like you know the the shortest path to the vault yeah you know how many times i've got the long path while playing in in arcade mode oh most of the time most of the time like the the full 360 movement around the the vault yeah you you're not getting any tokens at all in in that version of I made the silly mistake of doing Assault on the Vault in arcade mode.
    39:23
    And I quickly realized that's a waste of tokens. Isn't it, though? Yeah. It's clear that the game is really behaving like the game did when I remembered it back in the arcade, when it was in time zone here in Brisbane. It was just designed to suck the money right out of you and not give you anything in return. that's basically true to life. Well, they gave you the token, so they want it back.
    39:51
    Let's talk about the token real quick. Yes, okay. Let's talk about it. You don't see the token actually eject from the back box, but you sure as hell see it bounce down the glass. It kind of does this warbly roll down. Yes, a little wobble to it. A little wobble to it, and then you basically see the shadow of a hand over the top dropping it, and it lands on the apron. Yeah. This is way cool. Yeah, it is. If you go into, then, table view mode, and you angle it down to the apron, there you'll see whatever tokens you've earned. There. Almost like how you used to do back in the day. You line them up. Yeah. I got next, basically. So there's your tokens. The tokens do not go away. even if you exit the game completely even if you play some other pinball game in Xen you come back to Safecracker there's your tokens.
    40:49
    And there they will collect if you play Assault the Vault you'll take one token off there. The cool thing is so how Assault the Vault basically works once you've earned one token the next time you go to play a game of Safecracker there'll be a DMD screen pop up that basically asks you, normal game, assault the vault, or reset the tokens.
    41:13
    You can imagine the reset the tokens is if you collect all the tokens and you want to go through that again, then go ahead and just push reset.
    41:23
    You're back to square one. Normal, obviously you're playing normal, assault the vault. There was a big concern among people that because, again, in Pinball Arcade, people didn't want duplicate tokens. But if you left the game and came back to it, it reset the stack of tokens inside the machine, and you could very easily get duplicates. So getting those final few were almost as maddening as getting table parts in the mobile app for Xen. Yes. yes if you want one thing i didn't notice one thing that surprised me is that everything else in the game state seems to be maintained like tokens get remembered yeah but vault letters don't so when you go out and you go back in again your vault letters don't actually stay with the game and i'm pretty sure that in um a regular like production version of safecracker right that's part of the RAM, so it will remember how many vault letters are accrued.
    42:31
    But it doesn't in this, and I'm surprised, because they have pretty good state management in Xen, and that's something that doesn't seem to carry.
    42:38
    So you can't go and get like... There's something else for us to possibly put on the bug list. Yes, vault letters don't carry. Because at the very minimum they should carry in arcade mode. Yes. Well, I've been playing the Xen mode, they don't carry in Zen mode. I don't think I played Arcade mode once. They don't seem to carry. So, yeah.
    43:02
    Let's talk a little bit, and this is where it gets kind of funny for me, the challenge modes with Safecracker specifically. Because, truth be told, Safecracker is in and of itself those three very challenge modes. So, for instance, One Ball.
    43:22
    The nice thing is Zen starts you off immediately basically in sudden death. They went straight into the ROM and said, boom, put them in sudden death. Zero seconds. That's how you're going to get one ball out of this machine. The suck part is, the table is designed to suck as many balls as possible down the drain. Yeah, because it is relying on time mode. It's relying on you getting a steady feed of balls being thrown at you. So, yeah, imagine starting the game immediately in sudden death and trying to build up some points. It's brutal. It's very difficult. I spent a solid... I was toying with it enough to get me to the five-star level so I could unlock one of the wizard bonuses. But then I spent a good solid half an hour to 40 minutes trying to do the one-ball challenge. And the highest I got was eight stars. I think mine City around 8 or 9 as well It is so hard It's a mess It is very difficult Now you go into 5 minute challenge Well that's more or less what the game is Just not 5 minutes long But that's the game It feeds you as many balls as possible To get the score that you need I had one moment Where it sounded like I was going into Sudden death but I still had plenty of time left on my timer, but then I wound up hitting some stand-up targets and earning... And it reset the sound. Yeah, the time. So I don't know what happens in the game if you run out of time before the five-minute timer runs out of time. Oh, it just keeps shooting balls at you. So it overrides the sudden death and it just keeps popping balls out. Okay. So that mode is kind of like, like I said, on any of the other machines, it's kind of this novelty of constantly having balls thrown at you. With this machine, it's just kind of like, okay, that's nothing new.
    45:23
    And then you have survival mode, which, again, is the very structure and nature of the table, except for here you're having to earn points in order to continue going on, whereas normally the hit and drop targets to earn more minutes to keep going on.
    45:40
    But it's very strange. It feels almost meta, the way that it works with these daily challenges. It's like a subset of the standard game mode that they already have in the game. There's a few tricks that I found because I've been playing. I think I've got max on two of those goals, not the sudden death. But the trick, of course, is to quickly get in the board game, get tossed out of the board game, and get TNT multiple. So that's how you get your points built up. So that's your path to success if you do that mode and you want to get that achievement.
    46:20
    The one ball survival, it's sort of the same tactic, but you've got to really be careful. I would think that you'd want to get into, well, I guess getting into the board game, you don't really score that many points in the board game. No, you don't, and that's a problem. It doesn't actually get you closer to your goal of getting the point levels. you've really got to get into a multi-ball. So you've got to get into the vault, get multi-ball, or TNT multi-ball, or you just don't progress at all in that. Then you've got to keep the balls alive in TNT multi-ball, which is no easy feat because the flippers are short and you can't really trap.
    46:58
    All I know is this is not going to be the fun table on mobile for the daily challenges. Oh, this is going to be horrible.
    47:08
    This is going to suck. on mobile. You really do need to be able to tilt reliably on this game with that one ball survival. That's basically, at the moment, I can envisage that being an instant reset for 25 tickets and go into them and hope you don't get it again because it's going to be yuck. Very yuck.
    47:31
    Okay, so the one other aspect that I wanted to cover that sweeps over all of these that really stood out, and the table stood out again was with safecracker um the sound the audio wow yeah the audio and safecracker is so much more rich and dynamic it's like they've actually remastered the audio yeah and you go listen to it you'll fire up pimble arcade go listen to it and it sounds like it's coming out of a transistor radio in comparison to this wonderful sound system that's got a bass hooked up to it. Do you know why, though? Because I know exactly why. Oh, why? Well, in TPA, when Norm was doing the sounds, he originally was extracting sounds directly from the ROM, but then he switched to microphones in front of the speakers. So that's why you're hearing tinny sounds, because he was picking up the sounds from the speakers of the game. Ah. Oh. Because for some reason he felt it was better quality, which is rubbish. It's not. Because comparing Theater of Magic, there's plenty of bass in Theater of Magic and Pinball Arcade. Yeah. Because that's when he was doing direct ROM extraction of the sounds. Okay. So he wasn't doing it through speakers. But then, obviously, I think he found it too challenging to do it. Yeah. Basically, what I remember him talking about it, and he had a tool that allowed him to play the sounds back directly from the game, but he just set up mics in front of the speakers. And those speakers are crap on pinball machines, let's be honest. The lowest, cheapest part of the bill of materials that you can get. So that's why the sound in Zen sounds so much better, because they've clearly got a way to tap into the ROM directly. It also almost sounds like they've isolated tracks.
    49:32
    Yeah, well, they have. Like the speech call-outs from the music. It almost sounds like they've been isolated and then reassembled as it goes because they just – there's a punch to them, and they're crystal clear. Well, this is what they sound like when they're directly emulated. That's the thing. Like that, that is the sound you get. And I will note that in the enhanced modes, you do get different sound effects. So there are like, you know, you'll get, um, stereophonic sounds, sound effects that were monotonic in, in the game. And that makes a rather large difference to the soundscape of the game. And it's the reason why I don't play in regular, um, mode. So if you're a bit of a sound audiophile, you put your headphones on, and you will notice the difference, a stark difference immediately. Well, then on top of all of that is just their mechanical sounds. Their mechanical sounds are miles, miles better. And that's where I was having, I was like, okay, am I being impressed by the sound because of that stuff, or am I being impressed with the emulation of the sound that they've done? and there's, you know, if you stop flipping and you don't have the ball going into the pop bumpers and you're just listening to the music and the call outs, that's when you go, oh, okay, that's what I'm hearing. But man, yeah. And see, I normally don't play with headphones. I normally just play with my speakers. I normally have the speakers on relatively low volume. So this time specifically, I did put on my headphones and that's where I was just like, oh my God, this is a world of difference. Yeah, well, this setup that you see me, if you're watching YouTube at the moment with the headphones on and me standing here, this is how I actually play Zen because I've got the headphones all plugged into the microphone. It's like a USB mic with a pass-through audio. So I just have this set up like my reek all the time. So whenever I play, I always have to play with headphones on. So, yeah, I get a very consistent audio experience across all the Steam titles I play. And I will say this, like, in summary, I've forgotten just how much better it is to play on Steam than it is on mobile.
    51:43
    Like playing these games with a controller on a big screen without any of the stupid IOP rubbish getting in your way, it is just a delight. It is a delight in comparison to mobile. I was playing these using the micro cab there and having a blast. Oh, it would have been amazing. It would have been amazing with the micro cab, yeah. So there really is. I'm sure Chris would back me up on this saying, But, you know, if you're going to be playing Zen regularly, ditch the mobile and get a PC. It's really the only way you should be experiencing it. Yeah. Let the mobile version be the, oh, man. You're a time waster. Yeah. I'm sitting here. What do I want to do? Ah, let's play some pinball. But don't let that be your sole experience. And I know that's a really rough thing to say for folks who just don't have the ability to have PC gaming. And I was in that camp for a long time. so if you're listening and you're stuck on on android mobile it really sucks that you have that experience because it really it gets in the way of just enjoying these games well at the minimum then go ahead and get a console or or spend the money and just buy the games outright so you can play them or just get them all to two star i guess and just forget about the the iap stuff but you know you're gonna you're really gonna want the enhanced modes and probably the enhanced like the audio quality will i would imagine won't be different across mobile uh right that will just have the same sound package so you know i would be upgrading um if you're going for level three save your save your your smurf fairies and upgrade uh i'm saying for like people that are fully ensconced in the world of apple um they're the the apple version of zen is not the same experience that we're getting. It's fairly, fairly close, but there are some aspects missing. So what I'm saying is if you want the big screen experience with everything and you don't want to then buy a PC because you're already in the Apple world, that's where it's, hey, get yourself a Switch, get yourself a PS4 or an Xbox One and play it that way. Yeah. If you're a bummer, really, you'll get the censored version. So on Champion Pub, you'll be getting green beer for some reason. Green beer? That's what the image that I saw was. It was in the mug. It was some green liquid. It must be lime cordial. Yeah, lime cordial. That's what they're drinking. Right. Wow.
    54:21
    So as I was waiting for us to be able to play with these, I for some reason got an itch to go fire up FX2 and play Super League. And part of this was because Thomas Crofts had said in one of the past interviews that we did where he said one of their tables that can be turned into a real machine and he said aliens and then he said Super League. I was like, I gotta revisit Super League and see what that is. I'll be damned if he ain't correct. that thing could be translated. Oh yeah. There is nothing in the enhancements that add any sort of gameplay. Yeah. They don't affect the ball. There's no magic ramps. There's no magic launching. There's nothing. Every single aspect of that thing could be translated into a physical machine. Um, even the, uh, up in the goal area, the oscillating targets that are, you know, those could mechanically drop down because it's just a vertical three lanes of, of targets there that are rotating. So they replace them with the set of drop targets basically. Yeah. But like the bill of materials would be ridiculous on it. Like it would be a $15,000 pinball machine probably for the pro version. But yeah, you could do it. Maybe, maybe, I don't know. It's possible.
    55:45
    Um, but I had a blast revisiting that table. I was just like, Oh my God, this thing is so much fun. We desperately needed to get it into FX3 because lighting on it is not that great. No. And the inserts, the lighting on the inserts is not dynamic at all.
    56:05
    The physics would be better with the new FX3 physics that got applied to all the Zen tables I not talking about the Williams physics These are just the regular Zen physics that got upgraded It a fun fun table It good As I was playing it I was just like dang it sucks that I can There's no setting up a tournament with this because I would love to play a tournament with it. It would be fun. It would be great. Honestly, my tournament, if there was a way to set it up on that, it would be less about what is your total points, like the big points and more about how many goals did you score and how many teams did you defeat? That's the permit that I want. Yes. It is also the quintessential the ball never drains table. Oh yeah. It just keeps going, going. So it'd be one ball. Very long time. So, but so I, I did that. And then I was like, well, while we're here, let's check out South Park again. And I started playing the South Park tables again. I was just like, Oh my God, These are so much fun. And the humor on these are so great.
    57:11
    And I really, really hope that Zen is able to acquire that license again. I know circumstances under which they lost the license, and it wasn't – it's nothing that's insurmountable. It was just a series of events that – Yeah, some other company has got the rights now. and you know so anyway that made me think okay once we get Super League we're starting the Luskis South Park back in campaign because Super League doesn't even have any licensing in it it's devoid like the vanilla version of it is the vanilla version my only question is you are playing like on the DMD it'll say the name of the team that you're playing against so we'll say like AC Milan those are going to be festive I mean it's not a difficult table for them to change to bring it back over. I really hope that the only reason why they haven't yet is they're waiting for World Cup or something like that. And then bring it back to the luncheon. Just to time it with the season.
    58:17
    So anyway, I did that. I played South Park and then I was like, okay, let's look at the other two that didn't get brought over, which are Misplosion Man and Plants vs. Zombies. Oh, yeah. I've never played Plants. Plants vs. Zombies, honestly, is kind of an okay, whatever table.
    58:39
    Just me, I didn't just popping it in and playing it for a little bit. I was just kind of like, okay, yeah, whatever. It'd be nice if they were able to bring it back, but it certainly wasn't amazing. I wasn't going, oh, I so missed this. It was just kind of like, yeah, okay, whatever. Which is probably a good indication it doesn't need to be back in.
    59:00
    Misplosion Man. So I kind of decided after playing that to dig a little bit. This Monster Man is crazy. It's kind of nuts. It kind of can get annoying. Right. But it's also a rather interesting table to bash around on. I would like to see that in FX3.
    59:19
    I looked at it. So it was a platformer game on Xbox Live. Oh, was it? Okay. It was exclusive to Xbox Live. so they had bought the games company that had made it which was I won't say Magic Pixel because I think Pixel was in their name I can't remember what the name of the company was but anyway that's why it didn't get basically ported over to FX3 because it was still Microsoft but then I did some digging around and lo and behold the game just came out on the Nintendo Switch because Microsoft sold the company off and they're on their own again. Right. But that happened back in 2015. Oh, the game came out as a platformer in 2011. So I'm very confused as to why maybe, maybe Nintendo got an exclusive on it. I don't know. Maybe, or maybe it just was never that popular. And so they've figured out whatever we don't want to pay the license on it. Yeah. I reckon that's probably more like the answer you're looking for there. it's not really that popular who knows, maybe if it's popular he picks up on Nintendo Switch then maybe they'll want to go back and get it yeah, he might get a shot of popularity to the arm again who knows so I'm kind of hoping that we haven't seen the last of these tables, but like I said those last two with Plants vs. Zombies and Explosion you take a leave of them yeah, you know, it is what it is so that got me going you know what, I never really did, I never looked at these things in 3D on my PS3. Oh, yeah. Because by the time I got my TV, I was fully transferred over to PC. For all my pinball gaming. And I remember that I tried them out.
    61:13
    Mainly, I tried it out in Pinball Arcade. And the 3D in Pinball Arcade is so horrible. Really? It hurts. It literally hurts. When it first... and this is really going down the rabbit hole of 3D at home, but 3D, obviously your lens, the polarized lens, one is vertical, one is horizontal, essentially. And then you're getting the image fired simultaneously. So, and the only reason why you specifically know that is PlayStation was doing a thing for a while where if you had the PlayStation TV,
    61:49
    two people could be playing the game, like say Madden and seeing completely different screens so long as you were wearing the 3D glasses. Ah yes. They would send only one image to one person and one image to the other person and so you could Oh they're watching the same screen but seeing completely different things. So in games where you're selecting plays and stuff the other person would never see it. It was like hey that's genius. That's really brilliant that you did that. And it was a little because they were active shutter glasses. Oh right. So they just told which glass what time to fire on and off and open and close. And so that's why they got that kind of thing going on. That's an incredible bit of user experience right there. Oh, yeah. Wow. Pretty cool. So mine are the passive glasses. So there's none of that. It's a polarized lens. Well, when you first fire up Pimble Arcade in 3D, one of the lenses is completely just black. Oh, okay. For some reason. It's just you're not seeing.
    62:51
    All of a sudden it feels like you're only using one eye. And then it goes to another menu and something's popping out at you, but it's blurry because they use this major convergence that you practically have to cross your eyes. It's unnatural. When you first start it up, you literally go, oh, okay, and you kind of cross your eyes to get the 3D to work, and then your eyes just adjust and stay in that configuration. You can't just focus your eyes. You've got to, like, unfocus your eyes. That is just horrible. It's horrible. And then when you actually get a table up and in 3D, it looks like it's a bowling alley lane. It is miles long. It just looks bad. It's not at all what they did for the Stern VR experience.
    63:41
    It's terrible. To me, it is almost the – it's essentially somebody didn't have a 3D TV at Fireside. when they just guessed because it clearly never went through any kind of quality sort of testing. Yeah. Zen on the other hand is one of the best 3d experiences. People in terms of the pinball menus are crisp. Everything is beautiful. It's very dimensional. Um, and I, I only have, I think I only have about 20 tables on PS three. Um, I know I've got like eight, Well, I've got the original eight Zen originals, and then I've got a handful of marble tables and stuff. So anyway, I started bashing around on the... It's weird because you play the game differently. Oh, yeah? I was doing different shots than I normally do, or reacting differently than I normally do.
    64:39
    And it looks way cool, and it almost made me go, well, maybe I should buy some of these tables for the PS3. I don't know if I'm really going to or not, but dang, they look good. Unfortunately, because since the license loss, Super League and South Park are no longer available for purchase in there. And I was like, I really want to see what Super League look like. But I emailed Mel about the 3D. And obviously he said, well, because the 3D, they don't even manufacture 3D TVs for North America anymore. there's no sense in them doing it promoting that they did use what they learned with that and applied it to the VR experience what I don't understand other than creating the whole 3D environment they do in that but every single one of those tables was available in 3D so that portion of the work is already done but he said they had at Zen a vertical cabinet with a 3D monitor. Oh. And he says it's hands down the best 3D experience he's ever had playing their tables. Wow, that would be amazing. But again, there's no 3D monitors to purchase, at least not in North America. I don't know how it is around the world. Well, I think it's probably the same because the same models get shipped all over the world just with the Hertz. No, because North America specifically, the movie studios decided that they wanted to promote 4K discs. And once they started promoting 4K discs, they stopped releasing 3D on disc. Well, if you don't have any content for the TV, then there's no sense in selling the TV.
    66:26
    Thanks, guys. I don't think we have any 3D TVs. I go down to Costco, and I look down the row, and it's 4K, 4K, 4K everywhere. I don't think there's any 3D. Because this goes into me trying to find 3D discs. I have to purchase them from other countries now. I have to basically get them from the UK. But I believe Australia still is getting discs. Or maybe we do have models of TV that do. Or maybe we have it built in. We might have it built into the actual firmware. Because I'd imagine if you've got an LG TV, a 50-inch LG TV, they would just change the firmware in the screen. Cause it's not like the screen couldn't do it. No. Right. Like it's especially a 4k screen. It'd be easy. 65 inch 3d TV. Yeah. So in this passive glasses. So it was again, not like you have to have shutter. You can use the glasses that you got the movie theater. And I have a whole stack of them as opposed to also my clip ons that I do use normally. But yeah, right. Yeah. The ones that worked in the movie theater, they work at the, at home. Oh, right. Okay. I actually, the monitor that I've got here is an LG Cinema 3D. And I remember playing something, I think it was way back when Zen accidentally put 3D into Zen FX 2 on mobile. And I was able to plug it in through HDMI because my Shield tablet had that capability or my Transformer tablet did. And I was able to play 3D from my tablet on it. And it was incredible. Yeah. And then I made the mistake of telling them, and they took it out.
    68:14
    Thanks, Jared. Boo, boo me. I don't think anyone really realized you could do it. But anyhow, I did. And so I think I've since got rid of the passive glasses, but I wonder if ZenFX 3 would actually offer it or whether they've actually got it coded in on PC on Steam. I don't know either. it'd be if they did then i might try and figure out a way of getting it on a monitor computer monitor but i don't know yeah it'd be well if they already could could fudge the image how it needs to be yeah yeah you would just tell the monitor here's the signal that you're getting and that would be the signal yeah that's right yeah so so yeah i don't think i've got the glasses anymore I think I got rid of them a long time ago because, well, I rarely did anything 3D.
    69:09
    Me? I just watched a movie last night in 3D, so there you go. But I did want to just kind of say, hey, folks, if you haven't dusted off your FX2 in a while, do so. Give it a crack. Throw in Super League. It's fantastic, and let's get that campaign going right alongside the Cactus King You Continued campaign. So those are two bugaboos that we're going to be, we need to just lob at Zen right now. Be the noisy, annoying community that they know and love.
    69:42
    Okay, so now we've reached the part of the show where my wife has told me, if I were a listener, I'd just shut them off because we're going to tell you about all of our socials and things like go to Redbubble and buy a t-shirt. Just look for Blockade and you too can own a wonderful Blockade Pimple Podcast t-shirt. Show your love. Have people look at you funny.
    70:03
    All that kind of jazz. Or better yet, if you're going to a pinball tournament of any sort or an expo, then you get to wear that and people are like, hey, I know that as what happened to me. Yeah, that's right.
    70:14
    You could be famous at the show. So again, redbubble.com and search Blockade. The main thing that you should always be doing if you haven't done so already is follow the show on Twitter. It is at Blockade. There you will find when we're recording these shows like here, because I always announce it and say, hey, it's over on YouTube. Go check it out.
    70:38
    As well as we pass along any information that Zen has posted, news notices, all that kind of jazz. Keep you up on top of things. Then, of course, since you're doing that, why not go ahead and follow Jared and myself? Jared is at JaredMorgz. I am at ShutYourTraps. If you feel the need, you may drop us an email. Sometimes people do this. I have a few people that have. their email is blahblahblockade at gmail.com and of course for past episodes, show notes web links that we talk about go visit our website it is blockadepinball.com slash episodes yes we really should have something else to talk about after this particular moment so people don't turn us off but what I need to do is start doing what I've been threatening to do for ages and make little drops that I can just sort of scatter throughout the show so people get all the information ad hoc throughout the show and we don't have to do it at the end or you'd be like me and you here on the fire and you're like oh 15 seconds scan forward thank you well yes and that's their prerogative to do that essentially they could fast forward five times at the end or they could fast forward 15 seconds at a time during the show I highly recommend listening to us at two times speed because we're just that much funnier.
    72:02
    Well, maybe two times speed for you, but I would be unintelligible at two times speed because I'm an Australian and we speak fast. Why do you think it's funnier?
    72:13
    It's amusing, but you won't be able to understand me. I'll sound like a chipmunk. Me laughing at myself definitely does sound like a chipmunk when it goes through that. try it out folks put it on two times speed right now and you'll hear this kind of laugh and then you'd hear the kind of plastic i mean two times speed it should be like an intelligible anyway um okay enough of that stuff like i said next week we'll be uh talking probably mostly about the mobile app theoretically theoretically in zoom yeah if there is a beta on that i don't even know well no it should be coming out day and date with this oh yeah true yeah we should have full access to it so you know program notes subject to change but there you go that's the plan all right folks we really appreciate you listening to us watching us on YouTube and just giving us the feedback that you do because we value feedback yeah thank you for interacting with us we like We like it. All right. Until next time. Oh, quick shout out real quick.
    73:24
    Crow Pinball probably is going to be streaming some of this pinball action before Tuesday. And pinball is 45B on his Twitch channel. He's saying that he's probably going to be streaming on Sunday, probably around the 3 o'clock Eastern, I'm guessing, time frame. but anyway go ahead right now go over to Twitch and follow PinballWiz45B that way you know when his is going on Crow go over to YouTube and subscribe to his channel that way you can see this stuff in action basically all the stuff that we're talking about but with visuals and no doubt that Species Arcade will probably also be doing something in the very near future I'd imagine so yeah lots of ways for you to experience these if you're not going to go out and buy immediately. Yeah. All right. We will talk to you all again next week. Bye bye.
    74:29
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    74:43
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favourite podcast hosting service that BlackAid is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.