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Acquisitions and Redesigns

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 5m·analyzed·Nov 27, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Zen acquired by Embracer; AtGames reveals Legends cabinet redesign.

Summary

The Blockade Pinball Podcast hosts Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss two major industry developments: Zen Studios' acquisition by Embracer Group (via Saber Interactive) and AtGames' revealed redesign of their Legends Pinball cabinet. They contextualize the Zen acquisition as strategically positive, providing capital for expansion and licensing, while analyzing AtGames' cabinet redesign with detailed critique of mechanical and aesthetic improvements alongside persistent design flaws.

Key Claims

  • Embracer Group has acquired over 13 studios in the past year

    high confidence · Chris Freebus states this as context for the Zen acquisition announcement

  • Zen Studios has separate, dedicated teams for pinball and RPG divisions that don't interfere with each other's workflow

    medium confidence · Chris and Jared assert this to counter concerns about pinball being deprioritized, but acknowledge this is their interpretation rather than official statement

  • Zen had a 10-year plan that Mel (Mel Kramer) publicly discussed, and the Embracer acquisition was likely months in planning

    medium confidence · Hosts speculate this explains the strategic nature of the acquisition timing relative to announced plans

  • AtGames Legends Pinball cabinet redesign includes a new lockdown bar with proper corner design and a simplified apron

    high confidence · Direct visual analysis of official AtGames media release showing physical cabinet images

  • The AtGames Legends Pinball uses a 15.5-inch diagonal screen as its primary display rather than a dedicated DMD

    high confidence · Detailed technical analysis of official cabinet imagery

  • AtGames placed HDMI and USB ports on the top backbox rather than rear or front, creating cable routing issues

    high confidence · Direct observation of cabinet images with hosts questioning this design choice

  • Toy Shock cabinet has only 12 Gottlieb tables while Legends Pinball has 22 Gottlieb tables

    high confidence · Hosts compare officially available machine specifications

  • The Toy Shock cabinet appears to be missing its plunger in comparison photos

    medium confidence · Hosts observe this in official comparison imagery but note it may have been displaced during shipping

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't think that's going to be such a concern anymore... Maybe—and we keep on saying this—who's the logical place that Stern is going to land when the time comes? It's going to be at Zen.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~14:30 — Speculates on future Stern-Zen licensing partnership as a consequence of Embracer's capital injection enabling higher licensing budgets

  • “I'm more than optimistic about it. I actually think I'm very happy about it. This can only mean good things for the studio. I think. And I'm happy to eat my hat if that's not the case.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~23:00 — Expresses strong confidence in positive outcome of Zen acquisition despite initial community skepticism

  • “The one thing that Arcade1Up's cabinet has over this is that they actually use a real plunger body and plunger assembly, and it just makes it look so much better.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~39:00 — Criticism of AtGames' plastic plunger design choice versus competitor's superior hardware

  • “Why would you put those all the way at the top of there, so that your cables can then drift down the front of your playfield?”

    Chris Freebus @ ~48:30 — Identifies practical design flaw in HDMI/USB port placement on AtGames cabinet

  • “I understand what you're saying, Chris. You think that if that's what they were thinking of doing—actually allowing them to put the LCD marquee down at the bottom—they should have reversed the order of everything.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~56:00 — Acknowledges missed opportunity in Legends Pinball backbox layout for future DMD upgrades

Entities

Zen StudioscompanyEmbracer GroupcompanySaber InteractivecompanyMel KramerpersonAtGamescompanyLegends PinballproductToy ShockcompanyArcade1UpcompanyStern PinballcompanyFarsight Studioscompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Zen Studios acquisition by Embracer Group indicates consolidation trend in digital gaming; hosts speculate this enables higher licensing budgets and positions Zen as potential future Stern licensee

    high · Direct announcement of acquisition; hosts' analysis of capital injection implications for licensing; reference to 10-year plan alignment

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Initial community reaction to Zen acquisition was negative ('doom and gloom' predictions), but hosts position themselves as voice of reasoned optimism against panic narrative

    high · Hosts reference immediate community freakout without logic; explicitly counter fears of PopCap/EA comparison

  • $

    market_signal: AtGames redesign incorporating design elements from competitor analysis (lockdown bar improvements, simplified apron, removable control panels similar to Arcade1Up)

    high · Physical cabinet images show these features; hosts explicitly note AtGames 'took away' design elements from competitors in prior episode discussion

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Zen Studios' prior public statements about 2024 being significant year now contextualized by hosts as likely strategic planning around Embracer acquisition negotiations

    medium · Hosts reference Zen's earlier statement and connect to 10-year plan mentioned by Mel in prior interview

  • ?

    announcement: AtGames officially reveals Legends Pinball cabinet redesign with physical imagery after prolonged render-only period; cabinet features 22 Gottlieb tables, new lockdown bar, simplified apron, wider body design

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.196

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world it's jared morgan hello there professor chris i'm not gonna go by that sorry you can try all you want but nope i have to i gotta help it so uh we weren't expecting to be recording this week but uh we did say hey if any news happens and there's surely got to be something that happens before thanksgiving then by all means we'll pop on into a show hey guess what kids things happens things happened and not just of the minor variety either we're talking of the uh major variety so we're going to not even bother with the uh the banter and go straight into this which is zen studios has been purchased acquired if you will uh by a group called the embracer group and particularly as part of Saber Interactive.
1:23
Which is an arm of Embracer. Right. One of the many arms by the sound of things. Right. So basically Embracer went on a spending spree and over the past year has purchased, what is it, over 13 studios?
1:38
Yeah. That's a very, very active acquisition. Right. It seems like a lot to acquire in a year. So this company is the same company who has THQ. THQ Nordic. Nordic, yeah. Because I think there's many THQs. There's many THQs. I think. I don't know.
2:04
This is an area that we're sort of a little bit on the shady side with. We know pinball licensing and how that works, but we don't know how studios work and all the different arms of them as much. So it's a very interesting world that's opened up. Everybody freaked out immediately without applying any logic. Oh, doom and gloom. It's going to become another PopCap versus EA, you know, whatever. and uh meanwhile me and jared sat back and kind of went does this sound like a bad thing to you i don't know what do you think jared is this a bad idea i went nah no it sounds fine so uh we're here to talk to you we're here to talk to you all off the ledge throwing money like i don't see that as a really bad idea for for a uh a burgeoning studio so yeah so let's start off with the the what are the potential negatives let's just get those out of the way what people have been saying and that is oh my god here comes a larger company acquiring a small independent company uh the larger company probably could care less about their content they're merely buying them for library cachet you know to build up their portfolio and they're going to just wind up dissolving Zen within a matter of years.
Chris Freebus
person
Jared Morganperson
THQ Nordiccompany
EA (Electronic Arts)company
Naughty Dogcompany
Santa Monica Studioscompany

high · Official media dump with multiple cabinet angle photographs analyzed in episode

  • ?

    product_strategy: Legends Pinball vs Toy Shock cabinet comparison reveals AtGames is positioning larger table library (22 vs 12 Gottlieb tables) as competitive differentiation despite design similarities

    high · Hosts note Legends Pinball 'thumbing its nose' at Toy Shock with nearly double the table count; comparison photos show structural similarities

  • ?

    product_concern: AtGames Legends Pinball exhibits multiple design flaws despite improvements: plastic plunger (inferior to competitors), impractical port placement causing cable routing issues, backbox layout not optimized for future upgrades

    high · Detailed technical critique based on official cabinet images; comparison to Arcade1Up and Toy Shock standards

  • ?

    business_signal: AtGames cabinet redesign suggests responsive product iteration based on competitor feedback and market analysis; removable control panels indicate planning for future hardware partnerships/upgrades

    medium · Hosts identify removable panel design (Allen screws visible in images) as future-proofing similar to Arcade1Up approach

  • ?

    technology_signal: AtGames Legends Pinball uses single 15.5-inch display for both playfield view and score/DMD display rather than dedicated DMD, limiting screen real estate for score display

    high · Technical analysis of official cabinet backbox imagery showing integrated screen approach vs traditional DMD placement

    • 3:33
    There's con number one. Do I have that right, Jared? Yeah, that seems like a common sentiment out there at the moment. Okay. What would you say comment number two, negative-wise, was with this acquisition?
    3:49
    Would it have something to do with Zen becoming one of the big guys and not actually worrying about pinball anymore and just focusing on all the rpg stuff and only worrying about you know that sort of line of the business yes that would be another one because there was a lot of talk about how oh they were really excited by zen's rpg games and want to help expand those and uh help zen grow those into a larger thing and everybody went but what about the pinball because some of the other studios, if I'm not mistaken, are RPG studios. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. So that was a negative thing. And then ultimately it was that Zen will lose its independence and will purely be making things on a commercial front. it'll all become about the numbers and not the content.
    4:56
    Do you think it's not about that now? Is it that what a studio does remain profitable? I just don't understand that logic at all. Right. So the way that me and Jared have kind of looked at it is, well, no, this is more like you're an independent studio that's been wanting to grow. You really need capital, though, injected into you to afford the expansion that you want to go in. And here comes somebody saying, hey, we'll buy you and we'll give you that capital.
    5:32
    Seems pretty reasonable. I don't know. There's that angle of it. the other thing is now that you have various studios that you're going to be aligned with by all means they can help shore up the negative aspects that are currently within your company and I saw somebody point this out if there's a problem with Zen's quality assurance regarding they don't have enough playtesters or whatever goes into QA at the studio itself, at the studio level, before it ever goes out to beta testers,
    6:16
    there are specifically one or two of the companies that got acquired where that's their primary focus.
    6:23
    Right. So you basically go, look, we need this service. Oh, let's go to the umbrella company and ask for that. Not literally the umbrella company. Yeah, this isn't Resident Evil. No, there's no T-Force here, but the umbrella company that sits over the top.
    6:39
    so there's that we always point this out too you got the Zen pinball division you got the Zen all the other games division yeah that's cool and while the two might mingle a little bit and share certain resources for the most part they're two separate entities and one's workflow does not affect the other's workflow no so we really need to get off this idea that oh my god c's and it's just gonna drop pinball and go whole hog into rpg quite the opposite it is rather the opposite this is not the fast site was structured like that they had all their eggs in one basket and they all the whole studio is just pinball pinball pinball so when they had another like your contract job like you know pro bowling insert title here they had to take people off the pinball side of things to do that but that's not the case with zen they've got dedicated resources in each department that look after a specific part of the business not only that but think about this again influx of capital what would that mean for zen pinball specifically well for starters maybe the pinball division and probably Zen in general, I would imagine their RPG division too, increases in employee size. Yeah, they're going to get a headcount.
    8:09
    Yeah, for sure. I mean, how else are they going to keep up with the extra content that you would expect a large corporation like Embracer to demand of their acquired companies? Right.
    8:22
    Point number two, there are a bunch of licenses out there, whether you want to talk Bally Williams licenses or just licensing in general, like how they have the Star Wars license or the Marvel license, these things aren't cheap.
    8:37
    They really don't. If all of a sudden you have a larger entity with an influx of cash coming in saying, hey, we can help your bottom line so that you're not so razor thin on the margins, you can afford to reach out and actually extend beyond what you thought you were able to extend beyond before, hey, now maybe certain licenses become that much more obtainable. That's right. Yeah, like maybe some of those unobtainium licenses that we've seen in Belly Williams pinball machines aren't so unobtainium anymore. Right. You know? Maybe, and we keep on saying this, who's the logical place that Stern is going to land when the time comes? It's going to be at Zen. And what's the problem? All their tables are licensed. Licensed. ain't cheap.
    9:27
    No. They don't license junk at Stern. They license really good quality properties. Yeah. So I don't think that's going to be such a concern anymore. Right. So if you wanted to make yourself appealing in your pitch to Stern to say, hey, come over with us. Everything's cool. Right. But it's like, well, why would we want to go with you? We already went with Farsight. Look what happened there. They didn't produce any of the pinball tables that we would have wanted them to produce because they refused to pay Ponyup for the license. And you go, ah, please see this 10 year plan about your problems and how we're going to solve them here. And you know what? You bring up the 10 year plan that Mel has himself brought up in our interview with him. perhaps that's why they have a 10 year plan because this acquisition didn't just happen over the course of a couple of weeks this has gotta have been months in the making well acquisitions don't just happen they usually take a farewell to sort out from a legal perspective so you would think that just as they did with FX3 with their plans to actually do Williams Pinball, this move to become acquired as part of a larger group is definitely strategic, definitely part of the 10-year plan, and probably would be instrumental to execution. So this can only be a good thing.
    11:07
    For the most part. I mean, look, there are always possibilities that it all goes to... Yeah, it could go to cack, but I don't think that's going to happen. I don't either, and the way that Zen has been positioning themselves, this is the natural progression of things. And the way that I kind of liken it in terms of where this can go, my two favorite games on PlayStation were the Uncharted series and God of War. Both of those were independent studios. studios naughty dog and santa monica studios sony realizing that you know although they paid to lock up you know like the crash bandicoot series to be playstation exclusive they eventually realized hey maybe we should just buy the studio itself which they did so they bought both naughty dog well i think what did they buy out naughty dog no i don't think they actually bought naughty dog but they certainly locked them up into long-term exclusivity and then but i think santa maca studios they did actually buy uh but what happened then that was when suddenly they were able to expand their teams and blow up the games into much more complicated things they become the very thing that you absolutely want to play because they've got the development resources to actually make the game far deeper than it could ever have been before.
    12:45
    Exactly. So that's why it's... I know, like you said, oh my god, it's going to be PopCap. PopCap wasn't exactly positioned to... to be in a place of power at EA.
    13:02
    No, EA is a bit of a juggernaut, really. Right, and the Embracer group is certainly not EA. I mean, has anybody ever heard of Embracer group or Saber in general prior to this? No, never. No recollection of them at all. It just came out of nowhere, basically. And if anything, this is Zen on the rise to becoming EA.
    13:28
    Potentially, yeah. It's like, I think, whereas EA is a larger game development studio. They start off really small.
    13:40
    Yeah, that's right. They were really small. And now they're huge because they just keep on buying up studios and buying up properties. But the thing about EA is that they're a game studio. And I don't think Embrace a Group is a studio. They're a conglomerate of businesses. Exactly. by like i said they're they're having a portfolio a library of stuff yeah so it's a very different notion to the the whole relationship between pop cap and when they got bought out by ea and how terrible the game's out now because because ea and microtransactions so i i just kind of tend to fall back on when at the start of the year when zen was saying oh 2020 is going to be wild and you guys we can't wait to show you everything that's going to be happening i have to believe that that's because they were planning for this they understand what joining this group is going to mean for them and that pinball is only going to get bigger with zen as will their rpg stuff get bigger and the more zen branches out and has successful platforms of games of different types the more attractive they'll become to to potentially expand further in the future like and it helps them weather any storm that happens with any one particular game not doing well or all of a sudden there being some catastrophic failure of some sort i don't know that's right definitely not all eggs in one particular basket so they do have a number of different like product lines now um that they can lean on and experiment with and decide whether they're viable or not or can them or keep them or whatever you know there's plenty of flexibility they can use now um in their portfolio of games so again don't think this is anything to really worry about and if anything it should be something to be optimistic about I'm more than optimistic about it I actually think I'm very happy about it this can only mean good things for the studio I think and I'm happy to eat my hat if that's not the case I don't have a hat but I'll eat something resembling a hat Jared is getting at the blocking stamp of approval if we had a stamp If we had a stamp, it would absolutely get one.
    16:09
    Yes. Other news! At Games finally decided to release images of what their Legends Pinball Cabinet will actually look like as well as it actually having gameplay on the screens
    16:32
    We've been waiting for something other than a render to appear, because that's what all the other images were up until this point. and then lo and behold they did a media dump and it popped up all over the place and so we decided because we're not part of that media dump no we need to take a look at this with fresh eyes because just in that last episode we were talking about what are the things that uh each of the cabinet manufacturers will take away from the other cabinet manufacturers exactly and what What would they honestly steal as a concept? And interestingly enough, some of those things wound up just plain being in this build. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to take a look at these, and we're going to kind of break this down. So let's drop us down to a little small screen here. Look at that. And through the magic of technology, because I'm slowly figuring these things out. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da! There it is, folks.
    17:34
    Now, what do we see here? That is the redesign. so yes what are we seeing here what is we are actually seeing this with images on the screen we are uh i have a better image coming up that we'll look at with the uh the shape of the cabinet but look at that there's an actual lock bar now for jared to not have pointy corners uh jabbing into his palms yep i'm so glad to see that added like that was a massive oversight the crazy busy apron is gone if now just a simple legends pinball i think they did much much better there is not so busy on the eye there um not so busy it had way too much visual weight like your eye was just drawn to that all the time like when you're playing the game so this is much better yeah right he's better so there's there's that angle so so far so good so far we're saying yay um Although, what is up with the little tiny back glass with the speaker and the DMD display? I'm assuming because of what's being shown on the play field with the whole cabinet, this is probably fly-by mode, fly-over mode. Yeah, it looks similar to it because I don't see a view like that normally in Pimple Arcade. It's like it's doing table overview mode. Yeah, so that's what I'm kind of assuming is with that. Okay, but let's close that picture out. Let's look at the next one we have here. Ah, okay, so here you can see that the cabinet is not so wedge-shaped like it was previously.
    19:07
    I saw somebody that had likened it to a shopping cart. Yes, it did look a bit like that. This also gives us a little bit more detail, obviously, on the legs, which... Which... We have another picture we're going to show you. the legs, I don't know. They're weird.
    19:27
    They look like metal, but they look like they're sprayed with something not metal. I don't know. It looks like what I use when I'm restoring my dodgy Gottlieb pinballs and I have really rusty legs and I use the Rust-Oleum silver on them. It's a matte finish. It sort of is matte-ish. It maybe has a little bit of sheen to it. It's certainly not chrome. If you look at it, though, the rest of the, I guess, the hardware on the machine isn't either. So I imagine that probably, you know, electroplating metal isn't cheap. So they probably just went with the powder coating like they've done here. It's durable. Yeah. Obviously, you can also see there's a better angle on the corner of the lock bar.
    20:17
    It looks like those lock bars, they're not just, I don't know, if those are allen screws or just rivets yeah they're allen screws they're because you can take you can i think you can take the whole side molding off if you need to mod if i think so uh that plunger let's talk about that plunger for a moment that plunger is different to the one they originally had which was sort of like a sort of a had like a taper on it i'm using this hand motion with my fingers um it's like a taper thing but now it's actually more of a handle style thing but it looks like it looks a lot like what is on the toy shock and well played it's looks like a plastic plunger it it really does look plasticky like the the one thing that arcade one-ups cabinet has over this is that they actually use a real plunger body and plunger assembly and it just it just makes it look so much better i don't know why they would have gone with something like this when they spent so much time and effort on making something that looks as close as possible to the pinball machines in the real world. They've just done this and it just looks cheap and plasticky. Rather than having... Okay, so they have the faux coin door there, which is definitely an improvement over having just the four buttons across the front. You still have four buttons, but now they actually look like they're integrated and part of an actual pinball cabinet. So that's good. I like that I don't know for sure but it almost seems like the I know they're using the same artwork on the side of the cab but it looks like it it's not so bright I don't know if that's just me or what other angles it could just be the angle I think the front of the cabinet looks a little bit better lit it looks like it's front lit so the side of the cabinet might be just a little bit of shade I still think it's way too busy because that image of Gladiator doesn't have anything to do with the image of Centigrade, which doesn't have anything to do with the image of 1812 on the front. It's just still a mishmash collage. Yeah, it is. I'm not really big on that. All right, let's move on to the next pick here. Did you know that all the modders will just go, we're just going to wrap it and just put a wrap around it. But, you know, Joe Average Consumer probably won't even care. That's the thing. Well, or there's Joe Average Consumer that doesn't want to spend another $80 on a wrap.
    22:48
    Yeah. So I think Joe Average Consumer will just go, Meh, whatever, I'll just put up with it. Probably. Front of the machine. So there you get an even better look at what the coin door looks like.
    23:00
    It's nothing glossy. But there you really get the look of those legs, where just from this particular photo, they just look yeah, dull. They're definitely powder coated. Dull powder coated. And then you can get an idea of also that D-pad up on top. It gives you a little better... I heard they actually moved the position of that a little bit, so it's a little bit closer or centered more. Probably a good idea to keep it away from the edge because it was quite close to the edge before. Oh, was it really? I didn't know that before. I think it's better now. Have a look just before you go away from that picture take a look at the two screws on the top of the the the control pad area up the top there that looks like to me that it's suggesting a removable panel there right yes can you see those two so yeah it looks like that the reason why they've designed the the lockdown bar like that you'll see more clearly that those are actually proper screws that you can undo um is that you would take off that lockdown, you would slide out that control panel, and then you put your own one in, or like from another AtGames family product into that area. So very similar to what Akuta was doing with theirs. It looks obvious that's what they're future-proofing for there. Yeah. Okay, so next pick would be... Okay, here's our look at the back box. what do you happen to notice about this image of the back box well the first thing i notice is that it's a big flat piece of perspex with holes cut out of it but there's one hole that's definitely not cut out and that's where the at games logo is what would you be expecting there chris i thought for sure that was a dmd i always thought that was a dmd it's where the dmd would typically go and imagine my surprise to realize wait a second this doesn't have a dmd on it yeah the dmd turns out to be the 16 by 9 screen it seems yeah that which is a 15 and a half inch screen yeah um which so it kind of looks tiny in that back box it's i mean really it's like there's a lot of stuff in the back box that doesn't need to be there now i suspect and this is what i've seen up on looking at the forums that you can get like an an lcd panel that is about conveniently the same size of that legends pinball side and you could actually put that lcd panel potentially up into that area and turn that into a dmd but why would instead they should have made the app games be the spot where you would put the DMD like you would anywhere else.
    25:50
    Yeah. What do you think about it though? If you think about the way you lay out something, you've got a title usually at the top of the back glass, then you've got the screen and the DMD down at the bottom. So I understand what you're saying, Chris. You think that if that's what they were thinking of doing actually allowing them to put the LCD marquee down at the bottom, they should have reversed the order of everything but they may not have quite got that far with their thinking yet. Yeah.
    26:21
    I'm rather disappointed with this. I thought the monitor, and I should have realized with, again, it's a 15.5-inch wide or diagonal monitor. I thought it was going to go edge to edge.
    26:36
    Yeah. But instead it looks like there's this little tiny window. And again, my first reaction was, wait a second. So on this smaller monitor, you're now going to have them squeeze the entirety of the back glass and score display into that, which is even all the smaller. But that was my initial reaction. We'll get into why, again, why I think this is just a flyover. But it's hard to say. So let's close that picture out. Let's bring this one up. So here's all their ports. So it's their HDMI port, their USB port, and also their volume control buttons. Why? Why would you put those all the way at the top of there so that your cables can then drift down the front of your playfield? Yeah, and just obscure the top of your playfield. I mean, originally my feeling was, why the heck would you put them there if you've got a DMD right next to that area. But I guess that's not a problem now because there isn't one.
    27:44
    But the thing... But even the volume control, this isn't practically a full-size pinball machine. So you're not going to reach. You're going to have to walk to the side of it. Put those on the front.
    27:58
    That's a logical point for them. Like even decide what you want. Like, if it's, you know, if you want to use the on-the-go feature of the cabinet, like, you might want to consider putting things like the PC and stuff like that, like, towards the back of the game. And that's fine. Like, have the inputs for the PC at the back. But volume control and, like, on-off. Is that even, like, an on-off button up there? I don't know. I don't know what that middle button is. I just think that you're... I understand having the USB up there because that's just going to be a stick that you can plug in. Fine. Having your HDMI up there makes no sense because that's going to be a cable. That should be either at the back of the machine, on the side of the machine, or at the front. It should be somewhere, anywhere other than right there. So what I've heard is on the back of it, there's actually a network port. So on the very back of the machine, you've got an RJ45 plug that allows you to plug into your modems, etc. So you can play through the cloud computers that AtGames offer. So why not put the HDMI connector at the back there too? It's just the panel. And all you're doing is you're running just that extra cable to that area as well. So, or just, geez, just make it on a board. I mean, that's what they do. They just be on this one board. So I don't get this. It's an odd design choice. Really odd. You know what I find really dodgy as well? And this is a pet peeve of mine with when you go and get replacement glass done. See that bloody watermark on the glass that they've got there? that little that thing you you can ask for that to be removed when you get your pinball glass done and why would you have that on there like it just number one is upside down number two it's like not even necessary to be there like just get the thing off hopefully that's just the prototype that they've got and that's not going to be on the final build because that's gross i don't want any watermarks on my glass that's just yuck okay let's move on here we have aha let's compare it to The Toy Shock machine.
    30:01
    Granted, that's the only machine that's actually been on market, so I get it. But I kind of laugh because the Toy Shock one only has the 12 Gottlieb tables. The Legend Spinball has the 22 Gottlieb tables, so it's almost like it's thumbing its nose at it.
    30:19
    It's a very bizarre thing to be comparing with. And the thing I find, if you look closer at it, see how the back glass is haunted house and there's a very thin strip of Haunted House art on the AtGames back glass as well. Can you see that? Yes. I just went... And you know what's funny? It's on both sides. That's the only piece of art that is on both sides of the Legends pinball that's the same. That also seems to be where the Gottlieb logo is positioned on the AtGames as well. Oh, you're right. Yeah, so that's like the only bit of brand recognition that you get on the cabinet, just right at the back there.
    31:01
    You can see with this that the Legends pinball still has a severe rake to the glass itself. The monitor that's set within, I think, is more flat. That might be a glare protection kind of thing. It could be, yeah. I don't know. but obviously this gives you a good angle to at least go oh yeah that looks more like a regular pinball cab for the legends pinball um i'll say this chris what's that which art do you prefer more the toy shock which and i'm not even a fan of haunted house no me neither but i'll tell you what i have that over the one that's on at games it just looks so much better toy shock really got the art right. I also, in this particular instance, like the score display.
    31:55
    Just because it's legit score, and I have an image coming up that I'll show you. That's an actual score display, LCD display. It's not, I don't think, it's not a monitor display. It's an actual, It's LED, LCD. Or LCD, whatever it is, yeah, that's on the Toy Stock one. before you flick off that, that one, Where's the plunger? It's there. It's hidden.
    32:21
    I don't know. Oh, I just... Is it that little red blob? Let me see if I can adjust this at all here. Let's try to shock it out. Let's try and zoom in a little bit. This isn't always the easiest thing. Yeah, I know.
    32:36
    I think I can make it out It sort of like just where the wipeout sign is There a little red blob Oh Really Uh no you know what I not seeing a plunger at all Where the plunger That's bizarre.
    32:51
    Yeah. You know what they did? They took it off theirs and they put it onto the legend's pinball. Yoink. Yeet. Thank you. Yoink. Yeet. Yeah.
    33:04
    Okay. That's weird. Anyway, that is weird. That's odd. Um, alright. They're definitely in the same room together. You can see that there's reflection from the back glass and stuff. So this isn't like a mock-up. They've physically got these two machines in a room. Physically there.
    33:21
    Okay, let's move it on. Maybe it got knocked off in shipping. See, it's not even there. Where is it there? That is really weird. I think there's a hole where it should be, but it's not there. So there's a good sense, though, of the scale. you can see the height difference between what the... It's definitely a better height Definitely better height It's definitely better and you can see that it's got good, fairly good depth leg levelers at the back, like if you have a look at the bolts on the back legs it goes up really high, which of course... It's two inches that you can adjust these and that's going to be the same case with the Arcade 1-Up one. Yeah, that's right but I mean really, the only reason why there's leg levelers on a pinball machine is because, well, you need to level the play field. So having that much height on already long legs like that probably isn't really necessary at all. And this should be, with those legs, it should be standard pinball height. They look like a standard height, like 27 and a half inch height, those legs. So, I mean, they've really done a good day. And I think I've heard that that's actually, they've gone for a more wide body approach with the cabinet. and again that's that's a better approach as well i think going for a little bit of a wider more more closer to scale cabinet is definitely a good move from that games there um i definitely like that approach okay so let's take a look now at their back glass when okay so number one it's class of 1812 something that i'm i don't like about the presentation that they did what it was completely zoomed in so you're not seeing it in the scale of the actual back glass you're just seeing what the zoomed in image of the back glass is uh you know i mean we could if we were good at photoshopping we could totally photoshop that image onto one of the right the cabinet images and show you what it looked like but we're not that good at photoshop um so anyway So what they did was they squeezed it into a 16 by 9 shape because that's not the actual shape of the back glass on the real class of 1812. And then I also want you to pay attention to the score display.
    35:40
    Again, that's just the approximation that Farsight did for, you know, it's lacking glow, basically. And the reason why I point that out is because here's the real one.
    35:54
    and I'm going to adjust this a little bit so you can see. There's what the score display should actually be doing. It's got a glow to it, that incandescent glow. And that's what is on that haunted house of Toy Shock. It's got that glow. It's got that bloom to it. Yeah, so I appreciate that. But, so again, this is supposed to be a, well, this isn't even 4x3. This is more like a 3x4 kind of shape. It's like IMAX shape on the real thing.
    36:28
    So instead, what they did was they just squeezed the entirety of the image. And so now you have, you know, what was supposed to be a really tall, lanky guy. Now he's just short and squat. And, you know, your Frankenstein in the background looks like he really has to go to the bathroom as opposed to just being knock-kneed. check out the poor mummy she, you know she gained a few she definitely gained a few, alright, far out yeah the proportions just go all wonky and I don't know exactly what the solution should have been whether to and this would be on Farsight, I imagine not on AtGames no, that's not AtGames fault it's definitely Farsight's responsibility here Yeah, and I don't know what they should have chosen to do, which is letterboxed it or just only go on with a portion of the art. I reckon they could probably have done that, but there's no real clean solution for this. Now, the way that, and let's take this as an aside, this era of pinball machine was very much 4x3, sort of orientation in the back glass. But think to the more modern CERNs now. Their translights almost are 16x9. Like there's that much extra like video panel marquee down the bottom that you actually do get a 16x9 representation now. Well, I can even show you the other back glass that they showed is for pistol poker. And this actually is also basically a 16x9 back glass translight. So this translates. There's no stretching going on here. This is more of a one-to-one scale. There you go. But here's what I want to point out on this. Look at the size of that DMD.
    38:29
    It's small, wedged over halfway. So on a 15-and-a-half-inch monitor, that can't be any larger than 6-and-a-half inches wide at max. Probably still only 6 inches wide.
    38:43
    6 inches wide, that's going to be tiny. really small and it's not a it's not a clear dmd to start with no like the elven g pins had some problems with their dot matrix animations but this is going to be the same case with um i mean this is elven g but all the other got leaves that are you know so cuba wizard and gladiator um they're all going to suffer from having this tiny thing and this is where i'm like you should have had a dedicated dmd yeah i can't i'm i'm just really blown away by the fact that that's i don't know why i got fooled by that at games logo look you know i'd almost say spend the money on the dmd only and not on the big screen for the back glass like if it's going to be a pinball machine focus on what's important the back glass doesn't really matter that much Well, and here's the other question. Is Farsight including the animated back glasses? We don't know.
    39:43
    We don't know. I mean, they're there on lights, camera, action. So, you know, and it's an integral part of the game. So you would expect that they're going to be using that back screen on the cabinet to present those. I hope. Oh, they have to. Otherwise, what are they going to do? Break the illusion and zoom in on the main screen Yeah Unfortunately this is part of the Presentation matters folks And if you're trying to sell us On your cabinet Then you need to do certain Views and really run us through What is There So I really really hope that AtGames Responds to those that have been critical of what they've been seeing and not just listening to the yes men and maybe goes ahead and puts out even more content for people to see because this bothers me. I want to see the entire back glass with this image on the screen so I can get a sense of scale for how big my gut reaction right now is think about the premieres like Victory that already their score displays were teeny tiny as is and now imagine that on this screen.
    41:08
    Jared, you though thought that there is a potential that maybe the screen could just display the DMD. Is that right? I've seen hints of that in some of the Facebook forums. I think the AtGames forum,
    41:22
    Patrick Barnett actually mentioned, or somebody in there who I would trust to say knew what they were talking about, suggested that you could choose whether to just have a full screen in the back with the score display on or a mixture of the back glass and the score display. And for most tables, that wouldn't be a problem. You'd go with the full, basically the DMD dominating that back screen, no worries at all. The strength of that back glass area, in fact, if you think about it, The back glass on the AtGames cabinet is the only part of the actual cabinet body that isn't loud and isn't artified.
    42:06
    Like, you have a look at it. There's nothing there. It's just black. Yeah. And that's a good thing. Like, if I was to have a choice between just a flat black cabinet with some discreetly placed Legends pinball logos on the side, like a big hero image Legends pinball down each side of the cabinet, and then Legends at the top and the bottom. And shoot, you can go ahead and slap a giant Gottlieb logo on there too. I don't care. Absolutely. Totally. Sign me up for that. Like, I would absolutely prefer that over that collage of grossness. Right.
    42:46
    But hey, once it's wedged in between other things, then maybe you won't have to see the ugly. And that's totally the case. Like, the side art is only for when you unbox it, really. And if it's the only thing in your room, then you have to put it up with that. One other image to look at. Okay, so they had video. I took a screenshot. They had video of it actually playing.
    43:08
    Again, it was really wonky video, like somebody holding an iPhone. It was shaking and everything. and I wish that again they'd come out and we could see the playfield in conjunction with the back glass working they need a camera B don't they not just a camera B just a wide shot that shows me playfield back glass my gripe and this is with farsight really flat looking yep this was a problem with like the pistol poker i remember playing it on on android and i really had a hard time working out where that upper play field there is actually an upper play field on this machine folks yeah and you can't tell because it's so flat and so 2d this play field the the ball uh which you can see there on the flipper right there it looks round but if you do happened to catch the video when it goes up near the top it almost goes a little bit egg-shaped and that was also a problem because i did get to play uh a prototype arcuda cabinet up at farsight when they had the connect hooked up turning the whole thing into a 3d well not 3d playfield but uh it would change perspective as you move yeah and the one complaint that i had was that it made the ball and the pop bumpers all look A-shake at the top. So it was playing with perspective. So the farther up it went, the more things squished and distorted.
    44:43
    And to me, it looks like that's a carryover here. Again, that they're basically using... It confirms to me that they're using the cabinet mode that they developed for Arcuda.
    44:58
    Because they never had a dedicated cabinet mode available. Nope, looks like they just went, oh, we're going to reuse that now. The other thing I want to point out, this is our first instance of being able to see that, yes, the play field, the monitor itself, is sunk down into the cabinet because you can see the cabinet walls there.
    45:18
    But notice how you do not see cabinet walls on the game. The play field. Right. It literally looks like the monitor is the actual wooden play field and everything sits on top of that. So again, there's where it's about selling the illusion. Now, I bring that up because I'm going to prepare something here. If I can find it because I had it.
    45:48
    Zen put out a video of Mel playing the Marvel pinball cat. Oh, yeah. I saw this on my tweet stream. Yeah. He was actually flipping the thing. So I want to play this for you guys. There's a little bit of audio, too.
    46:09
    So let me go ahead. There's that. And before I even play it, I just want you to take a look up at the upper right of the play field by the Sentinel. So you can see the full back of the pinball cab. And then you can start to see the side blades.
    46:30
    Yes. They taper down. So that helps sell the depth, the illusion of the depth of the table there. I'm going to go ahead and play the video so that you can see this in action. Get control of my mouse.
    46:49
    Good. I hear that he's turned off all the sound other than mechanical noises. Yes. For better streaming. so no copywriting but this is pretty strong demonstration we've not seen this view this is not a view that is available in FX3 it's not the same view that's on mobile either this looks really good and I'm jealous that it's not going to be available for those of us with cab or even those of us who prefer to play in portrait like me. That's how I play now. Right. And it would really look slick in portrait. Okay, so let me bring up the other video here. This one does have audio.
    47:41
    Let's nail him. Oh well, I apologize in advance because it's going to drown out everything. But let's just take a listen to this and see. And again, from this angle it does look now a little bit more flat but you can still see the back of the cabinet but the good news is now that we get to see it in displaying with the DMD so let me just roll this time for Doombox baby let's nail him oh yeah boom they need some clobbering Hit him. Hit Doom. You gotta hit Doom right now. You gotta hit Doom.
    48:28
    Ah. Whoa. I didn't expect that. There he is. Come here. Alright, true believers. This is your pinball right here, true believers. Fantastic form. Thing is going after Dr. Doom. I can't wait for you to play.
    48:46
    So we're gonna finish on Mel squeaking in on the at games discussion, which is kind of funny. And by the way, I love the fact that when he tweeted that out, Zen Studios was like, hey Mel, you need a haircut.
    49:02
    The guy having a little bit of fun at his expense yeah that gives you an idea again it at least he was showing us full play of the game playing with the actual human playing actual cabinet with the game rolling it this is what at games need to do and i've seen feedback in the forums about this like they're they're saying well i don't know how this plays. Show me gameplay footage of the thing running. Otherwise, you're not getting my money. So, that's what you need to do, AtGames. Show the thing running. Yeah, because I don't know how hastily this was thrown together, but... It looks pretty... Well, I mean, the one that AtGames did, the images, looks pretty hasty. Because, you know, if you were going to release this out to...
    49:53
    officially release this out, it looks like this footage has been delivered to the at games marketing partners only for them to display as part of the lifted embargo. Cause it was apparently an information embargo on this, this information. So it's like, they've just done this as like essentially B roll footage just for these people. But the thing is that because there's no other information out there, this is essentially a roll footage for the product. And it doesn't represent it in a very good way. Like, they really need to actually spend some time doing some pretty in-depth gameplay videos of this product. Because it is turning some people off. I'm not saying it's turning everyone off. There are going to be some people who just cannot wait to throw money at the screen at this product. Because they're either Legends family members already and they want this cabinet as well. Or they just like this product over the other ones that are on the market. But there are definitely some people on the fence going, well, I've seen, okay, one product running. It looks good. I don't know what this thing looks like running.
    51:04
    I can't make a decision. And, I mean, obviously this is a vast improvement over what that render was. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Like, there's some really good things that they've done in this package. Let's not, with all the shade we're throwing on it, let's not take away from that. They have listened to what people have been telling them and made some pretty rapid product iterations to meet those demands. And this is something that I've heard pretty regularly with AtGames and the way that they run the business. They are really responsive to customer feedback, which is to their credit. so hopefully uh they you know take what we're saying with a grain of salt and you know hey at games if you were actually working on this stuff if this seems like good input then you know thumbs up you know respond to it we're not trying to just you know pile on and be like we're totally pros and pro arcade one-up it's just and we said it last time that's what we've had experience with we've had not the hands-on with the actual pinball cab but i've had hands-on with the arcade one-up cab i've had hands-on obviously with zen product um and we've had those conversations with zen and we understand where the feedback is and what the design choices are that are done and basically just asking the same uh about games that there's certain things that you're not thinking about from a pinball player's perspective. You're thinking at it from... From an arcade cabinet perspective. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Exactly.
    52:45
    So... Pinball is a very different beast. You can't treat it the same way. No. And... So, yeah. And, you know, and again, I'm not going to hold at games to the software that Farsight made. No. That's not really something they can control. No. Farsight's got to sort that stuff out and stop reusing their mobile builds over and over again. But seeing as how you contracted with Farsight, you can certainly make demands and say, hey, guys, this doesn't look good. Fix it. Yeah. I would be holding them to the fire with this because they've got a little bit of work to do in the way they're presenting this, honestly. because what might have worked on that toy shock machine that you've got in there you don't want it looking like that on your much more expensive much more larger screened cab no there's so many things that they really do need to iterate on and Jesus Upgradable Nature or the cabinet they may end up doing it if the price is right so let's back into our conversation of what will wave 2 look like yeah well what will wave 2 look like yeah exactly I'm almost like really as a consumer as much as I want one of these things I'm almost going you know what I'm not going to buy wave 1 I would go yeah let's see what wave 2 looks like because like in my bold prediction that I made in the last episode there's going to be dual screens on the wave 2's for arcade 1 up for sure like they can't not do it and i'd prefer one with with um full back glass art with the um the blockade marquees um that we offer for free they will look much better don't you think yeah with with our logo on the back glass oh well no what are you talking about you know the um the all the different back glass art that you prepared oh the back glass art that i made yeah Yes. They could have those. We'd give them to them. Honestly, I'm sure that Zen could come up with better back glass art than what I produced. Probably could, yeah. But, you know, it's a starting point. I like my back glass art. I think they're great. And we actually had pretty good feedback from a fully played up blockade member, of which you don't have to pay a single cent for, by the way. and they said it was really easy to get that set up and actually those back glasses align correctly and the DMD into them and it just looks much better. Let's see if I can real quickly, I'll throw a link into the bottom here if you look right now you'll see it for where you can pick up these back glass but let me see if I can just real quickly. They're also in the show notes so if you go over to the website there's always a permanent link in there to all the back glass art um a 16 by 9 screen but i wanted that 4x3 uh orientation orientation yeah so i created this is how it should have been yeah so i created the the uh i shouldn't say i created i copy and pasted and found various parts i found that artwork that had the aliens with the pinball in his hand then i found the the grill the speaker grill and then I added in the Zen logo for that. And then you can drop your DMD over the top of that area. And I made sure that all the DMDs are the same height. But then we have things like doing it with American Dad.
    56:32
    And then for all the Zen originals, I use this style. So it's a multitude of pinball effects, three screens in the background with this particular style of... so again that's that's the actual back glass that my grows has yeah I didn't alter anything on that that's the shape that's the where the DMD was for it everything so that's this is what we're talking about that at games or Farsight should be putting on their monitor you see the black edges there it's on a 16 by 9 screen it's just letterboxed in with the correct aspect ratio and look maybe there's a screen there in the flyover mode on the games photos that you showed that kind of suggests that that's what they've done with theirs but until we see it running we can't be sure so this was the screwy one because there was no good way of doing Dr. Dude Dr. Dude's hard because of the panel well I mean the Bally logo is all the way at the top. It's got this vertical screen. So unfortunately the DMD just sits over the top of it. And also there was no way of putting the lenticular or the rotating dude display. That's what's in the black pit there.
    57:57
    And then... Which they've managed to do for the record on when you're actually looking in flyover mode on the back glass for Doctor Dude. They've actually done that. well look at how good would Fantastic Four look with that background I like that background that I did on that with all the myriad of comic books and stuff I think that would be pretty awesome and then I'll just show just so people can see what the Star Wars ones look like just put some hyperspace as the background and did a little bit see that looked great yeah we'll include the like I said in the description down below this video on YouTube where you can download the link for that and be able to see it. We have him available. Willers helped out. He made 16x9 full display. Or no, excuse me. He did a dedicated 4x3 display, so he chopped off all the black. So if you have a 4x3 display, it'll fit perfectly on those. It goes straight in there. Meijer for 16x9, but not stretched. I didn't want any of the stretched. I could find the stretchy versions all over the place. Yes, but they're no good. I didn't like them.
    59:15
    No, they're really good. And for people who like to use cabinet mode on Zen, they're a great way to just add that little bit of more realism into your build.
    59:26
    Yeah, I haven't... Somebody... And I've had links to it. I haven't seen it in action myself. there's animated backglasses that have been made. I don't know exactly how to make those work with FX3, but I know that people have made them work.
    59:50
    I wonder if the cabinet mode in FX3, for those ones like Safecracker, that actually have a live backglass, I wonder if the cabinet mode allows you to actually throw that image up onto a second screen and just have it work. It's something I haven't played with because I haven't got the cabinet mode set up. But maybe they've actually enabled that now for the Williams collection. Well, there's the other question. I don't know that the cabinet mode is anything more than, say, a GIF. Just a fixed view. Just showing blinking lights that aren't coordinated with the actual game itself. Right. Or if somehow it... I mean, how would it pull that information? It doesn't have any access to your ROM. is just an animated screen file. Yeah, I'm more talking about... So for Safecracker, no, it's not going to function like Safecracker should. I'm just more talking about, has Zen actually coded that into their cabinet mode so you could throw up the second screen up there like that? Well, that's why I don't understand why Zen hasn't. Why that hasn't been made available. It pains me. It would take them so little extra effort for them to actually think about the back glass and throw that up as a second screen, because the DMD is separate. So they could just say that DMD as well as the back glass is now the second screen. Well, not only that, but it's been coded, because all you have to do is give a flick up on your right analog screen, and you can see the back glass, and it's fully animated to what you are doing at that very time. Correct. Yeah, it's fully synchronized with the play field. Like, the... Yeah, they... I don't know why they haven't done that. Hmm. Why have we not complained to Mel about this? We should totally complain to Mel about this, because he's totally going to go, oh, these two guys said we should do it. So everyone, drop everything and go and put the back glasses on the cabinet mode that only 3% of users use for great justice. By the way, Mel is going to be interviewed on Retro... No. I think it's Retro Ops Show. No. It's not his.
    61:53
    It's Arcade 1 of Weekly, whatever that show is. Oh, yeah. That's popping up Sunday. Oh, definitely tune in for that. yeah because it'll be interesting to see what somebody else's interview style is with Mel I haven't seen that yet that's true he doesn't really appear on many other shows apart from ours so anyway worth checking out RK1UP Weekly that's what the show is and that's the same show where John D got on and absolutely revealed a whole lot of cool stuff last time about all the pinball cabinets so definitely one to check out if you're a bit of an RK1UP fan okay well uh that's that was a lot more than we thought that we were going to have for this week but that's a show that is a show that's a show oh yeah we never know what we're going to have to talk about we try and react but obviously we're not going to be midweek reacting it's only end of week reacting on the weekend yeah that's right weekends weekend reactors that's right we're your weekly digest of what's happened throughout the week yeah something of that nature so that being said when the next show is going to be it's a good question when's the next bit of information going to drop that we can actually you know put together an entire show based around that at the very at the very minimum it'll be two weeks from now but it might be sooner just like this show was sooner that's right and if it's another two weeks from now it's basically then just kicks out the next one to two weeks until we don't have any more information to talk that so that's how our schedule essentially we're trying to you know we want to have a show twice a month at that minimum sometimes we have yes four times in a month you know but we don't want to do only one show a month that you that's where that's our blockade other god blockade guarantee yeah they'll always be at least two shows a month yeah of varying quality if there's no news around starting now starting now that's right because we weren't necessarily that way in the past shoot For those of you that have been with us a very, very, very, very, very long time back in the day, we used to go six weeks between shows. Oh, yeah, because it was that hard to organize the eight people that we had in the show to all get into the room at one time. And it was chaos. Oh, geez, those shows, man. They were rough around the edges, weren't they? Yeah, if you ever want a good snicker, and those aren't even available, the first ten, which is essentially the first year when we had all those people. I don't think those are even available anywhere but if you like the boost of it just go back and find the first episodes that we've thrown up, those aren't going to be in the YouTube episodes either, these are the ones that are audio only, so you're going to have to go over to the blockadepinball.com slash episodes and hunt them out that way and go back in time, yeah or you can actually go directly to ShoutEngine which is our podcast host and find them all there as well alright well again we appreciate you taking the time to spend with us and see what we have to blather on about on this particular time next time Jared's favorite stuff and things wait is that what's in a turkey stuffing thing no okay stuffing things happy Thanksgiving y'all bye bye
    65:23
    Thank you.