Blackade Pinball Podcast you. G'day, mates. How you going? Long time no speak and see and listen and stuff. See, I told you, I'm completely out of practice on this, man. You go away for two weeks and I'm just like, what do we do? How do we do a podcast again? You've got me in solo mode. That's what you used to terrify me, but now I'm kind of getting used to it, but it's still See, you don't need me anymore. No, no, no, no, no. That is completely false. Absolutely false. Because you have no idea how difficult it is to, like, when your brain farts, and you don't want to just sit there going, um, um. And you're, like, looking at the comments section going, please, somebody, pipe in. Somebody get me out of jail here. So, yeah, that was nice. I just got you picking your ear. Yeah. see it's value adding on the stream it was itchy i've got these little i think i've got like old man ears now because like i'm gonna be 40 in a couple of days mate so um my birthday is coming up and uh it's a big four zero and i think i'm getting the old man hairs sticking out of my ears so it tickles yeah when you when you suddenly find a hair that's about an inch long coming out your ear that's that's that's when you just go what in the hell is that and get the twice is Thulu hanging out of my eardrum here? He's going, you know? I always sit there and I wonder, you know, you'll see some really old guy who's just like got the eyebrows that just go in every which direction and stuff and you're sitting there wondering why? And then you realize, well, he just didn't start dealing with it early enough. No. They've taken root. So, you know, apparently they're a fixture. We actually, we're a prime minister with the most impressive eyebrows you've ever seen in your life um this guy had the bushiest brows ever it was amazing i've it was bob hawk i think it was yeah it was it was incredible yeah very impressive eyebrows anyhow that that's not why we're here no that isn't that isn't why we're here this is not the the the blockade eyebrows podcast this is no apparently we're We're supposed to talk about pinball. Okay. So I guess we can do some of that. Why not? Uh-huh. Maybe. I've got a little bit to talk about with regards to the pinball. Yeah, you've got a few things. Let's quickly knock something out. So just today, Zacharia Pinball, they did their own Twitch stream with one of the guys, Kevin, from Buffalo Pinball. and within that Mart was basically announcing that the Android app the mobile app of Zachary Pinball is done and yeah and it should be being released like anytime now and part of what went into that yes it's going to have all the remakes yes it's going to have the new UI it's basically as much of a direct port from the Steam version as they could, and that includes how it looks. That's pretty impressive. Yeah. It looks pretty good on Steam. Yeah. And even how it plays. Price-wise, they're going to have kind of that gold pack issue. They're also going to have, I think like the retro tables are only going to be like three bucks for the entire pack. oh geez that's cheap no no no they've got some really economical uh pricing going on and for certain things uh he said they will be selling each table individually uh basically they're all two bucks unless you go with the remake so it's gonna be three bucks and the remakes are worth checking out they're good yeah then they're not a fast site they're not a fast site remake these are actually good and then as far as uh all of you android users like jared that owned the previous version uh they will not know how that works until they go live so right yeah that's kind of the bummer of it but that's how google is set up there's no way of previewing it for them until it's actually live and then they'll try and take care of whatever the uh the issues of that nature are. And then I asked when can iOS users expect this? And I was kind of surprised. They're aiming for sometime in September. Oh, really? Okay. So that's pretty soon. Very soon, actually. Yeah, very soon. He said there was something about an issue with OpenGL. Does that sound right, Jared? Yep, OpenGL is a thing, yep. Yeah, that I guess Apple's not friendly with or whatever. So they're basically trying to work around the situation. Yeah, I think OpenGL is quite a common graphics framework on Android, but I think they use something subtly different on Apple. So that would be causing a few little hiccups, I think. Yeah. So anyway, that's kind of the Zachariah news. oh and Woods Queen just got released and they're announcing and I didn't watch far enough to know if it got announced I think he was saying it was going to announce but I'm going to keep my mouth shut just in case I'm not supposed to say anything but the final remake table should be coming out in about two weeks also okay well that's very cool yeesh so they will have completed the set then they will have completed the set but that is not to say that they don't have more tricks up their sleeve. I guess they had a game out on mobile prior to Zachary of Pinball. It was a hill race game. No, no, no. It was a pinball game, but I think it was called Age of Pinball. Oh, okay. Basically, there's a bunch of tables that you can earn to play via achievement. If you get achievements, they'll open those tables up and I think those were from Age of Pinball. And I think they're planning on doing something with those, whether there was a couple that didn't get translated yet or maybe they're going to do remakes of those. I don't know. But I know they've got other stuff up in the works. So this isn't the end, you know, just because they're going to be done with the remakes doesn't mean that's the end of Zachariah. No, they've got more. More and more. And, of course, I encouraged Mark that they really need to check out the Gottlieb license. they really do like i don't know what's happening up in big bear with that although apparently i've heard that there is an announcement pending soon according to somebody's post in uh digital pinball fans but i don't know what that means because i thought there was an announcement pending soon about five months ago now it was actually about a year ago a year ago oh right okay yeah you know timely um over on the uh zen pinball end of things also with their mobile app also with android they have gone and done a whole host of fixes to that yeah it's it's a huge huge quality of life um uh patch i guess you could say um and i've got the the show notes here that not show notes that would be us not them that would be us and they actually post these on reddit if you're interested so you can go to r slash pinball fx3 and uh these are all up on um on the official pinball fx3 channel um and there's a laundry list of of uh patch notes here so there are the the highlights for me are that they reduce the friction of the ramps on medieval madness meaning no longer is the ball going to stall out when you're shooting the dragon ramp and come back rolling at you that it probably will actually be able to be accomplished with a running shot. That would be nice. Yeah. And then on Theater of Magic, they've fixed it so that when you're shooting the inner loop, so the ball walk loop, if you will, that the ball will transfer to the proper flipper as opposed to doing what it's doing now where it goes completely diagonal to where it should be going sometimes. Which if you've watched Spacey's Arcade, he showed that off to brilliant effect. Right. I also noticed that they did some work with a bit of an accelerated ball issue in the rollover area. When you were on pro-physics, it looks like the ball was speeding up quite unconvincingly in that area, so they've done some fixes there, and they've also increased the upper source of strength when using zen and pro-physics, so it pops out a bit harder, which would be good too, because it You do need to actually have that ball pop out quite fast for it to contact the bumpers and then ricochet around in the drop target area so you can get the locks. So it's important for them to actually have quite a hard kick out there. Yeah, apparently there was issues also depending upon what version of Android you were running on that it was causing issues with the kickups. Oh, is that right? Oh, okay. I think I'm getting that correctly. but yeah let me just check uh there was a note uh on some devices with lower frames uh frames per second for black rose uh the pirates cove may have shot back the ball with a delay or did not shoot back at all so that's not ideal no that kind of makes the not very playable no um yeah not not much fun so that's good look this is just one of those massive um quality of life patches that you see a lot now in games um and it's great it's great that they're continuing to just slowly fix things that have been identified over the over the months the past months yeah so hopefully we'll see some of those uh well i think they will make their way into ios but more importantly make their way into steam because i know that the ramp issue is also there in Steam in terms of what the friction was. Yes. Yeah, it's the same, isn't it? So yeah, it'll be good to see it all sort of cross-pollinate around. Yeah. Yeah. No, we don't have any release notes for Xen other than the fact that September 13th, Star Wars pinball coming out on the Switch. That is where all of Xen's attention is focused. That's where all the promotion is going to go. and I think that if you were trying to keep the mouse house happy, you would be doing that too. Yeah, keep the mouse house very happy. Thank you. Thank you, please. I mean, I mentioned it previously in the Fakie podcast, but I'll make it official in the official podcast. When you have a property like this, you treat it with the absolute laser focus necessary to keep the giant corporation going, you know what? We like you. We like what you've done in the past. You're continuing to prove that you're a valuable resource for us, and we'll continue to let you play with our assets in the future. Yeah, exactly right. You don't want to mess that up. No. You know, and that's what I... Again, it comes down to what I used to say about the Kickstarters, where it makes the product look bad if it's not instantly funded. Yeah. And although this is not a Kickstarter by any stretch of the imagination, it would look bad if you were also advertising, although it's still pinball, but another pinball, you know, if you were advertising Volume 5 and that advertising is kind of competing, especially since the Star Wars pinball app is going to be separate from the Williams, or not from Williams but from the FX3 app. It's not integrated in. Mm-mm. Which that means also that tournaments are purely going to be played between Switch players. You're not going to be able to have interaction with any of the other platforms and none of your scores or super scores or any of that are going to filter over to FX3. It's a completely separate entity basically. Yep. which I'm, I mean, if there's anything that I kind of go, Oh, that's kind of a bummer. That is what I would go. That's kind of a bummer. But again, I understand. I mean, and the price, they're, they're asking $30 us for it for 19 tables. Wow. Yeah. Okay. That's pretty good. And this would be, this is a DLC. Um, and physical cartridge. Oh, 30 bucks for the cartridge. Yep. that's cheap yep so in australia you'd be looking at probably 90 dollars but no i think somebody said it was closer to 42 or something like that i think in australia uh i could sworn the person that i saw posting it was from australia and they saw it on pre-sale uh pre-sale price and they were asking hey should i get the is there a difference between the cartridge and the the dlc basically and the the there was that for the dlc the cartridge was going to be more but then they were like well i want to support zen the best and as somebody pointed out well zen already spent their money on producing the cartridge so if you pick up the cartridge then you're supporting paying back them exactly because they had to lay that money out ahead of time that's right they got to prepay it yeah yeah which is which is why we we suspect that it's taken as long as it has to actually get this out to market oh yeah i mean it has to go through all of that qa uh you know quality assurance uh especially in cartridge form you know i mean it's got to be ready to go ready to rock yeah because these because the cartridges that uh the switch use are like little sd cards hey oh yeah they're they're yeah they're little tiny sd cards so then they're not so much like an old school cartridge where they had like a pcb in them with like chips and stuff mounted on them so they're not like a daughter board to the the console but they're still you know a solid state piece of software that needs to work in a certain way so yep yeah pretty much um so anyway that's that's basically all the oh that's not all the zen news i have no i take that back i was about to wrap up the zen stuff and get to you uh we'll get to you don't worry Jared because you're going to talk a while I know it yeah maybe maybe um in the mobile app they have added another timed event and this time you are playing theater of magic and they call it a laddered event and I did it live on air the other day and I got a bunch of tickets like 75 tickets for the first, for the easy match, which I went, oh boy. And then the second match, and basically the first one was playing Five-Minute Challenge, the second one was Survival, and the third one on hard was the one ball. But the second match Survival I got seven coins in one drop And then for the third one I got three coins But I have a feeling if I was still needing parts then that probably what that would have been would be table parts So anyway, play the limited timed match on the mobile app. Yeah, get in it. Get in it. Okay. It's cool that they're mixing things up. It's great to see different play styles coming in and keeping the interest up in the app to keep it coming back, right? Exactly. and that's what i was hoping that they were going to do with that limited event would that it would you know it's a limited event i don't expect it weekly or anything but do something with it because it's too great of an opportunity to just let's sit there and it does draw people back in even when they're kind of like you know maybe they're done with it for a while maybe they've collected too many coins and they're just gonna like yeah you really don't need it but no hop back into a limited event they're fun just going back to the uh the patch notes for android there's a in the general updates there's something that's going to help with that as well and the fact that we get push notifications now but there's a an important note here to point out and that they can be turned on to inform about challenges and league results so you don't default to on and then have people turn them off right so that's that's the correct way to do push notifications folks yes uh i'm seeing over here in the uh in the comment section that for that third challenge it was three lots of two table parts so six table parts in total. That'd be if you hadn't already maxed out your table parts. So for someone like me who's already maxed them out, I just got three cards of one coin per card. Okay. That's good. Like I said, I kind of figured that one of them would be giving table parts if need be. but as it is with my guess that we're not going to see volume 5 until after the Star Wars release on September 13th that gives you plenty of time to earn lots and lots of coin and even more parts before the volume drops absolutely okay Jared I've kept you waiting long enough Jared tell us what you've been doing in the past few weeks at the Brisbane Pinball event? Yeah, so yesterday was the second event that the Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective ran at the Brisbane Showgrounds as part of the ECHA this year. And it was the first event, which was held on Friday, was a pump-and-dump event where people are just basically trying to get the best score. That's a great name for a pump-and-dump. Hmm. Pump and dump. Is it a gas station? Is it a... No, I'm not going to go there. Okay, go ahead. I get the same sort of imagery when I hear the word pump and dump. Anyhow, it's a format, and you play it in pinball. So that was yesterday, and there were some photos floating around from the guys who were managing the event, and it was packed. There were heaps of people playing all the moderns because it was done in the modern row. Yeah, very, very busy. So, yesterday, though, was the event that my star race was in, and that was the Classic Targets Matchplay. And that event is an event style I haven't actually been a part of before. So, what you do is the general idea is you get paired up through the matchplay software with up to four players. And it changes every round. So, you get a random machine picked for you and a random set of players. And that's really good because you get to meet a lot of different folks and introduce yourself to them and sort of, during the scope of the game, learn a bit more about them and where they're from and that sort of thing. So it was random, not seeded? It was random for the first three rounds, I think. Okay. And then after the data started coming through, I think they then started to seed you into sort of groups that were about the same skill level. and based on my initial three games, I was seeded with folks down the bottom end of the list because the way it works is for first, second, third, fourth, it's seven, five, three, one. That's the points you get. So if you win, you get seven. If you're last, you get one. And I got two ones in my first two games because they were both EMs and I'd never played them before. So backtracking a bit, what you do is you, when you get your group, you go and meet them at the table, introduce yourself, and work out first whether you want to have a practice go. And obviously, the answer is always yes, we would like a practice go on these pinballs that we've never seen before. That's usually nice. What's funny with the practice goes is I always forget to check the tilt sensor. Oh, yeah. Yep, exactly. Check the tilt sensor. If there's a skill shot, check the plunge as well. Exactly, yeah. but those are things that instead you're just like oh pinball shiny let's go yeah exactly it was very hard to resist that temptation just to keep flipping but yeah you need to you need to give that thing a shake and see what it's doing i see what the plumb bob's doing and you know just check to see if um the the plunger is hard or soft or you know just those little things that will trip you up in the game so yeah you do your practice rounds and then you start the game so depending on the game um some games are single player only even if they're like like solid states because you can steal locks so you have to play your games like single player no stealing locks is such a great like okay yes it punishes whoever the first player is but usually the first player is the lowest seated of the people but that like that's what makes multiplayer pinball exciting. Yes, except in a tournament setting where you feel cheated if someone steals your locks that you've been building up. Especially on games that are quite challenging to build locks up on. It's a real deflating experience when you're playing in tournament to have that happen. That's what our league was doing, which I guess was tournament. I mean, when we were keeping score like that. Anyway, go on. This was an IPA. I get your point. Yeah, this was an IFPA-sanctioned event, so we had to do it according to the IFPA rules. So, yeah, so the first game that I played was a re-theme of a Gottlieb EM Snow Queen. And the person who did this was actually Dr John Cosson's daughter, and she had re-themed it to Stranger Things. Oh, nice. based on Netflix. It even had Netflix logos all over it. So it was like proper. But when you put a coin in, did it go bong or whatever? No, it didn't. Because it was an EM. It should have had a really big, deep chime in it that they rewired. Big gong, like a big, yeah. Well, it's that, you know, whenever you select Netflix, that noise that starts when you first do it. But anyway, go ahead. But anyhow, so that was the first one and I was matched up against three other dudes. And the thing with that, I think I got ripped off on it because I think there was a score real issue, like a scoring motor issue on it. Because all of a sudden, like this game scores in the tens and the hundreds. And then all of a sudden... In other words, it was kind of like a... What is that? A dirty jackpin ball. Yeah, or Central Park. If you think of the scoring that you get on Central Park, it's basically like that. So all of a sudden, these guys are playing their turn, and they start getting thousands rolling up on the wheel. Like 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, like that. And I'm going, what are you doing to do that? And they go, I've got no idea. And what I think has been happening is I should have called over a tournament director because that's a clear malfunction of the circuit. And I got last because all the three other dudes got that, and I didn't get that. So, yeah, I think there's three pop bumpers, two on the outside award a certain point value, but the one in the middle is like the high score pop bumper. And it should have been awarding 100 points, but I think it was actually awarding 1,000. So that was a bit of a rip-off. I think if I had my time again, I would have actually called a TD over and got them to take that, strike that game out, because it ended up dying anyhow. like it stopped working shortly after we played i think um so that was game one game two was another em called jet spin and um it's uh another pretty brutal got leap yeah i mean all the ems are brutal they're gonna kick your ass basically yeah especially if you haven't uh if you don't have a lot of experience on them it's like yeah that's right or he goes oh they're so easy they're so symbol no no no they're they're outlanes are cavernous and and they will mess you up yeah so so the that was jet spin cla that was another like one point affair for me and then six billion dollar man came up which is a early solid state so the if you haven't played that one before this is probably the first um solid state pinball that allowed you to play six players at once which how many others since then have done that? not too many if any so it was it's big feature like having 6 million dollars and 6 players so I ended up getting managed I think a third on that one maybe and the only reason why I did that is because I managed to get one of the features in the game when you complete the 50,000 targets, there's five of them, you get 50,000 points. And that makes a big difference in that game. So it clawed me back to a half-decent place. And then a favorite of pinball arcade, we got to play Paragon in real life. Had you ever touched a ballet widebody, ultra widebody like that before? No, no, I'd never touched one before. And the thing that was killing me is that lower left pop bumper that drains basically to the out lane or to the out hole. The ball, I don't know what was going on, but it was bypassing everything in that area and just going straight down the out lane, not even hitting the pop bumper, like making a beeline for that hole and nothing I could do about it. I was just, it was just twice in one game it happened. It killed me. It was punishment, but it was a fun game to play like in in real life it is as floaty as it is in in pinball arcade and um even with it cranked up really really steep it's still floaty um yeah so imagine imagine not set to tournament uh rake and just on what normal pinball operators set it on it's uber floaty oh man you'd be you could go out and get a beer come back and get ball would still be making its way down to the flippers you know well what i always like to say is is you know it's going to go straight down the middle about three seconds before it actually does and it's the most painful three seconds you've ever been in nothing you can do about it but it was in good nick like the flippers were nice and strong and and it was just really brutal to play which is of the era like that's how they play yeah um and then we played uh blackjack this one had a few issues with it. There were some targets that were constantly scoring, so they had to actually take the targets out of the machine and actually disconnect them because they couldn't work out why they were actually triggering all the time. Okay, so who was that by? What manufacturer? Blackjack is a Williams, I think, for memory. I'm purely asking because that's what has happened on my 8-Ball Deluxe, where after I've done all of my drop targets and then I go and I hit a target behind, you know, the stand-up targets that were behind the drop targets, all of a sudden it would just fire non-stop scoring. I'm like, what in the world happened? Yeah. And it's really annoying because then I have to turn off the game. I think it's of the same era. So Blackjack, so underneath the playfield when the owner of the game was there, he lifted it up and each of the targets has what looks like an inline capacitor underneath it. So there's like, there's diode because it's using a switch matrix in that game. But there's also some sort of green capacitor attached to each one. And some of them were connected and some of them were disconnected. So I don't know what was going on there. Like the operator was saying, oh, look, you know, when I disconnected this one, it started working better. So I just lifted off. Okay, it's an interesting approach. but um um no we don't need that component it's like you know performance enhancing cars where bits fall off it and it still keeps running oh we didn't need that bit that just lightens the load right you know exactly you know when you're when you're performing surgery and you have an extra organ just lying there you know no everything fit fine now we're good leave it up let's leave it up don't need that that's fine so then we started moving on to some um some more modern games after that so hold on i got an update on the uh on the chat board here uh it says it's a ballet machine not williams and guess what a ball deluxe is belly guess what i'm going to go look and see if if there is attached because that might be the answer to my uh to my issue okay yep that sounds like about right yeah um so um the next one we got to play was a very nicely restored high speed so this was looked like it was brand new out of the box actually, like the playfield had been cleared all the plastics looked like they got a new old stock set it had LCD alphanumerics in the back glass, the back glass was clean, it was really really nice and it played fast that's a fast game as the Steve Ritchie table should exactly right, and this thing there's a trick with that one the really cool thing about match play is that when you're in an event like that and you're up for a round it'll actually it has a link to go to the table's pin tips um then pin tips are a thing that use a contributed set of uh tips for playing the game to get a good score it was really handy just be able to go oh tap and go oh so with that one when your ball is in the shooter lane a good tactic is to just give the ball a tap so the tachometer like goes up and then back down again and when it settles you do full plunge and you'll get uh providing your machine is capable of actually doing a full plunge and getting around the ramp um you'll actually get a spot target if you do that so you'll get one of the traffic light spot targets around the thing so it's an easy way to actually build up multiball on that game without very much effort at all and the other safest thing on that game is to shoot the spinner and get it in the saucer because you also get a spotlight from there as well and you can also have a go at the ramp from that saucer as well so it's a good safe way of actually playing the game and I did okay I got like 800,000 on it which is relatively respectable so that was sort of like the start of a relatively decent, I think I got second on that game which was a nice turn of events because up until that point I was doing terribly so then back onto the EMs we played Conquest 2000 or Conquest 200, which is another pretty brutal Gottlieb EM. Nothing to say there. I think I managed to get second on that but it was just by pure luck as it is with EM And then we got to play one that is an Australian pinball machine So this is produced by a manufacturer called Hankin And this game is called Orbit 1. And it's a really, really basic solid-state pinball. You've really only got a couple of shots to take on it. And it's all about essentially the orbit shots, Orbit 1, because it's all about space, rocket launches and stuff. It's not much to really say about that. It's not a great game to play. It's all about the artwork and that's about it. It's not even about the artwork. Oh, no. It's a pretty bleak-looking game. It's not one that I think... Its importance from an historical perspective far outweighs its actual value as a game because it's not much fun. yeah then though i got to play a game that i had not played since i was about 15 and i was working in the pinball arcade that i first got my start in the industry in and it was big guns oh yeah system 11 table with no pop bumpers if i recall correctly you're correct no pop on this because it's basically loaded up with big catapults it's got two cross play field catapults that you lock the balls in and when you get multiball so you basically lock the ball left lock the ball right then shoot up the middle to get multiball and that's that's about it now the the the pin tips from that one are worth reading because there's actually a hidden skill shot on that game that if you're aware of it you know where it is but if you're not you'll just full plunge and go around the loop but if you can get the ball in this little lane um and you can do it consistently you'll get a lock every single time doing it and you can fast track your way to multiball and i was able to do that two times it was really hard to dial it in because when you plunge the ball and it goes around that the loop the loop itself is actually pretty like flat from a rate perspective so your ball's just got to dribble into the lane and get your lock and it's really hard to do um but yeah if you can do it it's a very quick way of starting multiple and i got a reasonable score on that i think i got like close to 900 000 but there was this guy who is like an absolute legend um player he's a young guy called logan jones and he had never played the game in his life and oh i hate people like this he got he like basically one of the um guys the other guys there is a really good player that I played in the first round called, actually not the first round, the third round on $6 billion man, called Paul Jones. He gave Logan Jones, his son, the tip to just shoot the locks, basically shoot the left lock, right lock, up the middle, and start multiball. This guy is an absolute gun with playing. He can just, his flipper technique is amazing, and he's just one of those really top-end players. and he got two million on the thing which is no mean feat on big guns like it's a hard slog to get that so really great player and yeah well and truly happy for him to take the win so that one was logan first and david peck from new zealand um then me and then kerry um so the last one is a game the second last one is one that i was familiar with and that was trident trident's a game that's on the floor at netherworld and it's a what they call a pin game so if you get the high the wizard score on it you get a pin that wizard score is 500 000 points and that may sound low but let me tell you that is hard work trying to get 500 000 points uh and in my match i was about 30 000 points short of that score so would netherworld have given you a pin if you'd go there in tournament yes i I reckon I was gunning for it. I said, look, if I can get the 500,000, I'm snapping that and I'm showing it to Netherworld when I go back there again, saying, here's my pin score. Give it to me. And I was so annoyed that I didn't get it. But, you know, it was just one of those amazing... It was a little... I think it was actually set a little bit easier there than it was at Netherworld. The rake on it at Netherworld is so steep for that era of game. It's like a challenge to get up to the top of the playfield. but I had a really fun game on that. It was great. And the last game was Quicksilver. And this is, I think, a Belly Williams game. I'm not sure which manufacturer. I have a feeling it's... Oh, no, it's Stern Quicksilver, actually. It's a Stern game. And this was... Stern Electronics, right? Stern Electronics, yeah. Yeah. And this game, Mint, it had been completely... I think the playfield was one of the reproduction playfields. Okay. And it had been cleared beautifully, and everything looked new on it. The cabinet was beautiful. All the chrome was super high luster chrome. Man, this thing was really nice. So we played that, and this was the last match that I was in. There was no way I was going to get in the finals. because it was like the first players to get over 50 points, the first 16 players to get over 50 points went to the finals. And I was like, I think I was about 10 points off if I got first place on Quicksilver. So no bueno for me in the finals. But it was a good matchup because we had a lot of folks that I'd sort of like, I had a fun group, you know, when you get matched up in a group and it's like people who aren't super serious about pinball, They're not yelling at you because you nudged too hard. Now they have to wait a minute for the tilt bob to settle down. Oh, yeah. Or, you know, all they care about is winning the game. There's a few folks at that tournament and certainly at the Brisbane Pinball Club that they take it a little bit too serious. It's just pinball. You don't need to treat it like a combat sport. Yeah. and anyhow these folks, there was one player who had flown in from the US called Jessica Donato and Jessica is the person who set up Bells and Chimes over in the US which is the all women pinball clubs and she's a lovely, lovely person, it was great to catch up with her again and see how she was going and she's got her own brand of merchandise now under the Soft Plunge label. So check that out if you want some really sweet looking more feminine style pinball stuff. They've got really good stress balls actually. They're silver and they're really, really squishy. So if you are stressed out maybe some of the people who are playing in the tournament could do with some stress balls to chill out a bit maybe. I don't know. But yeah, that was the last game unfortunately and that was my exit from the tournament but you know it was good because being at the exhibition you can then go and and gorge on carnival food right so this is a gorge on you know other pinball but okay carnival food go for it no i did that too i did that too but the the food at carnivals like you know there's a certain style of food that you get at carnivals that's you would never have normally Correct. It's weird combinations and everything is deep red. Exactly right. Yeah. So I'm sure you have this style of thing because this is, you know, this meets the brief of the podcast. We're talking about food here on the podcast and we haven't done that for a while. So the food you get a couple of movies, snacks, but mostly pinball, mostly pinball with this, the food you get. And this is one of the things that I think it goes by a number of different names, but we call them Dagwood dogs here. and that is one of those red sausages deep fried in batter with a stick and you cover it with tomato sauce. You're looking at me strangely, Chris. I don't think you've ever heard of this thing. I can't say we do hot dog on a stick but we don't do that bright red sausage thing that I refuse to admit is a hot dog in Australia because it's just gross. They call them Savalois, I think, is the name. And we certainly don't then slather it in tomato sauce. Well, that's when you get through the batter casing on it. What they do is they get a sausage, they stick a stick up its butt, and then they batter it. They dump it in a big container of batter, and they deep fry that sucker whole. Yeah, that's hot dog on a stick. That's hot dog on a stick. So that must be what you call it. And then you will eat it with ketchup. Well, tomato sauce is ketchup. Oh, that's the Australian word for ketchup? Yeah, tomato sauce. Okay. Yeah. So we do have ketchup here. We have Heinz ketchup here. And yes, they are different, I know, before you start debating it. I was going to say, well, there's ketchup and then there's catsup. Catsup, yeah. Which I never understand what the difference between any of that is, but that's okay. So I had one of those, and one was enough. And then I had this. Wait a second, Jared. The question here is, how do you know which end of the sausage is the butt end? You make an educated guess. Sometimes you get it wrong. if the hot dog gags you know you got the wrong end that's right but if the hot dog presses its lips you got the right end uh anyhow uh so the other thing i had there was this um yeah the the exhibition is of course an agricultural show so the idea is they showcase local produce and i had this really really nice um slow cooked meat roll with gravy and and chips on the side and that was actually half decent and it was really, really tasty. And they had beer at Antonio Cruz prices there. So when I say beer at Antonio Cruz prices, you're paying $10 for a tin, which is a lot of money. So they're gouging you, which is what they should do with these events. Oh, they only do it once a year. They've got to get their money's worth. Yes. Yeah, exactly right. So they absolutely are gouging you. It's like theme park prices. of food, you know? Right. So you call it carnival food. We always call it fair food. And yes, everything gets put onto a stick. There's no doubt about that. I've even had pizza on a stick. Pizza on a stick? Yes, pizza on a stick. I mean, basically all they did was they taco'd the pizza and shoved a stick in it. That was it. It wasn't anything genius, believe me. And the best fair food I've ever had was where they took a Krispy Kreme donut, and I'm sure you don't have Krispy Kremes in Australia. Yeah, we do. Oh, you do? Okay, so they take a Krispy Kreme jelly-filled donut, and they slice it in half, and then they take a glazed chicken breast, and they put that, and that's your bun, is the donut with the chicken breast in the middle. Oh, my God, it's so good. Oh, yes. I'd imagine it would be. Absolutely terrible for you, but it is. And then we even tried the deep-fried Coke. the deep fried coke yes how do they do that um essentially they pour coca-cola on a slice of angel food cake and then deep fry it okay right it doesn't make sense and then for the we used to go to the fair with my in-laws and they loved fair food so they would try whatever the wacky thing was and one time we tried deep fried butter deep fried butter so so you take a stick of butter and you roll it in the batter and then you flash fry it and pull it out and then you put it in a uh you know the the cardboard boat if you will and basically just oozes butter all over the place and it was rather disgusting. Yeah. I don't know why you would want to buy that. Because it exists. Because it's a thing that you can buy. It's there, you know. We actually do have a butter... There's a very small little niche, I think you could say, in the exhibition showgrounds. You wouldn't even know it was there. It's underneath a building tucked away in an alley, and it's the butter board. So the board that does butter, I guess. You know, the organization of butter. I don't know. It's really weird. I'm just trying to imagine the kind of people that are on this organization. On this board. Yes. On this board. They're all sitting there, and I can't even begin to imagine what they would look like. But anyhow, you can go there, and the island's on offer. Marlon Brando's sitting in the other bed going, you've got to give me the butter. Oh, okay. so the items you can get are bread and butter wow what a novelty it's like it's like two dollars i went huh it's bread and butter better be some pretty good bread um anyhow and like a hand this is machine churned butter and this is hand churned butter and this is goat butter. I can't believe it's not butter. Anyhow, it's just crazy the sort of stuff you see. And yeah, fair food, carny food is a different type of cuisine altogether. Yes. So yeah. I want to get over to, I tease this to people, but I said I'd let you tell the deal. What is up with your star race at this show? Well, so Star Race is on location. It's available for people to play. And it has been earning a little bit of money. I checked the tin when I went there yesterday. I think it was about $20 in there, which is about normal for the second day in. And considering that there was no play on the table yesterday because of the tournament, it wasn't on Cointrop, that's a good start. But the other thing that is going with Star Race is it's not my Star Race anymore. yeah someone has bought the star race from me and the story behind it was when i was setting it up um when i dropped it off and set it up i i had signs on it saying you know for sale um you know i had the price listed up there and and said make me an offer then 30 minutes it had sold so not not too shabby to uh you know it was the the price that you posted up was that kind of you're just like, it's kind of ridiculous, but I'm going to put it to the price. That was my high starting price, where I was prepared to negotiate down from there. But the person who bought this game is well-known in Brisbane as being a massive Gottlieb fan. And I met the person yesterday who actually bought the game, and he's just so passionate about Gottliebs. It's amazing. Well, that's awesome that you know that it's going to a home like that. Oh, yeah. Somebody that's just going to lavish even more attention on it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, it's known fact that the back glass is probably the weakest part of that game at the moment. It's pretty in bad nick. So there's a high likelihood that he'll end up sourcing one from somewhere because he just has the money to do it. so it will end up being like it will take what I've done to it with the playfield side of things and turn it into a really really nice looking I was gonna say did he give you any props for the job that you done on the playfield oh yeah he said he said thank you for the work you put into this game like He was very impressed with it when I met him yesterday and very very glad that I was willing to sell it because it was confirmed that there is only one other one in Australia apart from mine Wow. So it's not coming home with you at all, is it? Nope, it's not coming home with me. I've got an empty space where a pinball used to sit. And do you have plans for that empty space? Yeah, I do. I do have plans, yes. But you're not going to share those plans yet? You're going to save that for another day? Let's save it for another day, I think. But yes, I don't think it's going to be empty for long. Okay, good. I would hate to, you know, it took you a long time to finally get one, and I would hate to see it just then disappear again. I think once you've had one, and you can attest to this, once you've had a pinball machine in your house, you're always going to probably have one in your house because it's just something that you need. It's a need, not a want. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. pinball whiz did you miss anything from earlier in the podcast rewind yes you you can do that you just rewind man i'm not gonna we're not gonna summarize the last 45 minutes um guess what no i'm happy to do that for him because he's a good friend of the show pinball whiz we talked about stuff and things there you go which we do every week yes yes um So I don't know if any of you have been paying attention on the old Twitters and what gets shared and whatnot. But Multimorphic, I think that's the company? It is Multimorphic for P3. For P3, right. They are known for doing everything. It's basically a large screen TV as your playfield service. And then all of the mechanics attach to the top of it. And so you can rearrange and shift the shape however need be. but it's module based pinball yes they posted uh that they're putting machines out on site at dave and busters and they have video of it uh little slick cabinet action going with light show man it's slick far out that's an understatement these things look great yeah and the chase lights or the chase led strips they've got on them really look amazing and they're uh they're linked together for whatever purposes those games are. I'm not really familiar with any of the multimorphic games because I don't... It'll be a very basic... It's pinball, but it'll be probably something like Space Invaders style, where you've got objects in the playfield and on the screen that's in the playfield. So it's kind of like in Zachariah playing Chase the Lights, where you're rolling the ball over... A little bit, yeah. I have a feeling, like, again, you're right, they didn't actually show a lot of gameplay of it, but I'll tell them this. Their sizzle reel for it is very convincing. It made me want to go and find a couple to play because it looked really interesting. So here's what I'm impressed with, though. So that is... Now, that is actual, real, physical pinball. Yes. So you're going to have those at Dave & Buster's, and then Zen is going to have their championship edition table at Dave & Buster's, which means pinball is showing up out in a chain store on a big scale. With more than one format. Exactly. That's the other thing. Exactly. To which then I go, where's our CUDA? Yeah. Yeah, interesting. Because apparently everybody's making deals. So, and I certainly would say there's still room for them. it's not like you know you're the only game in town but you have to ask yourself what can they bring with what we've seen on on their product offering what could they actually bring in that space that hasn't already been actually produced and out to market uh they're going to have to partner with a zacharia and put zacharia tables out that they're the only ones left yeah because because well i mean you could go out there with your limited uh selection of farsight and stern tables although i something no stern wasn't going to be part of the arcuda package which just means all you have left is the gottlieb table so i mean you could be out there with gottlieb but is that going to give you any attention i don't know not likely not with not with the way that package is presented no but if you went with zacharia and did either their remakes or did specifically that chase the lights mode um at least you're something different chase the lights would be compatible with redemption for sure yeah um and you know you could do something with the remakes i think the remakes are fresh enough that they would be and they play modern enough that uh it would appeal to uh more modern pinball players but you know that's a like unless you have started a year ago building up that technology and that partnership that's going to be a long delay for you to be able to get the same sort of integration that Zen is looking at implementing with their arcade products you know that's a big ask so anyway it's good to see that like I said that this stuff is a new generation of pinball if you will is filtering into into these public spaces because I I don't know Do you have Dave & Buster's in Australia, Jared? No, no, we haven't got that chain. We have Carl's Jr., but we don't have Dave & Buster's. Carl's Jr., that's hammered. Yeah, that is. What is Dave & Buster's? Dave & Buster's is restaurant? Dave & Buster's is what you might want to call it the original barcade. It was set up to be, it's a giant space. They have full bar, full restaurant, and then they had all sorts of arcade games. and what the arcade and start off arcade games with some redemption and they still very much separate a redemption center or section of it from the arcade games but the arcade games are now all these giant versions of them so like you can play you can play connect for digitally and it's on like you know an eight by ten foot screen basically yeah one of those big like stadium screens and yeah yeah everything is everything is hyper-sized and that's why that is why the zen championship edition will fit in perfectly with there because it's all about flash and lights and grabbing attention in that manner um yeah this is the kind of place that you would see you know those uh the sit down arcade racer games it would be you know they'd have like four of them linked together yeah and they're the ones that talking about like uh all the ones that raw thrills are producing basically um i mean you know there's mario kart versions there's i mean these games have been around forever right but yeah at most an arcade would be able to have a bank of four of them usually they'd only have two of them connected dave and buster's will have eight oh right so they're massive massive massive yes yeah right uh so they're the mega arcade sort of style um location base play right i mean and and what's funny is it's almost uh I mean, it's kind of like the Las Vegas look of arcade games, if you will. Yeah, I totally get it. So that's where it comes into play with what Zen is doing with their table and why these two machines that they were showing for Multimorphic fits right in place with what Dave & Buster's is doing. And because they dropped Pinball a long time ago. Yeah. Because again, it's mechanical and it takes maintenance. They literally are... Why would they want to have something that they need to actually fix in the fall where they can just plug these things in, turn them on, and maybe change a belt in the interactive steering system on the car games occasionally. These things now... I know that all the... There's a couple of racing games that Raw Thrills... So Raw Thrills are the people who produce Big Buck Hunter and all those sort of big-style, big-screen arcade games. Okay. The ones who recently redid Cruisin' USA. Okay, yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. And, you know, they're exactly right. They are all about... It's not a raw thrills game unless it's got neon everywhere and massive LED displays and heads-up displays at the top showing you all the action. like these are and then the seats rumble and and all that jazz and yeah the audience can watch and oh yeah these things are motion platforms like you're driving the game it's got like a full-on like pneumatic motion platform that you're sitting on these things yeah massive coin you've got to drop in these things to actually you know acquire them and it's kind of like what used to be uh you know when there was a sega produced afterburner and you know oh yeah yeah the typical orange just have the joystick and you play it but then you had the full cockpit that rotated and oh yeah and everything 360 that thing was ridiculous that thing we had that on location when in the heyday of arcades in the time zone chain here in brisbane and it it required three phase power to the building this thing was like an actual like it needed 415 volts to work you know that uh you know how i've talked about that um that that home arcade that i've been to that the guy had that was uh you know he basically had like a dungeon and it was you know built into his house and it was the just he has all the prototype machines yes he's the guy that has crawl and he has uh a white wood of of wizard blocks and safecracker and stuff yeah he's got that thing plugged into so he's got three phase into his house yes far out okay because he can that's the reason why not the other advantage is that you can also if you've got three phase into the house you can then get one of those really sweet turbo ovens that Subway have and that cook your sandwich in like 30 seconds he did have a pizza oven built in just on the other side of the arcade yeah okay sure why not like one that you see in a commercial pizza shop Like a turbojet oven. One of those brick ovens. Convey about styles. No, no, no. It was a brick oven. Brick oven. And, you know, so basically it went arcade and brick oven pizza. But in between that was the nightclub with the LED dashboard. Sure. Okay. Right. What would it be to have money like that? I'm telling you, it was the most spectacular place. I loved it. It's just, you know, oh, and that's not even mentioning the home theater that he had with full D-Box seating for about 20 people. Okay, sure. Where did he actually live? Oh, hang on. That wouldn't be in any one of those areas. Let me put it to you this way. His house was two miles away from Kobe Bryant's. Oh, okay, right. So he was in a rather affluent neighborhood. Rather affluent where one house probably, because it was right there on the beach with their own private golf club, and it gets better and better. One house probably would be in your $15 million range, but he owned two because there was his house And then there was the house next door that had all of this stuff, which he had dug down into the ground to build the subterranean, Mediterranean-looking facade that housed all of this other stuff. Wow. So he had a separate house for his entertainment equipment. Yes. Right. Let's just get that clear. A second house for his entertainment equipment. Yes. Okay. Okay, mate. Sure. again yeah you got the money why don't you use it right um hey uh for everybody that's watching here if you have not already done so why don't you go ahead and uh follow us on twitcher because that would be amazing and and i'll say this if we can get as soon as we get our 50 twitch followers Every Friday, I do Skills to Pay the Bills Friday, which is I play the Skills app. Well, it's the Skills app that's built into either the Zen eSports Edition or into the Williams Pinball app on iOS. And once we hit that, I will celebrate by actually playing a few of the $5 games. And I say that because if you watched me this past Friday when I was just playing dollar games, I was losing left and right. which isn't friendly. So that'll be the celebration for that. Or, and this is really insane if we can manage this, but when I do any of the Twitch streams other than this podcast, well, you know, for right now, I'll even let it be this podcast. If we can get 20 live viewers, I'll do it for that also. Oh, all right. The challenge is on. Tell your friends. The challenge is on. And in case you're not sure what the schedule is, which is probably going to start changing soon because school's starting for the kids, and so I've got to adjust for that. But Mondays are mobile app challenge days. Wednesdays are going to be playing Steam versions of pinball. Fridays is the skills app, and then Saturdays are obviously the podcast. So that's the schedule. This Wednesday I'm planning on doing Zachariah pinball for Steam. so that's what's going to happen on Wednesday and the start times are always going to be around 3 o'clock-ish it's going to be later on Wednesday I can guarantee that probably more, 3.34 but anyway so stick around pay attention to those please and give us a follow also give us a follow on YouTube and all you watching on YouTube give the follow on Twitch, come on I don't even care if you watch just give me the follow and then don't forget about the socials right down there. At Blockade being the main feature of our show. But we also have at Shut Your Traps and at Jared Marks for either of us. Have I missed anything? I don't think so. I think we're good. We're clear. We're clear. Okay, that's fantastic. We've made up for Jared's absence. That's right. Yes. Apologies for my absence. I have a late slip. I mean, he sold his pinball machine. What do you want? I was doing important things. I was doing, you know, things with pinball, which is important, like real pinballs. Very important. Right, you were doing things and stuff with real pinball. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, okay. All right, that being said, I think we've exhausted our time here. So, everybody, thank you so much for watching, listening, however it is you consume these podcasts. we enjoy doing them. We'll continue doing them and hopefully you continue watching and listening to them. Until next time, Jared, say bye-bye. Bye-bye.