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BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·59m 9s·analyzed·Oct 24, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.039

TL;DR

Blockade discusses digital pinball market expansion and Arcade 1UP delays amid speculation.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss technical difficulties with podcast recording, Jared's job loss at Disneyland during COVID-19 layoffs, and extensive coverage of digital pinball cabinet announcements including Zen's Williams Pinball Vol. 6, new competitors (Well Played Arcade, AtGames Legends Pinball), and Arcade 1UP's delayed Marvel/Star Wars/Williams pinball cabinets amid community speculation about release dates and game lineups.

Key Claims

  • Disneyland laid off 28,000 employees

    high confidence · Jared Morgan personal announcement; verifiable public event

  • Williams Pinball Vol. 6 (Funhouse, Dr. Dude, Space Station) releases October 20

    high confidence · Chris Freebus stating confirmed release date; matches public Zen Studios announcements

  • Well Played Arcade signed licensing deal with Magic Pixel for 27 Zen solid-state tables on Android platform

    high confidence · Chris cites specific numbers and platform details; verifiable licensing announcement

  • AtGames signed licensing agreement with Taito last January for classic games and recently announced Taito-themed virtual pinball games

    high confidence · Chris references press release; 12 Taito titles mentioned (Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble, etc.)

  • Arcade 1UP GameStop pre-order showed April 2021 delivery, not holiday 2020

    high confidence · Jared confirms pickup date April 2021; documented in GameStop listing

  • GameStop's pre-order practices are unreliable indicators of actual release dates

    medium confidence · Jared cites multiple examples of delayed/early arrivals; community feedback on Facebook groups

  • Arcade 1UP only stocks in Walmart and Costco retail stores, not Best Buy

    medium confidence · Jared's observation; verifiable through retail research

  • Farsight Studios likely reskinning Gottlieb tables for AtGames Taito pinball deal rather than creating new playfields

    medium confidence · Chris and Jared speculation based on Farsight's lack of pinball designers and Masters of Time precedent

  • Data East mirrored Williams table layouts in the 1980s-early 1990s without licensing issues

    medium confidence · Jared's historical observation; industry lore referenced

Notable Quotes

  • “It has been a few, indeed, yes. We decided to take a hiatus because there was really nothing to talk about worth talking about.”

    Jared Morgan @ Opening — Sets tone for episode; acknowledges slow news period in pinball

  • “I'm one of the 28,000 people that no longer has a job at Disneyland.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~4:00 — Personal disclosure of major life event; contextualizes pandemic impact on entertainment industry

  • “Just words at the moment. Very promising words. I need to see it.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~14:00 — Skepticism about AtGames Legends Pinball announcement lacking visual proof

  • “They wanted pre-order money before Christmas, so they put up this listing to try and sucker people into putting their money down. It's as simple as that.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~25:00 — Cynical but plausible explanation for GameStop's April 2021 Arcade 1UP listing strategy

  • “When Arcade 1UP are ready, they announce the game and then you can start pre-ordering it. And until that time, there is no roadmap.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~28:00 — Clarifies Arcade 1UP's consistent announcement/pre-order pattern; calms community speculation

  • “Do we honestly believe that Farsight is making brand new designed playfields? Or do we think they're going to do a Masters of Time and just reskin some Williams tables?”

    Chris Freebus @ ~17:00 — Central speculation about Farsight's approach to Taito virtual pinball; industry business model analysis

  • “It was kind of a large cut... you're not alone. So there's a large network of people out there that are sort of feeling the same things.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~5:30 — Empathetic framing of pandemic job losses; community context

  • “If you're using GameStop as an indication of when something's going to be released, it's probably not the best idea.”

    Jared Morgan — Practical advice to community to ignore GameStop pre-order dates as accurate indicators

Entities

Chris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen StudioscompanyArcade 1UPcompanyGameStopcompanyWell Played ArcadecompanyAtGamescompanyFarsight StudioscompanyMagic PixelcompanyScientific Games

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Hand sanitizer overuse at arcade venues risks fingernail damage and requires proper washing between repeated applications; Netherworld implements pump stations at machines

    high · Chris notes neighbor had fingernail damage from excessive hand sanitizer; Netherworld solution using sanitizer pumps at each machine with expectation of proper drying before play

  • ?

    business_signal: GameStop using pre-order listings strategically to capture sales before product readiness; unreliable as release date indicator per podcast analysis

    medium · Jared cites pattern of GameStop pre-orders arriving earlier or later than listed dates; notes discrepancy between GameStop and absence of pre-orders on Arcade 1UP official website

  • ?

    community_signal: Podcast hosts requesting technical assistance from community on OBS audio configuration; seeking deeper understanding of audio settings across different hardware configurations

    high · Chris explains audio difficulties with OBS/Streamlabs; solicits help via YouTube comments and Twitter; notes 'bazillion different answers' on forums with no one-size-fits-all solution

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Arcade 1UP community experienced significant meltdown over GameStop's April 2021 delivery estimate; multiple YouTube videos and forum posts questioning release timeline

    high · Jared notes 'The internet absolutely broke all of the Facebook groups,' YouTube videos posted asking 'Are we going to miss the holidays?'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Historical precedent: Data East mirrored Williams table layouts in 1980s-90s without licensing consequences; suggests licensing environment has tightened

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.177

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 jared morgan hello everybody How are we doing? It's been a few, hasn't it? It has been a few, indeed, yes. We decided to take a hiatus because there was really nothing to talk about worth talking about. And then we actually tried last week. We honestly tried. We really did. We really, really did. We were going to do a podcast. We were all set to do it. and to say there were technical difficulties would be a minor misnomer because either Jared couldn't hear me or I couldn't hear Jared and then to boot it entirely into the stratosphere was my computer didn't record any of the audio.
1:04
Yeah. So, yeah, it was a whitewash last week. An absolute get out of town. In no way. Don't worry about it. The good news is that it actually convinced Jared that he needed to download OBS to try and have a go at it himself.
1:23
Which was good. It was a good experience to try and set it up. And I know now what Chris is faced with every single time he records. Yeah, he didn't believe me, I don't think.
1:35
It's not so much I didn't believe you. Sometimes I need to experience things so A, I can maybe try to work out what's going on. And the announcer comes in and goes, he didn't.
1:46
um and the thing that's uh frustrating about obs and stream labs as well because i actually downloaded stream labs to try it is the audio the audio in this product is really really hard to understand unless someone could throw me a obs audio for dummies guide that lets me understand what each of the settings mean,

Marvel Pinball Arcade 1UP cabinet art shows Captain Marvel and Black Panther, neither of which have dedicated Zen games

high confidence · Chris analyzing cabinet art and Zen table portfolio; observable from promotional materials

@ ~24:00

  • “That way they're avoiding the new consoles from Xbox and PlayStation... people are going to have that much money burning a hole in their pocket.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~26:00 — Strategic market analysis of holiday timing and consumer spending competing with game console scarcity

  • “There's no need to go crazy. Keep that 500-odd buckaroos in your pocket ready to spend.”

    Chris Freebus @ ~29:00 — Price point confirmation (~$500) for Arcade 1UP cabinets; urges patience before pre-ordering

    • company
    Toy Shockcompany
    Gottliebcompany
    Williamscompany
    Data Eastcompany
    Taitocompany
    Disneylandcompany
    Netherworldcompany
    Walmartcompany
    Costcocompany
    Best Buycompany
    Marvel Pinball (Arcade 1UP)game
    Star Wars Pinball (Arcade 1UP)game
    Williams Pinball Vol. 6game
    OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)product
    Streamlabsproduct

    medium · Jared notes 'Data East used to just mirror Williams tables all the time for their layouts and got away with it scot-free' in 'Wild West' licensing era

  • ?

    licensing_signal: AtGames signed Taito licensing deal (January) for classic games and recently announced virtual pinball games based on 12 Taito titles with unclear developer

    high · Chris cites press release; lists 12 Taito games (Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble, Elevator Action, etc.); notes Farsight as likely developer despite 'haven't done so in a while'

  • $

    market_signal: Arcade 1UP pre-orders still not linkable on official website; Big Buck Hunter pre-orders available, suggesting intentional phasing of announcements

    medium · Jared notes 'You go to the Arcade 1UP website, pre-orders still are not linkable there, whereas things like Big Buck Hunter does have pre-order tags'

  • $

    market_signal: Arcade 1UP Marvel/Star Wars/Williams pinball cabinets delayed beyond holiday 2020; GameStop April 2021 listing triggers community meltdown and speculation

    high · Jared documents GameStop pre-order showing April 2021 pickup; hosts cite 'forums were lit up,' YouTube videos, Facebook group meltdowns; cite $500 price point

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Farsight Studios presumed to lack dedicated pinball table designers on staff, making reskinning Gottlieb/Williams layouts more likely than creating new playfields

    medium · Chris questions whether Farsight is 'making brand new designed playfields' given lack of staff; Jared cites Masters of Time as precedent for cosmetic reskins with rule changes

  • ?

    announcement: Williams Pinball Vol. 6 confirmed for October 20 release with Funhouse, Dr. Dude, Space Station

    high · Chris states 'Volume 6 of the Williams Pinball from Zen is dropping on the 20th of October' with specific table names; matches Zen Studios official announcements

  • ?

    product_strategy: Arcade 1UP Marvel cabinet art reveals Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America confirmed; X-Men or Fantastic Four expected; Captain Marvel and Black Panther shown but lack dedicated Zen games

    medium · Chris analyzes cabinet art: 'Every other image that is on that machine has its own dedicated table that Zen has made' except Captain Marvel/Black Panther; cites gameplay video evidence

  • ?

    technology_signal: New digital pinball cabinet competitors entering market: Well Played Arcade (Android-based Zen tables), AtGames Legends Pinball (Taito licensing), Toy Shock (Gottlieb variant)

    high · Chris catalogs 'new player on the market' with specific licensing details (Magic Pixel, 27 tables, DLC capability, USB ports); AtGames press release citations

    • 2:14
    it really is the most confusing part of the product. Setting up scenes is actually really intuitive. That makes a lot of sense. The video aspects, obviously, it's great. But the audio, it is really frustrating to try and get right. So here's what I want to throw out there to any of you else that have experience with OBS. Because I'm kind of convinced it's not entirely OBS's fault That is probably how I also have my own computer audio set.
    2:46
    And the issue that is driving me mental is the idea that I would like to use my headphones to monitor what is actually being put out. And if I can't hear it in the headphones, then that would mean that it's not being put out. so if any of you know a deeper understanding of OBS working with your computer's audio drop us a note you can do it in the YouTube comments or you can contact us on Twitter it'd be really handy to be able to actually have a conversation because the thing is when I go to the OBS forums there's a bazillion different answers and I've tried doing the settings that people have had and had no luck, and then I try different person settings and they work, but both of them are seemingly correct for whoever had their problem solved. So that's where we're kind of at with that.
    3:43
    Yeah, the thing I think that makes audio really hard on both OBS and Streamlabs is that every single computer is different. And there's no one size fit all. It could be that someone's using a different virtual audio card in their computer. It could be a Realtek versus some other video card, MediaTek or whatever. So how you set it up for one person's computer and hardware will be different for somebody else's. And it's probably why I haven't been able to find a really good comprehensive getting started guide for the products. Unless I'm looking in the wrong place. and if I am, please do send me in the right place and Chris as well. Yep. Because Chris has got it set up now where it's pretty much working well except for a few, like that last 10% that you really want to get right but it's like really, really hard to get right because you don't know what you need to set to get it to be right. That's sort of where he's up to at the moment. So that's where we need the help. So if there's any friends of the show out there who want to actually give us a hand, then reach out and say g'day. in other news in case anybody was actually wondering you may know that i had been uh working for disneyland well yes i'm one of the 28 000 people that no longer has a job at disneyland 28 000 is a ridiculous amount of people it was kind of a large cut yeah yeah and it was a big cut yes that's really crappy news but uh it is i guess the only i guess the only the only not even positive part of it but it's like you're not alone so there's a large network of people out there that are sort of feeling the same things often you know when you get made redundant or you know fired or you know certainly in this case just furloughed i think we say that's the new word for 2020 it's furloughed yeah there's a word i never knew before yeah i know everyone's unfortunately everybody knows what furlough means now kind of similar to how i never knew what zoom was before 2020.
    5:54
    Yes. Your life is probably no richer for knowing what Zoom is. Let's be serious. It's like, what else can 2020 take a dump on? Oh, yeah, see, movie theaters, yeah, those are taking a dump. Yeah.
    6:11
    Well, theme parks over there, I'd imagine, are still the same. Yeah. Tourist industry in general, that's toast. airline industry is like about to be majorly hurting it's yeah what a great year basically on the ropes yeah it's everything is on the ropes basically it's being knocked around for eight rounds um you know the funny thing about theme parks is they're open here in australia with a covid safe plan um and uh which is what the government's calling you know limited access you know capped numbers social distancing it's hand sanitizers everywhere but the the thing that boggles my mind is that they've had since march to go and do maintenance on the park and get everything working so they're up and running now and lo and behold two of the major attractions are down for maintenance it's like hang on wait a time it like so you had literally six months of like get your stuff worked out and now two of the key attractions that are there i mean there's a hypercoaster there which is working all the newer attractions are working but all the older ones like i think the scooby-doo spooky coaster which is one of those mad mouse indoor roller coasters um that's out and there's a couple of other ones there as well like arkham asylum which is the inverted um intimate roller coaster they have there with vr goggles on yeah that's down as well and these these are things that i was seriously considering i going yesterday um to a theme park and just spending the day there but if if the attractions aren't working like if if not every single attraction is working i'm sorry i'm not going like i'm i don't get an opportunity to go to a theme park that often yeah so yeah i want everything to be working i honestly don't know i mean i know that as far as disney is concerned they're open in florida um as is universal i don't know throughout the country how many other theme parks are actually open um i mean we've got a lot of theme parks throughout the country. Yeah, you've got Six Flags and all that over there. Six Flags, Cedar Fair, those are the other two big companies. But here in California, none of them are open. So, that's that.
    8:26
    Sliding that into the round of pinball, I know, that's what you all show up here for, right? We do tangents as well. We just pre-loaded our tangents up front, I think. We do, we do. But there's where with pinball, it's actually they're seeing it on Arise. We're going to get into that a little bit later with a certain new machine that recently came out from Jersey Jack Pinball. And I saw a news report basically stating that Jersey Jack, Stern, their pinball sales are, they're backlogged now. Yes. Yeah. So at least somebody's happy about all of this. Somebody's winning.
    9:12
    Unfortunately, the operators aren't, because nobody can go to the places that actually have pinball, because sweaty palms all over them would have to be cleaned between every single play. Yeah, I don't think that's happening.
    9:25
    Yeah. Netherworld work around it differently. They just have sanitizing hand pumps at every pinball machine, and the expectation is that you do a little pump and play.
    9:39
    So you put the hand sanitizer on and then you let it dry and then you start playing the game. And it seems to be working all right. You know, I mean, sure, when people get drunk, they're probably not going to do it. You know, I think that for the most part, people kind of get that that's the new normal now and you kind of just have to use it. But, you know, there's one thing to note that, you know, you can't really use hand sanitizer twice before you then have to wash your hands properly. So you can't just go for 13 machine bonanza and just keep pumping between machines because it stops working. And also your nails strip off as well. I don't know if you've seen any news about that. No, I haven't. Yeah, if you use hand sanitizer too much, it basically makes your nails lift, your fingernails lift off. And there's some people that live around here, our next door neighbor had that problem and she had to be on special dermatitis cream to actually settle her hands down because she was using hand sanitizer that much. So yeah, don't overuse that stuff. Yeah, don't overuse it too much. Just be sensible about it, all right, folks?
    10:48
    All right. Well, let's move on to the obvious news, as if you've been living under a rock. Volume 6 of the William Spinball from Zen dropping on the 20th of October. So by the time you're listening to this, it's either just about to drop or already has. Those three tables, Bing, in case you forgot.
    11:13
    Funhaus. Yay. Dr. Dude. And Space Station. Yes. So they're finally going to be coming. Getting out.
    11:27
    We still have not seen the finished product ourselves, even though we were beta. Nope. So they're cutting it to the wire. so we'll be just as surprised as you to see what the finished product actually looks like I'm excited to see how they manage to make function the score displays is basically what I'm most keen to see yeah they've had a lot of time to refine them and I know it's been challenging for them to get them right but the good news is that that paves the way doesn't it for all the alphanumerics now that they've got the tech right. Yeah. So that's good news. That is good news. So go on out there, quit complaining, and plop down your, I imagine it's 10 bucks for the three tables. Something like that. Yeah. Maybe about 10.
    12:18
    And I keep on saying, Funhaus and Dr. Dude alone are worth it, and Space Station, I'm not a fan of tables that don't have flipper in lanes. The Italian bottom. Yeah. so uh i mean it's gonna take some getting warmed up for me to enjoy space station but uh the other two it's fun once you it's it's it really is a fun game once you get into it like it's it's a classic system 11 or system 9 style game system 9 really um but yeah it's it's fun it just let the ball is wild down the bottom it's definitely wild but yeah it'll grow on you and that'll be very interesting to see if Zen has any other tricks up their sleeves before the new year or if they too have just gone you know what, 2020 screw you 2020 gives you plenty, that's what they like to say down here except in the case of pinball which gives you nothing speaking of, we have a new player on the market, so if you've been keeping track of the cabs that are going to be out supposedly this holiday season, you've got Toy Shock, once again, coming out with basically their version 1.2 of what they came out with last Christmas. So it's the 12-in-1 machine with the 12 Gottlieb tables on it. So that's number one.
    13:41
    Number two, you've got the 1UP arcade machines. We're going to talk about something that we've all known that has been making waves, and me and Jared think we have a different take on that. But for right now, the one-up three-quarter machine.
    13:59
    And then you've got a new player by the name of Well Played Arcade. They've got a table coming out, or a machine coming out, that's going to have Zachariah machines on it.
    14:13
    And then you've got AtGames, who is coming out with Legends Pinball, but we still have not seen so much as even a photo of what that is. It's basically just words at the moment. Just words at the moment.
    14:28
    Very promising words. It sounds like it's going to be great, but I need to see it. Yeah. I mean, the only thing that we can actually base anything off of is how they've been making function their Legends Ultimate cab and their Legends Gamer which is basically the controller that sits on your lap Yeah That has everything But anyway, like I said, the new player to that is this well-played arcade. And what they've shown is that they signed licensing agreement with Magic Pixel for the Zachariah tables. They're going to have 27 tables, which, if I'm guessing correctly, that would be all of the sold state tables that are in the game because there's exactly 27 of those and it's going to be running off the android platform yes because it sounds like that with their particular product you can download it they've got dlc capability um so that means that you could probably download all the other ones onto the cabinet as well which means that if my calculations are correct that's something to the order of 60 or 70 tables that they've done now yeah something like of that nature yeah probably thereabouts which would then put that cabinet as the highest number of tables offered for any digital cabinet that you can get on the market which is impressive in its own right yeah and it's got uh it's got usb ports and stuff on the front of it we'll we'll show you a picture in a moment um the other thing though that's happening over with the at games legends pinball is now i didn't realize this they had signed uh at games signed a licensing agreement with uh tyto last january uh to be able to bring over to the cab classic Taito games. But they just announced about a month ago, basically right after our last podcast, they announced that they had also signed an agreement to make virtual pinball games based off of Taito games.
    16:54
    They didn't list how many. They didn't list who was going to be making those, although if we had to guess, it would only make sense that, I mean, who's the only other player in the market that makes pinball, even though they haven't done so in a while?
    17:13
    Farsight? Yeah. But I wanted to point out something, and this was within their press release regarding this. These are the ones that they specifically mentioned because they said that they think that these fit a pinball theme really well. So see what you think. They rattled off. Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble, Elevator Action,
    17:39
    Chack'n Pop, Darius, Frontline, Operation Wolf, Rainbow Islands, Rastan Saga, Space Invaders, Legend of Cage, and Zookeeper.
    17:54
    Some of those I'm familiar with. It's something I've never heard of before. Yeah. So the big question is, assuming that it is Farsight, go with us here on this. Assuming it is Farsight, do we honestly believe that Farsight is making brand new designed playfields? Because that's 12 titles right there that I just rattled off. So 12 brand new custom designed tables with all their own set of rules and light show and coding and DMD and all that action. Or do we think they're going to do a Masters of Time and just reskin some Williams tables? that way they can skirt around the licensing issue but they've already got things programmed and dialed in and all you're doing is just slapping on some new art and changing out the toys well i think that it's obvious that's what they're going to do because because look for what it is masters of time is an interesting take on the doctor who table but it's not good.
    19:12
    It's not a great table. So I think it's going to be interesting to see whether they do go down the path of doing reskins. That's probably going to be a yes because they don't have pinball table designers on staff. Because it allows them to reuse assets that they've already R&D'd and spent time with. They already know the physics of the tables.
    19:40
    So all you're really doing is, like I said, slapping on a new coat of paint, changing out a toy or two so that you avoid licensing issues on that front, and then altering the rules a little bit. But you can base most of them, which is what Masters of Time did, base most of them off of what the original was and get away with it. Then you're safe.
    20:03
    As long as I don't have the moaning agents in it, I'll be fine. that's just my only memory of that table because wasn't there a um wasn't there a brazilian company that did exactly that with i don't know if it was with williams tables or with gottlieb tables where they uh re-skinned it retitled it but it was through and through guts and all the other table.
    20:31
    Yeah, that's right. It was not Pleco or Glico or something like that. I can't quite remember. Yes, they absolutely did that in Spain. Oh, it was Spain, not Brazil. I think it's Spain, yeah. Definitely. Because I think there's even some, there's like a Gottlieb table that is like, I think it's Mars God of War but then they've done another one to, I think it's called some medieval themed thing. I'd like to say Excalibur, but I don't think it is. And I was nearly going to pick it up as one of the tables I'm going to be doing up because it's really rare.
    21:08
    But it just didn't appeal to me. Like, it wasn't a really good layout to start with that they copied.
    21:13
    But, you know, I don't think that Farsight are going to be doing any Belly Williams tables because I think if they did that, zen and scientific games would just come down on them like a ton of you know what so you think they're going to actually reskin Gottlieb tables yep they're going to be reskinning Gottlieb's for sure because the target market that they're going for on this AtGames cabinet is I don't think it's the hardcore player and I think that their Gottlieb layouts they will be able to get away with really easily reskinning those because they're not complex Considering that they're already going to have all 22 Gottliebs, so basically it's everything but the two Alvin G's that they did prior, those have already been, well, they haven't been confirmed, but if you go to the Ad Games website, they say they have 22 licensed tables. there's exactly 22 tables that Varsight has access to that aren't Stern and those are the Gottliebs. So, and that's going to be part of their, I don't know, we still haven't figured out if it's actually going to be loaded onto the machine or is it going to be streaming, how that's going to be functioning. But if you already are playing every single Gottlieb that way, wouldn't it be painfully obvious for just a reskin to have Taito stuff on it and go, well, yeah, I've already played this.
    22:43
    I mean, essentially, you're like basically doing Eldorado City of Gold with, I mean, okay, fine, Gottlieb does have a history of doing that, don't they?
    22:53
    They do, yeah. In fact, most pinball manufacturers leading up to the 50s, 60s, and 70s did that all the time. Like, they turned a one-player playfield to a two-player playfield to a four-player playfield, you know, and just changed the art. Like, that's how they made money back then. So, you know, it's pretty common. And the thing is that, you know, Farsight did make some changes to,
    23:17
    albeit probably cosmetic in a large respect, to things like the Time Expander on Masters in Time. They turned it into a TARDIS. Well, because that's the toy that they absolutely had to alter. Include. Well, I mean, they had to alter it to avoid licensing issues. Yeah, absolutely. It was like, yeah, there's no way they could get around that. so from that perspective I think what they'd do is they'd keep the overall layout so probably the main playboard layout they would keep but then ramps and things is what they'd probably change so they'd probably change entry and exit points for ramps and they'd probably vary the playfield like that and it's pretty easy enough to do you just basically move one ramp entry to another position and then change the guts that was around it and you know then re-railroad all the shots and you're fine right so you know it's plausible that they'd be able to make enough variety of the tables to to do something about it the thing is that they don't have to worry about like when you re-theme your real table you've got to worry about you know cnc in the play field and all that sort of stuff they don't need to do that there was whack bits and pieces on it and just digitally assembled, like the people who create the virtual pin tables and the pin making tables.
    24:43
    They should be able to use all the assets they have to make some pretty interesting tables if they put their mind to it. But if they're just trying to pump it out and meet the licensing requirements of the contract, then prepare for dullness.
    24:57
    So, I'd be curious to see what you guys all think. Do you agree with Jared that it's going to be reskins? of Ghalib, or do you think that they'll dip their toes into the dangerous licensing waters and reskin some Bally and Williams, but because it's a complete reskin, just like Masters of Time, that they're actually able to get away with it.
    25:18
    I'm pretty sure they still have to go. That's what I think is going to happen. We'll see. They still have to go to Scientific Games to get the approval. I'm sure that they did. For Masters of Time? No. Yeah. No.
    25:30
    Oh, really? Are you sure? I'm not, no, I'm not sure. But I don't think they did. I think they could just completely claim it as their own.
    25:40
    It's original. And the only reason why I say that is because Data East used to just mirror Williams tables all the time for their layouts and got away with it scot-free. You know, so long as you've got different rules. That was back in the 80s, though. Yeah, but I mean, so long as you've got... 80s and early 90s, like. It was the Wild West back then with Faro's Licensing Go. So it's like, you know, it's pretty mad. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see. I don't think that those tables are supposed to be seeing the light of day until 2021, though.
    26:12
    Yeah. And the thing is, the market that you'll see these on is so narrow. Anyhow, you'll have to have one of the cabinets to play them. And that is the other interesting aspect. Yeah, if you want to play these new things, you're going to have to have an AtGames platform. platform like i said either the legends ultimate cabinet or the legends gamer uh control pads or this legends pinball so yeah so i i don't know i it's sort of like it's putting a niche product into a limited exposure market um with these cabinets so it's going to be it's an interesting play i mean i i just hope Farsight's getting a flat rate for these. Because if they're looking at getting download credits or anything like that on it, I don't think they're going to get very much take up on that. As if we haven't talked enough about the arcade one-up pinball.
    27:11
    We're going to talk about it some more, right? Yeah, we are. Too bad. Suck it up, everybody. so all of a sudden there was a flurry of posts that popped up on YouTube because GameStop went ahead and threw up pre-orders for Marvel Pinball at the same time a Star Wars site put up basically cabinet art and basic imagery of the Star Wars digital pinball cabinet from Zen so that's two of the three the last one would be the one containing of the Williams tables.
    27:51
    Yes. None of them mentioned, again, what tables are going to be on these. But GameStop went ahead and threw up a pre-order for late November.
    28:04
    But interestingly enough, they said the pickup order, when you could pick this thing up, wouldn't be until April.
    28:12
    Next year, 2021. That's right. So that means not ready for the holiday season. so everybody went into kind of a it melted down chris let's be honest you want to call it a meltdown internet broke the internet absolutely broke all all of the facebook uh groups um members of like you know people saw the listing for uh the game spot i always you have to excuse me because i will probably slip in to call it game stop because i'm not an american yeah and It should be GameStop, but it's Spot. I don't know. No, it's GameStop.
    28:48
    Oh, it's GameStop. Okay, there you go. I'm very confused. Please excuse my confusion. Again, it's not native to your country. No, it's not. It's a thing. Anyhow. So GameStop put this thing up, and then everyone on Facebook said, oh, cool, I'll put a pre-order in. And then people started getting notifications through their pre-orders that, oh yeah, it's actually going to be shipping in April.
    29:17
    And everyone just lost their minds, basically. The forums were lit up with it. As you say, Chris, there was YouTube videos up on the internet going, oh what going on with arcade one bins Are we going to miss the holidays And all this sort of stuff But I did some digging Okay And I did some digging about GameStop in general And this is not an uncommon practice for them, right? They release things. I was reading the comments on a lot of people on these posts, and they said, oh, look, if you're using GameSpot as an indication of when something's going to be released, it's probably not the best idea. because they put up pre-orders for big deluxe arcade sets with a game and lots of plastic stuff that comes along with them, promotional items and stuff like that. And there's been some cases, and I forget the name of it in particular, but there's been one instance where people have pre-ordered it through GameSpot. It's actually landed in the stores before people got their pre-orders. so as a reliable measure I would discount GameSpot as a reliable indicator and here's the other thing I love that you keep on saying spot by the way spot for us to show it's what it is to you now the interesting thing is also that because they sell the arcade one up cabs through their site I don't believe they stock them in the stores I think the only place that stocks them in-store is Walmart and Costco. That's it. Costco, yeah. That's it. Yeah. And interestingly enough, no other place that sells the 1UP stuff, which would be Best Buy, Walmart, like I said, those are your major retail target, none of them have even pre-orders available yet. You go to the Arcade 1UP website, pre-orders still are not linkable there, whereas things like Big Buck Hunter does have pre-order tags on the website.
    31:24
    So it does make you wonder, did GameStop just jump the gun? My thoughts on the matter is that GameStop did a strategic move. They wanted pre-order money before Christmas, so they put up this listing to try and sucker people into putting their money down and to try and get pre-Christmas sales. It's as simple as that. They wanted to be first. They wanted to get your money first. And I would vote with my feet and not put any money down with them. That's what I'd be doing. You know, I was thinking about it too, that at first I thought, oh, maybe it makes sense that they would delay it until April. That way they're avoiding the new consoles from Xbox and PlayStation. But then I realized, you know how difficult it's going to be to get either of those?
    32:10
    They're not going to be available. And people are going to have that much money burning a hole in their pocket. Yeah. So if these are available, it might be, well, we want the kids to have something under the tree. Boom. They get this. Get them this. Yeah. So I don't think it's necessarily a matter of trying to avoid the consoles. I mean, we could be wildly wrong. Everything that I've watched, nobody's willing to speculate.
    32:38
    No, but, you know, that's our trademark. So we will. So we will. We will. speculate that's what we love to do um so my speculation is you will see these things before christmas uh just i think you're not going to hear anything about it until a couple weeks before it's ready for pre-order now yeah because you know i asked them i asked them not them as in arcade one up but them as a people in the facebook forum i asked those folks look what happened when Big Buck Hunter was announced through Arcade 1-Up, did you see like a year long lead up to what the product did, what it was going to do did you see any gameplay or anything before Arcade 1-Up was good and ready to get the product ready for sale and everyone had to admit the answer to that is no, when Arcade 1-Up are ready, they announce the game and then you can start pre-ordering it and until that time there is no roadmap people like that you may think there's a roadmap but you're wrong there's not until ik1up tell you there's a roadmap for release all right so it's they will they will give you ample notice to pre-order the thing like i've seen like uh so we'll get to this in a minute but there's some products that are competing in this market, they're not going to be available until November to order or pick up. So there's still some time left, folks. Don't lose your mind. Keep that 500-odd buckaroos in your pocket ready to spend. There's no need to go crazy. The other thing that's being, like people keep on saying, is how come we still don't know what tables are on these? How come we don't know? What are they going to be?
    34:27
    We did this a little while ago, and I'll just kind of reiterate my guesses based off of the cabinet art.
    34:35
    My only issue with the cabinet art on the Marvel 1-Up table is the fact that there's an image of Captain Marvel and an image of Black Panther, neither of which has their own dedicated game. Every other image that is on that machine has its own dedicated table that Zen has made. So that means, this is again, what my guess as to what is going to be on this is going to offer the best variety, I think, as well as let them come out with another volume of these should this prove successful. But we know for sure Spider-Man's going to be on this. We know for sure Iron Man's going to be on this. We know for sure Captain America's going to be on this. And I believe we know for sure it's either X-Men or Fantastic Four is going to be on this. And I say that because we saw a gameplay video a while ago, but that's what they showed, those tables playing. Well, we had to remember, too, that if it was gameplay video that we saw at CES or at the Arcade Expo, that was running PC hardware. It was. So it could very well just have been a table that they managed to shove inside the cabinet, let's be serious. So it may actually not be the tables that are offered. But that being said, all of those pieces of art are on the cabinet.
    35:57
    That's true, if you can go by that. continuing with what is on the cabinet for artwork, you can pretty much assume that Thor will be a table offered, Wolverine will be a table offered, and X-Men will be a table offered. That leaves three other tables, and it becomes a question of what three tables would those possibly be. I've narrowed it down to being including Fear Itself and Infinity Gauntlet, because those basically wind up being the Avengers Endgame and Infinity War, more or less, without having the Avengers title in there. And I'll get into why I don't think that's why we're going to have those tables available. And the other one would be Civil War. And I only state that because it's got both Captain America and Iron Man and Thor featured in it. However, it's also the only table that has Hulk in it of everything that I've listed. and you'll notice Hulk is nowhere near being on the cabinet art but who is if you want to have Captain Marvel on there she's in one table which is A-Force so if there was one table I think that you would swap out to match the cabinet art it would be swap out Civil War for A-Force therefore there is absolutely no Hulk maybe there was a licensing issue being contained within that as one of the titles And then that leaves you with an interesting selection of tables for a second Marvel pin, which that's where you start having more of the movie-based...
    37:40
    Because a lot of their artwork, Zen's artwork, wound up starting to favor what was happening in the movies. The Revengers tables for sure kind of take that cue. Ant-Man takes that cue.
    37:51
    Doctor Strange takes some of those cues. and then you've also got what I think would anchor the table is your Deadpool.
    37:59
    Deadpool. Yeah, I was going to say, where's Deadpool in all this? Yeah. Like, you know, it would be good.
    38:05
    Again, nobody's willing to speculate. I am. Those are my speculations. Seems legit. I'd probably say that that's a fair assumption to make about what's going to go in there. it comes to holiday time and you're trying to decide well what am i going to buy what am i going to put under the kids at the tree for the kids chris what is the best value for the money i just want to kind of point out something and and i did a little bit of a photoshop here and i want you guys to take a look at what a real table so we're going to talk about guns and roses in just a moment uh so this is going to be included in this so that's going to be our image for what a real table looks like compared to what these other three companies at games, sorry, you didn't produce a picture, what they look like. And it looks a little something like this. Nope, that's not what I wanted.
    39:01
    I gave a sneak preview, Jared. All right, that's okay. I'm going to just do this. There we go. Hey, look at that. There we are. Yeah. All right, so obviously I scaled them all to be looking like they were the same size, but the three tables are three-quarter scale compared to, obviously, a Guns N' Roses that is very much real.
    39:28
    Yeah. And it's interesting when you see them all together like that, because you can definitely see the form factor of the Marvel Arcade one-up pinball there. it has the form factor of a real pinball machine it's got a fake coin door the table legs look the same it's got the feet that are adjustable the back glass looks you know fairly legit and appropriate it's got a decent cabinet depth and it's got the sunken play field which if you look right there over at the guns and roses obviously that has a sunken play field i mean you can't have pinball right on the surface of under glass and then you take a look over at the well-played machine that's running the Zacharia, and then on the far right, you've got the basically last year's iteration of ToyShock's 21C cabinet.
    40:27
    Yes. And you'll notice both of those have very large bezels. The screen is right there on the surface. They've got a little bit more severe rake, it looks like. But the thing that bugs me the most is look at those legs it's like the well-played machine looks like it's a giraffe yep but i said in pre-show that it looked like one of the aliens from war the worlds like it just looks really really tall and then the and then the toy shock one looks like it's got a bulldog stance like it's like legs out i'm not gonna fall over i'm not gonna fall over we know that that's exactly what they were going for there like they prioritize stability of that thing over everything else because they knew it was going to be for kids and they didn't want them toppling it over yeah so it's it's definitely bulldogging for a reason that one and then also if you take a look at uh at first my initial reaction just going off memory i was thinking that the well-played cabinet might be being the exact same product as the toy shock um in other words whoever's building the cabinets is the same person and then they're just dumping a different software and selling it through a different company. But now that I look at it, it's not so much that because it looks like the Toy Shock one has a deeper cabinet, a little bit better scale than this kind of narrow one that Well Played has. But they both have, and it's hard to see in this image on the Well Played one, but they both have the two flipper buttons, obviously for nudging as well as flipping.
    42:00
    Their plungers are both made of that. It's a plastic plunger kind of. the one on the well-played pinball looks horrible. I will say that. If that's what they're shipping, it just looks cheap and nasty. I can see it snapping off within five minutes of play. It just looks cheap and nasty. And you'll notice on the front of the well-played machine, that's where the USB plug-in is for interfacing there. So you probably assume there's a headphone jack in there, probably, too, so you can plug headphones in. Maybe. But what is the one thing that the well-played machine is missing there, Jared?
    42:34
    Uh, it's missing any sort of displays on the back box. That's right. I don't see a score display anywhere. No. Which means the score display is going to be right there on the screen, which, and considering this is an Android build of the Zachariah tables, it doesn't surprise me. It's just a straight port, as far as I can guess.
    42:55
    That's right. So, like, at least with the, um, uh, the Toy Shock one, they devised, basically, display out. Yeah. For the actual LCD display.
    43:09
    But the well-played one is just going to be basically you're playing the Android build on a cabinet, basically.
    43:20
    That's, look, I don't know. I'm on the fence about it. I don't know that the greatest experience, you know. So there you go, though. So if you've got, and I purposely put the collector's edition of Guns N' Roses on there because that price point is absurd.
    43:36
    It is. $12,500, folks. And they sold out the entire run in two hours. Two hours, yeah. That's the super, that's the CE version, isn't it? Yeah. They call it CE. Yeah. So probably for the price of tax on that, you can afford the Marvel pinball.
    43:58
    Yeah. For $50 less, you can get more tables with the well-played, if you want to play Zacharia tables, but you've got that really funky form factor. It just doesn't look right to me.
    44:11
    Yeah. I mean, those legs look just cheap. Flimsy. They look flimsy They really do And for then less you got your Toy Shock which again I can find any information on the 1 version of Toy Shock Everything I looked up, it was all referring to last year's thing. So I don't even know if this price point is going to stick. They might have increased the price, too. They may have done. I think the only difference between 1.2 and 1.1 is really the upgraded circuit board and, I think, black hole graphics on the side of the cabinet. And that's it. There's not going to be any of the DMV tables in there. That's the 2.0 version. Yeah.
    45:02
    And that hasn't even really been firmly announced yet. Like, you know, they've got plans for it, but, like, next year sometime, 2021.
    45:11
    Everything's up in the air. So that brings us back over to why are we actually going to talk about real pinball? We never talk about real pinball. Or at least we rarely talk about real pinball. But my lord, when I saw that Guns N' Roses table, my jaw hit the floor.
    45:29
    Yep. It was incredible. It is unbelievable. So there's a couple of interesting things that are going on here too with it. So Jersey Jack, not only do they have that insanely expensive collector's edition, which you can't buy because if you didn't buy it already, you can't buy it now. But they also wound up making their least expensive version ever, which is coming in just under seven grand.
    45:55
    It has a lot missing from it. There's no doubt about it. Which is not normal. Not normal with Jersey Jack. because normally the differences in a lot of cases between what they refer to as a pro model,
    46:15
    there's usually not a lot of stuff missing. It's normally just little extras and bling, basically. But you're missing, and we'll kind of highlight some of this, but things you're missing. You're missing the two different guitar headstocks.
    46:30
    You're missing on the pop bumpers the pop-up computers are essentially the drum kit and they've got cymbals and stuff on them. Those are gone.
    46:40
    You're missing a lot of the lighting. But what they are saying is it plays really nice and fast. So that's a good thing there.
    46:54
    That's a big price difference between $11.50 and $7.90 or whatever it was. like that's a lot of change that you could probably you could probably go the pro model and then go and buy a second hand pinball and get two you know right pretty decent ones for that price right so yeah so it is interesting uh the thing that stood out the most to me was yeah this thing will never be coming to digital uh not only because of the sheer processing power I think it would take with the insane amount of lights. I think just that regular base model has over 300 lights. The next one up has something like 450, and the collector's edition has something like 650 lights on it. I mean, it's an insane amount of lighting. I think they'd actually have a whole separate board or distributed boards just for the lights alone in this model. And that's not to mention the video package that they have accompanying this.
    48:03
    And then the sound package with full-cut songs. So there's where you're starting to get into insane licensing territory. These are masters. These are cut from the master recordings. And I can't remember how many songs exactly it is. I want to say it's like 13 or 14.
    48:23
    So you've got that. But then it's also featuring Gibson, Fender, Marshall, who's the drumstick? There's some major sponsors on this thing.
    48:37
    Yeah. Well, Pearl, I think is the other one. Yeah. So, I mean. Yeah, it's basically like roller games on steroids as far as the licensing problems go. Oh, my God. I mean, can you imagine trying to hammer that deal out?
    48:53
    Just. Man. You couldn't have a Kickstarter. There's why the table cost $12,500 for the collector's edition.
    49:01
    Absolutely. Because they're normally about $10,000, aren't they? That's what I thought previously, yeah. About $10,500. So an extra $2,000 on top for the licensing. And that's per unit.
    49:12
    So imagine how much this deal costs. But the thing is that they don't have to worry about it because it's sold out. So at least they're not having to risk it there. And that just shows you how strong the industry is at the moment, eh? I also found it interesting that it's shipping in family mode, but they didn't edit any of the songs. So if you play in family mode, I think you only get seven songs.
    49:36
    Yeah, right. If you want the rest of the songs, you've got to kick it into adult mode. And there's going to be profanity. Oh, yeah. Well, it was funny because I was watching this video that was an interview with the designers of the table, and the guy was talking about how he had this, I think it was like 700 lines of script that he needed one of the band members to talk for call-outs. and they were doing the adult version and he was talking about how the guy was like, hey, I don't want to read these. Can you just give me a line reading and I'll say it back? And he's like, yeah, sure. And he starts getting to some of these call-outs and he's like, I don't want to read this out loud for the guy to say it back to me. It was like one of them was like, quit pulling your pud and do something else. And it was just kind of funny. Wow.
    50:29
    Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting one on location, that one. I mean, it'll be okay in bars and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. You won't see this one in a family entertainment center. No. Anything other than family mode.
    50:45
    So the part that blew me away the most was the light show. Imagine playing that in... Look at this. It's just fantastic. I know, with the lights going up. I forget what they call the hot lights or something like that.
    51:00
    Incredible. Can you imagine playing that in a dark room? oh it would be so good with the sound or in the case of jersey jack with your headphones plugged in well no but here's the other thing again i think this is with the collector's edition only they put an amplified speaker in the topper it is an insane sound system that is on this thing I mean I think it's something that if you turned it up properly in an arcade that's all you would hear you wouldn't hear anything else in the entire arcade yeah it's just the sound package on Jersey Jacks in general are actually pretty good but they've got like mid range tweeters and a woofer in the cabinet like no other pinball game has that on the market but coupled with like a decent like almost studio quality speaker set up in it this thing would absolutely pump and i think one of the things you can do if you have it at home is you can put it onto jukebox mode and it'll just play the songs that are in there like a like a big glorified ipod basically yeah you know so it's going to be amazing to play i hope someone gets it down here in australia like it'll be the limited edition one or sorry the i think it's what the the regular limited and then CE. I think we might be lucky enough to see a limited down here somewhere, hopefully. Because I would love to get my hands on it. It was interesting that what they were trying to go for was capturing the concert experience.
    52:40
    That's what they wanted it to be. And the designer was saying that he purposely did not look at, touch, or play the Data East version of the game, because he didn't want to be influenced by it at all, didn't want to well, yeah. Taking you to swing cues from it. Exactly. But what I find interesting is that you're still doing the same kind of thing. You're trying to collect all the band members.
    53:06
    Well, it's a music thing, isn't it? It is. But they said the general idea is though you collect all the band members in order to get to the concert and then you play the concert. But they said no matter how poorly you're playing you will be able to start a song at some point in your three balls,
    53:28
    which I think is pretty cool. That is pretty good. Like, there's a guarantee, almost like it's a pity song. Right.
    53:35
    Like, you know, where you get, like, the pity extra ball at the end of your third ball because you've done so badly.
    53:41
    And the really insane thing is that, yes, they have the nine-minute version of November Rain in there, and you can play the entire song. And I guess what you're doing while you're playing any one given song, you're building up a jackpot and then at any time you can cash out that jackpot uh and then switch songs so it's up to you to how long you want to play any one song also from what i understand yeah it's uh it's gonna be an interesting one to play like just the mechanisms in it look great like you know the locking system and one of the i think it's like the the bass head where the ball gets locked and you store the balls there. See, I love it. Between this and Stranger Things, man, these guys are really starting to push the boundaries of what are capable on a pinball machine. Yep. I was lucky enough to get to play Stranger Things a lot the other night. the one with the Pico projector and the essentially stadium projection onto the playfield. And it doesn't get old. It looks so good and it makes the game so different to play. But this light package,
    55:04
    I don't know. I think putting Stranger Things and this next to each other, have a guess which one's going to win out.
    55:13
    It's not going to be Stranger Things, unfortunately. as much as I love it. I just kind of want to see this with Metallica right next to it.
    55:23
    And ACDC. It makes ACDC look like an EM. That's why I wouldn't even bother putting that one there. Which is fair to say, because it was produced in 2010, so it may as well be an EM with the amount of innovations that have happened in pinball in the last 10 years. It's not really a fair comparison, really. Am I correct in that Aerosmith and Kiss came after Metallica?
    55:51
    Aerosmith certainly did Metallica No, Aerosmith Didn't that come out after Metallica also? Yeah, it did And yet I would still put Metallica up against this Oh, you know what I have not seen in person? Iron Maiden So maybe that would be the one to put right next to it it's not that great. No? Really?
    56:15
    Well, we got the pro version at Netherworld. It's nothing to write home about. Oh, that's a shame. It's got an interesting playfield layout, but visually it's not awesome. I really dislike the game, actually.
    56:30
    So it's not one of my favorites to start with. But it's not super interesting. Well, I keep on wondering I'm going to see any of these because right now it's not exactly like you can just travel out there and go play pinball, at least where I'm at. Jared might be able to, but I can't. Yeah, we're lucky enough to be able to down here. We've just recently got the nod that we can actually stand up, drink beer at pubs and therefore play pinball machines in pubs. So, yeah, we're very fortunate here to be able to do that. so there you go folks uh lots of new info lots of things to uh to think about talk about discuss uh what has got you most excited though i mean are you more excited for you know some of these real pinballs that have come out are you excited at all for any of these cabinets are you strictly just like screw it all i only want the digital downloads of what zen and zachariah zachariah are offering um what is it tell us we're curious because we got another show to do in two weeks and we're gonna want to know yeah that's right because you know by that time you know with six will be out so not much to talk about there and then you know probably still in limbo about all the pinball cabinets. So, you know, what are we going to do? I have to talk about movies. Well, I'm always down for that. You know that. Yeah.
    58:10
    All right. Well, hey, folks, we appreciate you sticking around through this longer-than-usual gap that we had with the podcast. We're going to try and mix some things up a little bit. You might notice that happening soon. we just you know how we get bored with what we're doing and decide that we need to tweak try something new so be on the lookout for that I think you'll notice it happening it'll be happening on YouTube is basically where it'll happen it just depends on me and my time yes but until then until next time we talk like I said probably be about two weeks from now we usually don't know what we're going to talk about other than Jared's favorite things stuff and things that's it folks bye bye subscribe later see ya