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BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 23m·held·Feb 17, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

BlahCade covers pinball controllers, Zen VR plans, and community-created Wikipedia pages for Pinball Effects.

Summary

Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discuss pinball controller peripherals, Gibson Pinball's upcoming bespoke controller, a new Pinball Effects Wikipedia disambiguation page created by community contributors, Zen Studios' silence and upcoming VR announcements, Meta Quest headset purchasing decisions, and experiencing "pinball doldrums" — a lack of excitement for playing despite loving the hobby.

Key Claims

  • Gibson Pinball is working on a bespoke pinball controller with plungers, rumble, haptics, and solenoids that will work across Zen/Zacharias platforms, VR, console, PC, and mobile, and plans a Kickstarter to enable bulk ordering and bring down price.

    high confidence · Chris Friebus (Blockade Pinball host), direct statement about Gibson Pinball's controller project

  • A new comprehensive Pinball Effects Wikipedia disambiguation page was created by community members (Wilbur's, Mercy Scene, Laidback Ross) starting January 2nd and continuing through February 3rd, with detailed tables and platform information.

    high confidence · Jared Morgan, discussing Wikipedia contributor shoutouts and revision history

  • Zen Studios has had no new Pinball Bites content since November and no releases in December/January with nothing announced for February; AtGames cabinet content calendar was revised with Black Rose confirmed but Star Wars tables pushed back.

    high confidence · Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discussing Zen Studios communication and content pipeline

  • Zen Studios announced VR announcements, legacy updates, and Pinball Bites content coming on February 20th (The The Pinball Show episode).

    high confidence · Chris Friebus reading Discord announcement about upcoming Zen broadcast

  • Chris expects Zen VR announcement will feature augmented reality pass-through capability allowing virtual pinball machines to be placed anywhere in a player's living room with walk-around interaction.

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan speculation based on interview with Mel and VR features discussed

  • Meta Quest 3 has seen a $150 price drop from launch ($650 to $500) and remains positioned as the best value headset compared to Apple Vision Pro, Valve, and other competitors.

    high confidence · Chris Friebus discussing headset pricing and market positioning

  • Meta Quest 4 is rumored for holiday 2026 (approximately December 2026) with expected features including OLED screens, eye tracking, and foveated rendering.

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus discussing Meta Quest 4 rumors and speculation about purchase timing

Notable Quotes

  • “well that's the reason why there's no pinball controllers on the market... that it's way too expensive”

    Chris Friebus @ early in episode — Summarizes the economic barriers to dedicated pinball peripheral hardware in a small niche market

  • “people don't live in reality”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Response to Chris's lesson learned about Facebook forum dynamics and unrealistic expectations about pricing

  • “the community's gone and done what you guys should have done to start with and set this page up... now it's time for you as a studio to go on there and actually do the work”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Direct call-out to Zen Studios to complete and maintain the Wikipedia Pinball Effects page community members created

  • “I don't want a repeat of Pinball FX VR 2... I don't want a repeat of Star Wars VR, which is here's eight or ten tables. The end.”

    Chris Friebus @ mid-episode — Expresses frustration with past Zen VR releases having limited tables and makes expectations clear for future VR platform commitment

  • “I want a declaration up front to say this thing... the entire pinball effects catalog is going in there at some point. And that's what's going to be happening.”

    Chris Friebus @ mid-episode — Articulates the core expectation for Zen's VR platform: either full catalog commitment or he won't invest in a headset

  • “It needs to be all or nothing”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Reinforces the community expectation that Zen must commit to either comprehensive VR support or it won't be worth the hardware investment

  • “I'm feeling [the pinball doldrums] hard at the moment. Where you just kind of go, do I want to play anything? I don't know. Eh, nah. I'll do something else.”

    Jared Morgan @ end of episode — Expresses the phenomenon of losing motivation to play pinball despite still loving the hobby

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonGibson PinballcompanyZen StudioscompanyAtGamescompanyMelpersonWilbur'spersonMercy ScenepersonLaidback RosspersonPinball Effectsproduct

Signals

  • ?

    product_strategy: Gibson Pinball plans Kickstarter for bespoke pinball controller to enable bulk ordering and achieve competitive pricing; acknowledges premium peripheral market requires higher price points than mass-market gaming controllers

    high · Chris discusses Gibson's Kickstarter strategy to bring down price through bulk ordering; compares pricing expectations to Guitar Hero/Dance Dance Revolution peripheral tiers

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball community members created comprehensive Wikipedia disambiguation page for Pinball Effects to address streaming platform attribution gaps that official vendor failed to provide

    high · Jared highlights Wikipedia page created by Wilbur's, Mercy Scene, Laidback Ross starting January 2nd; notes detailed table information and platform data; calls out Zen Studios for not doing this themselves

  • ?

    communication_signal: Zen Studios has maintained radio silence on content pipeline with no Pinball Bites releases since November, no releases in December/January, nothing announced for February; AtGames cabinet content calendar was revised without clear communication

    high · Chris and Jared discuss 'crickets' from Zen; note revised AtGames calendar shifted from Star Wars focus to unspecified Zen table; Chris clarifies AtGames is 'just a software vendor' with limited promotional role

  • ?

    product_concern: Past Zen VR releases (Pinball FX VR 2, Star Wars VR) with limited table counts (8-10 tables) created community frustration; hosts expect Zen must commit to full catalog availability in new VR platform or risk poor adoption

    high · Chris: 'I don't want a repeat of Star Wars VR, which is here's eight or ten tables. The end.'; Jared: 'It needs to be all or nothing'; discussion of 'frustrating' and 'missed opportunity' with incomplete catalogs

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.251

0:00
This is the Blockhead Pimple Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Rebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, is Jared Morgan.
0:32
Hey, everyone. How are you going? It's been a while. You know what, Jared? Our movie show last time did such boffo numbers, we're just going to talk about movies again.
0:44
Oh, right. Yeah, absolutely. Movies all day. Every week now, we're actually a movie show now. I don't know if you all hated it or not, but boy, was that one of our lowest viewed shows. Well, you know, we're pretty up front about what we're going to be talking about on it. And, you know, people would have gone, oh, that's not for me. That's not what I'm here for. That's fine. Come on. We talk about a variety of things. It doesn't always have to be all about pinball, but I know. Y'all are like, oh, well, we had a Mel interview, and then we didn't have much after that, so we want pinball.
1:20
Well, you know, that's what we're going to give you today. That's right. We got a whole series of topics to kind of touch on. It's a big old grab bag. Yes. If I had an actual wheel, I would spin it, and then we would do that. I don't have an actual wheel. I know. The title lied.
1:38
It's like a – you know, you can actually have Wheel of Names. There's a site called Wheel of Names. Yeah, I know, but they're not very fun, are they? Right? I mean, it's not like having an actual clicker wheel. They're like – That's right. Like you would have it – I don't know if you have this sort of thing in the U.S., but we have a thing called the meat raffle here and you buy a ticket it's you go down to your local like you know um return services league or rsl here in australia where um all the um ex-servicemen go and um they usually have a meat raffle which is like a tray of meat and you buy a ticket into it like a dollar or something like that and you can win this big tray of meat you can take home and it's a thing it's been like this since the 1950s it's so weird but they yeah big old big old spinning wheel thing you know it's wheel of meat yeah okay wheel of meat that's right um you know i'm gonna i'm gonna dive into just a topic real quick uh it was kind of one of those things that i piped in on a facebook page thought i was being helpful and then started getting attacked and then started going, you know what, why are you being an idiot? Not me, but the person. Because Facebook. That's why. That place has turned into an absolute system. Well, no, but this was in a pinball page. I can't remember which. But basically somebody was asking, hey, how come we haven't had a pinball controller peripheral?

  • Pinball FX VR 2 and Star Wars VR were frustrating releases with limited table counts (8-10 tables) and incomplete catalogues, representing missed opportunities.

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing past Zen VR releases and expectations for future releases

    • Pinball FX
    product
    Pinball Mproduct
    Meta Quest 3product
    Meta Quest 4product
    Star Wars VRproduct
    The Walking Dead (LE)product
    Black Roseproduct
    Pinsimproduct
    BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization
    The Pinball Showevent
    Wikipediaorganization
  • ?

    announcement: Zen Studios formally announced VR announcements, legacy updates, and Pinball Bites content coming February 20th on Pinball Show broadcast; content details remain unconfirmed but expected to address platform scope and release cadence

    high · Chris references Discord announcement and February 20th Pinball Show episode with confirmed VR announcements coming

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Community speculation that Zen VR announcement will feature augmented reality pass-through capability enabling virtual pinball machines to be placed anywhere in living room with interactive walk-around experience

    medium · Jared: 'Pinball VR is now your lounge room... you can virtually place things anywhere... walk up to the pinball machine in your lounge room space and interact with it'; based on Mel's 'cagey' interview answers about VR capabilities

  • $

    market_signal: Meta Quest 3 achieved $150 price drop (from $650 to $500), positioning it competitively against Apple Vision Pro (failed/expensive), Valve, and other high-end competitors; future pricing pressure from import tariffs uncertain

    high · Chris discusses Meta Quest 3 pricing reduction and Apple Vision Pro's market failure; notes tariff concerns could raise future Quest 4 pricing to $700 territory

  • ?

    technology_signal: Meta Quest 4 rumored for holiday 2026 with expected OLED screens, eye tracking, and foveated rendering; creates consumer purchasing dilemma between current Quest 3 value and future hardware improvements two years away

    medium · Chris discusses Meta Quest 4 rumors (December 2026 holiday launch), expected features (OLED, eye tracking, foveated rendering), and FOMO dynamics around current vs. future purchase

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Both hosts experiencing 'pinball doldrums' — lack of excitement to play despite loving the hobby; Jared reports dropping off gaming in general over past two months despite still appreciating the medium

    high · Jared: 'I'm feeling [the pinball doldrums] hard at the moment. Where you just kind of go, do I want to play anything? I don't know.'; Chris acknowledges this is a known phenomenon they've discussed before

  • ?

    industry_signal: Community concern about Zen Studios maintaining separate Pinball FX and Pinball M platforms; hosts hope VR unification will consolidate both platforms into single distribution model matching AtGames cabinet approach

    medium · Chris: 'no delineation between pinball m and pinball fx it's just one... so that we can get the vr... in the same distribution which again is what we're getting on the at games cabinet'

  • ?

    content_signal: Community addressed streaming platform attribution gap by creating Wikipedia Pinball Effects disambiguation page; enables proper game selection on Twitch/Steam that previously only offered 2000s Xbox title as option

    high · Jared explains prior state where 'the only option you could select was the original pinball effects release for Xbox back in the 2000s'; notes community created solution Zen Studios should have provided

  • ?

    business_signal: AtGames cabinet content calendar underwent significant revision; originally planned Star Wars table releases for February-April shifted to unspecified 'Zen table' with Black Rose confirmed, indicating content prioritization or licensing changes

    high · Chris: 'february was supposed to be the kickoff of a whole bunch of star wars tables... that's not what's coming out in february'; notes 'rejiggering of content' and calendar showing only undefined 'Zen table'

    • 3:11
    And I'm thinking, boy, there's a topic that we've touched upon many a time, why don't I pop in and say? And so I just basically was like, hey, you know, A, this is a very small gaming population, and the number of those people that would actually want a dedicated controller is going to be even smaller from that.
    3:39
    We had the Pinsim, where you could build it yourself, and I said, You could have built it as cheaply as probably $70 or $80, or you could have gone and done what I did, where I tried to really fully kit it out.
    3:54
    And even then, I was buying used parts and stuff, and it clocked in at probably $250. So I was like, you know, these parts aren't cheap, and it costs money to do this. And the response was, yeah, well, that's just way too expensive. it i'm like well that's the reason why there's no pinball controllers on the market i understand that that it's way too expensive and so then i said well what price are you looking at because you know a brand new ps5 controller or an xbox controller these days is what 70 75 dollars something of that nature you know about that yeah that's what they cost here and that's just for a game controller that's good on every game that you play on that system right and the person responded with uh well no i can get one for like 20 or 30 bucks and i responded well sure a cheap chinese knockoff which they took offense at um but it's true but it's true and i said hey look even logitech third party who makes budget controllers that basically you know plug in and get the job done or they go all the way up to their deluxe controllers which have all the cool bells and whistles are really precise it's what the professional gamers would be using uh but those are back up to your very expensive price point 150 plus right like you're playing with the xbox elite controller that thing is like nearly 200 or something yeah australia whereas a regular one's like 80 yeah so yeah so so that then had me go okay well look there is somebody you know we've mentioned before gibson pinball is working on building their controller um i keep on getting updates here and there it keeps on feeling like it's just on the cusp of almost there we're almost there so i'm like i'm anxiously mating man come on we're there uh ready to promote you um but uh i i brought up that hey here's somebody that's making a bespoke controller specifically with the idea that's going to work with zenz and zacharias stuff it's going to be able to work on hopefully the mobile but for sure with vr for sure with console for sure with pc um it's gonna have plungers and rumble and haptics and solenoids and you know the whole aerometer the whole yeah the whole works i go but it is not going to be cheap i i have a general idea of what price point they're hoping for i'm not going to talk about it because that's me speaking out of turn um but i it's not going to be 79 dollars no peripherals i keep on thinking about you know when you went and we're getting into the guitar hero realm of things or dance revolution yeah you could buy ddr you could buy that cheap vinyl mat for 20 bucks or you could spend 100 plus on the actual dance pad that's going to last for a while and feel like you're actually playing the game um you know do you want cheap out of made out of like you gotta realize it's like if it's going to be made out of plastic it's going to be cheap yeah if it's anything other than plastic and it has actual things inside it that are supposed to do things it's going to cost a lot of money yeah because those things don't just grow on trees yeah and and so then i was just kind of like well Or the response was, oh, well, yeah, hand-built one-offs are going to cost a fortune. I'm like, well, that's not necessarily what Gibson's planning. The reason why, because I know that eventually they're going to do a Kickstarter, and the reason for that is so they can bulk order, which will bring down the price.
    7:52
    So what have you learned from this interaction on Facebook? Tell me the one lesson, one takeaway that you've learned about trying to help people on Facebook. that people don't live in reality? Correct.
    8:06
    That's one thing that you've learned. Don't tell me not to start. I can't help myself here. I was going to say, if you go to a general forum on Facebook,
    8:15
    prepare to have a bad time. There's only certain ones that I will go to on Facebook, and they are very specific ones that I know don't have idiots in them. And I'll say that freely, because all these forums generally are full of idiots.
    8:33
    They are just, I don't know what they do in there, but it's never a good time on a Facebook forum unless you know exactly which one you're going to. I can't resist when it's a topic that we've covered on this show multiple times. You're a better man than I, Chris. I know, I know. Maybe I'm trying to be the smartest man in the room.
    8:51
    Honestly, that's why I've disconnected from so many forums just in general. Even the Pimple Effects Forum, like the Discord, I maybe occasionally log on to it and look at it, but it's rare that I actually interact. Well, on Reddit, I'm listed as Blockade, and next to it, it says, DigiPin Know-It-All.
    9:16
    That was the title I bestowed upon myself, by the way. That's your own break. Yes, and the greatest thing was after there was some discussion that I filled in, and somebody commented afterwards. They went, wow, you really do know it all.
    9:32
    It's like, hmm? It's like, yeah, we might have a few years' experience in this. Yeah. But, yeah, anyway, it was just one of those things where it's like, look, man, I know you all want it cheap, but let's face realities. Quit thinking that our hobby is, you know, on the scale of Fortnite. You know? Oh, yeah. It's just not. Not even remotely close.
    10:01
    So, you know, you've got to put your expectations into place and, you know, realize where you are. But anyway, that was that little fun tidbit. But let's see, where should we go next, Jared? What do you want to do?
    10:18
    Well, how about, since we're talking about things on the internet, we actually talk about something that's good on the internet. What? And that is a listing that was created for pinball effects on Wikipedia. Yeah. So those of you who have tried to stream on platforms like Steam and Twitch will know that if you want to attribute your streaming to a particular game you can go and select that when you're actually setting up your stream but with pinball effects the only option you could select was the original pinball effects release for Xbox back in the 2000s and that was the only entry so what um has been done recently um is a couple of guys who actually hang out in the blockade um discord uh made me aware of this um back on 4th of january and they've they've taken um as you can see on screen at the moment the all the information that's floating around for pinball effects and made a dedicated disambiguation page or at least an actual full-on wikipedia page that's different to the original pinball effects page and look if you're familiar with wikipedia pages you'll know as chris as chris scrolls through this yeah just how much work would have been put in by the people doing this so i want to give um some shout outs here to the main contributors that i could actually see from the revisions page so we've got um front of the show wilbur's uh and also mercy scene uh as well who are two um pinball effects users with the same username um they've been doing a lot of edits to the page so um laidback ross is another one that's set up i'm not sure of what that username links back to as far as pimple effects usernames, but definitely will be as mercy scene at both on the leaderboards.
    12:33
    So this has been going on like 2nd of January and it's now 3rd of February was the latest one. That was sort of a lot of the feedback had been like, you know, stop editors from Wikipedia and stuff like that. This is really nice. I like also how you select a table and it brings up what winds up sending you to the Wikipedia on that particular title.
    13:00
    Yeah, this table is great. So that's really nice. This is very comprehensive and I like this. This is good. This is a lot of the information that now and then I'm looking for and I have to go to various sites to find. I'm going to throw out a suggestion, guys.
    13:23
    Just something that I would love to see personally on here, who the table designer was, if that's at all possible.
    13:36
    Yeah. I mean, that would be nice for the Williams stuff, but it would be also great for all the Zen. because that particular information, I forget where that lives now. It's pinned in some obscure part of the stores page or Pinball FX3 page, I think. Well, I know we had a list going at the Digital Pinball Fans site way back when, but it hasn't been updated in forever because I used to be the one that was updating it, and I haven't touched it.
    14:18
    So that would be like the one other piece of information I would like to see on here. Let's give the designers credit, not just who the manufacturer of it was.
    14:32
    But otherwise, this is great just in terms of where it's released and everything. I like that there's a whole section on Pinball M and everything. no this is nice it's really good like there's a lot of it been put into that page and i just want to like i i know the the challenges with getting a page even updated there are so many rules and regulations you have to follow on wikipedia as a contributor like it's like you have to learn how to actually write articles on wikipedia to actually just contribute an article and you'll see that at the top of the page there's like um a banner that says oh you know um there's you know game gamecraft and all these other sort of warnings um that are there so if you have been wanting this for ages if you're a streamer and you want to properly attribute your games then actually go and contribute to this page and you know do some cleanup on it and like address those problems so this page can become canonical for pinball effects uh and that banner gets removed yeah um because i think there's some sort of ranking thing i think that happens with wikipedia articles if they have that banner but i mean anyone that can go in there log in take the time to log in as a wikipedia editor and then like verify the content but this is now really over to Zen Studios folks like the community's gone and done what you guys should have done to start with and set this page up and gone to the trouble of doing it so now it's time for you as a studio to go on there and actually do the work to make it as accurate as possible for your game so off you go, that's your job now, ta-ta ta-ta, off you go time for you to do the work the extra work, not much work because 80% of it's being done now you just need to do the 20 to actually get over the line so off you go uh all right well hey uh if the wheel was spinning click click click click click oh look at that it talks about uh here uh why is zen being so quiet wow convenient that it rolled right into a zen topic after that it's very convenient that wheel is well tuned i like it so it had like it's been crickets from zen there hasn't been a pinball bites like ever since that last one they did um sort of like november i'd like to say yeah and then it's just been yeah radio silence i mean we had our interview with mel obviously but yeah we did that was that was you know state of zen but it wasn't necessarily like we weren't being teased with anything that was going to be coming out real soon um i mean we haven't had a release in december january there's nothing announced for february um it's like yes what what do we what do we got coming up next please yeah yeah the year is getting away from us fast um interestingly enough jared and i know that you don't follow this but i do um so we've shown in a past episode what to expect from zen on at games for the cabinet and february was supposed to be the kickoff of a whole bunch of star wars tables um for like the next three months yeah uh that's not what's coming out in february oh okay what's coming out instead Instead, Black Rose is coming up.
    18:16
    That was on the list, but it wasn't. No, and AtGames didn't show a master list. They just showed a revised calendar. And the next two things are, it just says a Zen table. It's not Star Wars. So I don't know what the heck happened there. um but there's been a rejiggering of content uh for what's going to be coming to the uh the alp 4k uh so that's kind of interesting um but again crickets like there hasn't i don't know zen doesn't really promote uh what's going on with ad games uh no it's that games is business They're just a software vendor. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of interesting. I made that point on a Steam discussion thread or something. There was, I mean, the thread up to the point I was commenting it was accurate, but I just disambiguated some of that stuff to do with hack counts. So, yeah, completely tossed out what that calendar was because now we don't know. It doesn't, yeah, it's wrong. It turns out that was wishful thinking.
    19:24
    Well, you know, best laid plans and everything. Right. Subject to change. Right. What we do have is over on the Discord page, hey, look at that, an announcement of Pinball Bites, VR announcements, and legacy updates. Yes. Legacy updates. Huh. What would be the legacy updates? What are we calling legacy tables these days? I'm assuming it's the ones that haven't been released yet. Yeah, but are we talking about the ones that haven't been released that are Williams? Are we possibly talking about just Xen originals? Because there's a whole bunch of those. Can we please, please, please talk about maybe getting Aliens?
    20:05
    Or Bethesda? One of those two? You know, yeah, I hope that... Maybe it's legacy updates. These are ones that we can't get lost in Zip4 and therefore abandon all ye hope. That would be really... That's an update. That's an update, but man, you wouldn't want to promote that, would you? that's a let's brush that under the rug kind of update it is it is i mean they have done it before where um they've said no that we can't do it yeah and they've broken the bat some tough news on the show and i think you know it's good that they're you know confident enough to do that on the show um but so vr announcements yes you see that's that's very good news that's good news uh because if they're announcing, that means they're semi-close. I hope I would think so Like yeah not VR update It VR announcements Yeah Mel did say that there was I think going to be something happening around sort of quarter one Yeah, we're definitely quarter one. And we're definitely in quarter one based on the interview we had. And there was some big announcements, apparently. So this is obviously a big announcement. Since we have no clue what these announcements are, speculation time! All right, Jared. What announcement do you hope that they are making?
    21:29
    Okay, so based, and this is purely on the answers that Mel was able to give us in the interview last year.
    21:44
    He was very cagey, obviously. on what you could do with um uh the vr update and i made a passing comment given that i've got a question i know what its big you know selling point is which is the um augmented reality pass-through i would think that one of the major announcements that's going to be talked about here Whereas, yep, you've basically now got the ability to virtually have a pinball machine in your lounge room through augmented reality.
    22:21
    And it's like the whole pinhole, like you were experiencing something like Star Wars. Yeah. Pinball VR is now your lounge room. And you can virtually place things anywhere in the lounge room. You can walk up to the pinball machine in your lounge room space and interact with it and walk around it and look at it. That's what I think is going to be the big deal in this VR release. Okay. So let me rephrase that.
    22:51
    And I'll answer this so you can think about it. But what I hope comes out with this announcement is what Zen's release cadence is going to be for this. What I hope, because here's what I don't want. I don't want a repeat of Pinball FX VR 2 or Pinball FX 2 VR. I don't want a repeat of Star Wars VR, which is here's eight or ten tables. The end.
    23:26
    Yeah. Star Wars VR is frustrating. Oh, so frustrating. They didn't get all the titles in. Such a missed opportunity there. Yeah. Like, really, really, really missed opportunity. So that's what I'm hoping is that, look, if you want to dump five tables right off the bat, kind of like what they did with Pinball M, here's five tables. Like a core pack. Core pack, yeah, get you started, give you the taste, this is what you can expect out of this. uh but ultimately i hope that they do what they are doing with uh the uh at games cabinet which is then release a table either every week or every other week something of that like there's always content coming there's always content yep uh because i think you'll see a buy-in rate better than uh it gives people a chance to play it gives people a chance to get hyped up about that particular thing that's come out everybody's on the same page playing that particular one and then they're all sudden start thinking about oh and then this other one's coming up and i'm kind of you know jazzed for that because of how much i enjoyed playing this one as opposed to when all of a sudden you do here's four table packs well now you know some people bought and some people didn't buy this one and some people bought all of them and some people are still on the fence and and it kind of muddies the waters there but yeah i really want to know that zen is committed to basically getting through their entire catalog and making sure it comes to be that's the announcement i want to see it's like I want a declaration up front to say this thing, whether it's like, and the other thing, I mean, aside from that, it's like how it's going to be deployed. Are you going to have a steam VR version or like a native headset only version? Yeah. But aside from that, we'll talk about that more. Um, I want a roadmap that says either there will be select tables coming over or the entire pinball effects catalog is going in there at some point. And that's what's going to be happening. I don't really care about dates or timelines. I just want, if I invest in this, I know that this is the only thing that I really need to spend my money on if that's what I want. I want that virtual pinball experience like you have with the cabinet, but in VR. Because honestly, that's my thing. I want to play in VR, but I also know myself and know that this is the only thing I'm probably going to be playing in VR.
    26:12
    I can pretty much guarantee you the same. I'm not into the VR world. That's not my thing. It doesn't really excite me. I don't like being closed off from everything else.
    26:31
    I don't know. It almost feels claustrophobic to me, which is why I enjoy being able to play on the cabinet because I'm not closed off to anything. I'm in the open, and people can come and have conversations with me, and I can easily pause and all that. I'm not, okay, now let me put the controllers down. Let me take the headset off. I'm not having to deal with any of that. So I have no intention of investing in a headset if I'm only going to get 10 games. yeah yeah that's all you're getting like just like the star wars vr experience no that's not worth it yeah at all um i i would agree like it needs to be all or nothing and i really want to see like if they're doing a on headset experience only and there's not a steam vr version of this that's a missed opportunity at some point they need to lay out plans for like sure have it on the headset exclusive for the time being because that means you get into the MetaQuest store and that gets eyes on it you can feature it, promo it, stuff like that it's important to be in the MetaQuest store like that's a key marketing factor but having it on SteamVR is something that needs to be taken advantage of because I know even the Quest 3 being more powerful than Quest 2 the gameplay experience on PC graphically is better and it really can really push the limits of what the headset is able of displaying rather than relying on its inbuilt um snapdragon um chip which is pretty powerful but not as powerful as your pc with a rtx 3060 right um so give us that experience you know let us choose the platform we're on and give us that full experience with like crisp graphics and all that sort of stuff you know that brings up another thing that i hope uh is uh part of this and that is no delineation between pinball m and pinball fx it's just one it's just one pinball environment so that we can get the vr so that we the vr platform x sorry fx and m in the same distribution which again is what we're getting on the at games cabinet it's just one true one thing so i hope that that also is the case um because those honestly those horror tables in vr will be spectacular. Oh, jeez, I can't wait. If they don't bring in the table. Because that walking dead table in VR was pretty incredible. It was amazing. That was pretty incredible.
    29:25
    The actual figures were actually walking down the table at you. They looked so good. Yeah, well, and then you had the zombie that would poke his head out when you gamed over. Oh, yeah. It was so good.
    29:38
    So, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see where they go with this. that show is on February 20th so this week if you're watching it in the appropriate week but yeah so that should be coming up soon alright spinning that wheel oh look at that it clicked on something else that's related to this god I gotta quit planning these shows um speaking of VR and again this is my own hmm when am I going to purchase when am I not I honestly was I was debating getting the Quest 3 right around Christmas because Costco had it as a bundle with, it came with a soft case, basically. So for the same price that everybody else was buying, you also got the $50 soft case. And I thought, oh, that's great. And then Christmas passed and Costco no longer carries it.
    30:31
    Costco also no longer carries the 3S, like it's sold out there. and my big worry was oh crap uh we got some tariffs here in the u.s that are being slammed down import tariffs yes how much is this going to raise the price of things if at all so far it hasn't on these but then like a friend of mine had said well that's because they're already here in the country uh so what happens when the stuff runs out stuff runs out yeah um but that anyway that got me thinking again well okay hey i'm cool with not having it right now i don't know zen's plans even with a zen's plans going forward um i have a headset that i can borrow and you know help do reviews for this show in the meantime but you know at a certain point maybe this library would be significant enough and that got me thinking about the future and as with all tech I start going, do I buy now or do I buy later? And I started looking at what are the rumors for the MetaQuest 4 I kind of want to wait MetaQuest 4 coming out in 2026 rumors And we're talking holiday 2026 So it's a December 2026 We're talking a hard, almost two years from now basically But OLAD screens yes please uh eye tracking yes please uh doing that bit where and i forget i know there's a specific word for it and i don't know what it is but where wherever your eye looks that's where it's pumping the resolution and it starts prioritizing where it's processing is going it's very clever yeah more expensive like the newer headsets that were coming out um alongside the quest 3 had that eye tracking technology but like they were you know two thousand dollars well so so that's the thing apple's headset has died a hard death oh yeah that's right the vision pro nobody bought it because it was freaking expensive and it was not a gaming platform um the beautiful but no titles for it therefore it's dead no uh the The one from Valve and I forget who else has one. They're a little bit, they're more expensive also than what Meta is. But that's kind of to be expected because Meta has market dominance. And market dominance allows you to lower the price and manipulate things. The things that Meta has thrown in software-wise on MetaQuest 3 to improve that have really raised the bar of things.
    33:19
    So there's where I'm just like, oh, should I wait? but if i wait yeah what is that price because the meta quest 3 has been dropped down in price by 150 from its original it was 650 now it's 500 um you know when a meta quest 4 comes out with import taxes and everything are we going to be back up to that 700 mark and nothing should be looking at more than that i don't know that's that's the big mystery so um I don't know.
    33:52
    Honestly, the 3 is a good headset. Sure. I've played... Well, people said the 2 was also. Well, the 3 is definitely, for me, the one to get. It's the right price for the features. Yes. The thing that I love about OLED screens is where they said absolutely no god rays. I went, ooh. Because I did not enjoy the god rays on that. well the rift had some serious gatherings going on yeah i know that they don't they're not as prominent at all on the three um no they're pretty good yeah um the the weirdness on the three is it's like you're having a pretty good experience on that i'm telling you like yeah the well it's the thing that's the difference is it's not one panel it's individual eye panels in the quest and the high resolution really, really helps.
    34:47
    I don't know. It's got a good balance. It's a headset that if you were to buy it now, even two years down the track, I think it would actually still hold its own because the thing that they did with the Quest 2 is they held back performance on the Quest 2 and they enabled it as they got more and more familiar with the chip. So they unlocked things on it that were like, you know, essentially the Quest 2 was at like, you know, 70% when it launched and then they unlocked it to be 100% compatible or 100% usage.
    35:23
    So you can expect the same with Quest 3. In fact, they've already done some of that stuff already. We'll have to see how much FOMO I get, especially since my birthday is in two weeks.
    35:37
    Well, if you don't record, happy birthday for two weeks Because we may not be recording. No, we won't be recording then. Plus my birthday. Oh, we might do a – Plus mine doesn't actually exist this year.
    35:49
    Oh, right. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah. Because you're a leap year baby. Yeah. So don't I get special discounts for that? Right? Yeah, right? Everything's free for me on that day because the day is free. Yeah.
    36:01
    I mean, are you even illegally allowed to drink in the U.S. with your actual age? No, I only just turned a teenager.
    36:09
    Can't even drive. Hey, something that you and I have talked about in the past, and I think that you're kind of going through it at the moment.
    36:20
    Hold on. Spinning that wheel. Click, click, click, click. There it is. The pinball doldrums. Yep. I'm feeling them hard at the moment.
    36:33
    Where you just kind of go, do I want to play anything? I don't know. Eh, nah. I'll do something else.
    36:42
    Nothing's exciting you. You give it the attempt and you just go, yeah, I mean, I still love it, but eh. Yeah, it's just like, I don't want to have a four-hour session on it.
    36:59
    Yeah, it's what I'm feeling at the moment. I, over the last two months, I've sort of dropped off my gaming in general for some reason.
    37:10
    I just haven't felt motivated much to turn on the gaming PC. It's what I used to do. The kids used to go to bed, and I used to throw on the gaming PC and maybe do an hour or so each night. And I just get to the evening, I go, I just want to go to bed.
    37:29
    Because, you know, I'm 45 and I'm an old man. But apart from that, even when I've got... It's like the kids aren't with me. I've got full access to the PC and it's like the daytime.
    37:44
    I'm still going, do I want to play pinball effects or just pinball in general on the computer? It's like, no, not really. I forced myself the other week to actually log on to pinball effects and play the events. because that's pretty much what I'm doing when I'm logging on now. I'm just focusing my attention on events and doing that. And I must admit, the other thing that's really good is that you see your friends on Steam chasing down your scores and beating your scores, and that's a motivation as well to get in there and try and beat them.
    38:26
    So I've been sort of doing that a bit as well, which is, again, good. This is a good thing that Zen's doing, putting those engagement things into the platform because it does make you want to actually do something. If you just go, I don't know what to play, I've got decision paralysis, then you can go, I guess I'll just do that and chip away and see if I can beat someone else to score. So I don't know if you get this sensation when these come across, but I know for myself, then I would start feeling guilty of what kind of pinball fan am I if I can't do it. you know oh i i love pinball and i've got five of them downstairs and i go and play tournaments every fortnight um on them but i can't be bothered to go and just turn on a pc that's literally in my living room and go and play some digitally like what's wrong with me sort of thing you know and i don't know i i a don't feel guilty and this is you know not to just jared i'm talking to all of you don't feel guilty go live your life go experience other things uh i get in moods where all i want to do is watch movies and then all of a sudden i'm like i really want to play a game but what kind of game do i want to play i want to play a story-driven game as opposed to something like pinball which is just you know pop in go do pop right back out yeah um i'm currently on a book kick where i'm just uh i've been well this started with a started with a movie i was watching movie called saturday night which is about that opening show of saturday night live that got me interested in how much truth was in that versus how much was a amalgamation of various things that happened beyond then and they're just trying to cram it in so that you will get that warm fuzzy feeling of oh yeah i remember that i remember that i remember that uh anyway that got me then oh hey there's these two books about those early years so then i read one book now i'm reading the other book the 50th anniversary is uh airing tonight i mean so it's like all of a sudden all my focus became SNL, right? That's what I'm focused on. Hyper-focused on SNL. Right.
    40:53
    That's going to go away. I'm going to finish the content and then I'm going to be like, okay, now what? You know?
    41:01
    The thing is that pinball is always there. It's your friend that doesn't mind if you forget about them for a bit and not get in contact with them for a beer. And you can go, hey, I haven't caught up for a while. How about that beer? And you just start the game up and you realize, oh yeah, it was good to catch up with you again. And maybe we should do this more frequently. You know. And I know I'm a broken record on this, but I have not had the doldrums since getting the cabinet.
    41:37
    You haven't? No. See, I... And it comes down to literally, a it right there in my living room not taking up much space it powered down i can turn the volume down low so I not worried about is it going to be making too much noise because I want to play it at 11 o at night
    41:57
    So there's that aspect. But the absolute key aspect of it is turning it on and a minute later I'm playing.
    42:07
    It just makes it so simple. and the interface is just like boom, boom, scroll, scroll, scroll, there's my table, play it, I'm in, right? Right. It's really changed my approach. They do tournaments, but it's not like you're seeing the results and there's organization. All they have is the leaderboards that pop up, and the leaderboards aren't even for the tournaments. You have to go onto a website in order to see where you placed in the tournament. Oh, right. And then the tournament prizes, it's a random drawing. If you played, you're entered into the random drawing. It has nothing to do with your score. So it's kind of taken away that kind of pressure from the thing, but it's allowed me to instead just go, yeah, I feel like playing something. Let's flick it on. All right, I'm going to play this. Ten minutes later, go, all right, hey, it's time to go grab dinner. Okay, bye. Turn off the machine. Go away. whereas i always felt with the pc it was this okay i am now going to sit and play on the pc and i'm blocking off this chunk of time to do exactly that um instead of because there's some days where i just leave the machine on and throughout the day all of a sudden i'm like ah what am i doing right now i don't know let's go have a quick game that you just dip in and dip out right yeah you know i'm in between doing the pc connected to you know no so i that's what i'm finding interesting is that while you're going through it again and i know that we've both gone through these waves uh before yeah um i honestly in the last year of ownership haven't had the doldrums so um i keep on finding new things that i'm enjoying playing so yeah kind of interesting how that works.
    43:56
    I wonder if there's something else on the wheel. I've got two more things on the wheel. Relate to maybe ways you could get back into rekindle your desire. Clackety-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack. Oh, look at that. Hey, have you ever played a table that you just didn't get into and you're like, yeah, whatever. That's a whatever table. and then you don't play it and then one day you're going through the whole library of tables that you have and you go well boy there's that thing should i give it another shot should i actually like concentrate on it and maybe learn the rules and see if it's worth its salt i've done this before sometimes to go yeah i just don't like this table i want to challenge my beliefs on it right um and yeah and and other times i'm just like oh my god why did i sleep on this this is now one of my new favorites you know that i'm gonna bash around on so uh jared and i decided that we're going to uh i don't know how many you've picked jared i've got three for sure with a couple of just honorable mentions of uh tables that i think you should dive into and you're going to discover that they're absolutely wonderful uh no restrictions on this if it was an actual real machine if it's purely digital i unfortunately have not touched any new machines in years i'm so behind on releases of i've i've not played wonka i've not played iron maiden that's how far back it goes with that's a long time it's a long time because i don't have iron mains being oh no IMA is not being rerun no it's not vaulted Metallica is being yeah um rerun so because I know Jared plays a lot more uh has access to a lot more of these things and so it wasn't a digital only thing uh or a specific game only thing it was just hey here's titles that maybe give them another shot and this is my one of my honorable mentions just to say what got me thinking about this and And that is, again, on the cabinet, there was a tournament where it involved playing Wild West Rampage. Oh, yeah. I've always liked the look of Wild West Rampage. I have never been able to get into the play. I found playing it on the PC just...
    46:36
    I don't know. There's something about the scale of it. It's a wide body. and i just but it but it also lays out a lot like adam's family but i just didn't find it as fun as adam's family and that was it always came down to i'm just not having fun with this i don't really care to learn uh all right i'd bash around in it oh yeah that's the score and then that'd be the end of it but because this tournament i decided to actually put some time into it and i got to learn it and all of a sudden it clicked and i was like oh okay no now i'm having a good time on this um so that's what got me thinking about this um but i'm gonna go win the way back machine to the first table that i ever gave this kind of mentality to a proper we're gonna deep dive into it and came away from it going i really like that and that is moon night yeah moon night yeah now moon night it has a lot of cool to it it's got a bit of a wonky play field it's a busy art style which makes it not easily accessible right off the bat it's also got a bizarre set of rules and you're going to be killing yourself going how come i'm not getting a good score and then suddenly you discover the trick uh then it's all about the clock and when to hit that thing and all of a sudden your scores just like ramp up and go crazy um here's the fun part about moon night for me i will all of a sudden start playing it a whole bunch and i'll remember everything and I'll get these crazy scores and I'll have I don't think I've ever actually wizarded it um but I come close and I'm like yeah that's great and then I don't touch it for a long time yeah and I go back to it and I go oh crap I've forgotten everything but because I know that my enjoyment is is there to be found there's a rediscovery and there's a lot of enjoyment in that rediscovery and then i finally get the aha moment i go oh i remember what i used to do and then i just start wailing on it yeah so moon knight is my first uh pick of a table that you should really uh give it a chance read those rules find find where all the different mode contributors are to the wizard mode because they're scattered all throughout the play you Go and do lots of weird stuff to get them. They are.
    49:18
    You've got to be quite deliberate with your shots in certain sequences to get it. So, yeah. There's my pick one. Jared, what's your pick one? Okay, so I've mentioned this before in previous shows about this one. And you can probably roll your eyes at this one, Chris, but it is Homeworld.
    49:39
    Funny enough, I was trying to give it a go just this last week. uh you're trying to give it a proper shake um but i'm still interested in giving it a proper shake so yes go so home world when i first like played the table i was going you know and this was a of a lot of people i was just so slow like the game like you got to wait you know seven or eight times for the ball to settle in that um lock hole and the ambient music doesn't help yeah it's very well it is you're right it's very it's sleepy style yeah that's right but it's very it's a bit like aliens the the isolation in that it's yeah it's it's deliberately sort of muted music because you sort of you know you're playing this sort of big expansive game if you were playing the original game but so you're sort of you're hitting around this thing you're trying to get locks and you know you get locks and you know 26 shots later or something you actually get multi-ball it feels like that sometimes but then you realize okay the the whole idea with this table is to slow you down because that is the way that homeworld plays like it's a big long tale to actually build up your resources and get your fleet prepared and all that sort of stuff now having said that i haven't played homeworld but i've seen the aesthetic of it in all the um the trailers and stuff and once i watched the trailers for the game i then used that lens to go back to the pinball game i thought right i get what they're doing here now it's deliberate that it's slowing you down and it's making you sort of build things up to get to a point like even having to do that you know somewhat hated mode start like rotisserie in the middle of the play field the donut yeah the donut that's that's there to slow you down um and to give you this feeling of you're building up your resources to actually go on a mission so once you flip your mind to that one and you focus on doing those missions in the donut um in the middle um it starts to become a really interesting game and fun to actually get to the end and it's not easy to get all those modes done and not drain no because the table does have some odd bounces on it and the outlanes are a little bit brutal so it's sort of you know you've got to the strategy is to always have kickbacks lit and keep your kickbacks like going because you'll need them um so that's my pick for one that i've in the digital realm that's like yeah check it out because it's good it's funny because i uh uh actually have the game because it was a free game on uh at the game store but i haven't i still haven't played it i really should i should just to see what the aesthetic is compared to the But it's an investment in time because it's like one of those long-tail campaign-style things. I just don't have the patience for it. All right. My second pick is available – well, was available digitally.
    52:58
    It might still be, but it's also based off of a real machine. and I know we talked about this back in the day when I finally unlocked the key to it was Ripley's Believe It or Not.
    53:12
    It is an ugly table. It really is. It's just not really appealing, but it is a Pat Lawler and I'll be damned if once you figure out how to get through the modes and stack modes, because you can basically stack two modes at the same time,
    53:35
    suddenly that thing opens up and becomes really just a blast, and your scores skyrocket, and it gets absurd with how high you can start going scores. And once you... I've wizarded it many a time now.
    53:55
    Once you get into that final wizard thing, It's just balls a-popping and loads of fun. Kind of like being Twilight Zone Lost in the Zone.
    54:07
    Yeah, right. You can see how Pat's sort of taken a lot of inspiration, I think, from his previous forays in Billy Williams. Yeah. I have not played it in a long while because it's in Pinball Arcade. And that's a punishment to play. It's a punishment to load.
    54:26
    Yeah. That's more the case. I really want to play it on my cabinet, but unfortunately this was back before Farsight. Well, Farsight never did do an actual cabinet. They had to go through Arcuda. I don't have Arcuda. And then you had to download a mod, and I can put it in portrait mode, but it literally requires me going into Windows and changing the orientation of the screen. Way too much effort. Not good. One of those. yeah it's it's like this is like the one too many steps to actually go back and play it again and honestly it's pinball arcade has not stood up very well as far as pieces go it's a it's just does not play like that yeah at all um but hey maybe you still have it in pinball arcade maybe you are a vpx player and i'm sure it's available there oh you can get yeah or beautiful recreations of it in vpx or you stumble across it in the arcade it is completely worth playing it's it's a load of fun i even just watched uh the guys that do straight down the middle um they were doing the top 10 pinballs that are most bang for your buck so it wasn't the best pinball and it wasn't uh most popular or whatever but ripley's ranked pretty high in their list um just because it is a very deep table and a lot of there's a lot of satisfaction uh that you can get out of playing it so that's my number two managed to put hands on one recently like a actual one and it's fun yeah what's your number two um my number two um it's a recent-ish release from Stern. Okay. It is Black Knight Swords of Rage. Oh. It's the pro. Okay. So, you walk up to the game, like, the pro doesn't have the upper playfield, which honestly, it's the model to get if you are looking to buy a Black Knight Sword of Rage. Somebody that doesn't like upper playfields. Yeah, and this is me saying, like, I like upper playfields, but the one on Black Knight Swords of Rage doesn't really add much at all to it um but yeah the pro is great because everything flows really nicely and the play field is really visible on it anyhow that aside um initially when you walk up to this thing it's it's just flashing lights so it's i'm sure it tells you on the screen what you're doing but it's it's the stern flashing lights everything's flashing yeah sort of thing and initially when you walk up to it and you sort of trying to not drain because it's a drain monster it's terrible um the the shots you need to make and stuff to light modes you kind of stumble across them but it's not really clear but once you like do a um a multi-ball with a mode stacked in it because with sterns that's the rule yeah you always bring a mode into your multi-ball uh when you when you're playing a stern now that's just the table stakes of how they've coded things um so once you do that you start getting a flow and you start doing a couple of modes and you find where the bounces are on this table it is it's such a fun game to play and when you get a good score on it you really feel like you've done a great job like i got i think 70 or 80 million on it the other day um after just playing it for like an hour straight um and it's it's fun it's a fun shooting game the flow is there it's just a lot of fun to shoot um and when you get your head around what shots you need to take you get golden you know fair enough uh okay my last pick this is uh for me was entirely dependent upon playing in cabinet mode um and entirely dependent upon me just going ah whatever i'm just gonna flip and see what happens then i started getting curious about repeating things and going wait is actually doing something what is and then that got me a little bit more into it xeno tilt um yes it's let's be honest it's a bit impenetrable at first because there is so much eye candy going on and just so much assaulting your senses that you're doing everything in your power just to find the ball and then make sure you flip it let alone actually trying to figure out hey if i keep on hitting this and if i do this this actually activates this and this is what my goal is and this is where this goes into that and that you know um so i spent probably it was over the course of two days and i was putting in a good two hours each of those days um just bashing on it over and over and over again and it finally started to make sense and i finally was the game was slowing down for me so that i could go oh wait no i need to get up here and get this started going in or if i keep on hitting this shot that's what activates this particular thing to happen i i'm truthfully i'm still just as clueless about what the hell is going on but i'm now enjoying it i'm now i'm now having a good time with it um and i went back Can I play Demon Tilt? And it's funny how basic that seems in comparison.
    60:13
    Where that used to be also just an assault on the senses for me. So do yourself a favor. Don't sleep on Xenotilt. If you have a cabinet, for sure. If you've got the ad games cabinet or you've got a computer hooked up to your arcade one-up cabinet, plug in Xenotilt. So it's really a bummer that the developers have no interest in making it a TrueCab experience because some of the score overlays impede on your view. And I really wish that that would just go up to the back box because I don't need the information. It's fine if it was just on a back box.
    60:56
    But the developers just aren't interested. I don't think there's not a lot of like on that DMD or on the display area there's not a lot of information seemingly that you need on it so all the feedback that you need is actually on the playfield that's the really great thing about both Demon's Tilt and Zenith Tilt in that all the information is there laid out where your ball is rolling because like you say Chris, you don't have time to look anywhere other than the play field. That game moves. I had to turn on ball trails. I had to. I always play with ball trails. Turn on ball trails. Turn off shake. Turn off strobe bright. Like, turn down how bright everything is. Like, whatever I can do to make it less spastic.
    61:50
    Dull and traceable is what I'm looking for in that game as well. And for sure, play the XCOM. I think it's called XCOM? was that my the one with the bonus mode play that oh the ex mode ex mode yeah yeah play that is great yeah that's the only one you want to play yeah like the the original one's good but the ex mode is fantastic especially when all of a sudden you get this weird octagonal pool table that you're shooting on i don't know why but it's fun um it's so fun and i don't ask me how you get that mode but uh yeah i started figuring it out um yeah and this is the thing like zenith tilt here doesn't have any rule sheet like it doesn't say oh to get this do this it's just like here's here what i discovered jared one this this is this falls for demon still which also has an ex mode Which is also really good There essentially three playfields Top middle bottom
    62:50
    Each of those playfields has a central boss, if you will. The more you hit the boss, it then transforms into something else, transforms into something else. Eventually, you defeat whatever it is. Okay. Once you've defeated it, that's when your bonus mode starts. Right. But each level has a different bonus mode.
    63:19
    So that's where it becomes, well, which one am I starting? Well, if you're defeating the bottom boss, you're always going to get this one particular mode. Defeat the middle, you're going to get this other mode. So that's the one thing I actually figured out. Okay. That's good. All right. What's your number one, Jared? what is my number one I this is going back a few years in pinball effects but I think for me it was actually the Mandalorian it's one of those tables that you know what you need to do you shoot the ramp it says keep doing it it's just doing it Yeah, and not draining because, boy, that table, I'd love some outlying guards in it because it is not good from a draining perspective, which is why, you know, you really need to strategically tilt on this table. It is imperative. In fact, it makes it quite a stressful table to play. So you've got to be in the right mindset to do it. You've got to be really, like, focused and engaged when you're playing it. Well, it also doesn't let you just shoot the safe shot because you won't advance you have to shoot these stupid shots that are going to drain the ball if you miss yeah like trying to get in the multi-ball and trying to shoot that really far right lane right up to the mini play field that is dangerous that shot yeah um but you know again starting the modes and having the the thing that put me off initially with that game was that you had to go through the first two modes, I think, before it let you start selecting what order in which you want to play the modes. So you've got to struggle through the first two modes, and then you can actually then get to experience the other modes in the game and put some practice into them. So you really, like every mode after the first two modes, you sort of have to work your way around and see what you need to do and see what the shots are. So it's one of those ones that doesn't feel very rewarding because you feel like, oh, I've got to grind the first two modes first so I can see what's going on.
    65:43
    But once you crack it and once you get good at nailing the ramp and just starting the mode all the time, it's a fun game. And it's, you know, comparing it to the Stern version of The Mandalorian, which again is in a similar vein is something that i've rediscovered a passion for again it's one of those titles when you walk up to it in the arcade it that's cool it's mandalorian it's great you start playing it nothing flows you just go i don't know where the points are in this thing and then someone showed me where the points are on it um and the literally the four shots or four or five shots you need to do um when you on ball one that will get you 130 million points wow pretty much guaranteed and it's like once you know that yeah it's like ah okay right amazing and then you just want to play it over and over again and do that sequence and and that's just it with a lot of these it's finding that point of entry um getting the victory that gives you some points so you don't feel like you're just wasting your time um it's honestly it's one of the things that i don't like about jersey jack pinball the scores are so low and i know a score it's just it's just an artifice but when i've bashed around and thought what i had was a really great ball and i've still only have scored 15 000 points that's defeating yeah it doesn't feel good doesn't feel good um you know the flip side of that is when you're playing, what was it? Was it, it might be Mars Attacks, or Attack from Mars. It's either that or Theater of Magic, where it's just like, I have a really terrible ball and I scored 75 million points.
    67:34
    You know, I'm like, what the hell? I houseballed and I got 50 million points. Okay. You know, so, that's the interesting thing. But I have one last honorable mention because I literally just started bashing around on it this past week and I've never given it a fair shake at all because the license didn't thrill me. Xena.
    67:58
    I finally started bashing around on Xena and I started putting together what you have to do and then I started a mode where like 50 stand-up targets popped up and I went, whoa! Yeah, I was like, whoa, that's kind of cool. And then that's all I wanted to do was try and get that back up and try and defeat it. That's my point of entry right there. That's when I went, ooh, that's fun. And because I kept on trying to get that. Yeah. Because I started focusing on trying to get that, other things were happening.
    68:35
    And I was noticing and understanding now what was taking place. That mode is so easy to activate if you know where to shoot. Yeah. Like, it's three shots and you're into this 50 target mode. Like, what the hell? So that's one of those that I'm not there yet because I really barely cracked the surface on it. But I'm now interested in trying to go more. I may come away from it still just going, eh, it's an all right title. But, you know, that's one. The modes are like you've got to read the instructions for this one. It is nonsensical in the way that they've, like, done mode starts and stuff like that. It's a real challenging table from that perspective.
    69:16
    But read the instructions, focus on one goal. And that's the trick here, right? Just read the instructions and go, today I'm going to just do this one thing. Now I'm going to do this one thing well so that I know that it's in my back pocket and I can just pull it out if I need it. And then once you've got that thing nailed, you go, all right, read the instructions. What's the next thing? I want to go and try and get an extra ball. What do I need to do to do that? Because obviously working out where the extra balls are on the table is going to give you a better experience. So start there. Work out what you need to do for extra balls.
    69:53
    And then you'll just have a bit of extra play time to do other stuff. Yeah. So yeah, give these tables a fair shake if you haven't already. If there's tables that you think that we should get a fair shake. I have barely even looked at the Exploding Kittens and Terraforming Mars and Gloomhaven.
    70:24
    Gloomhaven's another one that's sort of semi on my list, but I can't talk to it because it kills me. I gave the initial go to Princess Bride and Go Simulator. I haven't really done anything with them since either. Go Simulator's fun. Um, so, so there's a bunch of tables that I need to go revisit and need to, there's a bunch of Marvel tables that I've just went, well, yeah, I'd rather play for yourself. You know what I mean? There's always that table that you go, yeah, but I could be playing this and having a good time. And, and, and that's what I wind up doing. So if there's any recommendations that you would like myself or Jared to give a go on and be like, have you really given this the fair shake? Um, and tell us why. Tell us why, yes. Why should we do it? What's the thing that hooked you when you were playing it? Because as much as Jared wants to recommend Curse of the Mummy to me, I just don't like it. Yeah, yeah. So, all right, last thing on our wheel, just to quickly touch upon this.
    71:31
    Zachary Pinball, Magic Pixel, they have done a first update in like two years to this game. Yeah. And what they touched on was their remake and deluxe tables to bring the art style cohesive so that each table looks like it was almost done in the same vein, in the same style. Most importantly, they've gotten rid of that ugly-ass art that was on all the original Zack tables because those things are fugly.
    72:05
    Yeah. The art style was a certain aesthetic. Oh, and it was not a good aesthetic. And then when you chop it up and make it do a Photoshop job, essentially, and chop it up and re-blend it into a new table style, it doesn't really make it any better. So it's really welcome what they've done here. So Zachary has said basically they've changed up the art on many of the tables. They've tweaked the lighting. They have tweaked the physics. they've I think those are the things that they've tweet they've done a lot of engine updates as well if you're on Linux and Mac they've got a lot of engine updates there and also VR so it works more seamlessly with the Quest 3 so a lot of improvements problem for me is it's still just lipstick on a pig because those deluxe tables are hideous messes yeah they are just there's literally like at minimum seven flippers on each of the table and there's three levels and there's wire forms and you don't know where your ball is what level it's on and how you can get it up to a different level and you still have the terrible dmd or led screen with its spirally kaleidoscope and the exact same font no matter what game you'd have you still have the absolute just boring call outs that me and myself or jared and myself have even done contributed to on uh two of the remakes um because it's literally this i guarantee you me and jared had i essentially the exact same script to read from oh we did yeah yeah um so it's not like the call outs aren't specific to the table for anything spectacular. There's no story going on there. So those are the things that I would really hope that Match Pixel goes and does next, is tweaks the code so that the games are a little more fun to play in that manner. But unfortunately, the layouts are the layouts. I don't have much of a problem with the remake layouts. The Deluxe layouts are just... They're a mess. I don't care for them at all.
    74:22
    So we had in the Blackhate Discord, um we had bowling man 88 because i asked i said look can someone tell me like i need to live vicariously through these deluxe tables like what is there any difference to what we've already covered on the show and bowling man said look you know he was actually he played um future world so he actually had hands on the table um and he also admits he's not generally a big fan of their deluxe tables but he did say that they have gone through and they've got a lot more call outs now that actually tell you what shots you're supposed to be going for okay uh in the game so they've not just given you like you and i had yeah and chris a script of combo double combo triple combo super combo jackpot yeah exactly like all those sort of generic things um they've actually got shot call outs in them now which is which is so good like this is exactly what we were hoping for um in these sort of things now uh apparently he reckons black belt deluxe was pretty good as well um so he did say that uh the mode timer it's it's two minutes to complete a mode that's too long and using non-standard pinball terms like they he also says you know they say in the call outs these new call athletes that they've done it's like um instead of saying hit four bumpers they say go for the orbs you know it's like huh what are orbs you know just don't try and reinvent the wheel just keep it to the terminology that we know because when you're in the midst of a game you want to just have clear direction about hit thing that we know the name for not what is an orb like where's the instruction manual what is this yeah yeah so they're learning but they just need to not try and be clever about it and just re like look at the prior art that's out there with all these video games and we say this is in and they get the they get the um the nod because they listen to what the community is saying about call outs so magic pixel needs to do the same um but this is a good step forward it is a good step forward they've changed the ui a little bit in those deluxe tables like it's it's still the same oh the new tables they still have the same font in the display there's the display has just been tweaked a little bit with the layout but it's the same like kaleidoscopic background and the same font it's like zero it feels like zero effort i'm sure it's not zero effort but it definitely feels like zero effort is being put into i just feel that the visual look of the art at least is now inviting yes you're not going to be like there's a couple of tales where i thought the layout was fun but god i hate looking at it so um i'm glad that that has been addressed because everything i've looked at at least is like okay that's pretty decent even even what i always said was one of the most hideous looking things out there farfalla um they've made improvements i've actually i played a real i actually played a real farfalla yeah yeah i played it and it looks it actually in person you get it, right? Yeah.
    77:58
    You're like, okay, I can see what they're doing there. But, like, I think the thing that's worth calling out here is that, like, if you haven't already and you've got a VR headset you'd be mad not to buy the VR add-on for Oh, yeah.
    78:12
    They've done a lot with very little. And, to be fair they are most improved in VR. oh yeah that's what i was going to say like yeah no it's if you're into these deluxe tables the only way you should play them is in vr they make they make so much more visual sense in vr you can see what's going on on flat screen on 2d flat screen it's just a visual mess yeah like don't even bother well because this is the reason why i don't play it yeah because i have a lot of the or i shouldn't have a lot i have uh what 13 of uh deluxe tables that came with my cab oh okay so i've been able to play a lot of these deluxe um and then i have the dr seuss pack which unfortunately follows the same model of how they construct a play field they love doing three layers stacked for and the problem is is in a 2d environment you can't tell what layer your ball is going to. You're like, how do I get up to that flipper? And you're looking at this absolute maze going, I don't even know where the kicker is that's going to get my ball going up there. What should I need to make to get up there? Yeah. And then it turns out, oh, it's because this animated figure is going to reach down and grab your ball and put it up there. And you're like, oh, okay. Okay. You know. Or in the case of me playing one of the Dr. Seuss tables, it literally is there there looks like there's a lot but it's literally you playing this little tiny portion of the table which unlocks this other portion now you're only playing up here and now you're only playing over here you're not playing the entire table you're just playing these little tiny zones which is like again terrible and because there's five million flippers flipping at the same time you're like i don't know what's going i don't know where i'm going i don't know what i'm hitting i i'm lost you know so um but again sometimes too much is too much yeah um but i am going to applaud them for at least updating and keeping these things active they added like a future world's a brand new table that they put out uh they also added uh in the they called the arcade section i think um gulf city or something it's basically fishtails um yeah but they've added something so i mean i'm glad that magic whistle is still pumping out things for these um you know and making that effort i just i want them to learn some lessons and not just go excessive like they are so you know they also say that you know this start of um you know all the new action on steam is you know they actually do have big plans for the year um so it seems like 2025 is is going to be when we see a lot more stuff coming up from um magic pixel and you know we always say this like it's good to have competition in the commercial digital pinball space yeah um look i really hope the big year is them announcing if they got got leap because If they somehow manage to get that license, it's going to be incredible. I'll buy those. I will buy them without hesitation. Shut up and take my money. I will absolutely give them all the money if they get it. Because they absolutely know what to do with these retro tables. That's their bread and butter. And arguably, they probably should have stuck with that. But I get they need to make money. but like they they're the retro and the original zachary recreations are just pixel perfect they are really really good so um they're the ones that if you uh have not yet got it and you're coming new to digital pinball they're the ones you buy yeah they're amazing uh jared my wheel is broken it doesn't want to spin anymore so i think we've uh reached the end of our time here but hey folks i hope you enjoyed that that was like nothing but pinball this entire pinball pinball pinball that's right um so uh obviously we'll have more to comment on once we hear what this uh the vr announcement from zen is uh with pinball bites uh by then also uh i'll be able to comment on what playing black rose on uh the the cabinet feels like uh with full haptics that's that's the difference maker i can play it right now in but without the haptics and honestly the haptics are what's making these tables be more fun I think by that point also there should be a second Zen title that will have come out on that so we'll have plenty of content to comment on pretty soon, beyond that it's always what Jared loves to talk about Stuff and Things Until then folks Thanks for watching Thanks for viewing We'll catch you next time, bye bye Bye bye
    83:28
    Thank you.