Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Arcooda Been a Pinball Wizard

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·46m 24s·analyzed·Feb 12, 2017
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Arcooda announces Pinball Arcade cabinet with full hardware integration and Barnstorm Games Time Shock partnership.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss Arcooda's major partnership announcements with Farsight Studios and Barnstorm Games. Arcooda will bring Pinball Arcade to a full arcade cabinet with a 42-inch touchscreen playfield, custom LCD DMD display, and 32-inch backglass monitor, plus support for Time Shock. The cabinet will feature coil mapping, shaker motors, and lighting synchronization. They also discuss Silvercastle Pinball's parallel development of a physical Time Shock machine and compare the different artistic approaches between the digital and physical versions.

Key Claims

  • Arcooda has partnered with Farsight Studios to bring Pinball Arcade to their arcade cabinet with 70+ tables

    high confidence · Hosts directly reference Arcooda's official website announcement and partnership details

  • Arcooda's Pinball Arcade cabinet features a 42-inch touchscreen playfield, 15-inch HD LCD DMD monitor, and 32-inch backglass monitor

    high confidence · Chris and Jared cite specific technical specifications from Arcooda's website announcement

  • Farsight will be implementing backglass lighting synchronization for Pinball Arcade on Arcooda cabinets, which they have not previously done

    high confidence · Hosts explicitly state Farsight will map coil pulses and lighting to the backglass as a new feature

  • Arcooda is investigating coin-op versions of their cabinet, something Farsight previously backed away from due to licensing issues

    high confidence · Chris references Farsight's previous licensing concerns and notes Arcooda is moving forward with this

  • Silvercastle Pinball was developing a physical flipping version of Time Shock but had to significantly redesign the playfield due to licensing/collaboration changes with Barnstorm Games

    medium confidence · Jared cites Silvercastle's June 2016 Facebook post stating 'not a single object in the playfield could be left the same as in the game' and references subsequent art changes

  • Arcooda's Touch Wizard countertop unit runs on Android and supports Pinball Arcade, Zen Pinball, and other Android games

    high confidence · Hosts confirm this is detailed on Arcooda's website

  • Arcooda's cabinet supports plug-and-play compatibility with Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS4, PS3, PC/Steam, and Android devices

    high confidence · Chris references video demonstration on Arcooda's website showing multiple input options

  • Stern Pinball replay knocker sound is digitized through speakers rather than a physical knocker, producing an intentionally annoying sound to cut coil costs

Notable Quotes

  • “Not a single object in the playfield could be left the same as in the game. No. That, together with all changes Dennis Nordman made, meant going through many playfield iterations and taking a lot of time to get to the point where we are now—a well-tuned playfield layout that we're very happy with.”

    Silvercastle Pinball (via Facebook post quote) @ mid-episode — Key insight into Silvercastle's licensing/collaboration pivot with Barnstorm Games on Time Shock physical machine development

  • “It's not just porting over. If they're going to start doing something with the backglass, what makes me excited about that is—well, when you're playing something like Scared Stiff, we've all seen that backglass. It's not pretty. It would be definitely one that would be a candidate for first iteration refresh.”

    Chris Freebus @ mid-episode — Expresses enthusiasm about Farsight's newly announced backglass lighting capability for Arcooda cabinets

  • “I think this work is being conducted under license, essentially... I think so, yeah, because this is, number one, the Farsight, to make that actually work—I'm not sure. You might have to help me understand how the mod on Steam works to actually get backglass support.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Suggests backglass integration may be Arcooda-exclusive rather than trickling to general Farsight release

  • “If this is the definitive version of Pinball Arcade, you know? And again, they're advertising, you know, it's well over 70 tables that you get to play with.”

    Chris Freebus @ late-episode — Frames Arcooda Pinball Arcade cabinet as potentially the premium/definitive version of the platform

  • “this would be essentially a fork—a commercial fork of Pinball Arcade, which is, you know, it's going to have full customization. Like, I don't think we're going to see cabinet mode like we see on the other platform anywhere in Pinball Arcade that's offered on Steam. It just isn't going to happen.”

    Jared Morgan @ late-episode — Articulates the distinction between Arcooda's custom Pinball Arcade implementation and the standard Steam release

Entities

ArcoodacompanyFarsight StudioscompanyBarnstorm GamescompanySilvercastle PinballcompanyChris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonDennis NordmanpersonPinball ArcadeproductTime Shockproduct

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight's historical reluctance to support cabinet mode may have been driven by licensing complexity; Arcooda's coin-op exploration suggests licensing barriers may now be surmountable

    medium · Chris notes Farsight 'backed away from it due to licensing issues' but Arcooda appears to be moving forward with coin-op investigations

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Silvercastle Pinball's physical Time Shock machine underwent significant design pivot, with playfield art redesigned due to licensing/collaboration changes with Barnstorm Games

    medium · Jared cites Silvercastle's June 2016 Facebook post stating no objects could remain the same as digital version; subsequent art changes visible in mock-ups showing shift from gray photorealistic style to more vibrant, colored artwork

  • $

    market_signal: Arcooda positioning as premium digital pinball platform alternative with full arcade cabinet form factor, potentially challenging traditional pinball cab enthusiasts to reconsider video pinball

    medium · Chris notes Arcooda's feature set (42-inch touchscreen, coil integration, multi-game support) makes it compelling alternative to MAME/emulation cabs and homebrew setups

  • ?

    community_signal: Blockade Podcast received early/embargoed announcement information from Arcooda before wider release, indicating media relationship and trust

    high · Jared notes early access: 'there's been a bit of a time constraint with Arcuda releasing the information to us early'

  • ?

    announcement: Arcooda announces partnership with Barnstorm Games to bring Time Shock to full cabinet with coil mapping, shaker motors, and hardware integration

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.139

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rods. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com, sales, restoration, customization. you are listening to the blockade podcast this is your host shot your trap aka chris freebus joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan hello how's things uh things are okay if uh if i have a little trouble speaking today that's because yesterday i uh at breakfast i bit the tip of my tongue and i bit it nice and good and you know it feels like I'm missing the, like I just chomped it right off. Oh, yeah, that's never fun.
1:00
No, especially since it's like that's all you can feel. You know, every time you eat, you're now afraid you're going to chomp it a little bit more and things just don't taste quite right because that's where I think your sweet receptor of your taste buds is right there on the very tip. So, yeah. You know, it's funny. like when if for some reason i bite my lip or something like that or bite my cheek and you know then just continue about my day without you know thinking consciously that i bit my cheek i always keep biting it it's one of those things isn't it that your your mouth and everything inside it is almost like within microns of tolerance so therefore if anything is just remotely bigger than normal or out of place normally, it just feels so wrong and everything doesn't work. Everything just starts falling into a big heap.
1:55
Something like that, yeah. Yeah. Like I said, it just feels like something like the tip of my tongue is dry and it's just not a good feeling. Don't care for that at all. Rather unpleasant, yeah.
2:10
What else is going on? Oh, right before this podcast, well I shouldn't say right before, but a few hours ago.

medium confidence · Jared speculates on Stern's design choice; presents as opinion/theory rather than confirmed fact

Blockade Pinball Podcastorganization
WizardAmusement.comcompany
Stern Pinballcompany

high · Chris and Jared explicitly state this is newly announced on Arcooda's website with full technical details

  • ?

    announcement: Arcooda officially announces partnership with Farsight Studios to bring Pinball Arcade to full arcade cabinet with 70+ tables, including new backglass lighting integration

    high · Hosts cite Arcooda.com website with detailed technical specifications and video demonstrations of the cabinet setup

  • ?

    product_strategy: Backglass lighting synchronization feature appears to be Arcooda-exclusive, representing a 'commercial fork' of Pinball Arcade not expected to reach standard Steam platform

    medium · Jared states this work is 'conducted under license' and the backglass integration won't appear in general Pinball Arcade release

  • ?

    product_strategy: Farsight implementing custom backglass lighting integration for Arcooda platform, potentially bringing arcade authenticity enhancements like improved Scared Stiff backglass visuals

    high · Chris expresses excitement about backglass refresh opportunities, citing Scared Stiff and other classic machines as candidates for lighting restoration

  • ?

    technology_signal: Arcooda cabinet hardware specifications not fully publicly disclosed; hosts speculate on likely internal components (dual video cards, possibly NVIDIA Shield hardware) based on observed performance

    low · Hosts note they haven't seen full specs, make educated guesses about dual-head video cards and powerful PC components needed to drive multiple screens without lag

  • ?

    technology_signal: Arcooda cabinet represents significant advancement in digital pinball hardware integration with coil mapping, shaker motors, lighting synchronization, and multi-screen display architecture

    high · Hosts detail 42-inch touchscreen playfield, 15-inch LCD DMD, 32-inch backglass monitor, and coil/solenoid integration mapped to gameplay

    • 2:17
    Just went and saw the Lego Batman movie. Oh, right. Well, lucky you guys can because we can't. Oh, it's not released there yet. We are one of the... I think there were 27 countries where it was released and we're not one of them. So, why? Don't worry. We'll just go and watch a screener instead.
    2:40
    Whatever. We're used to it by now. Well, I can tell you this much, spoiler free. I found it to be in every way funnier than the Lego movie. Oh, wow. Okay. That's pretty good. Because Lego movies are pretty funny.
    2:55
    Yeah, I think I found the Lego movie more amusing than outright funny. And it definitely touched that soft spot in me of, oh, yeah, Lego. It hit the nostalgia button over and over again. This one is just plain hilarious.
    3:12
    All right. And they dialed up the comedy, eh? They dialed up the comedy. Not only did they dial up the comedy, but they threw in so many jokes for the parents.
    3:23
    It's ridiculous. Oh, good. I mean, there is stuff that there is absolutely no way your kid knows about because there's just no way he knows about it, you know, or he or she. And so you can hear the difference in laughter in the theater between when the adults got something and the kids didn't. So it was kind of funny. This is how it would have been, right? It would have been, ah, and then, he's going, man, what are you laughing at? Right. Why is that funny? And then on top of that, they threw in so many visual gags in the background that, I mean, there's stuff that flashed by that I was like, oh, I wish I had seen that, and then it was gone. And it's one of those things where I think that if you just constantly freeze-framed any particular frame and looked in the background, you'd see something. I mean, it is jam packed with Easter eggs.
    4:17
    So it's definitely designed for repeat watching on DVD. Yeah, I think so. And then when we get finished with this podcast, I'm going to go see John Wick Chapter 2.
    4:31
    Oh, John Wick? Okay. Yeah. I haven't seen that at all. You haven't seen the first one? Nah. Which one is John Wick? You know of it, though, yes? I think so. I've heard of it. Like, it got released down here and everything, but I just didn't really pay much attention to it. It was probably a busy period.
    4:53
    How long ago was it released? For people like, it was released, I want to say, two years ago. Yeah, two years ago in February, at least here. So for the uneducated like Jared, John Wick is Keanu Reeves he is a former assassin and some idiotic people that think he has a hot car decide they're going to steal his car but while they're at it they're going to mess him up and they wind up killing his dog and that's all it takes for him to get back into the game and go postal and when I say postal he basically Call it Gun Fu. If you're a fan of any of John Woo's movies, you know what Gun Fu is.
    5:44
    And he proceeds to just kill the ever-living hell out of anybody that gets in his way. And probably 90% of those kills are headshots.
    5:56
    That's the only reliable way to do it. It is the only reliable way. Movies would be a lot shorter if everyone just did headshots. you know yeah the thing I found so refreshing about that one and this is why I'm really looking forward to seeing the sequel is that for as much as I complained about shaky cam this movie is completely devoid of it and it does not do massive amounts of quick edits there is actually on they came out with an honest movie trailer for John Wick and they showed a comparison of kind of in that trailer of why John wick rules and something like, uh, Liam Neeson's taken sucks. And that is because they showed a, probably a 10 second clip from John wick, not a single cut in it, but it's him tumbling and jumping and killing. And the cameras are following him the entire time. And then they showed a equally 10 second clip from taken of Liam Neeson hopping a fence. And I kid you not, there were six cuts within that 10 seconds. so just because Liam's old and it's hard for him to jump over a fence you need to put him on a trampoline right and Keanu is 50 and yet he's 50 yeah I know it's crazy right he must really have worked out to do John Wick well they said that they used a portion of their budget to put him in training for three months wow so that was part of the budget of movie expenses yeah so they wanted him that bad they wanted Keanu whoa Reeves that bad they put him into training for three months well they realized that that's what everybody identified with in the first movie was it wasn't just the action it was watching Keanu do it so it was like well we need to have Keanu doing this again you know every bit as much as he did in the first one and fortunately he's totally down for doing that kind of stuff he's been pretty good as an actor right because you know to get that much training and get that fit it's it's is a full-time job so imagine being able to get paid to get that fit right part of your job and then do your job and get paid again you know what i mean it's sort of it's pretty good if you think about it yeah you know i i think about that is win-win you think about it's even thinking about it with professional athletes where yes they're getting paid to play the game but they're also getting paid to show up every day and hit the gym and do workouts. And a lot of these training facilities, when you're at their facility, they've got the full massage area and they've got the food there for you.
    8:45
    I know the Los Angeles Lakers basketball, they're building a new facility that opened next year, and they already showed pictures of the amenities that are going to be in this training facility. One of the things was even having a barbershop. so you really don't have to leave basically go there, hang out all day do your thing and go home and that's what you're getting paid for yeah, that's your job instead of being in an office, you're in a gym instead of filing TPS reports you're doing burpees thank god I've never had to file the TPS report I have to work at 70 though Yeah.
    9:29
    Yeah, that'd be great. That'd be great. What do you say we talk about some news that is coming down the pipe? This episode, folks, is going to be very Arcuda heavy. So we promised that we'd be able to talk about some things, and we can talk about some things. Yes, now we can. Let's talk about some things. Let's talk about the first thing that came down that we almost had a special podcast for when it was announced, and then we were like, eh, well, we can delay it. And that is that we already know that Arcuda had partnered with Farsight to be able to bring Pinball Arcade to their machine. We're going to get into that in a little bit. But the first thing is, instead, they also have now officially announced a partnership with Barnstorm Games, and they are going to be bringing Time Shock. in all its ever-loving glory into full cabinet. It's ultra glory. That's right. That's going to be pretty cool. It lends itself very well to that sort of setup. I think from the Steam version already, they do have a degree of cabinet support implemented. So it will be interesting to see the extras that they put in. Well, I think we can safely say, if you go to Arcuda's website, which is arcuda.com, there is a ton of videos up right now and basically really they've they've just updated their website so it's packed full of fresh information about exactly what their machines can do one of the things to note is that we're talking about it having coils and shaker motors and all that good stuff wired right in and i can almost guarantee you that one of the things that partnering with Barnstorm and doing Time Shock is making sure that stuff gets implemented.
    11:24
    That's right. I doubt that the Steam version has written in. I'd say definitely not. That wouldn actually have that in So that would be a definite exclusive and probably a value add if you really want if you were like one of those guys that was just super into Time Shock and you wanted basically a real pinball without having all the trouble of a real pinball in your house, that would be the version to get. Now, it's interesting, isn't it? Because you might remember a while back that Barnstorm had also collaborated with Silvercastle Pinball to do a real version of Time Shock, like a flipping pinball. Right. So I started digging into that aspect of it a little bit too because I thought, hmm, it's interesting that they're going down the digital path here and allowing Arcuda to actually offer what is essentially going to be a very complete version of Time Shock. So I started digging around from Silvercastle, and to be honest, there's not a lot of online information about Silvercastle. They seem to only have a Facebook presence. And on looking on their Facebook posts over the last couple of years, I saw one back on 15th of June 2016. And I won't read you the full post, but there's two reasons why they were saying that things have been delayed. The first one is about, you know, not accepting pre-orders, et cetera, et cetera. And we don't want to take money before we have it. But the second point, which is interesting, is that. And two, no matter how close the computer game comes to the real thing, not a single object in the Whitewood could be left the same as in the game. No. That together with all changes Dennis Nordman made meant going through many play field iterations and taking a lot of time to get the point where we are now, a well-flung play field layout that we're very happy with. Now, the thing to point out there, not a single object in the Whitewood could be left the same as in the game. let's dwell on that for a minute it sounds like that suggests to me that somehow the guys at Barnstorm Games said you should do Silvercastle we'll get Silvercastle to do a flipping whitewood on it, cool but then something changed with their agreement and now it sounds like I can't really see any pictures of their flipping whitewoods or anything like that on the site but it seems that they've had to do something like Time Shock, but not Time Shock. And the interesting thing is that having a look at the digital mock-ups of the game and the backglasses that they've got up,
    14:13
    and comparing that with the Time Shock Arcade Edition that Arcuda is offering, the artwork is totally different on the cabinet. Like on the backglass, the artwork is absolutely different. so it's like Silvercastle have had to do what we now refer to as a pivot and completely change things and you're saying that nothing new has been posted from them since, was that August?
    14:44
    it was June, the last post was on 31st December 2016 and there is a post saying here's a sneak peevery of what's to come early next year Keen observers should be able to spot a thing or two, dot, dot, dot. The team at Silvercastle Pinball wants to thank you for continuing support, blah, blah, blah. And on that, it's just a single picture with what looks like the original play field, but it looks like there's been some changes in the style of the play field. it looks like that it's gone from photorealistic ish i'm just going to flick back quickly to the original version see if i can see some screenshots um but it seems like it's gone from yes it has they've actually changed some of the art on it so the one from silver castle pinball has a more sort of coloured time capsule thing, which is the thing down sort of towards the bottom of the flippers, where it has all the three different or three or four worlds on the play field. So they've done some art changes to that and made it sort of more coloured compared to the one that is on the Barnstorm Games digital version, which is basically just a grey sort of time machine without any sort of representation of the glass. and it looks like that the other things they've changed again could be the way the planets are illustrated as well so I think what it's suggesting is the Silver Castle one has basically got redesigned art on the play field to make it so they could actually proceed with the build so very interesting, very interesting I'll give it to them, it actually looks better than Barnstorm's version, I think. It actually looks a little bit more like the pinballs of today that are coming out. It looks a little bit more modern, a little bit more vibrant in colour. And I'd say it's actually a better looking thing than what is on the Okuda one, just as a comparison. But the fact that you'll be able to play it digitally with all this extra integration, that's still pretty cool. without all the overhead of maintaining a pinball machine and all that.
    17:11
    And also having the ability to play everything else on it as well, which is the other huge benefit of it. Yeah, so let's actually talk about a little bit some of the information that Arcuda did wind up releasing on their website.
    17:26
    For starters, we're talking about the main play field will be a 42-inch touchscreen. and we're talking industrial grade touchscreen because one of the things and it's hinted at here on the website is they're looking at having a coin op version of this and I know Farsight has talked about they investigated doing coin op and they backed away from it due to licensing issues but obviously they probably got that cleared out something else that I know that Farsight talked about years ago with me. They had mentioned the Touch Wizard kind of, you know, you see them in bars, those small video games. A lot of them that had Arkanoid.
    18:19
    And they've been approached about that and I think that was when they first started dealing with the possibility of coin-op and realized at that time that they weren't going to be able to do that. So interestingly enough, with the Arcuda, not only do they have their arcade cabinet, but they also have their own touch wizard, and they're saying that Pinball Arcade will be on that too. Yes, that's right. Pinball Arcade is based on all of their touch devices.
    18:45
    Anything that they sell, it looks like Pinball Arcade has been licensed to use on it. So if you don't have the room for a pinball machine, you can get a countertop touch unit, which incidentally runs on Android. so the good thing about that is you not only have the ability to play pinball arcade but also zen and all the other different pinball games and all the other offerings on android and pretty much use it like a little mini in a way mini computer i guess yeah almost like a almost like a an apple 2e form factor type of computer which is which is pretty We've got a lot more stuff on it, of course. Now, the interesting thing about the TouchWiz is I wonder if it's running on Android. I wonder what guts is inside the machine. I wonder if it's actually something like a Shield console. Because you know how Shield and NVIDIA actually have their Shield sort of what was supposed to be like the entertainment hub thing they got? It's incredibly powerful. It's got the same specs as the Shield tablet with a K1 processor in it, but more RAM and designed to be used basically as a set-top box. Now, they've released a new version of that this year. They've done an updated version with even more specs and more guts in it. So I wonder what the insides of that thing is, whether it's bespoke or whether it's actually technology that's been improved in some way to add the touch interface to the screen. Yeah, I don't know. I don't either.
    20:23
    Hard to say when you haven't touched one yourself. Yeah, it's true. It is. One of the other things that they have announced with regards to Farsight and Pinball Arcade is that they are actually mapping the... what do you call it, the coil mapping?
    20:50
    The shaker motors, coil pulses. Right, right. As well as the lighting. Now, one of the things they're talking about lighting is that is in the back glass.
    21:02
    So what happens here? Your play field is going to be obviously on the 42-inch. Your DMD is going to go pop up to the custom LCD that they have for correct. That's right, the 15-inch HD LCD monitor. Right. And then they've got the 32-inch monitor up top for your back glass. Yeah. So that's going to have all the lights pulsing the way they should, which is something that Farsight hasn't had to program in yet, because obviously we don't have back glasses while we're playing. No, we don't. What that is basically implying is there's going to be some customization here going on between, well, basically on Farsight's part. So all of you that have been wanting Farsight to allow cabinet support and do cabinet support and everything, and even the guys that did that mod to be able to do more of a top-down play view, that's what's going on here. It's not just porting over if they're going to start doing something with the backless. What makes me excited about that is well, when you're playing something like Scared Stiff, we've all seen that back glass. It's not pretty. It would be definitely one that would be a candidate for first iteration refresh, I think you could say. And things like, what about things like brighter pinbox back glass with all the ascending ladder up bright with the big flasher bulb in there. That would look amazing. Well, same thing goes with Whirlwind. and Hurricane Comet Cyclone any of those all of a sudden you're going to have the Backlash doing what the Backlash should do which will be awesome so I'm really kind of stoked at the fact that they announced that because that means that Farsight is going to have to get to work and do some stuff and it's stuff that we've been begging Farsight to do even though it's like yeah we begging them to to make certain tweaks to a back class that we never see but that be sweet I really looking forward to Farcite doing that and hopefully it trickle down to just even the regular game itself. I don't know if it will. I don't think it will. I think this work is being conducted under license, essentially. Oh, so it would be a Raccoon exclusive. I think so, yeah, because this is, number one, the Farcite, to make that actually work,
    23:38
    I'm not sure. You might have to help me understand how the mod on Steam works to actually get back glass support. Well, they don't have back glass support on the mod.
    23:51
    It's only DMD. I don't even know if they have DMD. Do they? I just know what it is. Instead of using the camera angles that Farsight provides, they hacked into the program to be able to get a top-down look without it having any kind of angle. Oh, right. So it'll actually fill up the entire... Yes. Yeah, right. But that would be... Well, then this is a huge step up from there. Yeah. Now, I think there has been a bit of... One piece of feedback that we got when we announced this on blackapinball.com. I did a blog post up because we just didn't have time to do an episode. there was a bit of a time constraint with Al-Quda releasing the information to us early.
    24:41
    But the thing that we got as a feedback from one of our listeners is that they're a little bit disappointed that Farsight has gone down the path of sort of not really supporting those people with cabinets.
    24:55
    And, you know, sort of, you know, there's been a bit of language in there that suggests that people aren't really happy. But I guess to that, I say, yeah, fair call. It probably is a bit frustrating if you have a cabinet. And the suggestion of cabinet support has been, you know, thrown around by Farsight. But, you know, at the same time, the stuff that Arcuda is doing here is non-trivial. Like it's this level of integration was never even thought about by Farsight when they were like tossing around cabinet support. Right. So this here is, you know, and, So that's one thing. The other thing, too, is that, you know, this platform that Arcuda is here, I guess if you like the concept of pincaps and you've set yourself up one yourself,
    25:47
    it might be worthwhile going, you know what, maybe I should look into this, because this, out of any other platform that's there, I don't think there's any other one that actually has a 42-inch touchscreen monitor. Let's touch about that because if you watch the video that's on their website they show that this isn't just a pinball cab you can replace the apron basically with full joystick and arcade buttons on top and therefore you're also able to play any number of games they were showing a demonstration of playing Grid which is a racing game on it, and Gauntlet Legends. And being able to play it either on the 4.2-inch screen or throwing it up onto the 32-inch back glass and playing it there. One of the things they showed was they were playing Grid with the joystick, and then they switched it over to playing it with the touchscreen.
    26:52
    Then they switch it over and play it with your controller plugged into a USB port that's on the front of the coin door, basically. so there's many different ways of playing they also point out that you're able to plug in it's compatible plug and play with 360 Xbox One, PS4 PS3 and your own PC with Steam even Android you can even interface your Android products into it as well so really it's the box that they've got running all this synchronizing up all the screens and doing all that sort of logic. It's basically like a big, I liken it to an AV system that you just put all your things into, and then it handles it all for you. Right, like the receiver? Yeah, yeah, receiver. It's basically like an entertainment system receiver, plus also what I imagine would be a pretty powerful PC. That's the one thing that's interesting, though, isn't it? Because we haven't actually seen the specs. No, we don't know the specs yet. yet no but i'd imagine for it to be driving two screens and an lcd monitor for the back glass we'd probably be talking at least a two head video card system in there for it to do that i'd imagine to get the power going um particularly as i saw the the things running on steam on that preview video and they weren't lagging at all yeah there was a bit of effects in it so i'd I imagine it would be a pretty grunty box that they've got driving all this technology.
    28:32
    I think I saw a sneak peek of the box. They didn't show what was inside, but I saw sort of what it would actually look like. They had a picture. Here it is. Let's see if I can bring it up.
    28:46
    It's not really super clear, but it looks like it's definitely a big PC box. It probably would sit in the bottom of the cabinet. It looks like it's got pretty heavy ventilation in it. It looks like it actually has two power box. What are they? CPU. My words fail me. Power supplies in it.
    29:08
    And a big panel, which is a little bit low res, but I can't really see, but a big, big panel. There, yeah, it looks like it's a relatively decent looking box.
    29:20
    It should be very interesting to see what other changes get made for compatibility issues. I do know that right now, if you watch the announcement with Pinball Arcade, that right now the DMD, it didn't look like the DMD was working, other than for, I don't know, I kept on seeing images of where it just looked like it was Pinball Arcade running on the 42-inch. No back glass, no, well, sometimes I saw DMD, sometimes I didn't, but the DMD was clearly on the 42-inch. I know they don't want that there, obviously. so right now I think what you're seeing is the current version of TPA running on the Arcuta system and eventually they'll get it through some wizardry obviously I'm assuming the wizardry is on Farsight's end but making it integrate with the machine completely but I think that'll be because I've touched a video pinball once it was at one of the league guys. They had one.
    30:27
    And I quickly started playing a game on it, and then I went, why am I playing this when I could go play the actual machines? Yeah, it didn't catch you enough. Well, and not only that, but it was just, you know, okay, great, the buttons are on the side of this thing, but that was it. The idea of having the coils react so that it feels like when you're pushing the button, the flipper is flipping.
    30:49
    I wonder, what do they have going on for, say, the pop bumpers? Is that another set of coils it's going to activate? Yeah, I'd say there'd be a shared set of coils. There'd be different ones. You know how, like in a machine, there's ones that actually pull and ones that actually activate cranks? There'll be a whole stack of different types of solar noise inside. So they might actually even have, like, a basic sub-assembly, probably a custom sub-assembly, just with the, I guess, the coil set up in the pop-on configuration, but probably attached to the side of the cabinet. So I'd imagine that one side, they'll actually be, or maybe on the base or something like that, there'll be an array of coils that will basically be hammering away on the side of the cabinet. You want to have that feeling, you want to have that tactile feeling through the cabinet. And I think the only way they're going to do that is to probably put it quite close to the front where the flipper buttons are. so you'll actually feel it a lot better. And then there'll be things like the vibrator motors and all that sort of stuff as well, which we'll need to go in. I wonder if they'll put a replay knocker. Oh, I think they'd have to. It's not a pinball machine without a replay knocker. Yeah. So imagine that integrated directly with the pinball arcade software. You know, every time you get a replay, it actually orchestrates it correctly in time with the replay on the machine itself. Pretty cool. The only thing is if they, well, considering they're looking at the coin-op version, I think this is kind of a good indication that no, we will not be seeing Stern pinball on this unless they, obviously, they'd have to get a whole other license going. But, you know, the Stern tables have that different pinball, that high-pitched squeech of noise for their replay. I don't know why they put that in I think they were trying to cut down on coils and they thought what's the most annoying noise that we can put in a pinball machine that tells everyone that something happened on it and oh it would be that basically a one second blast of feedback from the speakers yeah that sounds great is it really from the speakers it's not an actual knocker I've never known it's fully digitized it's through speakers which is why it sounds terrible wow With, you know, on some of the early, like, Royal Rumble and stuff like that, database tables, that had a little bit sound like there was a bell inside the machine. It wasn't. It was just all through the speakers. So, yeah. No, it's all just like a digitized sound, basically. The most annoying sound ever in pinball. Now, the video also shows a whole bunch of, showed a display of a whole bunch of other games. I don't know if any of it was pinball, but it sounds like they've got other vendors obviously coming on board with them and fully using the integration that all the control setups they have. So it should be very, very interesting to see how this comes along and be curious to see what the end result with Farsight is. because I think that's going to be a big selling point is if this is the definitive version of Pinball Arcade you know and again they're advertising you know it's well over 70 tables that you get to play with yeah this is really if to my mind this would be essentially a fork a commercial fork of Pinball Arcade which is you know it's going to have full customization like I don think we going to see cabinet mode like we see on the RQ2 platform anywhere in pinball arcade that offered on Steam It just not going to happen Oh, I know what I was going to say was with regards to having only touched video pinball once, but to play it with all those coils going off and having an actual DMD, I'm very interested to see how much my brain gets fooled. one of the things they mention is there's a it was in parenthesis a 3D view and I'm very curious to know what that means are we talking about simulated 3D like if you had a Kinect camera hooked up to this thing so when you shift your head it's reading that and altering the perspective accordingly or is it just a particular unlike the view one, view two, view three that we're used to seeing, but it's a certain view specifically for this platform that gives more depth somehow. I don't know. That'll be a weird something weird that I'm curious to see. Yeah, I think it will be kind of interesting because it was actually mentioned, we'll read the block that is for Arcuda Pimble Arcade in the little box set which says Arcuda Pinball Arcade is being developed in partnership with Farsight Studios, makers of the number one video pinball software, the Pinball Arcade. Many new features are being implemented to create a realistic pinball experience including easy touchscreen navigation and gameplay, advanced playfield angles, including 3D options, which is what you were saying. More pinball part support, tournament play, and three-screen gameplay. Over 70 customised classic pinball titles will be exclusive to our Cuda Pinball Arcade, including the Addams Family Funhouse Terminator and a few other ones. So over 70 customised classic pinball titles, exclusive to our Cuda Pinball Arcade. So that pretty much there says, no, this is like a fork of Pinball Arcade, especially for our Cuda. So, yeah, sorry, cabinet builders, you're out of luck. This is not going to be coming your way anytime soon. yeah unless of course you buy one of these cabinets then it will be coming your way right yeah but like I said I just want to know how much can it fool my brain you know I think it's 3D a lot yeah and then 3D having shaker motors having the coils going off having the DMD where it should be the back glass where it should be it could be a whole different way of playing it. And then that makes me wonder, will that make it easier or more difficult or just the same as when we play?
    37:45
    Yeah, I'm not sure. It's not going to be to the extent of, say, something like Zen VR, which is totally fully immersive and you're not really even standing in front of a physical machine. but I think from memory, the Zen actually already has a 3D mode in its offering on Steam. So if you have the right equipment, you already get access to that. So I just wonder... Oh, you're talking 3D, 3D. Yeah, well, they have it on... It's available on PS3. You can get Zen in 3D. Yeah, so I wonder if it's... So they don't do it on Steam at this stage, do they? I don't know if they do. I don't have a 3D capability on my computer, so I don't have the proper monitor or anything. I'd be surprised if they didn't. I think that they probably would, because I know that it was actually in the Android build accidentally at one point. So if they had it on Android, it seems to be a common feature across all platforms. That'd be a little weird, though, with a, A, your screen is turned sideways.
    38:48
    Yeah. So I don't know how the 3D is going to work in that aspect. But also, you're looking at an angle. You're not looking at it dead on.
    38:57
    So I wonder if that'll mess with the glasses, if you're playing with glasses. I wonder if eventually when that feature gets introduced into the Pinball IK platforms, I'll have some sort of connect-based add-on that will go below the DMD that allows you to track eye movement and stuff like that. Yeah. Because that might be the way you do it, you know? Yeah.
    39:20
    Huh. Plenty of interesting news to come. So much to wonder about. yeah that's right so I would highly recommend people go check out arcuda.com go look at the videos that we're talking about there's plenty of photos you can get a better idea of everything of that nature and then well you can follow Arcuda on Twitter or you can just follow the blockade on Twitter at blockade and we pretty much parrot whatever they send our way so you can keep up to date on that if you had a bin following us on Twitter, you would have seen the announcement of Barnstorm Games' time shock coming to Arcuda back on Monday, I think that was announced.
    40:03
    Yep, I pushed it at the post on Monday, I think. Yeah, yeah. So you wouldn't have had to wait for this lovely podcast to tell you you would have been well-informed prior to that. Hey, why don't you go ahead and follow Jared on Twitter? He is at JaredMorgz, or you can follow myself, I am at ShutYourTraps. for other stuff go ahead and check out the blockadepinball.com website and then you can see all the past episodes as well as links to the various sites that we mentioned during our podcast and news gets pushed to that site also yes when we have it it's pretty often because normally it's just like podcast episodes but yeah occasionally we will tweet out from there and use that as the way that we communicate long form things that aren't really suitable for micro blog, 140 characters at a time sort of an hour. Right. Yeah. So I would love to talk to somebody up at pinball arcade about, uh, their partnership with our Cuda. Maybe they could give us some, uh, some information that we're not supposed to have. Yeah.
    41:11
    We're always trying to get to work that who can tell us something that we can then, uh, spout off on because we liked, if you haven't guessed by now, our favorite thing to do on this show is speculate. Speculate until the donkeys come home. We should have called this, instead of the blockade, we should have called it Speculation Pinball.
    41:32
    Theory cast. Yep. We'd be good at it. Well, hey folks, I think I'm going to go head off to the movies and go see John Wick 2. Enjoy. I think I will. What are you up to, Jared? What do you got going on this week? Staying inside, inside the house, because it's 39 degrees Celsius outside, and no thank you. What does that translate to in Fahrenheit?
    42:00
    100 plus. Oh. 100 plus. Lovely. Yeah, 100 plus at least. So, yeah, it's broiling time out there. The air conditioning is cranking away in here, and it is hot, hot, hot outside. Were you mentioning that at the mall near you, they were filming Pacific Rim 2?
    42:26
    In the city, yes. They basically turned it into downtown Tokyo. Yeah, it was in the mall. A buddy of mine, he's got a friend in Australia also. She works in Sydney, and she had received notice just the other day of basically they're seeking permission to film. And it was for Pacific Rim 2. and the the notification got sent to the office building of we are going to be firing off a lot of gunfire please do not call the police it is fake gunfire there you go so everything is under control don't worry um so there you go that that's pretty exciting yeah they're using a lot of locations here in australia for filming this so it's kind of cool um to sort of see movies coming down here and utilizing our areas. Yeah.
    43:20
    And then I'll close with saying, so this kids show that I've been working on for Disney Channel, Stuck in the Middle, we had our premiere episode last week and we came, basically we went to work on Monday and found out that we were the number one rated kids show for shows aired so far in 2017.
    43:46
    Well, congratulations. That's really good. Now, the funny part is what is the age group? So usually when you're talking about ratings, the coveted group is your 18 to 34-year-olds. Okay. That's what they feel has the most expendable cash and can be suckered into whatever advertising goes on. So with this kids show statistic, the group rating is from ages 1 to 11 and I'm sitting there laughing because I was like I don't know of any 1 through 4 year olds that are going to be watching our show and I doubt a 5 year old would even care about our show but it's just kind of one of those weird age range things that kind of maybe crack up it's a rather broad brush that they're painting the kids with there yes and then of course it's also one of those things where people were like, oh, hey, congratulations.
    44:46
    Isn't that great? I'm like, yeah, but it's not like they're raising our paycheck rate at all. No, but look at kitchen work. Yeah.
    44:57
    The thing is that we're working for a low budget rate, basically. Rather than being paid our standard wage, we're being paid quite a bit less. so it is one of those things where it's like, so we made you a success. How about maybe making us a success? Yeah. You know, grazing the wheels, grazing my palm. Unfortunately, I know that's not going to happen. No.
    45:28
    Oh, well, oh, well, it doesn't matter. Indeed. It does not matter. Hey folks, we're going to talk to you again next week. Maybe we'll have more news. Maybe we won't. Maybe we'll just have an entire episode about things we ate. delicious food delicious food all right until then bye-bye wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter runs easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favourite podcast hosting service that BlogAid is delivered to. You can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening, play some Pingball.