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Take the Challenge, Brave One

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·54m 46s·held·Dec 4, 2016
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Farsight releases EMs and announces Premier Gladiators; Zen drops Bethesda Pack tables.

Summary

BlahCade hosts Chris and Jared discuss their recent vacations and dive into pinball digital releases: Farsight's launch of two D. Gottlieb & Co. tables (Centigrade 37, Jacks Open) and announcement of Premier Gladiators; Stern Pinball Arcade on consoles; and Zen's new Bethesda Pack (Skyrim, Doom, Fallout) releasing December 6th. Key tensions emerge around Farsight's Premier table strategy and Zen's RPG-focused pinball design philosophy.

Key Claims

  • Premier Gladiators is the third Premier table released this Pinball Arcade season

    high confidence · Chris explicitly states this during discussion of the Farsight announcement and mentions Big Hit as another Premier table this season

  • Gladiators was originally designed as a Zelda table before being rethemed to American Gladiators due to licensing issues

    medium confidence · Chris states 'apparently Gladiators was originally...this is the third design that Premiere...I guess originally it was designed as a Zelda table...for whatever reason, it didn't get approved'

  • Gladiators has a very powerful vibrating motor that is one of its key features and would be hard to replicate digitally

    high confidence · Jared describes personal experience: 'it has the loudest and strongest vibrating motor in it that I've ever experienced...it will rattle the glass and it will shake the tables next to it'

  • Farsight released a day-one patch for Stern Pinball Arcade on consoles adding lighting adjustment sliders

    high confidence · Chris: 'Farsight has released a patch just this past week that adds all sorts of different sliders for adjusting lighting on that'

  • Zen's Skyrim table plays more like an RPG than traditional pinball, with character building, towns, factions, and minimal combo-based gameplay

    high confidence · Jared's hands-on review: 'it very much feels like an RPG that happens to be pinball...You and your flippers are merely a form of navigation...I didn't feel like I was playing pinball'

  • Zen's Doom table features Nine Inch Nails-style music composition similar to the original game's Trent Reznor score

    medium confidence · Chris: 'I believe Trent Reznor scored Doom back in the day. This has very much the music score sounds like Nine Inch Nails'

  • Bethesda Pack tables (Skyrim, Doom, Fallout) contain no multi-ball modes

    high confidence · Chris: 'You'll be happy that it...actually, you'll be happy with all three of these tables. There isn't a single spelling to be seen. Other than your typical in-line spelling'

Notable Quotes

  • “We're not going to drag D. Gottlieb & Co. through the mud here because Farsight, go ahead and release all the D. Gottlieb & Co. you want to release. But Premiere, you blow.”

    Chris @ ~mid-episode — Expresses frustration with Farsight's decision to release Premier tables, viewing them as taking slots from more desirable Williams/Valley games

  • “You could have had Banzai Run. You could have had Banzai Run. But instead, you've got bloody Gladiators.”

    Chris @ ~mid-episode — Highlights specific community desire for particular unreleased tables over Premier releases

  • “If we knew that they had three more seasons at least that they were going to be making, then having another premiere table would be like, okay, I don't feel like it's taking any valuable slot away from a System 11 Williams game or a Valley game.”

    Chris @ ~mid-episode — Core anxiety about Farsight's long-term commitment and table selection strategy

  • “It very much feels like an RPG that happens to be pinball. You and your flippers are merely a form of navigation.”

    Jared @ ~late-episode — Characterizes Zen's Skyrim design philosophy as fundamentally different from traditional pinball

  • “It's hard to tell unless you've experienced it. Yeah, it's hard to judge a VR experience when you don't have VR.”

    Jared @ ~mid-episode — Notes limitation of evaluating VR pinball without hands-on experience

  • “It's funny, the guy the designer is Peter Deep Orville he did all the good the movie Star Wars tables...yeah all the tables have a nice bounce I was able to do dead passes very easily”

    Jared @ ~late-episode — Credits designer Peter Orwell for strong foundational mechanics in Bethesda Pack tables

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonBaron Rubikperson[name withheld pending review]personFarsight StudioscompanyZen PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyPinball Arcadeproduct

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Farsight released two Gottlieb EM tables (Centigrade 37, Jack's Open) and announced Premier Gladiators; Stern Pinball Arcade launched on PS4/Xbox One; Zen releasing Bethesda Pack December 6

    high · Multiple confirmed release announcements and dates; Jared has early access to Bethesda Pack tables

  • ?

    code_update: Farsight released day-one patch for Stern Pinball Arcade on console platforms adding comprehensive lighting adjustment sliders

    high · Chris: 'Farsight has released a patch just this past week that adds all sorts of different sliders for adjusting lighting'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Zen's Bethesda Pack tables (Skyrim, Doom, Fallout) feature RPG progression mechanics including character building, faction systems, weapon upgrades, and quest-based structure rather than traditional combo/spelling gameplay

    high · Jared's hands-on review extensively documents RPG mechanics: 'it very much feels like an RPG that happens to be pinball...You and your flippers are merely a form of navigation'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community frustration with Farsight's three Premier table releases in single season, sparking forum debate about whether Premier tables represent poor allocation of development resources

    high · Thread on Pinball Arcade fans forum requesting end to Premier releases; Chris articulates core concern about opportunity cost of Premier slots

  • $

    market_signal: Strong positive reception to Zen's VR pinball implementations (Walking Dead VR); market enthusiasm for immersive digital pinball experiences

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.164

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. Hi, do you remember us? Because this is the Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Shut Your Trap, aka Chris Frebus. Joining me after a well-rested vacation, Jared Morgs. Hello, I'm back in Studio North Lakes, ready to do another blockade. I say well-rested, but I don't know, vacations sometimes are more stress-inducing than anything else. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Jeez, it was a jam-packed holiday.
0:59
So much stuff to do. And a few little uncool incidents on the way as well, which we'll get into later.
1:09
Remind everybody where you went exactly. So, first of all, we flew from Australia to Abu Dhabi, and we stayed there for two nights. How long of a flight was that? That was a 12-hour flight. Wonderful. Yep, so that was 12 hours on the plane. Luckily, we were doing all this in business class because we saved up our pennies. So it was not 12 hours in the economy. It was 12 hours of champagne being brought to your chair.
1:34
So it came in your own personal screen with your own personal entertainment system. And subsequently, I caught up with all the movies I had wishlisted in Google Play. So I'm now completely up to date with all the movies.
1:49
So that's really cool. Abu Dhabi, we stayed there for two nights and then we went to the UK and stayed in London with a friend for about four nights and then from there we took the Eurostar from UK to Paris and then from Paris to a little region in France that's well known for its champagne called Reims or as it's commonly pronounced Reims stayed there for a couple of nights and then made our way back to then from Paris home How long was the flight? 24 hours.
Stern Pinball Arcade
product
Bethesda Packproduct
Skyrimproduct
Doomproduct
Walking Dead VRproduct
Centigrade 37game
Jacks Opengame
Premier Gladiatorsgame
Banzai Rungame
Big Hitgame
Doctor Who: Masters of Timegame
Bone Busters Inc.game
IPDBorganization
Pinball Hall of Famevenue

high · Chris: 'everybody is going nuts...this is the way to play pinball...Zen is hitting it out the park with it'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Farsight released Stern Pinball Arcade to consoles before PC/mobile; hosts speculate this could establish pattern of simultaneous multi-platform releases with day-one patches

    medium · Chris hopeful about future coordinated releases: 'when they release it to the mobile and PC, that then they'll start a pattern of doing day one drop for all platforms'

  • ?

    product_concern: Premier Gladiators' most distinctive feature—powerful vibration motor—will be difficult to replicate in digital version; mobile/tablet platforms lack haptic feedback capabilities

    high · Jared: 'it is actually one of the key features of the game, is that big vibrator...if you're playing with a controller or something like that, or a tablet, you don't have a vibrator in it'

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Farsight operating under Apple app store closure timeline during Christmas period, creating production pressure for December releases

    high · Chris: 'The plan also is to have this out for a change before Apple closes down their app store like they do every Christmas'

  • ?

    content_signal: Zen provided Jared with early review access to Bethesda Pack tables prior to December 6 release; hosts conducting hands-on evaluation and design analysis

    high · Jared: 'I got my sneak peek review copy and have done a little poking around on them' with detailed 15+ minute gameplay assessment

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Zen's Bethesda Pack represents intentional design philosophy shift away from traditional pinball mechanics (combos, hurry-ups, multiball spelling) toward quest-based, RPG-inspired navigation

    high · Jared notes absence of traditional mechanics: 'You're not dealing with hurry-ups and combos. It's, hey, shoot over here because this is the end. Once you've got the end, well, now you need to shoot over here'

  • ?

    community_signal: Community data shows Premier tables occupy only ~13% of Pinball Arcade collection and similar percentage at Pinball Hall of Fame; collectors rarely purchase physical Premier machines due to space/budget constraints versus preferring Williams/Valley machines

    medium · Chris's analysis of collector home surveys and venue representation: 'if all these collector's houses that I go to for my pinball league, you don't see Gottlieb Premier in any of the homes'

    • 2:22
    I'm sorry, say that again? 24 hours. What? 24 hours for a flight home? Yep, so I went from Paris to Abu Dhabi, transferred to Abu Dhabi, and went back home to Brisbane. The legs were about seven hours, and probably with the transfer and everything, another 12 hours. So practically a whole day of traveling. Wow, that's brutal. It sure is. Luckily, it would have been really brutal in economy, but because we're in business, it was okay because we managed to get a bit of a catnap on the plane. I think that really helped me re-sink back into the time zone again. Sure.
    3:05
    It was pretty bad, though. It was a long time on the plane, and, yeah, it was just lucky it was business class. That's all.
    3:15
    Yeah. so yeah it was wicked it was a great trip really good that's fantastic to hear I we had the Thanksgiving holiday I stayed in town didn't do anything went and saw my parents had a wonderful smoked turkey for Thanksgiving meal that my brother-in-law made that would have been so good I love a good turkey it was quite tasty it was very moist you know ate my fair share of pumpkin pie and you know that was a pumpkin pie something pumpkin pie is something we can actually get here from Costco now.
    3:48
    And I think people rave about it, like the expats rave about it, but I think as Aussies, we just don't get it. We don't understand the appeal.
    3:57
    Well, there's one thing that you need to understand about pumpkin pie. It's only as good as the amount of whipped cream that you pour on top of it. Ah, so that's what we're going wrong.
    4:07
    So, would you like some pumpkin pie with your whipped cream, is the answer you should be asking. Exactly. And I'm not talking about throwing on – I'm talking about the ready whip. There's stuff that comes squirting out of the can. Oh.
    4:20
    The life-sized stuff. It was my job to go pick up the pumpkin pie from Costco the day before because obviously Costco was closed on that particular day. On Thanksgiving. Yeah. And so I went to Costco. It opens at 10 a.m. I got there at 10 a.m. There was a line of cars to get into the parking lot. Oh, boy. The parking lot was already completely full. Oh, no. So I had to do a couple of laps before I finally found a spot. And then I go in, and they just had pallets stacked high with pumpkin pie. I can't even imagine how much pumpkin pie that Costco must make for the Thanksgiving weekend.
    5:07
    The sweet potato farmers must be stoked. Is it sweet potato that they use? No, it's pumpkin. It's a straight pumpkin. Yeah. Well, somebody told me that it's actually a squash. Oh, okay.
    5:20
    With a little bit of pumpkin in it. Ah, right. So it's sort of like pumpkin solution that they put into the pie. Yeah, you know, gourd pie. Gourd pie. That's not the same appeal, does it? No, it doesn't. Not really. Street appeal zero. But you looked in every single cart that was in there, and everybody had pumpkin pie in their cart. And then I go to check out, and normally you've got the main thoroughfare, you might say, that leads to the registers. And, of course, there was a backup of people, and I'm like, oh, those people are idiots. I'm going to take one of these little side lanes and sneak my way in. And nope, every single side lane was also backed up. All the way to the fixtures. it was about halfway into the store that it was backed up and the thing was all the little arteries feeding all those little sub lanes that were going straight to there those were all backed up with people too so we were all merging our carts like you would on the freeway with your cars and every single was it truly right?
    6:25
    was it truly right? well fortunately everybody was still in good spirits but I mean it was just really you've just opened and there's already hundreds of people ready to check out. I mean, it was... They need like an express pumpkin pie lane. So people are just getting pumpkin pies and that's it. Should have a pumpkin pie express lane where they can just churn through. Right. Well, of course, I didn't wind up just picking a pumpkin pie because, you know, you go to Costco. It's Costco.
    6:57
    Yeah, totally. You come out with 20 other. But yeah, that was an experience. yeah doing any sort of Christmas shopping or seasonal shopping is usually a bit of an experience isn't it yeah it's just it's just like yeah the worst of people come out at that time of year and you you just have to try and grit your teeth and bear it and just get through it you sure do um while we were away I was gonna say I must have missed a lot hey because I was sort of I had wi-fi but most of it was just like trying to upload all the photos that I took on the trip, and I've sort of just been checking Twitter only, and that's about it.
    7:38
    I've missed a bit of stuff. I heard that Zen released some more tables for VR and stuff. We're going to get to a whole bunch of stuff. We're going to talk Zen in a moment, but let's start with the Farsight released, Centigrade 37 and Jack's Open. Oh, yeah. Two Gottlieb EMs. Yes. and hooray yeah because they're EMs and they're not solid state premieres yeah and you know and they play pretty dang good and they're fun like EMs can be you know they're not very deep games or anything but EMs certainly are no but they're good for a quick play yeah totally and Farsight did they did a good job on them I got no complaints with how they managed to handle those properties. I haven't really had a chance to sit down with them yet and play them. I managed to quickly download the first beta before I went on the plane. I thought, oh, I'll give it a go on the plane, but I just didn't bother. There were too many good movies to watch, so I didn't really bother playing. But I did notice that there were quite a few pickups about the rules observed in the Android beta room. I know that our forum friend, Baron Rubik, has decided to come along and do a bit of beta testing in the Android after a long hiatus. And it's great to see him back in there sort of contributing, and he's got a real eye for detail when it comes to rules. So for these EMs that they have to script, he was taking really quite a close look at the rules and also taking a good look at the art that was – quite a bit of art in the early betas was missing. They were missing words and stuff like that. So I have a feeling that the tables that Farsight were working with were pretty clapped out, and they had to do a lot of art rework on them.
    9:25
    So, yeah, it was interesting to sort of just quickly follow that in between eating baguettes and stuff like that when I was over in France.
    9:32
    So, yeah, I can't wait to play them. It's hard with the rules with EMs because they are such simple tables, but there are various things to know about. But we, having been so far removed from when they were a thing, it's a tricky thing. I mean, nobody has guides to these tables. So when Farsight gets one of these, it's kind of like, well, let's figure it out. And they sit there with the glass off and, you know, ball in hand and start hitting switches. Yeah, seeing what does what. So it's good that there are some people out there that actually are familiar with these EMs that can give them a better clue as to what they can do. They can get all the large things, but it's those finer nuances that they might miss. Well, I know that in the case, what Baron was taking a look at was, he was just looking at the three-ball play and the five-ball play instruction cards and comparing that to actually how it played in the game. And there's some differences in the way it was scripted with how the drop targets worked on Max Open, where a certain combination and a certain rollover should actually drop some of the very targets. the variable drops, and they weren't doing that, so that was a good catch. But yeah, there were just observations like that just made the final release a lot more solid, which was really cool to see. I really was hands-off this release. So yeah, good on the beta testing team for smashing that out this week. And then also, Farsight and Stern released Stern Pimble Arcade onto Xbox One and PS4. Yeah, consoles first for a change. Good on you guys. So that's good, isn't it? It is, and they're also releasing a hard disk version. Yeah, the box version, eh? That's really unusual that that's a thing, but I guess it's for those people who like to sort of have a physical copy of things. Yeah, I wish I could comment on them.
    11:30
    While I do have a PS4, I didn't download it for the PS4 because I'm waiting for the Steam PC release, I do know that they, the free table was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Word that came back was that nothing was different between that version and the Pinball Arcade version.
    11:55
    That's a shame because I'm pretty sure they have all the cat assets for that now. Yeah, so I'm not quite sure what people are looking at in that regards. Were they doing a true A-B comparison or maybe they weren't changing at all, I don't know.
    12:09
    And then also, at first, people were complaining that the lighting options were fairly minimal. Since then, Farsight has released a patch just this past week that adds all sorts of different sliders for adjusting lighting on that. So kind of like a zero-day patch for the PlayStation. Yeah, and for the Xbox. So what I'm hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping, since they released it to the consoles first that when they release it to mobile and PC,
    12:46
    that then they'll start a pattern of doing day one drop for all platforms. Yes. It would be so nice if they could do that. I think there's no reason why they can't because they're... They don't have a schedule. Well, they have a schedule, but it's one of those ones which would be classed as a slow burn schedule where they know that they have this table, they have all the assets they would know that they would need to submit things so many weeks ahead for consoles exactly so they could time it out you know get the submission going with Xbox and with Playstation and as you get right there for it to be released then you can do your submission to Steam and the mobile and then have everything released right around the same week and then to make sure all the bug fixes and everything are in the consoles you do a zero day patch on the consoles and you're away yeah exactly that would be the best way of doing it Yeah so I very hopeful that that what the Farsight is planning to do And then the other Farsight news So we going to get into this a little bit here Jared And that is they announced what their next table is. And God damn it if it isn't another Gottlieb premiere.
    13:55
    What was that picture? Because I saw it fleetingly in the clue. The picture was of the TV game show American Gladiators. So everybody went, oh, it's Gladiators. Take the challenge, brave one.
    14:10
    Now, apparently Gladiators was originally, this is the third design that Premiere, I'm not even going to call it Gottlieb. You know what, folks? We're not going to drag Gottlieb EM through the mud here because Farsight, go ahead and release all the Gottlieb EMs you want to release. But Premiere, you blow.
    14:32
    So I guess originally it was designed as a Zelda table. Ah, I see. And then it didn't get approved. They couldn't get the license. Well, yeah, for whatever reason, it didn't get approved. And then it went through some other iteration. I believe, actually, they were thinking of making it American Gladiators. I think that was what I read somewhere. And then they went ahead and just went Gladiators. Yeah, because they couldn't get the license for anything because they suck. Right. Now, technically, what we call this still season of sports, you know, Gladiators of Blood sport.
    15:03
    It's like a TV sport, isn't it? It's kind of like a TV sport. You know. It's going to be Gladiator. And so there's a thread on the Pinball Arcade fans forum about, can we please be done with godly premiere tables?
    15:23
    And there started being a discussion of, ah, you people are whining too much. You know, what's your problem? Pinball is pinball. Pinball is good. You know, there's some people that actually like these tables. And the discussion kind of started raging on.
    15:38
    As it does. And I kind of brought up the point, well, here's the deal. The issue is we don't know how much longer Farsight is going to be making the game. If we knew that they had three more seasons at least that they were going to be making,
    15:56
    then having another premiere table would be like, okay, I don't feel like it's taking any valuable slot away from a System 11 Williams game or a Valley game.
    16:06
    Or it's not taking a slot away from some Daddy East table. Who knows? That's right. But because we don't know, it feels like this little dagger just poking us, going, nah, we're filling up on you. You could have had Bonsai Run. But instead, you've got bloody Gladiators. Right. and then on top of that this is the third premiere table this season so we've had Big Hurt which honestly look Big Hurt it wasn't terrible it's not great but it's not terrible and a lot of people are saying no but Gladiators is a good table you know what maybe it is I don't know my experience with premiere tables is set your bar low I can say I've actually played this a lot this particular table. It was in the arcade back in the 90s, and it was pretty much new in box because God Leads were cheap for this operator. And it is a combo table, like just combo all day. That's how you do well on the table. It's got the usual six set of modes that all God League premieres are limited to.
    17:20
    And there is a final battle sort of thing, like a wizard mode in it. So that's something to look forward to or four to strive to, but it is very formulaic in how you play it, as all Gottlieb premieres are. But the one feature it has, and this will be very hard to replicate in the digital version, is it has the loudest and strongest vibrating motor in it that I've ever experienced in any table at all. It is so powerful that it will rattle the glass and it will shake the tables next to it, and it makes such a racket with all the money in the cash box that the operator had to actually remove the money in the cash box because it made such a terrible racket when the motor pulsed. Like with anything Gottlieb Premier,
    18:14
    I guess the engineering behind it all was rock solid, and these motors, boy, they were well and truly overspec for the application that they were used for.
    18:26
    Now, this is the game. It has kind of a rotating habit trail at the top, correct? It does. It has a swinging arm. The idea is to type a shot, and it drops into the saucer, and you get some points.
    18:40
    So, yeah, that's an interesting feature of it. But really, it is all about just comboing all the ramps and the loops and stuff and building up your points that way.
    18:50
    So, yeah, and locking balls for multi-ball, et cetera. The usual pedestrian fit you get on a Premiere.
    18:57
    Well, maybe first I can do what they did with Red and Ted's Roadshow, where they added, when you're playing on your mobile, the phone would actually vibrate during certain modes. Just a simulation.
    19:10
    They probably will, I would imagine, in this. But the problem is that if you're playing with a controller or something like that, or a tablet, you don't have a vibrator in it. So it will lose a huge dimension of the game without that thing, because it is really one of them. Unfortunately, it is actually one of the key features of the game, is that big vibrator. Now, somebody else was also mentioning that it has a specialty flipper button.
    19:33
    A specialty flipper button. For an upper flipper, I believe. I can't remember. I think it's just basically all the flippers are linked to the main flippers. Okay. I don't know, but it's always saying that, oh, God, this is going to be a pain in the butt on mobile because now you've got to have a special button press on a different portion of your mobile, which always is kind of funky to deal with. I don't remember it having an extra special button for flipping. Okay. I'm pretty sure that all the flippers were just tied in to the same two buttons. Okay. so anyway the discussion kind of got going with premier tables versus having Williams and stuff and somebody started going well hey in the grand scheme of representation premier tables have only done 13% of all of TPA and if you look at the tables listed at the pinball hall of fame in Vegas that's about the same number that they carry of premier tables. And so what I argued was well, if all these collector's houses that I go to for my pinball league, you don't see Gottlieb Premier in any of the homes and that's because you have limited space and X amount of dollars to spend and are you really going to spend your money on one of those machines? Unless you truly, absolutely love it. No.
    21:02
    Absolutely not. To follow up before we continue, the flippers, I haven't looked at the IPDB and And interestingly, I think we are justified in calling it Premier Galic Gladiators because when you look at the entry for it, it is listed as Premier Gladiators, not Gottlieb Premier Gladiators. So I think we're good with that. But it turns out that the flippers are actually stage flippers. So the button, if you press it in lightly, will activate the lower two flippers. But if you press it in heavily, like you would normally, it'll just activate all four because there's actually four flippers on this game. and so okay so that explains what somebody was saying was is if you're on the lower uh field yeah you need to try and pass the ball to the upper field it'll be impossible because you need to do the stage version of the flipper so that the upper doesn't uh flip because that'll block the lane that you're trying to shoot the ball into i never found that playing it because back then i didn't really have a lot of flipper like i was okay at playing pinball but i was always pressing the buttons in all the way, and I never found a problem with comboing on that game. With the flippers, you just do a quick flip, and it goes up there anyhow. The advantage is that because they'll probably be set paths in the simulation, you won't have a problem getting the loops, I wouldn't think. Well, I guess we'll find out.
    22:21
    The plan also is to have this out for a change before Apple closes down their app store like they do every Christmas. Oh, yeah. So you can pretty much be guaranteed that they would have been working on this probably in conjunction with the two EMs to try and get it in the bucket. Maybe they're also planning on having Darker Who Masters of Time out at the same time. Wow. Okay, that'll be interesting. That might be a state of grace.
    22:51
    That will be interesting to see because based on what I saw with the preview pictures, it looked far from completion. But perhaps, you know, things move quickly in software development, so let's see what they come up with. Yeah.
    23:06
    So the weird thing about this particular season is if you look at the other tables that have been released this season, which are Doctor Who, A-Ball Deluxe, Indianapolis 500, and even add in the two EM, Sunagrid 37 and Jack's Open, I'd be like, hey, you know what, this is a pretty good season. I think it's bone busters. It just taints everything. way that Going Nuts Tainted 2 yeah it was like why put this game in there's nothing redeeming about it at all although you know you're saying that victory is of the same era and I don't know it's sort of got the same I wouldn't say it has the same game mechanic but it's certainly running on the same software or hardware version, so the rules and everything are kind of limited by that era, but I still prefer I think I probably still prefer Victory over Bonebusters, honestly. You know, Bonebusters ranks up right there with Class of 1812 for me. Yeah, we'll never touch them again, no. It's nice that it's in there, but I will just walk straight past it in the virtual arcade and go to something else.
    24:20
    It will be the one sitting there with dust on the glass because no one ever plays it. My fear is we only have three more tables to go for this season. They better really smash them home. And it's like, and everybody is going, where the hell is Roller Games? Get us Roller Games. And I'm like, if you want to start with this season, I want NBA Fast Break and I want Bonsai Run. And I know that ain't going to happen.
    24:46
    But that's about the only way they're going to wash my mouth out of the bad taste of three premieres in one season. Yeah, that's really rough. I don't really know what to say.
    24:59
    I don't either. So let's talk about what Zen is doing right. Yeah, let's do that. Because they're releasing lots of goodies. Lots of goodies. So they just released Walking Dead VR, and everybody is going nuts, and I'm seeing all sorts of Twitter posts about this is the way to play pinball, that this is everything that you ever hoped to play pinball with, you know, digitally. VR is just hitting it out the park, and Zen is hitting it out the park with it. Even with Stern Pinball Arcade, people are like, you know what, it's pretty cool. It's not as polished a package as Xen has, but no surprise there.
    25:40
    But yeah, everybody's really high on what Xen has done with Walking Dead, and so it's just a spectacular experience.
    25:49
    Why is it so good? Have you seen any sort of indication about why it's such a killer implementation of VR? I haven't, other than all I can think of is...
    26:01
    Zombies reaching out at you or something? Well, it was my experience with when I was playing Plants vs. Zombies on the PS3 pinball table that Zen put out. And I really didn't like it. It didn't translate well. It just looked mashed, and I couldn't tell what the heck was going on. and then I went over to a friend's house who had a 3D TV and I played the thing in 3D and all of a sudden it was like a completely different experience and it just made sense and it looked like how a table would look like and so I'm kind of thinking that might be the same thing with Walking Dead because it kind of is a cramped play field it seems and there's a lot going on and so yeah maybe having it pop out in a virtual experience and being able to really look around and see all the detail, that might make all the difference in the world.
    26:50
    Yeah. It's hard to tell unless you've experienced it. Yeah, it's hard to judge a VR experience when you don't have VR.
    26:59
    But the bigger news, coming out on December 6th, so actually when this podcast gets released, congratulations,
    27:08
    then is releasing what they're calling the Bethesda Pack. so Bethesda are the makers of Skyrim, Doom and Fallout and those are the very tables that we are getting out of Zen I got my sneak peek review copy and have done a little poking around on them What do you think These are different Oh, yeah? Yeah. They're very interesting.
    27:33
    They're deep. Oh, okay. There is a lot going on with these tables. Let's start with Skyrim. Skyrim, I'm going to put the caveat out here. I've not played any of these games, the actual games.
    27:53
    I've not either at all. So I'm coming at this with zero knowledge of what the heck is going on. Skyrim is kind of everybody's dubbing it Epic Quest 2.
    28:04
    You are building a character and it can be saved game to game. Oh, okay. Cool. But bashing around on it, it very much feels like an RPG that happens to be pinball.
    28:23
    You and your flippers are merely a form of navigation. You know what I mean? You can do mining. You can find inns. You're going to different towns. You can join various factions. You have all these upgrades that you can do, weapons. There's health points to worry about. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff just happening. And I really found in the 15 minutes I devoted to bashing around with it before having to record, I didn't feel like I was playing pinball.
    28:59
    And that was very interesting. It was very interesting. It was odd. I mean, like I kept on, yes, I'm playing pinball, but that wasn't how my mind was going. And it's a combination of just not only what you're kind of going for, but also the various sounds that they use on the table itself.
    29:20
    You're not dealing with hurry-ups and combos. It's, hey, shoot over here because this is the end. Oh, once you've got the end, well, now you need to shoot over here to go into this town or whatever. So it's very directioned and forgiving timelines.
    29:39
    Do you think it's... It sounds a little bit... This is probably pretty loose, but let's go with it. It sounds a little bit like Junkyard in the fact you're trying to complete something to sort of make something larger, like shoot shots to collect certain things. Yes, but Junkyard was still very much a combo-ish table. This I just found that I was very much stopping the ball and trying to aim for a specific place. and so the whole game kind of slowed down Less about flow, more about stop start. Yes, very much about stop start and I was going through the rules and it's just like, holy smokes there is a bazillion things in this so that's why I was just like well, it's funny, the guy the designer is Peter Deep Orville he did all the good the movie Star Wars tables and uh yeah all the tables have a nice bounce I was able to do dead passes very easily um so yeah it uh it just like I said it felt like an RPG that happened to have pinball that sounds really cool so it was different it was a very different experience and to all those people that are always complaining about zen being a video game well you know what this legitimately is feels like a video game.
    31:07
    Yeah. But it's well worth it. It's different, and I like it. I mean, it's... I'm definitely going to be interested to kind of deep dive onto it. And you get to pick your class of character to start with, and there's like eight, I think, different classes that you can pick, and there's magic to worry about, and weapon power, and hit points.
    31:29
    I mean, there's all sorts of these other things to worry about that in normal pinball game you wouldn't worry about.
    31:36
    I really do hope that at some point in the game you have to take an arrow to the knee. And you'll be happy that it... Actually, you'll be happy with all three of these tables. There isn't a single spelling to be seen. Oh, good. That's excellent news. Other than your typical in-line spelling. But, you know, it's not shoot the ramp six times to spell a word. Oh, good. There's none of that. Excellent. Moving on. to Doom, which is, man, it's ominous. It sets the tone really quickly. So dark as the actual original game was.
    32:15
    Well, I mean, lighting-wise, no, but tone-wise, absolutely. And right off the bat, you realize that starting
    32:26
    a mission, not hard. Finish a mission, good luck. they are we're talking about like there was a the one mission I started was I need to shoot the ball through these various portals I needed to shoot over 30 portals they just keep on popping up and so all the missions are they're not timed but they are very long and there's a lot to get while you're in the mission now you can do other things while the mission is open so it's not like you're locking yourself in you can do various okay so you can go and build up other parts of the game within reason but the main core thing is doing the portals which if you think about it is a really clever game mechanic because within Doom itself you could go and explore the whole map and unlock all the secret rooms etc and there was no time so really making it a time based challenge really didn't make sense and once again it's a matter of upgrading your weapons, finding new weapons monsters pop up all the time that you're then having to battle.
    33:31
    It does the three, there's like a, near the top of the table, there's three slits in the table and it's those kind of cardboard pop-ups that pop up and then rotate back and forth. So those are your monsters. Yeah.
    33:45
    So those are popping up all the time and my favorite part is that I believe Trent Reznor scored Doom back in the day.
    33:57
    This has very much the music score sounds like Nine Inch Nails and that couldn't make me happier. Wow, okay. That's going to be hardcore. That's going to be one to enjoy with the headphones on. Yes.
    34:11
    There's two different modes or difficulty levels that you can pick right at the beginning. So there's I forget what the first one was where it's basically a hard time. And then there's Nightmare Mode. Nightmare mode turns off all ball saves, turns off all extra ball. It turns off everything that would save your ball, basically.
    34:32
    Oh, okay. So, again, all of you who think Zen tables are easy, ta-da! Buckle up, because it's about to get real.
    34:42
    And then, for those of you that play Doom, you'll know what the heck this is. I guess there was some kind of a cheat code or a special code that you would type in, and it was I-D-D-Q-D.
    34:55
    Oh, yeah. And there are those initials on the table. And if you can shoot them in the proper order, you'll get some sort of outlaying protection.
    35:05
    Oh. That you get to choose, I guess. So there's even a cheat code in the game itself. And again, that's I-D-D-Q-D for those of you who want to have a crack at it. And if I can't get it before the next time we talk, maybe you can get it and tell me what the heck it does. that's cool so again and again I was going through the rules you know the table guide and there's just so much and that's the thing that's really impressing me about these tables is Zen's going all out they're really designing an experience here not just slapping you know a coat of paint on a yeah and calling it oh yeah this is Doom no they're really trying to transfer the experience of the game into the pinball table. It's quite awesome. That sounds great. I can't wait to get those on my ball. The last table is Fallout. I've got to say, of the three tables, this is probably the most pinball-ish.
    36:06
    Kind of your traditional standard pinball rules, but once again, you've got to worry about your health.
    36:15
    In this one, you've got to worry about radiation and how much radiation you're taking on and you need to, you know, you can open up inventory and you need to, you know, take health packets and restore your health and various things like that.
    36:31
    So there's all sorts of little items of that sort that, again, not the kind of things that you normally have to worry about in a typical pinball game, but here it's you know, normally when you hold down the flipper you get the status report. here if you hold down the flipper and an inventory pops up and you can go through your inventory and this is what it is with the I know for sure on Skyrim it does that I think it's on all three games that it's kind of the same mechanic that's pretty cool so instead of status report it's like an inventory screen I love that yeah these sound really good I reckon these are going to be fun you can build your own character oh you can choose the various attributes that your character is going to have or you can hit a randomizer and it'll randomize your character.
    37:19
    So yeah, I mean, that's what I say. They really banged one out and it's given them... It seems like something that you're going to be able to spend a lot of time exploring and figuring out just what is going on and, oh yeah, you happen to be playing pinball.
    37:34
    So really, this is great. So fans of the license are going to really find it fun, but for those people who perhaps don't subscribe to the franchises that much, they're still going to get a lot out of it. and it might even be a gateway drug into the franchises for them if they haven't already got onto them. Sure, quite possibly.
    37:53
    So I would definitely say, hey, December 6th, these are worth the pickup. I think they did a pretty dang good job on it. I'm impressed.
    38:03
    Show yourself an early Christmas present and get on it. Exactly, exactly. You did happen to miss the Steam sale that both Zen did. They were doing serious deep discounts on everything. And then Barstein also did a Steam sale on seasons one through four. Yeah, I saw that come through on Twitter. I went, wow, that's pretty good to see. It's about time, too. Yeah.
    38:32
    I think that was at the last episode. Yeah, I believe so. yeah so that was a good way for console owners to get up to date on PC if they wanted to switch so yeah very good so Jared remember when we were talking about wondering what system parameters you could use to run pinball arcade oh yeah like the minimum spec yeah minimum spec so I also happen to been given a hand me down laptop oh yeah I remember you were talking about that Yeah, and basically my father-in-law gave it to me because he didn't like Windows 8 and he wanted a machine with Windows 10. And I scratched my head and was like, well, why didn't you just download the Windows 10 upgrade? But, hey, I can do that.
    39:25
    Yeah, so, yeah, totally. You give me that laptop that quote-unquote won't run Windows 10. Exactly. And I'll repurpose this. The pain in the butt, so it's a Dell Inspiron 15. It's not a fantastic laptop by any stretch of the word. Nothing grunty. No.
    39:42
    Made in 2013. Integrated graphics. Intel HD 4000. Yeah, so I knew that it was going to struggle to run some of our stuff. But first things first, I had to get it into Windows 10. So I had to first upgrade it to Windows 8.1. So that took about three hours. Yeah. as it rewrites everything. And then I had to get Windows 10 on there, but Windows 10 isn't being offered for free anymore, unless you know a certain trick. So I applied that trick,
    40:15
    and it took another three hours to upgrade to Windows 10. So then once it had that all done, I was like, hooray! But it still had, then it was a matter of me, oh, guy, now I've got to get rid of all the Dell bloatware, and that was kind of a pain in the butt. But I went about downloading some programs that I have on my PC, but I don't have the disks for. Yeah. Because my PC was a hand-me-down PC also, and so I had these programs already installed. But I was like, I need these on my laptop.
    40:46
    So I went the bold route and thought I was confident enough in knowing what was good Pirateware and what was bad Pirateware. And, oops, I did bad Pirateware. Whoopsies. It amazing how fast things can get installed on your laptop Oh yeah All sorts of porn sites right No no Here what was funny All of a sudden, all these little icons started popping up for programs that had downloaded, and it was all this PC protection, and these things are supposedly there to protect the PC. Antivirus. Yeah, antivirus stuff. Now, I had Avast already installed on there, but then all of a sudden I got the old school malware pop-ups that no matter how many times you click them they just pop up five minutes or five seconds later and they do audio and there's no getting rid of them and I'm just like oh crap the herpes of the computer world I'm like I've got to get rid of this is no bueno so as I'm navigating over to Windows to do some kind of a system restore, see what's capable for me. Because, of course, I didn't do the boot up start backup yet. I hadn't gotten to that point yet. And so as I'm doing that, all of a sudden it says, it pops up a message from Avast saying that Avast needs to rewrite the boot drive. I went, whoa. No, Avast doesn't need to do that. It never would ask to do that. this is you and your fakey software telling me to do that and how I knew it was going to do that was I went over and I clicked the vast and I said turn it off and I turned off the vast and then this message kept on popping up and I'm like no no no no you're not fooling me so rather than yeah so rather than me trying to fix the situation I just went you know what let's just start over and I clicked the button for delete everything and restart from scratch and I did that and So it had to go do the whole reinstall of Windows 10 again. Now, the fortunate thing was when I did the first install of Windows 10, it rewrote my BIOS. Yeah. And so this time I didn't have to go through the upgrade process of Windows 8 to 8.1. It just went straight to 10.
    43:15
    In the process, it deleted everything Dell tried to put on the laptop. So, hey, it turned out to be a good. A good thing. Yeah. I think you did not use those crappy malware distros again, and you were fine. Yeah, so I didn't. I went and downloaded the freeware versions that are, you know, the fakey versions that are almost just as good as the actual programs themselves that all the Linux people love so much. So, you know, instead of Photoshop, you went to download GIMP and all that. Yep.
    43:53
    And then I loaded Steam. And I wanted to see how well does it run both Xen and TPA. Well, I ran Xen first because I knew I wasn't going to have to deal with any of the lovely issues that Farsight has failed to fix. Like data restore issues. Exactly.
    44:17
    And Xen runs on the laptop. I think I have two times anti-aliasing on and that's the only thing that I have turned on. Everything else is turned off. Okay.
    44:29
    It's just not super shiny. Yeah, no ball reflection, minimal anti-aliasing, all the bells and whistles. The shinies. Yeah, the shinies. But it's certainly playable. Okay. So that was cool. So then I decided, well, I really need to try TPA. and so I got a hold of Ksenia and said Sven help me so he told me okay make a backup I made a backup of the game and then I downloaded it onto the laptop and booted it up and just as expected it wiped everything across both PCs and so then I had to go back and restore and we went through all the multiple steps and finally got Both of them in sync. The good news is I have TPA loaded onto the laptop, and now that it was synced with having all my data, now I can play on either computer, and the data will sync back and forth.
    45:33
    It's just that initial install, which is a pain in the butt. I contacted Farsight, one of the guys that we talked to over there, and was like, come on, what is going on, and he was saying that he's hoping that when they get ready to put Stern Pimple on the scene, they'll have the bandwidth to actually try and fix this, because he imagines that they want the spa to have that right out the gate, the proper coding. Because what it is that the program that programmed this initially isn't that far set anymore. So it's one of those things where they're going to have to crack it open and actually take a look. So he's hoping they'll be able to get that going with Stern Pimble Arcade and then migrate it over to TPA afterwards.
    46:21
    Fingers crossed, but in the meantime, if you have any of these problems, contact Sven and have him walk you through how the hell to get Pimble Arcade on two machines while saving all of your data.
    46:35
    Once I had it up and running, man, you've got to turn off everything to play it in DX11. Oh, really? I literally, and I was testing it, I only have one time anti-aliasing on. If I bump it up to four times, it's slow motion play. Oh, jeez. Yeah, I mean... I guess that's the overhead with emulation, isn't it? Yeah, I was able to have it with a shiny ball. So that was good. I play it in Camera 3, which also apparently helps because Heretic had said, try it in Camera 1. I bet it chugs. I'm like, well, why in the world would I ever play in Camera 1? That's a terrible angle to play in. Extreme low mode. Yeah, that would not be a good time. Yeah, so the way that I would play TPA, I'm able to play it. Now, my resolution is 1368 by 7 something. it's kind of an odd resolution so it's not pure true high def and text is kind of muddled it's hard to read because that's the resolution circles are ovals and that sort of thing no I actually I corrected I should say I did wind up correcting it to be a true HD size 1280x720 or whatever it is so that I wouldn't have ovals but it runs. So I will say, on a basic 2013 laptop, I am able to run DX11 and at least see the cool lighting. Oh, that's good. That's better than I would have expected. Yeah, and although it may not be running at 60 frames the entire time, it's also not running in slow motion.
    48:27
    It's certainly playable. You're probably better off playing in DX9, but I hate playing in DX9, so I'll suffer through whatever minor stutters. And I was testing everything with Adam's family, even getting it into multiball because Adam's runs a heck of a light show, plus you've got the force or the power running and then it's a fast table.
    48:52
    Yeah, that's true. Well, that's actually pretty cool to hear, isn't it? Yeah. So, if you're looking for a budget way of singing DX11, let's say you didn't want to buy a PC well one of these $400 laptops will more than likely be able to do the trick well my mouth is dry well that's why I brought water in with me because I've been sipping on the water but yeah you've been doing a lot of talking because I really don't have anything to add much this month but that's okay because I'm sure that after I've got my hands on at the Zen tables and had a bit of extra time with centigrade 37 and jacks open and maybe some new tables that might be coming out earlier than we expect. I'm sure there'll be plenty of things to talk about over the next couple of episodes. Absolutely.
    49:41
    Yeah. So we'll see what happens. It might be, um, might be a bit quiet next weekend to be honest, because we've got my wife's birthday party on Saturday. Um, so it could be, um, Oh, look at this wonderful table service. Um, yeah.
    50:00
    Just bought a glass of water. Unfortunately, it wasn't beer. I don't know what's going on. It could be improved. No, I don't drink beer, so. No, that's fine.
    50:09
    Water was just fine. Okay, I can go another hour now. So, yeah, next weekend, I don't know if I'll be available for a podcast because one of two things will be happening. I'll be cooking breakfast for everybody who is hungover from the party, or I'll be hungover myself. So who knows what happens. I'll tell you what, folks. We're going to call it right now because it is the holiday. So you know what? We really – it was quite nice. We got a couple of posts saying, hey, where are you guys?
    50:40
    Yeah, it was nice to see that. People do actually miss us. But, you know, the holidays are a little bit – it's a tricky period. So, yeah, enjoy this podcast for the moment. Go play some pinball. There's plenty out there right now. Go try out. There really is. drop us a note, please, at blahblahblockade at gmail.com or you can contact us on Twitter, at blockade and give us your thoughts on any of this stuff that we've talked about this episode. Let us know what you think of the Bethesda pack.
    51:15
    Are we incorrect about some things? Please, let us know. We don't want to give incorrect information out of there.
    51:23
    Because we're not perfect. Exactly, and that'll give us something to kind of build up towards, and we'll be back in two weeks with another podcast after that. And then probably we'll have the week after that off because it'll be Christmas.
    51:36
    Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so it's going to be a bit of a light month of pinball. I think it might be the case for the other episodes, the other podcasters as well for the same reason. So it might be a bit light on with the pinball, but we'll be around. Exactly. it's kind of like a TV this month where you get one new episode and a whole bunch of reruns and some specials yeah that's right yeah I know some people get very excited about this time of year because of all the reruns and they love to watch all the old Christmas movies the tried and true Christmas movies that come out so yeah there's a lot of excitement from people on Twitter that I see I'm going to be putting up the Christmas tree tomorrow and our tradition of when we put up the Christmas tree is to watch a Christmas story at the same time so Oh, okay. Ours is already out. We did it last night, and it's looking pretty good. I had to redo it. You're in the future. Well, we're actually technically we put it up on December 1st of the year, but because we were only back on December 1st, we kind of had to wait a couple of days. Okay.
    52:39
    Yeah, we don't really have a tradition about what we do when we're putting up the tree except we just try and get it put up. Yeah. I had to do a bit of reengineering on it this year because we've lost a little thumb screw that tightens it into the base. So I kind of just got the good old dodgy workaround solution and just made a collar out of electrical tape so the whole shaft doesn't wobble around. It actually made it more secure than it was when it got out of the box. So I win at engineering. There you go. You win.
    53:09
    So there you go, everybody. Go put up some lights, put up a tree, buy some presents, play some pinball, and we will see you again in two weeks. if you want to talk to me or Jared directly, why don't you go ahead and fire a tweet off at us. I am at shout your traps. He is at Jared Morgs.
    53:26
    And, you know, for all those other needs, why don't you go visit our website, blockade pinball.com. And yes, show notes and things will be up there and, and all that sort of goodness.
    53:42
    All right, gang. So, uh, thank you so much for listening. We really do appreciate it. We love hearing from you guys. So do that to us, won't you? And we'll see you again in two weeks.
    53:53
    See you later. Bye-bye. WizardAmusement.com, the West Coast League of Classic Pinball. Makers of custom pinball shooter rods and buyer specifications. Swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table. Installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools. Even if you don't own a table, looks great as a pinball memento to admire. Prices start at $39, but mention Blockhead Podcast and receive 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
    54:27
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that BlindPay is delivered to. We can't approve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and place it in ball.
    54:45
    you