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Episode 6 – Nick Dangerous Interview, FFXV, & Tabletop Miniatures

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 11m·analyzed·Aug 18, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Nick Dangerous discusses EM restoration philosophy and plans for score-tracked barcade venue.

Summary

Tony and Dennis from Eclectic Gamers Podcast interview Nick Dangerous from Dallas Makerspace's Vector Committee about EM pinball restoration, focusing on his prized Freedom prototype—one of only 100 made with a middle pop-bumper that made it geometrically superior to the 5,000+ production models. Nick discusses his exhaustive restoration philosophy (100+ hours per machine), clear-coating techniques, and ambitious plans to open a barcade combining EM machines with modern score-tracking and social features.

Key Claims

  • Only 100 Freedom machines were ever made with the middle pop-bumper configuration; remaining 4,900+ production units had standard layout after European distributors rejected the unique design.

    high confidence · Nick Dangerous on Freedom production history: 'only the first 100 were ever made with the middle pop bumper' and 'European distributors were like, you know, I do not understand this middle pop bumper.'

  • Dallas Makerspace is the largest (and cheapest) makerspace in the United States at $50/month for 24/7 access to 20,000 sq ft facility.

    medium confidence · Nick: 'we're not only the largest, fairly sure we're the largest makerspace in the United States right now, and if not, certainly the cheapest'

  • Vector Committee's first Texas Pinball Festival showing (12-13 machines) resulted in best in show, runner-up restoration, and multiple award ribbons.

    high confidence · Nick: 'Rodney's win. He had the best overall custom machine, and I won a best in show for best 70s electromechanical pinball for the Snow Derby machine. and Freedom was best runner-up restoration'

  • Clear-coating playfields requires exhaustive restoration process taking 100+ hours per machine and fundamentally improves gameplay feel without changing original character.

    high confidence · Nick: 'the minimum of 30-40 hours assuming there's nothing that's truly wrong... and then, of course, the repainting, the metal polishing and all that. We were talking easily 100 plus hours per machine.'

  • Nick plans to open a barcade venue combining classic EM machines with modern score-tracking, social media integration, and adult prize redemption.

    high confidence · Nick: 'creating a barcade that has old and new, and even within the games themselves, old and new tech to expand the gameplay... those numbers having a competitive meaning, a redemption aspect to them'

Notable Quotes

  • “But it was a travesty because... it was just extraordinarily ironic that in 1976, America's celebrating its bicentennial, the name of the game is Freedom... And then they take it to Europe and they get shot down.”

    Nick Dangerous @ ~25:00 — Explains the business decision that made the Freedom prototype rare and special, highlighting tension between engineering creativity and commercial pragmatism.

  • “When I rebuild machines, I take them completely apart down to the last screw and then put everything back like it's supposed to be... bulletproofing them and making them good for another generation, I think is important.”

    Nick Dangerous @ ~35:00 — Articulates Nick's restoration philosophy emphasizing preventative care over reactive repair for vintage machines.

  • “The floatiness is usually because the table isn't leveled correctly... EMs are supposed to be kind of tough, and they're supposed to be fast and a little difficult.”

    Nick Dangerous @ ~42:00 — Corrects common misconception about EM gameplay feel, emphasizing proper leveling and maintenance.

  • “I kind of feel like I'm everyone's sort of pinball drug dealer because I've poached all members of the Vector Committee from existing makers.”

    Nick Dangerous @ ~48:00 — Humorous self-deprecation about recruiting makerspace members to pinball restoration projects.

  • “It's about creating a barcade that has old and new... to expand the gameplay from simply you and the machine and making numbers go higher to those numbers having a competitive meaning, a redemption aspect to them.”

    Nick Dangerous @ ~58:00 — Core vision statement for Nick's future barcade business model combining EM authenticity with modern engagement mechanics.

Entities

Nick DangerouspersonDallas MakerspaceorganizationVector CommitteeorganizationTexas Pinball Festival 2016eventFreedomgameTonypersonDennispersonSteve YoungpersonSnow Derbygame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Nick planning barcade venue combining EM machines with score tracking, social media integration, and adult prize redemption to enhance competitive relevance and attract tournament players

    high · Nick: 'creating a barcade that has old and new... you can play an EM and you'll swipe a card start the game and it can track your score... prize redemption for adults like etched barware or cool souvenir stuff'

  • ?

    community_signal: Dallas Makerspace Vector Committee actively recruiting and training new members in EM restoration; Steve-O and Stacy accumulated 9 machines in few months of involvement

    high · Nick: 'I kind of feel like I'm everyone's sort of pinball drug dealer... Steve-O and Stacy... they just got into this a few months ago... they're already up to nine machines'

  • ?

    event_signal: Vector Committee's debut at Texas Pinball Festival 2016 with 12-13 restored/built machines achieving multiple awards including best in show and runner-up restoration

    high · Nick confirmed: 'At the Texas Pinball Festival, I think we had 12 or 13 machines... Rodney's win. He had the best overall custom machine, and I won a best in show for best 70s electromechanical pinball'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Tournament venues like Strawberry Hill Strikeout using Elvis with extra ball enabled, creating swing-play scenarios where skill shot on extra ball can determine matches; hosts discuss implications of rule configurations

    medium · Dennis' match loss: 'His single drain got up enough points to push him just over the top to beat me... up 700, almost 800,000... He pulled like 850, 900,000 out of it'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.214

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. It's April 10th, a Sunday. I'm Tony and joined as always by... Dennis. Hello, everyone. And here we're going to talk to you about pinball and video games and tabletop. We've got a lot of interesting things coming up this show, but let's first go over what we've been doing the last couple weeks. What have you been up to, Dennis? Oh, well, I finally finished Final Fantasy Type-0, a video game I've been working on for a while. I'll wrap that up this morning. Started up Far Cry 4, which I've been having on my backlog for quite a while.
0:32
Played a little bit of pinball. Did a couple tournaments recently, Strawberry Hill Strikeout and the monthly at the 403 Club. I didn't do very well at either of those. Did my own Star Trek machine, finally hit the Kobayashi Maru mode, which that's basically meaning I've completed one-third of the game's programming, if we go in terms of how deep it is. But, of course, it set my high score as well. So that was nice. And I've put up a couple of my older machines for sale because I want to free up some room for one or two new ones. And there are several that I just don't play very much. So I thought I'd try and get rid of those. And I'm getting a lot of interest, but no deals have closed out yet. But that's what's been keeping me busy. Well, it sounds like you've been keeping pretty busy and good luck on getting your machine swapped out. I know personally I've been playing a fair amount of Stardew Valley lately in addition to my ongoing Star Realms addiction. Unfortunately for me, I have had a real big string of bad luck in Star Realms. I have dropped a full rank. I've dropped from rank 12 to rank 11, and I've just barely been holding on to rank 11 this whole last week. It's just been a terrible week for me, gaming-wise. Not much else has been done. I spent up to just a week or so ago studying for a certification for work, so that's all I've been doing for the most part until I finished that. I did pick up The Force Awakens, and my oldest finally got to see it, and she enjoyed it quite a lot. That's about all I've done lately. Oh, and I got trounced horribly at Strawberry Hill Strikeout, but that didn't surprise me. I got completely, oh, man. I had a win. I had a win set up, ready to go. But the gentleman I was playing had earned an extra ball in Elvis, and the way the game is set up is with an extra ball, or the way the tournament was, You just drain it, no flip, just let it go. I was up 700, almost 800,000. His single drain got up enough points to push him just over the top to beat me. It was soul-crushing. Yeah, it's always painful when on those. I'm a bit surprised, actually, that Elvis was set to allow extra balls. I don't know why they didn't. I wonder because I'm pretty sure a stern that modern would have allowed it to be turned off. I'm not sure if they regularly do there or not, though. That's probably consistent with their normal behavior. But, yeah, when you get that free plunge, and I know with Elvis there's a potential skill shot, but it's also not all that hard to get that ball to go into those pops, and then those pops can score a bunch of points. It can throw. There's like a mode hole up there, I think, if I'm remembering right. It can throw the ball into the hole, and that can score points. So unfortunately, it's not like, say, if you were to just get to plunge on firepower, where there's probably not a whole lot of points that are going to come out of the pop bumpers out of that. But Elvis can be pretty generous on that initial launch. Yeah, he pulled like 850, 900,000 out of it. So it was painful. It hurt the old ego a little bit.
Mortal Kombat Xgame
Scoreboardgame
Strawberry Hill Strikeoutevent
403 Cluborganization
Internet Pinball Database (IPDB)organization
Steve-Operson
Stacyperson
Marco Specialtiesorganization
Pinbotgame
Stargategame
World Cup Soccergame
The Peacockorganization
Magic Citygame
Yukongame

design_philosophy: Nick's restoration approach balances historical authenticity with modern improvements: clear-coating, stealth LED integration (warm white + filament bulbs), score tracking—intentionally avoiding 'Skittles effect' rainbow mods

high · Nick: 'I try to bridge yesterday and yesterday's technology with the good things that we've sort of found in modern technology... That's the kind of experimentation that... will lead to the next thing'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Nick Dangerous established himself as specialist in EM restoration through exhaustive research (reviewed IPDB twice), curated 25-machine collection, and teaches specialized restoration techniques to Vector Committee members

    high · Nick: 'I have done an extraordinary amount of research... I've looked through the entire IPBB twice... I have a collection of about 25 that I've built up over the last year and a half'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Freedom prototype (100 units) with middle pop-bumper configuration geometrically superior to 4,900+ production units with standard layout; business decision to remove unique feature based on European distributor feedback

    high · Nick: 'only the first 100 were ever made with the middle pop bumper... European distributors were like... I do not understand this middle pop bumper... they basically change the geometry to a standard kind of layout'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Boutique makerspace-based pinball restoration incorporating modern digital components (Arduino score tracking, Hall effect sensors) into vintage EM machines while maintaining original gameplay

    high · Nick describes Steve-O and Stacy's work: 'they had, like, Arduino in the back that was doing score tracking on EMs... They had little digital call-outs from, like, old movies'

    • 3:37
    Yeah, well, we should we should say, though, we both actually did just as well at Strawberry Hill Strikeout. We didn't we didn't get three strikes in a row either. We did win one match each. So we weren't the worst. We tied at the second worst level. So that's a progress of a sort. Yeah, it's definitely moving forward a little bit. Well, let's go ahead, given that, and transition into our pinball topic, which is a first for us. It's going to be an interview. And so I took some time and I interviewed Nick Dangerous. He's with the Dallas Makerspace Vector Committee. And we mentioned one of the machines that he restored in our last episode. He is the one who worked on the electrical mechanical machine Freedom that was best EM restoration runner up at Texas Pinball Festival 2016. So I sat down with him for a few minutes, and we discussed a variety of topics relating to the work of the Vector Committee and Dallas Makerspace, a bit about the machine freedom itself, which you and I both found pretty fascinating, and just sort of what he's looking towards doing in the future regarding his interests in EM machines in particular. So let's go ahead and roll that tape, and then let's have a discussion. Hello, everyone. I'd like to welcome Nick Dangerous with the Dallas Makerspace Vector Committee to the Eclectic Gamers podcast. Nick, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to speak with me about your Freedom prototype and what you do with the Vector Committee and the Dallas Makerspace. It's my pleasure. Well, let's go ahead and launch off for the listeners and myself. could you tell us what the Dallas Makerspace is and what the Vector Committee does with the Dallas Makerspace because I am completely in the dark about what either of those things is. Well, I guess then that means we have to do a better job of developing our website. But essentially the Dallas Makerspace is part of the maker movement which you may have heard of maybe via other news sources. but we're basically a non-profit shared sort of workshop, classroom, and social space all in one. And, you know, we kind of attract people who are interested in creating and making things, and some of it centers around electronics or microcontrollers. We have about four 3D printers, creative arts, an area, a series of large format printers, vinyl cutters, metal shop, wood shop. I mean, even the automotive section, the pottery. It's basically a place that's, I call it shop class for adults. And so you essentially, for $50 a month, we're not only the largest, fairly sure we're the largest makerspace in the United States right now,
    6:35
    and if not, certainly the cheapest in terms of what you get for your money, but $50 a month will get you as an individual 24-7 access to our 20,000-square-foot facility. And so essentially it's a place to network with other creative people, learn new skills, learn new creative abilities, and have fun doing it. Okay, so the makerspace isn't pinball specific or even just gaming in general, but you really do mean maker. It's extremely comprehensive. Yes, the makerspace itself is the facility. There are many committees within the makerspace, and some deal with woodworking and metalworking. And VECTOR, it's an acronym, essentially, but it's basically the committee that deals with everything that's arcade and pinball tech. Okay. So it was part of the VECTOR group then, the VECTOR committee, I should say, that your freedom prototype ends up showing up at the Texas Pinball Festival? That's correct. We've been promoting VECTOR for about a year and a half now, but we've really reached a new level. and we have several prolific members and projects that have come in and been restored at the Makerspace. So at the Texas Pinball Festival, I think we had 12 or 13 machines, and nearly all of them had been either restored at the Makerspace or, in the case of the Mortal Kombat X cabinet, built entirely from scratch at the Makerspace. so we have a nice little group and we're actively trying to connect with the community of arcade and pinball aficionados who would like to kind of just take just playing the games to the next level of actually kind of creating hacking and building them okay well that's really interesting and I think actually it was a number of those vector projects ended up either winning awards or being highly recognized within the award categories. I recall that Mortal Kombat one in particular at the conclusion of the pinball festival. Yes, we were really happy with Rodney's win. He had the best overall custom machine, and I won a best in show for best 70s electromechanical pinball for the Snow Derby machine. and Freedom was best runner-up restoration and also Sean had a runner-up ribbon for his time warp solid state. But parts of all of those machines have been restored or built at the makerspace in our committee. So we're actually pretty proud to have achieved that our first time out.
    9:26
    Well, that was really impressive. It's not a total clean sweep, but I don't know if any other group got so much recognition as you all did at the end of the festival. Let's transition to your freedom machine specifically. For those that had listened to our fifth episode, Tony was essentially gushing over that freedom, and I had to agree. Of all the EMs I played at the festival, I thought it was the best one. So we both thought you should have won Best Restoration, but Runner Up was very, very good. I was wondering, I didn't know until they were actually announcing those that it was a prototype. I didn't know what made a prototype special. So could you explain specifically regarding the Freedom prototype, what makes that prototype unique? What was different about it versus the production runs for Freedom? Oh, now the cat's out of the bag. You see, I knew this was going to happen. Well, I have done an extraordinary amount of research in terms of looking at the entire sort of pinball vernacular that is from the 30s all the way up to the present era. There's a website called IPDB. That's the Internet Pinball Database. And you can search by year or by genre in terms of all the pinball machines that have been released. It has photos. And essentially, I've looked through the entire IPBB twice, which takes quite a bit of time to do, but I was studying geometry and what exactly is it that makes a pinball machine a good machine. I really kind of wanted to deconstruct not only the artwork and the sounds and, of course, the obvious elements, but specifically the core of what makes a pinball machine what it is, is the geometry. It's the game itself. And so in studying the machines, I have a collection of about 25 that I've built up over the last year and a half. And most of them are these electromechanical machines. That's my favorite era. But in the case of Freedom, I guess you'd notice that it had a pop-up between flippers. And there's really only a small handful of pinball machines that had ever been built with that configuration. Most of the time, you know, pinball machines just have two flippers at the bottom, and that's kind of it. But, yeah, let's see. In the era of earlier machines, pinball machines had, like, two-inch flippers, and then around 1970, they went to the three-inch flippers. So of the three-inch flipper pinball machines, and that's the size of flipper we have today, only three were ever made with a middle pop bumper. and they're all good but the Freedom prototype to me I just saw it on a Craigslist ad in Las Vegas and I'd never seen it before either I mean I saw it in the IPBB but I kind of took a look at the geometry and it just makes this fantastic figure eight pattern and the shot layout is significantly different from other games that I just took a chance on it and bought it from the guy, and it was in terrible shape. I mean, I didn't get to see it firsthand, so it was like $1,100 plus like $350 shipping for this, you know, kind of beat-up electromechanical machine.
    12:59
    But from what I knew of the history of these types of layouts and the geometry is that middle-pop games are really fun,
    13:09
    and this one just looked... I knew it was just going to be a winner just from the layout. Freedom, I guess you're familiar with, I don't know if you've looked at the production numbers or anything, but Freedom is a game that was very, very popular. They made about 5,000 of them and another 1,500 in solid state form. It was built right at the era where electromechanical was crossing over into solid state. And so there's quite a few of them out there, but only the first 100 were ever made with the middle pop bumper.
    13:43
    And as the story goes, what happened was Valley was taking these 100 games to the different trade shows and were kind of showing off, hey, this is the latest and greatest, and trying to sell them to arcade operators. But when they got to Europe, the European distributors were like, you know, I do not understand this middle pop bumper. I'm going to make a movie to make it like Ozzy West. I don't understand. So they had to have a little discussion, and I'm like, well, I guess sales, business is business. You've got to stay in business, got to pay the people, make payroll. But it was a travesty because a lot of rare games are rare for a good reason. They usually suck.
    14:32
    You're on your production line, and you're making a game that's not very fun. You kind of stop early, and that's why they have a limited run. or maybe they're just too expensive to make. But in this case, it's just extraordinarily ironic that in 1976, America's celebrating its bicentennial, the name of the game is Freedom. It's got American flags plastered all over it. And it was a fantastic layout that they came out with, the best middle pop game ever. And then they take it to Europe and they get shot down. I mean, so they caved in. and they basically change the geometry to a standard kind of layout, which, in my opinion, screws up the geometry because you have a V shape. All the shots come from the middle instead of across. And as, you know, as Tony was, is it Tony? I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, Tony was the other one. I'm Dennis. Yes, so as Tony was, you know, I could just hear it in his voice when you guys did the last podcast, and he was like, Freedom, that's the game. It's awesome. I'm like, yeah, it is great. I'm so glad that quite a number of people at the show just had that kind of, hey, this is something different about this game. But only 100 of them were ever made. So it's just a really unfortunate business decision that triumphed over engineering and creativity in that case. But obviously I'm pretty happy to have one. I would just recommend, certainly, if you ever know of anyone who has one, better grab it. so yeah i i yeah that that uh pop bumper between the flippers really i felt made that game what made it the fun that it was uh i mean the only other middle pop bumper game that i'd played i actually own but it's a 50s got leaves it's the two inch flippers and it's covered in gobble holes and there's a you know there's a pop bumper down there which can save you but it's not doesn't have that flow like the freedom does where that pop bumper is sort of an integral part of how the ball's going to actually be moving around all the time on that main play field. So it was incredibly unique. And then when I looked and I saw that there were over 5,000 freedoms, I was like, well, what were the differences? Maybe I could tell him he could watch. Tony would want one. He could watch for a non-prototype unit. It's like, oh, there's no middle. There's no flipper, pop bumper. Never mind. He ain't going to want it. Exactly. It's just not the same game at all. And which 50s game is that that you have? It's Scoreboard is the name of it. Score hyphen board. Okay, yep, that's in my little list. So, yep, that one looked good.
    17:06
    Yeah, so another one from that era that's really nice is Magic City. It's a Williams game, two-inch flippers. It's got a middle pop. It also kind of great artwork. But, yeah, it's a small – middle pop games are kind of – there's only about a dozen or so, but they're all – it's a pretty neat style of geometry. So let's transition to the restoration process for a bit. I was curious in terms of if you had a sense in terms of how many hours were invested and what were the main elements that needed restoring. It sounds like it was in pretty rough shape when you got it. It certainly was. As mentioned, I had to buy it sight unseen, which was scary, and certainly shell out a lot more than I typically do on an unseen unclaved electromechanical But the rarity and the geometry was the issue So when it arrived I think one of the reasons I didn invest in show for it was the back glass had been touched up poorly by someone. I don't know, but it was some sort of acrylic paint that had been badly applied to the back glass, so it didn't look great. I think the cabinet itself needed a repaint, And although I had time to do that with 2001 and Snow Derby, and of course Snow Derby didn't win the best in show for that category, I think those two things are probably what, you know, those aesthetic upgrades that just didn't quite push it over the edge for the win. But it was recognized, certainly, and I think that's why they at least did so with the runner-up ribbon to kind of signify that it was a special game. But in terms of the restoration, I have an exhaustive process that, to my knowledge, I don't think anyone is doing with EMs at all. Not to just say, you know, gee, I'm awesome. That's not the point. It's a commitment of time and money, and I'm taking a risk by investing this much of it in each project. But the main thing I do that some people in the hobby consider maybe overkill is the clear coating of the play field. When I received the play field, some of the wood was almost, there was planking. That's where it has that kind of, you know, the wood has either been exposed to moisture or temperature changes, and it kind of has that, you know, sort of rough texture to it. You can see the grain kind of rising. So that had to be dealt with. The white circle that goes all around the middle of the play field, that had turned sort of a brownish color, so that had to be completely frisked off and painted. It actually is whiter than the original game. I wanted it to match the other elements in the plastics in the play field. It just sort of, you know, the red, white, and blue theme. So that had to be re-sprayed. There were a lot of touch-ups, and then, of course, the inserts, some of them were loose and cupped. So clear-coating, you know, when I began this collecting, I kind of had to take a risk because I didn't know if the clear-coat would profoundly change the gameplay. Some people have said that it creates too much spin or too, you know, it just feels different. But it was a gamble I think that has really paid off. Every game that I've cleared, pretty much all my local collector friends have said that's the way to do it, because it really just plays like the table's been freshly waxed. And the good part is you don't have to wax the table over and over again when it's cleared. It will just play like that all the time. So I think it looks great. I don't knock down the finish. I leave it nice and glossy like it's kind of like a new modern game. but yet the artwork comes through, and I think it comes through even more beautifully than it did, certainly after years of wear and exposure to UV or sunlight. So that's the one thing I do that's really kind of over and above the top is depopulating the play field, touching up, fixing inserts, re-spraying the artwork, and then clear-coating it, because I do believe that, I believe in making upgrades in the spirit of the original.
    21:36
    For example, some people go crazy with LEDs and the colors, all you see is rainbow flashers. Right, Skittles effect. Yeah, I mean, that's fine if you are going for that, it's your machine, and hey, you do what you want to, that's fine. But I try to bridge yesterday and yesterday's technology with the good things that we've sort of found in modern technology. And I think clear coating is a reasonable and actually desirable step in that process.
    22:09
    That was probably the most significant thing that was done to make the game play well. Of course, the pop-up bodies, caps, flippers, these plastic parts that have worn out, those have been replaced with new ones.
    22:21
    And of course, props to Steve Young at Pinball Resource for keeping all the parts moving along at good prices. You know, he's kind of my main supplier, but I also buy things from Marco and others as well. But let's see, the plastics, the original Clayfield plastics, kind of the art pieces, those were luckily intact, thank goodness, because that lower piece being a prototype, if it was broken or missing, I would be totally out of luck.
    22:50
    Because there's no, you know, you can get the upper pieces are the same, but certainly not the lower ones. And so I got lucky there. But let's see. So that covers, let's see, I've, of course, polished all the metals. I had a new door, put in a new door. And, of course, when I rebuild machines, I take them completely apart down to the last screw and then put everything back like it's supposed to be. You know, new sleeves, every switch contact gets polished, every relay gets disassembled and regapped, put back together. It's a little OCD, but, you know, I do have a future goal in mind, which we can talk about, I guess, in the next stage of the interview. But, you know, bulletproofing them and making them good for another generation, I think is important. Because certainly a lot of, you know, if you only fix what's broken, you're really only setting yourself up for a failure the next time you take it to a pinball show or venue where you'll have 50, 100 games, and then the next thing will break. So these games are 30, 40, 50 years old, and they kind of mean you need to reset the clock at some point and set everything back in its original configuration as well as possible. So when they come through my stable, I do that, and I feel and I couldn't do that for every game of course I do that because I've gone through the IPDB twice and identified the machines that I feel are they have a unique style or something about the gameplay or something that's worth preserving before I embark upon this level of restoration which takes anywhere from really just the mechanicals minimum of 30-40 hours assuming there's nothing that's truly wrong with it or have to order you part or undo something that was sort of hacked to. And then, of course, the repainting, the metal polishing and all that. We were talking easily 100 plus hours per machine. Well, that's really interesting. And I will say that I agree with your decision to have applied the clear coat. And I know Tony would have, as you undoubtedly heard during our last episode, he thought it looked like the play field had come out of a new factory, that it was new. And I liked the way the ball mechanics worked on a field that slick. So I thought, you know, in a way it didn't feel like an EM, but in a positive way. It didn't have that same floaty sort of nature that some people who are more familiar with the modern games tend to frown upon. Exactly. And I strongly dislike games, EMs that are slow and floaty. Well, the floatiness is usually because the table isn't leveled correctly. Yeah. You know, EMs are supposed to be kind of tough, and they're supposed to be fast and a little difficult. So most of the time, that's just leveling, and it's because the mechs haven't really been gone through and serviced, and everything feels a little sluggish. And unfortunately, that's something that also motivates me, because I think when modern players walk by EMs, they've kind of been trained to ignore them because so many of them are in just not very good shape, or if they are in good shape, they haven't been leveled, or if they've been leveled, they have the weird graphical things that were done to them or the lighting that's kind of odd. And, you know, it's hard to get everything right. There's just a lot of consideration required to get an EM back to have that original feel. But certainly clear-coating, to me, eliminates that annoying issue where the ball travels over a cup insert and then it changes the trajectory or sometimes it gets stuck up there. I just can't stand that. And they didn't play like that when they were new. So in a way, it is kind of you're getting the experience that people got, you know, 34 years ago. So what is your long-term plan here then? what is Willy Wonka's pinball factory going to come up with we have some very interesting things in store even what we're doing at Dead Vector we have a couple of people Steve-O and Stacy they're a couple and boy they have I kind of feel like I'm everyone's sort of pinball drug dealer because I've poached all members of the Vector Committee from existing makers. You know, they were already at the maker space doing other things, and they kind of wandered over to what I was doing with my pinball machines and were like, hey, that's kind of neat. How much does it cost? Oh, really? 300 bucks? I can get a good game? Oh, wow. Well, maybe I'll do that. And then, like, you know, one thing leads to another, and now we have a little committee of people. But Steve-O and Stacy have just taken off. They're already up to nine machines. I mean, they just got into this a few months ago, you know. Wow. Yeah, they just bought a Stargate and a Pinbot at the Texas Pinball Festival last week. And, you know, last year they bought a World Cup Soccer. And, you know, they totally like, they work on rebuilding Gold Wings by Premier. They've got a couple of EMs that I'm teaching you how to do the full rebuild and all that. And they had a Yukon. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite fully dialed in yet, but they were doing some interesting things with Hall effect sensors, and they had, like, Arduino in the back that was doing score tracking on EMs. And once you cross certain 1,000, 2,000, 3,000-point thresholds, They had little call-outs, little digital call-outs from, like, old movies that were like, yee-haw, little, like, theme, you know, call-outs for, in an EM, you know what I'm like? That's, I mean, that's really cool, the bridge in technology like that. It's like, that's the kind of experimentation that, you know, will lead to the next thing, the next big kind of amusing thing in pinball. So we're, we definitely take the Ben Heck kind of hackery side of working with our machines, But so anyway, as far as the future is concerned, I have kind of a, I had a, my brother and I ran a bar in Austin about 10 years ago. It was called the Peacock and it did well and it was cool and kitschy and it was kind of like Willy Wonka meets cruise ship kind of aesthetic, you know. I lived in Dallas. I wasn't able to run the bar with him, but I did kind of like the business. It's just kind of a nice, social, crazy, unpredictable, work hard, but sort of inexplicable and fun. So I think combining that with pinball, and specifically, I like mechanicals.
    30:01
    Now that I've kind of taken apart so many machines, and I have the understanding of which games kind of have engaging gameplay, which ones are significant in terms of the history of EM and pinball, what it takes to get everything dialed in and reliable, what it takes to have those next-level upgrades made that don't sacrifice the gameplay, even the right blend of sort of LED lights. and that's one thing I have a pin-side thread about stealth LED, in which I call it stealth LED because it's a combination of filament bulbs and LEDs that, you know, you use the warm white LEDs in a way that's complementary so that it still evokes that original look, but then you have inserts that are a little brighter, back glass with artwork that still comes out, and you still have some of the power savings. So, again, it's that best of both kind of approach. But moving forward, it's about making the machines bulletproof, fun to play, fun to look at, and also doing score tracking and social kind of media integration in the sense that, for example, Dennis, you go into a barcade, which is the next venue. It's going to be like a barcade with craft beers and pinball machines and stuff. but you can play an EM and you'll swipe a card start the game and it can track your score and kind of pit you in friendly competition against other people who come to the bar and maybe even have like a prize redemption for adults like stuff adults want like maybe etched barware or cool souvenir stuff this is a 21 and up thing it's not going to be for kids But it kind of brings EMs, it gives EMs another level of depth and competition that kind of makes it more relevant with the types of games people play today. Without, again, without sacrificing what's good about EMs, because after all, in my opinion, it's kind of my favorite era, is just that classic pure pinball that they represent. So, again, going forward, it's about creating a barcade that has old and new, and even within the games themselves, old and new tech to expand the gameplay from simply you and the machine and making numbers go higher to those numbers having a competitive meaning, a redemption aspect to them, and tying the social aspect together and enlarging kind of the pinball experience as a whole. Well, that's very ambitious. I think you have a good plan that has a lot of potential to work out. Yes, certainly ambitious. I mean, it's very, you know, it's something that we could also, if it's, you know, location is everything. I mean, it is, of course, still primarily a, you know, bar entertainment venue. The games are theirs as our unique offering, but it is a business. It's not a hobby at that point. But I do think that, again, the score tracking and social integration brings a dimension to it that is kind of a value add without taking anything away from the fundamentals of the game. And, of course, we want to also attract tournament players and the community as well.
    33:54
    And maybe even if it takes off, it will be something that other owners or venues would want to maybe even link up or institute in their own businesses. But it seems pretty exciting. We've done some preliminary tests, and it just seems to be something that's worth exploring and expanding upon. So, yeah, it just kind of looks like maybe two, two and a half years out, we'll be looking at setting up shop. Excellent. Well, Nick, I want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me. And hopefully we'll see some new stuff out of the Vector Committee for Texas Pinball Festival 2017. Yeah, you guys set a pretty high bar for yourselves in 2016. So it's going to be tough to beat that, I think. But if any group's set to do it, it's obviously you all. yeah we're bringing our uh we're definitely bringing it next year everybody's pumped and we're really happy with uh with our reception last year so yeah stay tuned and come on out next year it's gonna be fun all right thanks a lot take care nick all right cheers thanks and so that was my interview with nick dangerous i really appreciate that he took the time to speak with me about freedom and all the the activities going on with the dallas maker space uh i should go ahead and start out. As I noted in the interview, I was very unfamiliar with the idea of a makerspace. I suppose I'm a bit surprised how ignorant I was on it. I think it's a really neat idea. I see a lot of potential for doing things like video game and pinball restoration, and obviously flat-out creation, like what we heard regarding the Mortal Kombat game that was also at Texas. I get the idea. I'd known that there were groups and things of people that would pool money together to invest in items that are really expensive like 3D printing for example to get their own 3D printers But I wasn aware of anything that large scale or that organized And it does sound like Dallas may be the most advanced in terms of makerspace concept, at least nationally. Yeah, I've heard of makerspaces before through some other podcasts I listen to and a lot of forums that I take part in. I know they're really popular on the West Coast. I know there are several big ones in like San Francisco and Seattle, and I know there are several other places with them. I think they're a really good idea, especially for people more in town, in big urban areas, especially apartment dwellers, people who wouldn't normally be able to put together stuff like that because it gives them the workspace they need, and it lets them put together the more expensive parts that is normally not accessible to most people while still giving them the freedom to create and do whatever they want. I mean, if they want to just sit down and go old-fashioned and build an old-fashioned rocking chair, they can do it. If they want to work on a bicycle or work on some weird little 3D-printed project or something, it's all stuff that's possible, and it's all thanks to Makerspaces.
    36:54
    From everything I've seen, they're just a really, really good idea for the people who don't have room and don't have the money. Yeah, no, I can imagine a lot of potential with that. Far more ambitious projects would be possible than what like my dad and I who do most of all when I do a project, that's who I usually do it with. And we're in usually my garage with whatever cheap materials we can we can assemble. And that dictates sort of what sort of approach to a project we will take on. And it's never been anything as expansive as what we saw coming out of the Dallas group. Let's transition a little bit to the part of the interview where Nick went into the details regarding Freedom and the history of that fascinating machine, or at least I found it quite fascinating. I did not realize how rare middle pop games, middle pop by which I mean having that pop bumper in between the flippers. I didn't realize they were that rare. I I've I've always known that I haven't seen them around very much, but I I've always just assumed, you know, I'm mostly familiar with solid state and later and the three inch flipper model. And generally you just have the flippers and the drain hole in between. And so it's just not something that that layout's kind of fixed now. Whereas if you look back at the era, they played around with the flipper layouts a whole lot after they got introduced in the 40s, especially given how well it seemed to play to me. having that middle pop by those flippers, I was especially amazed that it didn't win over folks, the European folks at the trade shows, that they thought that was so weird because to me, that's what makes that game compared to a lot of the other EMs I was able to experience down in Texas. What were your thoughts on that? I do think it makes that game. And it's, I know you have one that I've played a little bit, and those are the only two I've played that have that pop bumper, but I really think it brings a whole new kind of feel to the game. And while it's not something that I think we're ever going to see again because everything is very solid down into what the forms are currently, I think even a modern table built properly could probably pull something like that off pretty well and be a lot of fun.
    39:03
    I just don't know. I don't think it's something we'll see. It's a different feel. It's kind of like some of the machines. I cannot remember the name of the machine, but I played a machine where the flippers, instead of flipping with the smaller ends towards each other, they were rotated. So they flipped on the outside, and the ball rolled to the left or right of them instead of rolling down between them. I played one of those, and that was an interesting little game. It's just that whole testing and marketing and working with stuff from back in the day is something that is, I think, kind of missing nowadays.
    39:41
    Yeah, I think part of that could just be that pinball, even though it's in its resurgence now, it's not like how it was back then. And so there are just certain risks that no one wants to take anymore because it would be far too disastrous if it didn't catch. So like, for example, those what I call reverse flippers, my understanding is that the reverse flipper layout was the first flipper layout when they in the late 40s when those games first started to appear i don't know when they first uh went to what we think of as the right the right way to face the flippers and where the points are facing in but but you know even when you know p3 for example uh multimorphic and how uh innovative that is obviously the way they've gone with that is those slings and those flippers are in the standard now traditional format and That's something they chose not to muck around with in doing anything. It's all the back box, not back box, but the back of the play field stuff with the modules that gets to have the changes. And I think it's just because now that sort of double sling, double three-inch flipper layout is so accepted, and no one wants to risk going against that. It's not worth it. So, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, when we look back at the EM era, we can see a lot more innovation in terms of layout. I mean, some of those layouts are big duds, too. So obviously, I understand why no one wants to take a sort of chance like that anymore. Something that I thought was really interesting that Nick did with Freedom, which apparently is what made the game play so well, in addition to that fascinating prototype, the pop bump, was the clear coding that he went in and clear coded it. But I wasn't surprised that he clear-coded it. It made a lot of sense to me after playing it that that was why the ball was rolling so well, or as you had described it, I believe, as feeling like it had just come off the factory floor. But what I thought was interesting is that a lot of other restorers don't seem to consider it. And I guess from talking to Nick, my sense was that that seems to come down to maybe a purist versus a reformist perspective, as I would categorize it, where there are some people that when they do a restoration, They want it to be as much as how it was when it actually came out as possible, which would mean no clear coat because they were not clear coated back then or versus someone that might be wanting to make the game look new again, but is willing to put in modern accommodations or accruements that are going to, in theory, make the game play better. And I thought the clear coat was a winner. I now I wish all my EMS were clear coated. I'm just too lazy to do the work to do it. But I think they would probably all play better if they were actually coded like that. Yeah, I think it worked really well. I enjoyed it quite a lot. I think on the people seen differently, I think it's kind of like car people. You see people who want to mod their cars a lot or people who want to mod it just a little bit and people who keep everything as stock as possible.
    42:38
    And typically, it's just, you know, what one person likes. I know personally I kind of like taking an old machine and cleaning it up and making sure it looks like the old machine, even if you've gone through and modernized it a little. I think the clear coating is nice or switching out the lights for LEDs, provided you get enough GI, is a wonderful little thing, but I don't think it actually affects the gameplay at all. I think that kind of stuff is something that's really good and can be really, really well done and can do a lot for an older game. Yeah, and in my experience with the pinball community, I would assess that most people are more in the modding. It's more of a mod community than it is a keep things stock sort of view. But within the pinball community, there's not a lot comparatively as a percentage doing work on the EM front. It seems to be much more oriented to the DMD era and beyond at this point specifically. And that probably just has to do with the nostalgia and what was out when people were first playing pinball. But so, you know, there could be more differences there in terms of purists from the EM front. But I just thought it was an interesting aspect to the restoration process that I didn't notice on very many other games on the EM front at Texas. So I thought it was a really good move. What do you think of his ideas on the score tracking and social media integration that he has that were very specific to electrical mechanical machines to do in a setting like a bar? The way I got my impression from it after I completed the interview and I was thinking about it was that it's sort of like achievements for EM machines, that it would be a way for people playing at a particular location to keep track of stuff that just wasn't done when those machines were made. What I was sort of curious about, though, is will it make EMs a viable option to put on location? Will it make them modern enough to entertain today's audience while still relying on the traditional gameplay mechanics that are going to be a part of the machines themselves? So I didn't know what your thoughts were on that. In my experience in the Kansas City area, we have three main venues with high-quality location play, and I've only ever seen one of them have an EM machine, and only once. And so out of all the lineups, I've seen one EM machine ever in the, you know, just over a year that I've been regularly going to these places. And so it would be, I think it'd be really interesting to see something that would hook people into saying, let's go ahead and let's put EMs on location and people will actually want to play them. I don't know. What do you think of it? Do you think the score tracking sort of social media thing, is that the hook that's needed? Will it work? It might work. I think it could be just that EM games are just too slow for modern players, and they're not deep enough for modern players. It's too easy to have a solved game. But then I think there's still some nostalgia that could be had, and I think they've got a chance, and I think an edition like that could do a lot. But I think that edition is actually a really brilliant idea, not just for EM machines but for all machines, especially if it could be done right and set up right. I know everybody's got their fancy little cell phones anymore, even I do. And if you could set it up so you could tie your cell phone into a modern machine, use them like an NFC or even a Q code or something else, something where it literally just takes you tapping your phone up to the side of your machine and telling it which player you are and having it track those scores and send them to you or send them to a site. Like I know Steam on the PC side or like Xbox Live that tracks scores and achievements and this and that. If there was something like that online that could track your as-you-play stats, I think it would be really interesting. I think it would bring another thing to the table when it comes to play. I know there's a lot of competitive people out there, and I think it would go a long way towards helping drive their competitive natures.
    46:52
    And honestly, I could see where a whole bank of machines that were activated like that in a tournament setting would be a very, very powerful tool for tournament organizers. Those are some very good points. I think that we'll have to keep an eye and see just exactly. We'll let Dallas area, we'll let Nick lead the way on this, and we'll just have to keep track and see if this resonates when they move forward on it. And then in true Kansas fashion, perhaps we'll see some cloning if we see some success elsewhere. The social ability to be able to track things is something I have heard from other pinball players, especially people who come more from a video game background, and they look in at it and they wonder, why is it still so archaic? And comparably, it is still very archaic. And without even getting into the whole thing, like why is Stern still used, DMD, and all of that, Just a lot of the ability for it to synchronize, to truly make a multiplayer experience as seamless as possible, to be competitive as seamless as possible, they lag. They lag way behind. There are a lot of reasons that that's the case, and I'm not surprised at those. It's just it would be nice to see something move forward. It would be, I think, extra interesting to actually see that happen in the context of trying to drive EM machines into more location play popularity. But anyway, it was a fascinating interview, and I'm really glad that Nick agreed to do it. So let's go ahead and transition over to our second topic area, which is video games. I believe we only have one item that we wanted to go into, but it is a big one when you consider the history of video games, and more specifically the history of RPGs, and that would be Final Fantasy XV. The release date has been announced. There is actually a playable demo available on console, and so it looks like finally at long, long, long, long last, Final Fantasy XV will be a game that people can get and enjoy. So I guess let's just go ahead and dive into it. Tony, what are your thoughts on the announcement that Final Fantasy XV is finally going to be playable? Well, I mean, it's been a long time coming, and the Final Fantasy series was my introduction to video game RPGs, playing Final Fantasy I and eventually Final Fantasy II on the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo. And I consider several of the Final Fantasy games my favorite RPG video games of all time. VI, VII, and IX are my three favorite Final Fantasy games. With that said, I really haven't had a lot of interest in any of the newer Final Fantasy games, and just the entire JRPG style has really grown stale to me. It's not something that I'm as interested in as I was back then. I've gone much more into the open-world style RPG gaming. I am going to be interested to see how a game that's been in process for a decade like this will actually work. That said, there is no PC version, so I'm not going to get a chance to try it for myself. there's not going to be any way for me to. Yeah, you made a couple of really good points there. The first was about the decade. For those that aren't familiar with Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XV was first announced in 2006. So it really has been a decade. It wasn't called Final Fantasy XV back then. It was called Final Fantasy versus XIII. But what that was is now XV.
    50:31
    Like you, RPG background, Final Fantasy was one of the earliest RPGs I was familiar with. I can't say that it was my introduction. I don't know. I may have played Dragon's Quest first. We can get into whether or not we're counting all of these as RPGs, but Dragon's Quest I felt met the criteria at the time.
    50:50
    So, yeah, Final Fantasy 1, Final Fantasy 2, which is now known as 4, but it was 2 to us Americans when it came out. I'd say I really enjoyed Final Fantasy's 5, 6, 7. I even liked 8 decent. I've played 12 i didn't play 9 12 was okay it was very linear though and that was a lot of the criticism is it didn't feel as open as the old final fantasies did and your point about the stagnation that's been seen in the what's broadly considered the japanese rpg genre is it's i think very real and it's been a serious problem the the western rpg category which is more characterized by less emphasis on storytelling especially through cut scenes which started to become more and more popular on the jrpg scene when the playstation came out more open world you know free form allowing you to go around discover your own side quests things like that that is where rpgs are at now and jrpgs have sort of stuck to their more traditional formula they've embraced doing action combat mechanics versus sticking with the old turn-based approach but other than that there hasn't been a whole lot of change. And some people appreciate that. But the market, broadly speaking, has definitely been going more towards these open world, open concept, open class sort of scenarios where you kind of build up your own character rather than doing this whole, well, you have a whole party of different classes and you mix and match, or maybe it gets mandated what you're going to do. It just depends on the version. The PC thing, that's a really good point Also, I am flabbergasted that they claim that they could not develop this simultaneously with the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Both of those consoles are on PC architecture, so I just don't get it. I could understand that maybe the PC version wouldn't look any better, but I don't understand why they couldn't have easily done a port, especially now, and just said, okay, it's not going to look any better no matter how awesome your rig is than it was going to look on the Xbox. But it would still be available. I mean, I just, again, I don't understand the nuance of that. I thought it was a lazy, lame excuse to not have it out on PC. And honestly, while this is going to be a juggernaut, and I'm sure it's going to do gangbusters for Square when it comes out on the consoles, it would have done even better had they included PC. And at this point, I mean, they're obviously not doing console exclusives, so there's no reason to be playing favorites and try and leave that out, even if their PC market is smaller than their console market is. It would have been like leaving out the Xbox and just doing the PS4, which is probably going to be where most of the sales are, is the PS4. So yeah I don understand that Some differences that I know about that have been announced with the Final Fantasy 15 is it appears that you will only control one character This is a pretty big departure I say It could work well I played other RPGs where you had competent AI characters as your support but you only really manage the one character In some ways, I actually prefer the model if it's done well than having to sort of micromanage things. I'm not I don't I just don't like that in my RPGs anymore. Whereas when I was a kid, I did. My main concern, though, is what I had a problem with with 12. And that's about linearity. I'm really concerned that I think it was 12. It was 13. I'm losing track of if I'm saying I'm saying 12 a lot. It's whatever the one had lightning in it. And I borrowed it from my brother in law. And the game story was fine. It's just you felt like you were just running down hallway after hallway until the one end game area they included. And that area was awesome. But it was almost entirely optional. The storyline had you run briefly through it. And then afterwards, you were able to go back and work on a whole bunch of really hard monsters. And I really enjoyed that. But otherwise, it felt completely linear. There weren't any side quests or didn't feel like there were any. and so my hope is that they go back towards more of their old final fantasy model which let's not i i don't want to overstate it final fantasy was never like this massive open world thing it was sort of like you played eventually you got an airship and then you could fly around the map but there weren't like tons of side quests everywhere this is not fallout it's not elder scrolls uh so i don't want to ever say that it was like that but at least it did a pretty good job of creating the illusion that you had choice and that they've sort of forsaken that lately and i'm hoping they're going to get back to that with this one i did try the demo i can't recommend uh you know i can't really recommend the demo because it feels more like a tech demo the game looks great the demo i mean graphically it's a very it's very impressive but i didn't get a really good feel for the gameplay the combat mechanics kind of felt a little kingdom heartsy to me i think Again, I haven't played one of those in years, but it has potential. So this is one. It's not going to be a day one buy for me. But, you know, Final Fantasy VII, seeing you have a copy of that and watching you play that is why I got a PlayStation. So I've always got a soft spot in my heart for Final Fantasy, even when it lets me down. So I'm going to keep my eye on this. But currently, I think it looks very shiny, but I'll be willing to wait for a sale. Yeah, 7 was a lot of fun. I remember I got that for Christmas, as I recall, and burned through it all through the break when we weren't in school. That was a good time. The whole linearity thing is a problem that I've noticed, not just with the Final Fantasy games, but it seems like a lot of games, as they require more and more and more work, they're cutting down on story or cutting down on options, I should say. I mean, I remember back in the day playing Wayne Commander when every single winner lose a mission, you would just go on. It's just, did you go farther down the losing path or did you go farther up the winning path? And a lot of the games nowadays don't have anything like that. And what they do have that is similar to that, what they do a lot of times is it'll start out very linear and it will break off and branch off through the middle of the game and then it pulls back down. So by the end of the game, you still only have one, maybe two paths that you can go. and everything that happened before, everything that happened in the middle, none of that really mattered. It was flavor, but it didn't matter if you made choices here or if you made choices there. And a lot of times when you're playing the games, you can see that in the cut scenes and the dialogue. You can see the places where another character was supposed to be and wasn't because you got that character killed. Or that character didn't die, but they were supposed to. So when they're talking, they don't really have any purpose or important impact past the point where they were supposed to have died. So even if you save them, nothing changed. They're just another body that's there. They're another NPC that doesn't really matter in the end. Yeah, I think in the case specifically of the linearity relating to JRPGs, my general sense has been the chief reason for this is they have transitioned. towards a very heavy approach on doing cutscene-laden games, usually with high CG production values and voice acting, and they're very much showpieces. In some ways, playing a JRPG, and this is part of the sort of definition of the genre for a lot of people, is at this stage to go ahead and experience something where there is game. I mean, most of the game is game, but there are also very, very significant periods where you are not in control and you are just watching a movie. And of course, if you were to actually offer options and those options affected how that movie plays out, you would have to record additional voices. You'd have to animate additional footage for all those various scenarios. And they just, they're already putting in so much money on the production. It's just not worth it to them. They'd rather just tell a straightforward story. And we see that straightforward story approach, obviously, in a lot of other things, Like most shooting genre. I mean, really, other than open world RPGs, most games are pretty linear or they may do something where you can have like a last minute choice. Do you save this person or kill this person? And it doesn't even affect the cut scene so much. It might just be, you know, it gives you a little the ending story is like stills with a voiceover and they just have to have that person record two scripts. And those scripts are like less than 90 seconds long. So that's where I think those sort of scenarios come into play. And JRPGs have very much embraced the let's have this sort of cinematic experience. And not just Final Fantasy, but we see it out of a lot of the major JRPG producers at this stage. And that's okay. It's just I think for most of the gaming public, they rather have all that choice and get to experience that they're making a difference. It seems to be what's working with the RPG community because it's things like, well, I mean, Witcher 3. For example, the big thing, which I still haven't played it yet, but compared to Witcher 2, it's getting a lot better reviews. And Witcher 2 was a liked game, but Witcher 2 was pretty linear. You'd go to sections and you had side quests and stuff within those, but it never opened up fully. In Witcher 3, the rave reviews about it are just how open it is, like a sandbox game. And so that just seems to be where most RPG demand is now, and I understand why. But you would never get that and the major cinematic experiences. When you play Fallout, you do not have major CG-laden cutscenes for all of these stories because there are just way too many choices and way too many quests. It would never work. It would be too expensive. So this is what we get instead. But on the JRPG side, they still want to deliver that, what I call the cinematic experience. Yeah, I watched a Let's Play of a gentleman playing the latest Tales game, And I was struck by just how interesting the story was and how really, really good the cut scenes were. I mean, the opening scenes and the entire first, like, hour of the game, which was just opening scene, had lots of video and was really, I mean, it felt like I was sitting down watching an anime is what it felt like with occasional scenes of him walking around and doing a couple other minor things. and throughout the course of the game I mean the story was good the cut scenes were amazing but it really did feel like the gameplay was just something to do between all of that like they could have strung everything together and just sold it as a show and probably done just as well yeah Final Fantasy Type-0 the game I finished up today my same experience I liked the cinematic elements I liked watching the story The gameplay did not impress me. It was fine. I muddled through it, but it was nothing to write home about. It's not impressive. I don't recommend the game because it had plenty of game in it. It's just there was nothing unique about it. It wasn't a mess. It was just what it was. We're going to go ahead and move on to our final section for the night, Tabletop. Over the last several weeks, we've talked about a lot of different games, and we've talked about my favorite form of gaming, which are the deck-building games. But now we're going to talk about my addiction, my crack, my second favorite form of the game and the one that takes the most out of my pocket,
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    tabletop miniatures games. There are a lot of tabletop miniatures games out there. They come in small units that only require a few models to play with. They come in ones that require armies of hundreds, if not more, models to play. They cover pretty much every genre you could ever want. I mean, World War II, steampunk, World War I, sci-fi, fantasy, anything. It's all out there. Several of them are really well known, and one of them in particular has gotten very big lately on the video game front of taking their IP and shifting to video games, and that would be the Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40K stuff by Games Workshop. I personally have not played those two games to the point of owning an army. I've played them with friends' armies, but they are not my bread and butter of minis games. They require a bit different way of playing, and I don't really like Game Workshop's way they go about changing the rule sets as often as they do. My entrance into tabletop minigaming happened about 11 years ago. I picked up a game called Axis and Allies War at Sea, which was the simplest way to enter into mini gaming. The minis were already painted. They didn't need to be assembled. You literally just pulled them out of the box and played with them. As the name of the game sounds, it was a World War II naval combat game based around easy rules, and each side commanded a fleet on a grid map, and you moved around. and not nearly as complicated as a lot of the games out there. I didn't need a tape measure to measure things. I didn't need anything fancy. It was just designed for nice and easy, quick play. And I played that game for years. I had a large group of friends I played with that met up there nightly, and it was something that was very much a gateway drug to me when it came to gaming. I stepped away from War at Sea as things started to spin down, and instead I picked up another game. I moved into the Privateer Press's War Machine.
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    Specifically, I built myself a Coddor army, and I've never looked back. Now, War Machine falls into the more complicated route without going quite as bad as the games that require incredibly large armies. The model count on the table is still fairly small. I've played games where I've had as few as three models on the table and games where I've had as many as probably 45 or 50 models on the table. It is a more classic minis game. You buy the models, use the specific models you want to build the army you want, and then you have to assemble them and paint them and go through the whole thing yourself. And with most of these games, that is the actual primary thing you do while you're playing, is painting and assembling your models and building your armies. You spend many, many, many more hours painting than you do playing. And it kind of draws a specific kind of player. Yeah. Actually, giving your overview of this, it sounds like that, especially compared to the other tabletop game types we speak about, and obviously we have been more focused on the card format than anything else, But these seem to take a bit of a commitment to get started. But it also sounds like, such as with the first example that got you in, that isn't always the case. So I guess what I would want to know as someone who has no experience whatsoever in tabletop minigames, I'm familiar with some of these franchises because of their outreach into things like video games, but I've never actually played the tabletop minigames or painted any of the figures or anything like that. what would you recommend for someone who is interested in this concept, is interested in either gaining the painting or whatever, but just the idea that they want to play these mini games, but they have no idea where to start. Where should they start? What would be the best approach in your view for them to actually get their feet wet and see if they like it enough to actually dive in deeper? I think the best place to get your feet wet without having to put out too much money with the understanding that minis games are expensive. Especially if you get into something like games workshops games,
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    we wouldn't be surprised for some armies to spend thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars to build your army up. I could very comfortably probably sell off my war machine army, and it wouldn't surprise me to get between $1,000 and $1,500 for it, especially if I finished all my painting and sold it as a lump sum, complete painted army and on and war machines, a very cheap game compared to a lot of them. The big thing though, if you want to get in and get your feet wet, there are several very good games out there right now.
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    And which one you would go after would completely depend upon your interest. I think the number one out there would be X-Wing, which is by fantasy flight games. and it is exactly what it sounds like. It is a Star Wars fighter combat simulator. The models are already fully painted. It comes, you get the starter box and it comes with literally everything you need to start. Any extra aircraft or fighters you add are just extra ships for you to build your groups out of.
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    And no, nothing weird. You don't need tape measures or anything like that. It's got movement tokens, and it's a very simple game, and it's a very fun game. I own it. I own a fairly large number of fighters for it. I enjoy it quite a lot. Now, if you were still in the Star Wars bent, but the fighter combat isn't as interesting to you, they have recently started, the same company yet again, has started putting out Star Wars Armada. I have not played it yet. I've seen it played. I own a single ship because they look that good. It looks like something that somebody put a lot of time into. They look real nice. I've got one, and it's on display as part of my Star Destroyer display section. It is entirely based around capital ship combat. There are fighters in them, of course, because this is Star Wars, but the primary goal is heavy capital ship combat. If you're not as into Star Wars, there are several other games that use similar control variants and movement tokens and pre-painted ships, like Sails of Glory, if you like Age of Sail naval combat, or Wings of Glory, if you like World War I dogfighting. any of those games would be a great place for somebody who has very little experience and they are not willing to drop huge amounts of money in to play to start out at. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for going through that. I'm so weak on tabletop game knowledge and you are a resident expert. And it's good to finally touch on an area that I've known about. Actually, when I think tabletop game, my first thing I think of is like D&D with all the dice and the books because that was my introduction to tabletop. But the second thing is actually thinking about these with the figures and the painting because that's just visually what I've always recalled seeing, even though it's never been an element that I have dived into. For our listeners, I should point out that we are always open to covering other topics within our three categories of tabletop, video games, and pinball. If you want to email us at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com, we do check that, and we will try and format accordingly. We are looking at, especially on the pinball side, for example, I know that we're not expecting a lot of new announcements coming up, so I'm hoping to try and get some more interviews to try and explore some elements of the hobby that we don't touch upon because they're not part of the normal news cycle, so we need to turn to the real experts. People are actually doing these sort of things, and I think there are a lot of interesting stories there, and we're hoping to get information like that regarding our other two topics as well. I should point out, in addition to email, you can reach the show at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. It's probably the best way because we're easily able to monitor it. And I just want to thank everyone once again for listening to us. Thank you, everyone, and we will see you next time.