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Williams Pinball Volume 5 Announcement

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·51m 41s·analyzed·Dec 8, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Zen announces Volume 5 with three Gottlieb tables; Toy Shock digital cabinet details revealed.

Summary

Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan discuss the newly announced Zen Pinball Volume 5, which includes three classic Gottlieb tables: No Good Gophers, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Circus Voltaire. They also extensively cover the Toy Shock digital pinball cabinet ($399), a newly licensed Farsight product featuring 12 Gottlieb tables with alphanumeric displays, detailing its hardware specs, limitations (oversized bezel, small plunger travel, floaty physics), and market positioning as an entry-level toy rather than a serious digital cabinet alternative.

Key Claims

  • The Toy Shock digital pinball cabinet is officially licensed Gottlieb with Farsight software

    high confidence · Chris confirmed via Facebook group and unboxing video that Farsight copyright appears on the product's title page

  • Toy Shock cabinet features alphanumeric LED displays styled like Gottlieb System 80B but spaced apart like early System 80

    high confidence · Chris described the display configuration in detail based on video teardown analysis

  • The Toy Shock cabinet's screen bezel is deliberately oversized to protect children from touching the display

    high confidence · Chris cited company testing rationale for the design choice

  • Volume 5 Zen tables represent a significant visual upgrade over Pinball Arcade versions, particularly No Good Gophers

    high confidence · Both hosts described crystal-clear inserts and lighting improvements after playing

  • No Good Gophers animations include a golfer character that appears to be motion-captured by someone named 'Deep'

    medium confidence · Chris speculated on the actor's identity based on voice and appearance; Jared confirmed it sounds like Deep's voice

Notable Quotes

  • “Remember, it is a toy. A toy, folks. It is not a digital pinball cabinet toy, okay? For $399—so for $400, rather, an expensive toy—but a toy all the time.”

    Chris Frebus @ early in Toy Shock discussion — Sets expectations for the Toy Shock product as entry-level consumer product, not enthusiast-grade cabinet

  • “It's cheap. There's 12 tables in it. You know, it's—if I was a kid and if I was young enough and I wanted to get into pinball, I'd be pretty stoked with this present on the Christmas tree for sure.”

    Chris Frebus @ Toy Shock assessment — Positions the cabinet as gateway product for children interested in pinball

  • “It's that unnatural Farsight floaty that we didn't have much of a problem with until we started playing Zen.”

    Jared Morgan @ Toy Shock physics discussion — Comparative criticism of Farsight's physics model versus Zen's implementation

  • “There's not really much more to say about the build. Apparently it's a really solid unit. It's quite heavy. It doesn't tilt very easily.”

    Chris Frebus @ Toy Shock hardware section — Physical build quality assessment from teardown analysis

  • “Look, it's good from a space-saving perspective, but you know, I guess if you needed a shell and you didn't want to go and buy a kit, you can buy these kits all pre-done.”

    Jared Morgan @ modding discussion — Acknowledges practical limits of the small form factor despite modification potential

  • “All three of them are such an upgrade over what Pinball Arcade had... Everything just looks phenomenal. All the ramps look spectacular. Again, it's just like shiny jewels going on.”

    Jared Morgan @ Volume 5 visual assessment — Strong visual upgrade affirmation for Zen's Volume 5 tables

  • “Just like Attack from Mars, when you play Neon Multiball, the whole point of the mode was that everything goes out on the table—all the lights go out except for the neon.”

    Chris Frebus @ Circus Voltaire critique — Identifies missing feature in Zen's Circus Voltaire implementation—inability to darken playfield lighting during neon mode

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen StudioscompanyFarsight StudioscompanyToy ShockcompanyGottliebcompanyNo Good GophersgameTales of the Arabian NightsgameCircus VoltairegamePinball Arcadeproduct

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong grassroots enthusiasm for Toy Shock in official Facebook fan group; community discussing immediate mods (plunger replacement, bezel reduction, monitor upgrade)

    high · Chris joined and praised the Facebook group as friendly and passionate; detailed mod discussions noted

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Circus Voltaire missing feature: inability to darken playfield lights during Neon Multiball mode, reducing intended challenge

    high · Chris: 'I really wish that they would just allow us to flick a switch and turn off all the lights in the room so that only the table is lit'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Volume 5 surprisingly includes Circus Voltaire (Bally table) rather than Williams-exclusive content, indicating licensing expansion or negotiation shift

    medium · Chris notes surprise that 'gone is the all Williams—are all Bally things' and says 'which makes you kind of got to wonder'

  • $

    market_signal: Toy Shock positioned as low-cost gateway product ($399) for testing consumer interest in digital pinball before expensive cabinet investment

    high · Chris: 'testing the waters with this product—it's cheap... if your kids would be interested, then oh, this is a great product for that'

  • ?

    announcement: Zen Studios officially announced Volume 5 digital pinball tables featuring No Good Gophers, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and Circus Voltaire

    high · Hosts have played the tables and describe them as released/available

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.155

0:00
blockade pinball podcast you are watching the blockade pinball podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan Hello, folks. How you going?
0:28
Long time no speak. Right? It's kind of been a hot minute. Yeah, it has. Indeed. Yeah. And as usual, once again, life interferes, but then there's also other things like the fact that we thought last week we were going to be able to talk about Zen's pinball announcement, and instead they delayed it by two days, so we weren't going to be able to really say anything, so what's the point of us coming on? no you just have to listen to us talking about stuff and things and you know while that's fun and all you'd probably not really want to listen to stuff and things you want to know stuff and things and things right so yeah that is that is usually the the ideal environment for what's going on um but meanwhile so it's it's yeah it's nighttime here it's all dark in my room It's a lovely, gloomy Saturday, and fortunately I didn't have to work in the rain this time, but it was close.
1:27
But, yeah, not used to the rain. You know, we like sun. Well, yeah, that's right. It's sunny here. It's like, you know, 10.43 a.m., and it is, yeah, hot as anything. It was a 37-degree Celsius day yesterday, which is about 110 degrees Fahrenheit, I think. Okay, yeah, that's hot. Yeah, so what is that? That's like hot, hot, right? Yeah, around my house, it is rare to go that hot. Like maybe once a year we'll hit those kind of temps.
2:02
Hitting 100 is even like we'll have a stretch of that, but it's not often. Yeah, no, it's hot here at the moment. And, of course, being hot, it's terrible bushfires here in Australia at the moment. Like, basically the whole of the East Coast is alight.
Attack from Marsgame
Gregperson
Deepperson
Jeremy Williamsperson
Pat Lawlorperson
Ballycompany
?

product_strategy: Toy Shock deliberately designed with oversized bezel to protect children from damaging touchscreen, iteration strategy planned for future versions

high · Chris: 'They're apparently—the company did some testing of the product, and for kids they wanted to actually have a little bit of extra bezel'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Zen's animation philosophy has evolved toward non-obtrusive enhancements that add value without overwhelming gameplay (seen in No Good Gophers golfer)

    medium · Jared: 'Zen has found this nice mode that they're in now where the animations aren't too obtrusive, but they're actually adding something to the game'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Farsight's capability post-acquisition/partnership now extends to custom OEM hardware integration for consumer toy products

    high · Toy Shock cabinet confirmed to run Farsight software on commercial off-the-shelf mini PC hardware with custom display configuration

    • 2:19
    What was the thing that I read that it said that koalas are now effectively on the extinction list? Essentially, yeah. It's actually not a lie. The koala population in Australia is just being decimated by the fire.
    2:33
    That's absolutely crazy. That is, yeah, it's very, very close to being extinct, which is, yeah, you'll be able to see it still at, you know, Australia Zoo and stuff like that because they have koalas there. but in the wild, their population, I don't know what they're going to do about it, whether they're going to try and re-breed them and put them back out there again, but yeah, they've just got roasted, essentially, in the fires. And that's kind of the problem with eucalyptus trees, in that they're essentially alcohol, and they go boom! Full of oil, yeah. You know, if you have eucalyptus oil, yeah, that's from gum trees. so yeah yeah they basically just go when this when the fire hits them they go straight up that was my favorite factoid that i learned when i was uh with my wife in australia that um koalas are basically essentially drunk 24 7 because of they are because of the eucalyptus they're a classic australian animal it's like it's amazing they don't fall out of the tree and become a drop bear.
    3:39
    Well, yeah, that's right. I think partially that's where that name came from, but also it was just a scare, a scare to us. But, yeah, it's bad. It's real bad. It's hot and it's smoky and the air quality is terrible. Like in Sydney at the moment where the real bushfires are raging at the moment, they've got air quality equivalent to Beijing on its worst days. That ain't good. And that's very rare. I mean, we don't have wonderful air quality here in Australia, like with all the cars and stuff on the road, but we definitely don't have that sort of level of pollution.
    4:16
    So, yeah, it's very bad here. But that's your weather report from Australia. Well, you know, you talk about weather when you don't know what to talk about. Wait, we have things to talk about. We do know what to talk about, though. So let's, before we get into the wild and crazy action, although we'll just go ahead and say, in case you've been living under a rock, you don't know what Volume 5 tables are. Ta-da! It is. It's Indiana Jones, and it's... Jared, you're spoiling our Volume 15 announcement.
    4:52
    Yeah. No, we've got Totan. Totan, Tales of the Arabian Nights. And? we've got no good gophers a Pat Lawler favorite and to round it all out we have got Chris Circus Voltaire Jared lost it no I just wanted to give you a chance to say one oh okay yeah which is a bally table so gone is the all Williams are all bally things which makes you kind of got to wonder but we'll get into that wondering in a moment. First off,
    5:31
    hey Jared, remember that lovely pin cab we talked about last time? Yeah, that's right. The Toy Shock digital pinball cabinet. And we speculated back then, in that episode, that oh no, that's definitely not affiliated with Farsight in any way. No! There's no way! Guess what, folks? Yeah, it is.
    5:56
    It is officially licensed Gottlieb product with Farsight doing the software for it. The build is what looks to be a skinned version of the Android interface and with all of its various pros and cons. Cons, actually.
    6:17
    Just with some new menu items that basically highlight push this button, push this button to go. Which, I mean, I do got to say hey at least you made it idiot proof uh so and it needs to be because it is so we need to caveat what we're about to say with the following statement the toy shock digital pinball is a toy a toy folks remember it is a toy it is not a digital pinball cabinet toy okay for what is it for the $399 so for $400 uh rather expensive toy but a toy all the time you know it's a toy so now that we've covered that off let's get into what we know about it it has a digital plunger they've actually done a tear down so i should probably i decided to do something against my better judgment and go and have a look at Facebook. Oh, no. I decided to join the official Toy Shock digital pinball fan page. And I'll say this from the outset, it's a really great group. The folks in that group are really friendly. It's not your normal Facebook derp that you get. Everyone there is really interested and really wants the product to succeed and is passionate about it. and it's actually really refreshing to be in a Facebook group like that people aren't being jerks. It's really good. So I will try and link it in the show notes, but if you are at all interested in this particular Toy Shop digital pinball toy, then I would strongly suggest joining the Facebook group because it's quite fun. I'm actually still enjoying being in there even though they've got some sample stuff and they've kind of like worked out what it is and everything.
    8:05
    So, yes. so I joined the group guy one of the admins there he is he basically had the first one of these in America and he did a live unboxing of it, set it up and got it running which allowed you to verify that yes it is Farsight software because it has Farsight on the title page down the bottom as the copyright owner I'd just like to ask this where's the pleasure in watching somebody spend 45 minutes building a cab or anything in unboxing i don't understand these unboxing videos because i'm just like oh come on do i really need to watch how you razor blade open plastic or you know whatever look you know it's different strokes for different folks i did a lot of skipping through that video i said right just get to the point and show me the bit that I wanted to see, which was the inside of it and the guts of it and the thing actually running and someone playing it.
    9:13
    So, yeah, I did skip a lot through that, you know, but some people love to see the thing being. I know. It's just one of those things that I don't under. I don't understand. It's strange. It is a little bit odd, but look, you know, whatever. So it looks like inside the cabinet, it's not much to it. There's obviously there's the arcade buttons that you see from the outside, the digital plunger. And then what looks to be, I think, I don't know if it's a proprietary board. I think you can actually buy these boards just generally from the Chinese market. Now, Toy Shock is actually headquartered in Shenzhen in China. So it's obvious that they have access to this sort of like hardware, commercial off the shelf mini hardware. but it's basically a little mini PC that's in there. It's not like a mini PC that you would buy from a shop. It's just a board basically exposed and then sort of attached to the bottom of the cabinet. The board seems to have an external power supply to it, which is sort of off to the side. It also has the same power supply in the head. And I think that's just to be running the LED displays that they've got in the back box. So they're alphanumeric LEDs, displays on the top. There's four of them.
    10:34
    When you put them together, like when it's running, it works in the same way as a Gottlieb System 80B display, which is the ones used in Bone Busters and Victory. Ew, those are the horrible displays, and they're also microscopic. No, they're big. Well, no, but I mean on those machines, they're tiny. they are very tiny but these ones are big and they instead of being all sort of like um squished together like the ones um would be in a in the system 80b um the the the displays are actually um spaced apart like player one player two player three player four just like you would see in a like a very first very early um belly uh not belly uh got leave system 80 so uh they all it's pretty neat they actually do that they actually run the game code so uh they will display the display um as it's going through a track mode you'll see high scores scrolling across and all the information you would normally see in a track mode for the game which is pretty neat um and apart from that nothing really that that more to report on the display side of things um the the screen apparently the biggest complaint that people have and it's the thing that will strike you the most when you see the product is the oversized bezel um yeah the bezels are gigantic it's it's colossal and it's deliberate um they're in apparently the company did some testing of the product and for kids they wanted to actually have a little bit of extra bezel around the outside so the kids wouldn't like have to touch the screen all the time and potentially damage the screen um so they did opt for the larger bezel uh there's people in the the toy shock the official toy shock um page that are already thinking of modifying it but there's a bit of a an interesting thing about that and that the screen that they use is is one of those oem screens that you get from china but it's got a unusual connector on it it's you can't just plug an hdmi cable into it it got a particular type of connector which i never heard of before so i think you need to find the monitor family that this monitor belongs to get the next size up with the same connector and i think you be right if you wanted to get a bigger monitor for it but um what toy shock and and certainly the um the one up um the little three-quarter scale one-up cabinet um community seems to get is when they release a product like this initially it is really just a test run and then what they do is they iterate on the features and design after that uh so i think that if you hold off and you wait for the next generation of these to come out which you know based on success you may or may not see um if you if they do come out with a new iteration i'd say that bez will be dramatically reduced in size um there's not really much more to say about the build apparently it's a really solid unit it's quite heavy it doesn't tilt very easily um um the the height of it is basically good for people who are about five foot two um as a maximum height if you're any taller than that you're going to be um wanting to sit down when you play it um and that's not really a big problem anyhow because the the tilt in it is digital button tilt, so you don't have to shake the machine. It's just push button.
    14:17
    So I guess that's not a really big thing, but it's interesting. When you put it next to a 1UP arcade cabinet, it actually looks perfect. Like, it looks really in scale, obviously. Well, that's what I figured. It would be, you know, if you had a whole collection of those 1UP cabinets, then throwing this in there, I mean, you could literally have a mini arcade. That's exactly, like, we've seen photos of some of the folks' games rooms, with these three-quarter scale caverns. I have one of each. And they put the pinball machine in there too. And, you know, it actually looks really good as a collection.
    14:48
    But, look, so I guess if I was rounding out what I would think about the product, I think that, yep, it's definitely a toy.
    14:59
    It's a very, very cheap way of testing the waters, right? So if you have a kid that's interested in pinball and you were thinking about getting some sort of digital pinball setup and you weren't quite sure whether it was going to be worth investing the big dollars in it because, you know, we're talking for a proper one that, you know, for example, our friend of the show who does all the very, very awesome YouTube videos of all the Zen pinball releases.
    15:30
    Oh, Greg from Spaces Arcade. He's, like, his cabinets, you know, like thousands of dollars. so you know if you don't want to expend that but you do want to test the waters and see if your kids be interested then oh this is a great product for that like testing the waters with this product it's cheap um there's 12 tables in it um you know it's uh if i was a kid and if i was young enough and uh i wanted to get into pinball i'd be pretty stoked with this present on the christmas tree for sure.
    16:05
    I too watched a little bit of the video. I think I sped right to the end though, just to find out. And I know that the positives on it was that the guy said that the flipper response he didn't notice any lag. So that was positive. Negative was the plunger did have lag and only has about an inch and a half of pull total. Yeah, very small travel on the plunger, yeah. That's one of the things the community is looking at modding immediately. You need a different plunger in it. My question also, though, with the monitor is, what's the angle of view like?
    16:41
    Well, it's interesting you say that. It looks like, and Jay William in the chat has actually said that the views have actually been tweaked for the cabinet as well, so they're a little bit flatter, like cabinet mode would be.
    16:55
    And apparently, Jay William also said that one of the Farsight devs mentioned on their Pimble Arcade stream that they had worked on it. And that's what they did to make it a little bit more compatible with the cabinet. I think you misunderstand what kind of view I'm talking about. What? I'm talking about looking at the screen, and if you move too far to one side or the other, does the color diminish? Oh, you mean the... What do they call those? IFT screens or whatever that you can get really... It doesn't matter what angle they're standing at, it still stays there. The view angle is wonky. If you put sunglasses on, everything disappears, right? Right, right, right, right. I don't know. I think... I'm trying to remember if they covered that or not. I think... I'm not sure. I can't remember if they did cover it. But again, this seems to be one of those scenes where when they were in the video and they were filming it, they actually were going around the whole cabinet and taking shots of it while the game was running from multiple angles. And it didn't seem like there was any sort of filtering going on. Okay.
    18:00
    So it looks like it could be all right. The panel could be good. The other thing that I noticed with the video play and this, it's amazing how much you can see the ball speed compared to Zen. It just looks underwater. It's kind of crazy. It's so flozy. But we do know that that era of Gottlieb, they were pretty flozy. No, but I'm talking about it's that unnatural Farsight floaty that we didn't have much of a problem with until we started playing Zen. Yeah, the frictionless Flozy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely got the fast life physics still on those Gottliebs.
    18:43
    But, you know, it is what it is. It's 400 bucks. It is, yeah. Interestingly, though, you look back and when Farzad said, oh, no, we're definitely still working on pinball, this is it. so that's what they were doing for the last uh year more maybe well yeah who knows interestingly like there's been a lot of uh i have been able you know with our six years plus of of institutional knowledge with this particular product i've been able to uh dissolve a fair few myths pretty quickly in that facebook forum about um what can and is not possible at all with this product. And I guess that was kind of helpful for the community.
    19:32
    Let me guess, they're going, oh, I want full motion video on the back, or you'll be able to project the back box on another monitor, right? Yeah. It's like, well, yeah, for maybe $1,500.
    19:46
    But, you know, this is just a classic thing. People want as much as they can get from a consumer product. That's just human nature. And, you know, that's fine. But, you know, there was some things like about licensing that was constantly going, oh, you know, maybe they can cut a deal with Belly Williams to get the Williams style. I said, that's an absolute no. No negative, not even a hope in hell that that's going to be happening with this product. It's kind of funny. it's why I can't watch a lot of people's reviews of Zen tables that aren't us.
    20:25
    Yes. Because the amount of false speculation or bad info that gets put out there, as opposed to our years of knowledge of what is going on, is just like I sit there and I just wind up screaming at the screen going, No, it's not that. we are those classic comic book guys you know from the simpsons like no that's not how it works worst video ever that's right it's a curse of having lived and breathed this for so long that we are kind of we know too much and that's why you've listened to us hopefully because we do know too much about these products so it should be interesting like you said if it's successful will they do the other 12 tables that Williams, I heard that in Williams, that Farsight has with Gottlieb? Well, it did say in the product description up on the Walmart website that there is support for alphanumeric and DMD tables. That was on the product sheet. But, of course, this first round is only alphanumeric and just numeric as well. so I don't know at this stage but I think it will depend on how well the product sells if they decide to do any sort of DMD and you can guarantee that whacking a DMD in there of any description whether it's an LCD screen or whatever it's not going to be $400 folks nope that's going to jack the price right back up even with OEM and building it from China I would speculate that you know you'd be looking $699 plus maybe that's a hard pill to swallow when the whole market is a particular price point and when it's just got leaves and you know the got leaves that are in the Pimple Arcade collection there's they're right but you know they're not worth I don't think forking out that much money for a dedicated cabinet just to play them on when you can go and set up basically, I think the one piece of information that was in that form, which I think is definitely worth knowing, I don't know whether it was in the fan forum, whether it was in the Pinball Arcade fans forum or the Digital Pinball fans forum. I think it was the latter. I think someone was talking about the efforts they went to actually set up a Digital Pinball cabinet and the amount of rabbit-holing that they essentially did to get to the point they were happy. And I think the decision they came up with at the end was it's actually just better just to have a monitor that's mounted somehow in the orientation of a pinball machine cabinet and just set up a box with some flipper buttons on it and not go too hardcore with a cabinet because you just go down the rabbit hole too much and it doesn't really add any extra value to the experience, if you do. so that's interesting so you know just having like a screen that you can tilt and sort of have it on an arm maybe and like have a controller box like you've got your pin cabinet controller there have something like that you know that's a much better solution than actually making a full machine yeah because you also fall into the trap of once you do that on the little pin cabinet you're not going to be happy with only these 12 tables you're now going to want everything else and that's going to lead you into basically, and I know this because another friend of the show, I'm storing some of his stuff right now while he's in a transitional move, and one of those things is he has one of the one-up machines. It's the Street Fighter II machine. So that's sitting in my house right now. He gutted the thing and basically installed his own computer, and so now it has, and wrote his own software, all this stuff. So it's got all these things in it. but there's very little left other than the cabinet itself that he didn't replace and the buttons even the button no he replaced the buttons he replaced him he replaced the buttons with uh light up led buttons i don't know if he changed out the joysticks or not um that might have stayed but literally it's not running on none of the switches uh the on off switch or anything he installed his own on-off switches he installed pinball switches um your buttons on the side it's yeah very little is remained the same and that's the thing like you can go people going oh yeah this has got heaps of room for putting mods in and stuff okay yeah but why would you like it's it's three-quarter size uh look it's good from a space saving perspective but you know I guess if you needed a shell and you didn't want to go and buy a kit you can buy these kits all pre done like they've got a Kit so you can I'm sure you can buy them the US you certainly can here where you can just get the standard size pinball machine shell sent to you in the post
    25:45
    So if you really want a cabinet you can get one of those relatively easily now So I just don know if that the approach I take if I wanted to create a digital pinball cabinet from this thing. Certainly the 1UP Arcade cabinets, they're reasonable size, and they are almost like a full-size cabinet. And all you really have to do with those, and they sell them, They sell a little box that you can put the whole things on, and it brings it back up to pretty much standard height. Yeah, it's a little riser. Yeah, that's right. I've seen those. So the screen is still small, and the real estate width-wise is still small, but at least you don't have to crouch while playing.
    26:28
    Exactly right, and that's the problem. People think you're putting legs on this thing, on the pinball machine. Which, guess how much legs are, folks? They're about $75 to start. well you can get got leave legs from the pinball resource for 13 50 us a leg um so you know you've got you know 52 there then you get shipping um to domestic us which is going to be like i said you're right about 70 bucks or so and then there's if you if these things ever come to australia which they probably will end up coming here apparently in 2020 they're due to be in australia then if you want to put higher legs on them in australia you are looking at 350 for a pair of legs in australia because that's how much it costs to ship them from pinball resource as i found out recently um and i'm not going to be getting replacement legs from i got leaves anytime soon because that's ridiculous so there you go um i mean the question on the uh uh The board here is just about asking, is there a controller box that's for sale? And, yeah, I don't know. Building one, it wasn't that hard to build mine, and I kind of went nuts on it. But if you want to build the basic, just cheap version, basically the way that Jeremy Williams set his up, you can certainly do that. and it's not a very difficult process to handle. The only thing that was difficult for my end was I was like, but I want more buttons and I want this, and I added some stuff. Yeah, so he increased the scope dramatically. Like I said, you go down the rabbit hole really fast. And that was just on a pinball controller. Think about what would happen if you actually had a pinball machine that was trying to let you do the screen. Yeah, because now I'm like, yeah, now you're dealing with the actual computer that's going in there and what software to manage all of the tables and are you going to put solenoids in it and all this other stuff. And look, VP Cabs is charging what they're charging for a reason. yeah that's right because it's really expensive to make one of these and make it work right and make it rock solid so that it can handle you know actual play and you know the the neat thing about the the full-size cabinets and this is where you pay the money is that everything is pre-loaded you switch it on and it works and it often has arcade games in it too so you can actually play arcade games up in the back box pinball machine games on the big monitor so you actually have more of like uh i guess it's it has more utility than something that's dedicated just for pinball only yeah but you know uh expensive hobby and like even digital pinball is expensive come on like so so let's let's shift gears and go into what uh everybody probably wanted to hear about anyway although they already have seen stuff um let's Let's talk about Volume 5 that Zen has dropped.
    29:56
    I'm just going to say this. First impressions when I threw this thing in. A, look phenomenal. There's no doubt about it. All three of them are such an upgrade over what Pinball Arcade had. Just because, okay, No Good Gophers, for one, is one of the worst offenders when it comes to not being able to read a single insert, especially on that sand trap insert, which I was like, what does that say? Yeah, on that spinning wheel, there was just nothing there. Yeah, you couldn't read anything on the spinning wheel and everything. This version, it's all crystal clear. It's beautiful. You can read it. Even when it's lit, you can just see everything. So that part of it is wonderful. Then you move over to Circus Voltaire, and it has a wonderful lighting package going on on it. just really vibrant. When the neon glows, you can see the light cascading on everything. It's just gorgeous to look at. And everything that you were hoping for, the most part, Circus Voltaire, I'll get into my most part action. And then you get Tales of the Arabian Nights, which, again, that was Farsight's first volley, the first four tables. It was one of the first four tables that they released. and so in most desperate need of an art upgrade and here you have it everything just looks phenomenal um all the ramps look spectacular um again it's just like shiny jewels going on so the look of these tables is just tremendous yeah yeah um then you get into the added enhancements.
    31:46
    I'll say... Wow. Far out. So, I started looking at No Good Gophers first. And No Good Gophers, basically, the enhancement is you have a golfer on the table. Who I think looks remarkably like Deep. But I don't quite know... Well, I mean Deep is doing all the motion capture anyway.
    32:05
    And this is voice for sure. It's definitely Deep's voice. But Zen has found this nice mode that they're in now where the animations aren't too obtrusive, but they're actually adding something to the game, hopefully. Value to the package. Yeah. And in this case, they've captured the humor of No Good Gophers really well. The golfer is quite funny just in his reactions. Yep. It's very Caddyshack. It's very nice. Which is essentially what No Good Gophers is. It's a nod to, it's an unlicensed caddy show. Oh yeah, completely. And I think my, when you lock a ball, a collection of balls drops onto the apron. You lock another ball, even more balls. When you finally get multi-ball, a missile from the golf cart that's been parked on the other side launches, hits the golf ball scatter everywhere at the exact same time as the balls launch onto the table in real multi-ball. It's just so good. It's a little bit chaotic, but it's also rather cool. it's a wonderful effect that they did on that one. So that one, the animation's great just from the standpoint of adding humor to the table. Then you move on to Circus Voltaire.
    33:24
    I don't really know if I dig on they basically put the ringmaster. Yeah. Unfortunately, he reminds me a lot of the clown that's on Cyclone. Yeah, Pennywise. Yeah.
    33:41
    Actually, what he really reminds me of is, any of you Buffy fans... Spike? No, not Spike. It was... Oh, great, I've got to ask.
    33:53
    Lorne. His name was Lorne. He was the nightclub owner of basically the karaoke bar. He was always singing.
    34:00
    That's what he kind of looks like. But here's what is cool. the ringmaster uh head that rises out of the table they've actually animated that a little his eyes move his mouth sometimes moves way cool i like that yeah that's very nice and the most important thing that they added it was the ability right off the bat hey what color neon do you want yes you select it from way before you start the ball it's lovely and of course when you depending on what color change neon to that changes what color the ball in the menagerie is which is indeed how it was in the table. Yeah, that's right. So here's my gripe.
    34:40
    And Jared's familiar with this. Just like Attack from Mars, when you play Neon Multiball, the whole point of the mode was that everything goes out on the table, all the lights go out except for the neon. The neon. And the neon pulses and it makes the mode more challenging visually because you can't necessarily see the balls. Just like in Strobe Multiball on Attack from Mars, where the whole point is, I mean, it's an easy mode otherwise that you can go on for a long time if you can actually see the balls. But if you can't see the balls, then that's the whole point of it. And the room doesn't go dark. And I really wish that they would just allow us to flick a switch and turn off all the lights in the room so that only the table is lit.
    35:27
    Yep. Which I know that you don't like that. jared but it's on certain tables i want that i want that option so i'm not even talking about i could care less about like turn it off just for that mode and if i could turn it off just for strobe yes but if i had to keep it off all the time no yeah and i would even i would even say if you can't turn it off just for that which i don't understand why you couldn't but if you aesthetically don't like that i don't even need a light slider just allow me the opportunity to turn off the ambient light completely yeah and i'll play in dark i'm not going to play it often i probably will play it only 10 of the time but i want that option yeah yeah i look i wouldn't have a problem with that yeah so anyway that's that's what circuits voltaire um and then over on totem totem oh my god the animation has gone to town they've gone to town and they help you play and you're going, what do you mean they help you play? Okay, so you know how there's the, what do they call it, star capture? Shooting stars. Shooting stars with a little plunger, shoots up to capture, trap the ball if it was maybe going to go in the outline. I never knew if those things were lit. Here, also in a little animation of a shooting star goes and lands on the table and tells you what side is actually lit. Yeah. Nice. Wonderful. Very nice little visual trick there. When the genie hurls fireballs at you, the ball turns into a fireball, which is fantastic because then you know when the mode ends because when the mode ends the ball goes back to normal um there's just there's just all sorts of little visual cues like that on the table and it really i just appreciated what they did with that because i was just like oh i'm not struggling to figure out what's going on i understand completely what's going on yeah it's it's made a huge difference to your enjoyment of that game it certainly has for me I never played Totan on the Pinball Arcade. It was just... Number one, it was just way too easy. And number two, it just looked gross. Yeah. Because it was the first batch, and it never got any attention, and it desperately needed it, because it's a good game when you get into it. Oh, and it's one of those tables that, because of the color scheme of it, and the lighting package... It's got to be sharp. It's got to be sharp, and it's got to have... That way you can get the contrast, you can get the layers that are actually a part of the table. And it really does have a great art package on it, but you couldn't see it in Pimble Arcade. No. It's well-themed. The other thing I really like about the Totan table is that the scimitar, which is the ball launch, the sword, basically, that you launch off, actually holds the gems when you earn them, when it holds the jewels. Correct. You earn them, and they actually sort of float up and slam into the scimitar and etch themselves into the scimitar. It looks awesome. Which again, you no longer have to be, wait, I missed that on the DMD. You can actually visually just see it on the physical table now. Yeah. This is the sort of digital enhancements that I think we were hoping for when we were originally speculating about what they could do with these digital enhancements This is the level that I think they at now and we essentially getting our dreams realized about what we want to see with the digital enhancements. It's great. Yeah, precisely. They're actually so well integrated into the game that they almost are compelling enough that you don't want to play the game without them.
    39:07
    Yeah, to me, it's kind of like what they did with Safecracker, where I won't play safecracker without the enhancements now. No, exactly.
    39:16
    Moving on to then the physics of things, because all three of these tables had issues in TPA. Again, no good gophers.
    39:28
    The main thing is the ball no longer lives in the pop bumpers. That's so much relief. It actually gets out there pretty quick, which is great. yeah what's funny is i've actually had the ball get stuck in the pop bumpers now oh really i haven't had that yep i had it happen twice where i had to nudge in order to get the ball out but it's yeah it's not just this rattle fest the ball lives there um the other thing is that the ramp is kind of brutal to try and hit yeah they're not easy anymore uh they're they're hard the other thing that i like on on the subject of ramps is the hole-in-one shot is actually a variable shot now you don't have to hit that one point on the ramp for it to always make the hole-in-one because it was very much it was very much railroaded physics in um in tpa um for that shot because it was leaving the table and i had to literally plot the arc of the ball into that area of the um play field so and what's interesting is that zen has this exact feature and i think it's shaman their table and it's ugly on shaman is not a cool shot to try and take and they've learned so much in terms of where this is that i'm like hey but why don't you go back to shaman and fix that now and do that now yeah yeah um the the other thing with no good gophers is that yeah, I think the main thing is that the vacuum ramps are gone and the trajectory of the ball when it does the loops is not nearly as predictable as what it was in TV. So it just makes the whole table so much more enjoyable because, again, the ball is wild. The ball is wild. It is pinball. That's what we want. Moving on to Serge Voltaire, that's the one that everybody was most concerned about because at times depending on where you were playing it you know what console or whatever uh that was very problematic with that i think had them that's the table that balls flew off the table the most on if i'm not mistaken yeah yeah um i think you're right there it was a you know there was a lot of able actually well There was a lot of off-playfield action happening on that one. Yeah. And then it also has that very evil horseshoe shot that sends the ball very close, straight down the middle. And that was never a good time. And then there was the outlanes.
    42:10
    Yeah, the outlanes were hard to gauge on Pimble. Sometimes you would be fine, and sometimes it was just a drain fist. and there was no real rhyme or reason to why.
    42:22
    They're a lot better on, even with the classic arcade physics on Xen set to arcade mode, not tournament, that they're actually fine. They behave really nicely. So I guess they behave consistently is the thing. Right, right. So I mean, it's not saying, I'm not saying that it's less challenging. It's that now it's challenging on a realistic level. You don't feel like you're being gamed when you play it. You actually feel like you are playing pinball. Yeah. I do want to highlight the boom balloon. Oh, yes. It's great because they actually put a balloon inside, and every time the ball hits, the balloon pops and then blows back up inside the pop-up. It's a nice, nice touch that they did that. Really nice. Yeah, very, very nice touch.
    43:14
    And then switching over to Toten, that was one that very similar to Theater of Magic where the outer loops were it was weird trying to hit them because it didn't seem like a natural trajectory off the flipper previously they were an unnatural feeling shot and now the ball is going where you wanted it to go just like it did with Theater of Magic so that was what I was really looking forward to one area of contention happens to be with the ramps on Tales of the Arabian Nights because it seems like in order to complete a mission you can't just launch it up the ramp and have it plop down the middle you gotta have it do the full arc and go all the way around into that ring and there's a lot of balls that come rolling back down at you we brought it up in the beta and yeah Zen's 100% acknowledged that, and Deep is looking at tuning the ramp a bit more. Because I was doing clean shots up that ramp every single time, and they were all rejecting. So I think what's happening, this goes back to Medieval Madness with the dragon ramp. And I think there's too much friction on the ball spin. and it's the material that whatever they've assigned friction on those ramps is got too much grip and it needs to be instead of slick so that no matter how much that ball's spinning it's just going to go whoop and keep on going around. It's not affected essentially, yeah. Right, which they fixed it on Medieval. And I think they also wound up fixing it eventually on Roadshow.
    45:05
    Yes. Because I think it was the same problem too. Yeah, so I think that's the same thing that's going to be going on here. It just needs a little baby tweak, and that'll be the end of that.
    45:16
    Yeah, it'll be fine. By the time it gets released, I'm very confident that'll be resolved. So here comes the question, though. This is what I was saying. You've got two Williams Tables and now a Bally table. Does that mean that we are not going to be seeing Jackbot, Whodunit, and Cactus Canyon? I already stated Cactus Canyon, very rare table hard to find probably even harder to find in Europe I don't know they'd have too much trouble getting access to it from the partnership they have with the Pinball Museum over there, they'd surely have one I don't know maybe, maybe not like I said, it wasn't exactly considering it's one of those tables that goes for $12,000 that would be the other thing is anybody even selling it and trading it Farsight basically said that they lucked into even having that come up for sale which is why they bought it paid a boatload more than they ever wanted to but they couldn't pass up the opportunity yes that's right it would be interesting to see so there's that one that's questionable and then you've got whodunit which I really have no emotion towards who done it. I could care less about the table. So I don't know if that's just kind of the same thing where it's just kind of like, well, does anybody want this? I don't know. Do we go for it? And then the third table, of course, is Jackbot, which is old casino, which is that going to screw with the ESRB?
    46:53
    Maybe. There's a lot of questions there that I guess will only be answered over time. yeah so um there's where hey you want to start your speculation uh we'll know soon enough because if the next tables announced are alphanumerics i'm gonna say probably kiss those three tables goodbye yeah i i think the only reason why i want to see cactus canyon in the collection is to just play a better visual representation of that table. Certainly. Because there's nothing to like on the Pimble Like Hate version. It is just a blobby mess. Well, and it's also lit all wrong. That was my whole complaint about it. It's just lit horribly. But I just really wish, and I'm pretty sure this is outside the scope of what's possible, but, geez, if Cactus Canyon continued, it would be lovely to see on that. Absolutely. I just think that Zen's going to have to program it themselves probably because it yeah but you know that is just it would just be wonderful to see that sort of thing and you know when brighter pinball comes around BOP 2.0 yes please that changes the game 100% it's a completely different game when that ROM's installed yeah so that would be I'd love to see some sort of arrangement cut there if possible but I'm not holding my breath for that because that is outside the scope of license. Roboloco in the chat says, Zacos said they will probably do Cactus Canyon if someone will lend it to them.
    48:31
    That was mentioned during the new pack stream. Okay. So thanks for that, Roboloco. Yeah. So, yeah, your suspicions are correct there. Those tables release on Tuesday, I believe. A couple of days, yeah. Yeah. Y'all are going to want to get them for sure. What a great way to round out the decade. Yeah. Right. And I don't, you know, there's all of a sudden, there's a little blowback against, basically you might say it started with Greg from Spacey saying, Zen, lock the physics, they're great, with Monster Bash is what he, when he said that. And some people are saying, oh, but they slowed the ball down, that's not good. I don't have a problem with it personally because if you've ever played a real pinball machine and if you watched Greg's video when he used the marble instead of a pinball, you'll understand a thing or two that what we've been seeing in digital pinball is not real the ball does not move that fast ride with the physics, they're good when you go out and play pinball for real compare, be aware of the ball speed and you're going to see that the ball usually moves a lot slower on a real machine. Zen does have plenty of variables going on.
    49:51
    We're now splitting hairs, and my point is I would much rather have all of that catalog matching right now and just move forward with now, because it's good.
    50:03
    We thought it was good when Volume 1 released. It's fantastic right now. Don't tweak it anymore. It's fine. Just gold master that one and lock it in and roll it back to all the other tables. And that will then become the Zen physics. Exactly. That is it. And then maybe they can apply those physics to Zen originals. All the tables. Yeah. Like aliens. Yeah. Aliens.
    50:33
    All right. Yeah. So I'm going to call it right now and say there ain't going to be a podcast next week because I already know my work schedule. It's full.
    50:42
    But we do want to hear your feedback. So by all means, hit us up right there on the Twitters and let us know what you think. And if there's anything that you want us to address in the show next time, just drop us a message. Tell us. Yeah, it works wonders.
    51:04
    Also, make sure you go check out the website, which is blockadepinball.com slash episodes because there is where you'll find all past episodes plus Jared will drop in show notes as well as links to things that we talk about as he likes to.
    51:23
    And what am I forgetting, Jared? Well, the next time we speak there's most likely going to be talk about stuff and things. There you go. What more can you want? Until next time, buh-bye. Buh-bye.