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Save The Pinball For Last

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 1m·analyzed·Oct 1, 2017
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Blockade hosts share Portland arcade experience and discuss digital pinball updates.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss their Portland trip, including Chris's experience playing Star Wars and Dialed In pinball at Ground Control arcade, followed by conversation about Zen Studios' Back to the Future digital pinball table reveal and Farsight's new licensing deal with Trick Gaming Studios for Pinball Cadet and Pinball Invaders. The episode opens with extended discussion of the It movie and Blade Runner before pivoting to pinball content.

Key Claims

  • Star Wars Pro model is very generic with boring-looking shots and narrow ramps that create straight-down-the-middle drain issues

    high confidence · Chris's direct hands-on experience at Ground Control in Portland; detailed gameplay critique of Pro model

  • Star Wars has too much upfront character and mode selection for casual quarter-fed players, needs arcade vs home mode toggle

    high confidence · Chris's experience with neophyte gameplay; direct comparison to tournament mode toggle on modern Stern machines

  • Dialed In is a fun, well-designed Jersey Jack machine with good shot layout and multiball mechanics

    high confidence · Chris achieved 350k-400k scores and multiple replays on Dialed In; positive gameplay assessment

  • Ground Control arcade is not as well-maintained as Quarter World, with dingy playfields and missing rubber replacements

    high confidence · Chris's direct observation comparing two Portland venues; noted Dialed In lacked shine despite being brand new

  • Farsight is licensing its physics engine to Trick Gaming Studios for Pinball Cadet and Pinball Invaders rather than developing these games in-house

    high confidence · Jared confirmed Farsight partnership detail; stated Farsight is functioning as publisher while Trick Gaming develops

  • Zen's Back to the Future table uses a DeLorean vehicle mechanic similar to Plants vs. Zombies repurposed element

    medium confidence · Chris's observation of DeLorean flying around playfield; acknowledged similarity may be deeper than simple reskinning

  • Pinball balls are made through a six-step process involving grinding and polishing, not chrome dipping

    high confidence · Jared shared YouTube video observation about ball manufacturing; described 15-minute instructional video

Notable Quotes

  • “It's a very generic table. Like, you really have to...you gotta know the source material. You better have the audio turned up because there's a lot of audio cues.”

    Chris @ ~13:30 — Summarizes core design issue with Star Wars Pro: requires substantial player knowledge and audio to understand gameplay

  • “They almost need to have like an arcade mode—a toggleable arcade mode and a toggleable home mode. So you know how a lot of the time on the new Stern machines you can hop through the buttons in and it enables tournament mode automatically? They need to do like a hey, I'm new to this—give me the arcade version.”

    Chris @ ~14:15 — Suggests design solution for accessibility gap in modern Stern games; identifies tournament mode feature as existing precedent

  • “Save the pinball for last. Make the people wade through the stuff. I'm putting my foot down, Jared.”

    Chris @ ~10:45 — Episode title reference; Chris's meta-commentary on show structure, choosing to discuss pinball at episode end

  • “I think probably the Michael J. Fox voice that they got in the Back to the Future Zen version is nowhere near as bad as the one they have in the Data East Back to the Future table. That was absolutely terrible.”

    Chris @ ~39:00 — Comparative voice acting assessment; suggests Zen's casting/production is notably better than historical Data East version

  • “Farsight, in this instance, is becoming a publisher. The only skin in the game they have is the fact that they've got their physics engine in, at the moment, Pinball Cadet.”

    Jared @ ~51:30 — Clarifies Farsight's new business model shift toward engine licensing and publishing rather than sole development

  • “Ground Control is not as well maintained as Quarter World was. Not new rubbers, playfields kind of dingy. Even Dialed In wasn't sparkly.”

    Chris @ ~28:45 — Direct venue comparison highlighting maintenance standards at Portland arcades

  • “I wound up scoring—the first game I think I had around 350,000 and the next game in the 400,000 which, again, think of Jersey Jack scoring and you know, that's not too shabby.”

Entities

Chris RebuspersonJared MorganpersonGround ControlorganizationStar WarsgameDialed IngameBack to the FuturegameZen StudioscompanyFarsight StudioscompanyTrick Gaming Studioscompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight transitioning from sole developer to publisher/licensing model; now licensing physics engine to third-party developers

    high · Jared confirmed partnership with Trick Gaming Studios; Farsight licensing physics engine; Farsight becoming 'publisher' with 'reasonable cut' from revenue

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Star Wars Pro model features narrow ramps causing straight-down-the-middle drains and overly complex upfront mode/character selection unsuitable for casual arcade players

    high · Chris's detailed hands-on critique: 'very generic table,' 'straight-down-the-middle drain monster,' 'exceedingly narrow' shots, ball ejects straight down middle

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Modern Stern machines lack arcade-friendly modes; need toggle between arcade and home/tournament modes like existing tournament mode feature

    high · Chris's direct comparison to existing tournament mode toggle; suggested solution referencing precedent on modern Stern machines

  • ?

    announcement: Farsight announcing two new digital pinball titles: Pinball Cadet (available now) and Pinball Invaders Space Warfare (Kickstarter launch)

    high · Jared provided official announcement with game titles and platform details; Farsight partnership confirmed

  • ?

    product_concern: Arcade venue Ground Control shows poor maintenance standards despite having new machines; Dialed In playfield not properly maintained

    high · Chris's observation: dingy playfields, missing rubber replacements, new Dialed In machine 'wasn't sparkly' despite brand new status

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.183

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared this is the blockade podcast i'm your host chris rebus aka shut your trap which is fun to tell uh telemarketers when they're looking for your email address um joining me halfway across the world Jared Morgan.
0:29
Hello again. It has been a little while. That just popped up because I was literally on the phone talking to somebody that was trying to sell me a different TV package than the one that I have. And they were like, oh, hey, we can email you our quote. And I was like, OK. And I was not spelling it out to them. I'm like realizing because you shut your trap as part of my email. And I realized that that's kind of rude to people that don't know me. And, yeah, it's kind of a hoot. So what's your email? Shining Traps. Yeah, let's broadcast that all over. Why don't we, huh?
1:11
So, yeah, it's been a little while. I was up in, well, I was last Saturday, last weekend on our podcast. It wasn't. I was flying home from Portland again, so that's why we didn't have a session. but things did happen while up in Portland oh okay I'm going to start with a non pinball and merge into pinball so I got flown up there and when I arrived and went to the hotel my room was not available yet going to be available for about four hours oh okay and so it was like oh okay so I need to kill some time and so I went and I had no intention of actually going and seeing this just because it's not usually the kind of thing that I would go to the movies for but I'm ever so glad I did so I went and saw it oh yeah I'd like to go and see that it's just trying to find the time to see it tell me what it's like well I'm not a horror fan I'm a Well, when I say I'm not a horror fan, I really do not like slasher picks. I definitely don't like torture porn. You like sort of thriller slash horror more than straight-out horror. Yeah, more than that, more cerebral or whatever. But just jump scares don't do anything for me. I don't get a thrill out of that. And I also find that the majority of time when people say, oh, but it was a really good horror movie, it means it was just kind of a mediocre movie in general. Horror movie, yeah. Because those people really, really like horror movies. And therefore, they will go over the top for it. Right, right. If it's actually a somewhat decent movie, they'll think it's the best movie in the world. Whereas, oftentimes, to me, that means it's just a watchable movie as opposed to a piece of crap.

Chris @ ~24:30 — Establishes Dialed In scoring context relative to Jersey Jack's typical scoring design

Pinball Cadet
game
Pinball Invaders Space Warfaregame
Quarter Worldorganization
Indiana Jones Pinball Adventuregame
Twilight Zonegame
Blockade Podcastorganization
  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community backlash against Farsight on Pinball Arcade licensing expectations misses the point that Farsight is now functioning as publisher, not developer

    high · Jared noted community complaints about Stern Pinball Arcade and missing titles; clarified this is external studio licensing, not Farsight development

  • ?

    technology_signal: Trick Gaming Studios found Unity's default pinball physics engine inadequate and negotiated access to Farsight's proprietary physics engine at GDC

    high · Jared: 'Team at Trick Gaming tried to use the Unity pinball physics engine and found they had to basically go back and rewrite it from scratch'

    • 3:05
    So, anyway, so I went and, you know, I'd seen the trailer and that's about it. I've never read the book. I never saw the miniseries, you know, the original miniseries with Tim Curry.
    3:17
    I never intended to because I really don't care for Tim Curry at all. There's just something about him that I don't know. Tim Curry's the guy. It's always in all the Disney movies and was in Congo, right? Yeah, he was in Congo, and he's always kind of usually a slimy bad guy of some sort. Yeah, I know the guy you're talking about. The problem is when I see him, I go, oh, there's Tim Curry.
    3:44
    He doesn't blend into a character for me. It's just there's Tim Curry again. About the only time that he successfully fooled me was there was a Ridley Scott movie by the name of Legend that starred a very young Tom Cruise.
    4:03
    And it's a fantasy film. And it's quite good, but it's slow. And especially in the era of Lord of the Rings, it's way slow and not action packed. and anyway, Tim Curry played the Lord of Darkness in that and it's one of the most spectacular costumes and makeup jobs. It is absolutely incredible. He's all red and huge and he's got cloven hooves and he's got these massive horns coming out of his head and he's very ominous.
    4:41
    It's totally practical effects. It's not digital. Totally. Well, yeah, because this is a movie from like 82? 83? Somewhere in that vicinity? Yeah.
    4:52
    But anyway, that's about the only time that I've enjoyed him. So I go to the movie, just kind of like an open book of whatever, and real quickly it gave me the vibe of Stranger Things, which is that show on Netflix that is phenomenal.
    5:09
    And it also has again, going back into the Wayback Machine. There's a movie called Stand By Me, which was also a Stephen King short story with River Phoenix and a guy I'm slitting my mind of who else is in it, but it's a bunch of young kids. Anyway, it was also a really good coming-of-age kind of story. It wasn't a horror movie at all, but it has that vibe going for it. A very 80s, I mean, set in 1989,
    5:36
    I believe? 87, 89, somewhere around there. But the kind of horror that it is, like I said, it reminded me exceedingly amount of Stranger Things. But also, remember X-Files, whenever they would do their Monster of the Week episodes? And they were always kind of spooky and creepy? Yeah, like the... Yeah.
    5:59
    Like the Fluke Man. That's what I was trying to think of. The Fluke Man, because that's what everybody thinks of. Exactly, exactly. It's that kind of...
    6:10
    You know, there's dread of when is it going to come around kind of thing, but when it comes out, it's not like you're going, oh my god, I've got to avert my eyes. You're kind of creeped out but fascinated at the same time. There's a general uneasiness that you're going to have while watching it, but it's not like you're going to be shielding your eyes and you're not going to be going, oh god, the blood, the blood, except for one scene where it's like, oh my god, the blood.
    6:34
    Yeah, exactly. So the fascinating thing was, after I got on watching it, I could not stop thinking about Stranger Things, because it literally was clearly Stranger Things was influenced by the book, and clearly this movie is influenced by Stranger Things, to the point that even one of the cast members of Stranger Things is in the movie. And so it becomes this kind of, what do they call it, a Cerberus? The snake eating its own tail? What is that?
    7:07
    And that's what it just reminds me of, though, where you suddenly go, well, where does one begin and where does the other end? I don't know. And so I rewatched all Stranger Things and I've been thinking about it all week.
    7:18
    So no, it really stuck with me and it'll probably go down as one of my favorites for the year when I hit that list. It's going to be very interesting to hear what one of my colleagues at work thinks about it because she is not a horror fan at all, but she was roped into going to see it. So I'm going to be asking her on Monday how she thought of that to see if it's something that would be worthwhile. What I'm really, I think I'd probably hire that. I'll have to hire it myself when Kim is not here and add it to my wish list because she will refuse flat out to watch it.
    7:52
    But I will probably watch it at one point. But the thing I'm, I think I'm going to have to somehow, even if I need to take a day off to do it, is to go and see Blade Runner in the cinemas. Oh, that's, yeah. Yeah, right? That's sort of one of those things that you kind of need to have in the cinema. And I don't know, the trailers are really bringing me into this one. I haven't felt this way about a movie for a long time. You've got to understand, Blade Runner is one of my all-time favorite movies, not just necessarily watching it, but I was fascinated with the making of it. and there used to be books have been written about it of all the different variations. And this is one of those movies that was very troubled production where the financiers were trying to shut the movie down and take it away from Ridley.
    8:52
    And right. OK. And that went all through the editing process because, look, you've got Harrison Ford, who at that point was only known as Han Solo. and then all of a sudden Lost Ark comes out and it's like, oh my god, right?
    9:10
    And then Empire Strikes Back comes out and so that's what everybody's got in their minds for Harrison and all of a sudden here comes Blade Runner and they tried to sell it as an action sci-fi movie which is completely not what it is.
    9:23
    And so that's why it tanked to the box office and it got a really bad critical reception but it's one of those movies that is stuck around so well. And you watch it today and it is flawless. It holds up. Oh, it has not aged at all.
    9:39
    No. It's because of the, what would you call it, I guess the scenery and stuff that it's set in, the whole dystopian sort of future thing, that sort of picture of the dystopian future hasn't really changed that much for us humans. Like we think that this is going to be anyhow.
    10:04
    It was supremely good world building and although they were predicting the future, it wasn't outlandish and it was never comical. You never went, oh yeah, right. It was always very... Like Back to the Future's neon lights and the curbs sort of thing. Right, or the fashion or whatever. No, it was very realistic and tangible and even to this day when you see the date pop up and you're like that ain't how it is today but you kind of instead view it as well this is an alternative of where things could have gone you know and yeah so I used to read all the books about all the different variations of the edits and cuts that were made and then they came out when I was in college they came out with what they called the work print cut and so me and my friends went to the movie theater to go see that and it was a very rough thing when they found old footage and reinserted it in.
    11:02
    And then, of course, a few years back, they came out with the ultimate release on home video, and it had all five versions of the movies. Yeah, there's five different versions of this movie available. Yeah.
    11:14
    So it is literally one of those movies that I held in massively high esteem. And actually, whenever a film geek tries to tell me that Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever made, I laugh in their face and then they always do the inevitable. Oh, well, what would you say? And I throw a blade around around them and I go, go ahead. Because point out with with Cis and Cain, which is, oh, invented the language of cinema and it was so far ahead of its time in terms of how it did this and this. And it influenced.
    11:49
    Movies for years to come afterwards, and it did. I mean, not Cis and Cain is not an effects movie. but it had special effects in it that were unheard of at that day and age. And I just point to Blade Runner and I'm like, yeah, does it all. That pretty much redefined science fiction after it came out. And to this day, that's still how a lot of the future worlds look is a lot of Blade Runner and the effects work you watch it today. And it was all models and practical effects. They hold up phenomenally as way better than CG holds up. Um, so yeah like i said this is a movie that i hold way high on a pedestal so then when i heard about them doing the movie i was like oh god no and then i heard who the director was and this is the guy that did the arrival and the prisoner and sicario and that kind of was like okay he's at least a quality guy and then i find out it's his favorite movie so he's not gonna watch it right you hope he's not gonna watch it and then word goes around that everybody was saying it's the best script they've ever read.
    12:58
    And then you realize that Ridley is, although he's not directing it, he's definitely got his fingers all over it and making sure that it looks a certain way. Yeah. And then that trailer came out and I just went, oh my god, that's it.
    13:12
    And even though they didn't hire evangelists to do the score, it still has that same kind of music, which is I mean, you gotta understand, it's a movie that is a combination of the visuals, the sound, the effects, the score, that's what creates this world. And if any one of those components was missing, I think I would feel false about it. But for you, I was like, no, that's it. Sign me up. I'm there. This is an extension to the universe. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. And it's going to be one you want to see in 3D. Absolutely in 3D. Is it available in 3D? I don't think it is. It's not? Do you mean something like this with so much potential to be 3D and have depth of field and all that sort of stuff, they're not going to do it in 3D? Let's do a quick Google search here. Google A search? I can't believe they're not going to do it in 3D. In 3D. You know, there is an interesting thing going on right now.
    14:18
    With the movie industry, about 3D. Movie industry, and I'm noticing it because... So I really wanted to go see T2 3D when it got released. I didn't get a chance, but then I was like, I'll just buy it on home video. It's not available in 3D in North America. It's available everywhere else, not in North America. They're pushing the 4K discs really hard, and I think the way they're doing it is by denying 3D.
    14:45
    Oh, really? What would be their endgame with that? Why would they do it to drive people back into cinemas again for that exclusivity sort of thing? I honestly don't know what their reasoning for it is.
    15:00
    Or you can go and import it from any other region and play it in 3D. Well, I mean, the thing I'm going to have to find region free discs for.
    15:13
    Yeah Well I seeing some things mentioning 3D but I don know There are all very old news articles. I don't think it's going to be a 3D movie. To basically cut the 3D? Well, it wasn't shot natively in 3D. Okay. So there would have to be some conversion. I mean, that's what everybody's doing is conversions now. oh right okay unless it's something like an animated movie which can actually bake 3D in just through the process of doing it yeah well that is interesting either way I think I need to go and see it in a very big cinema like an IMAX style cinema I might actually pay money to go for an IMAX on that one yeah is it getting a World Drive release or just worldwide, isn't it? Well, it's releasing here in the States on October 6th. I think we're about the same date. I think it's actually going worldwide with this one, which really they should be doing anyhow. They should be going worldwide every single time with a movie because otherwise people will just pirate it.
    16:29
    And they should learn. Anyhow. Anyhow, so boy, we go off on a tangent there, but here we go. I might actually I might promote this to the end of the show, actually, because we kind of went down the rabbit hole of movies, which is fine. It's fine. We do this. I'm going to jump into the show. No, don't jump into the end of the show. This is an opening moment. Come on. We always do openings. Save the pinball for last. Make the people wade through the stuff. I'm putting my foot down, Jared.
    16:55
    It's because here's the whole point. Right. After the movie, I still had time. I still had more time to kill before going back to the hotel. So I walked over to Ground Control, which you remember I visited my first trip to Portland.
    17:12
    Yes, it was awesome. And so I was like, all right, I'll go plunk five bucks in some machines. I walked in, and what do I see? They've got Star Wars.
    17:21
    Unfortunately, they had the pro model. They also had dialed in, which they didn't have the previous time. So I was like, hooray, all right. Let's do this. Right. Well, so first I went and I played Star Wars. And my impression is it's a very generic table. Like, you really have to, I mean, not that nobody doesn't know the source material, but you got to know the source material. you better have the audio turned up because there's a lot of audio cues just music and vocalize and stuff like that right off the bat you select the different kinds of missions that you want to start off with or what kind of modes you can automatically unlock sooner you might say which I thought was kind of interesting but it's almost too much choice right off the bat for walking up, neophyte to the machine, flunking your quarter and it's first you've got to select your character and then each character has about five different modes that you can automatically start going for. I'm like, I don't know anything about this table and you're throwing all this stuff at me.
    18:30
    You know, let me get in. You want me to select character traits? I just want to flip the ball, man. Right? You know, I'm like, wait a second. It kind of reminds me of with ACDC, depending on what song you pick, that determines some of the scoring that goes on. What you do, what you go for. Yeah. it's a bit like that and again great for the home market because you can sample through it all bad for a person walking their corners in they almost need to have like an arcade mode a toggleable arcade mode and a toggleable home mode so you know how a lot of the time on the new stands you can hop through the buttons in and it enables tournament mode automatically yeah they need to do like a hey I'm new to this Give me the arcade version. Right. Yeah, and then turn off the simulation mode like in Gran Turismo.
    19:26
    So that was my first issue with it. The second issue is the pro mode has very boring-looking shots. You just kind of like, I don't know where I want to send the ball. There's just lanes. I actually care. Right. I don't really care where I send the ball. It doesn't really excite me. Yeah. Third thing, it is a straight-down-the-middle drain monster. some of those shots some of the ramps are exceedingly narrow and if you miss it boom ball down the middle alright some of the ball ejects straight down the middle unless you have your flipper up just enough and it's like literally brushing against the tip of your flipper kind of moment so it's kind of punishing and yeah I did not I didn't get very far I put two bucks in so I could play three games in a row I think I matched on one of those games so I got about four games total in and I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do where I wanted to go, what I wanted the ball to do I just felt like I was flailing meh so then I went over to dialed in and again plunked in the two bucks so I could get my three plays my bonus credits and unfortunately I didn't have my headphones with me so I didn't get the audio experience which was a bummer because I literally could not hear it with all the other noise. Yeah.
    20:48
    But I got a feel for the game this time around. I was able to figure out where shots were going, what kind of combos it wanted, how to walk balls and start multi-ball.
    20:58
    So that was good. And I had a couple of good runs on that table. I wound up getting two or three replays out of it. Two of them definitely I think I got a match a third time. but the replays were for I got on to the high score for the day board so I wound up scoring the first game I think I had around 350,000 and the next game in the 400,000 which again think of Jersey Jack scoring and you know that that's not too shabby that's a pretty big score yeah exactly but I really like that table it's a lot of fun if you see it definitely go plunk your quarters in it's a good one I want to I don't know if it's come down here yet though don't know if anyone's got it well I know that it's starting to they're starting to deliver it like crazy I see those updates of they show the Jersey Jack factory lines and lines of them it's cool to see them pumping it out so anyway by the time I got done with that then my hotel room was ready and I was able to go back in that was the Portland experience this time that's good that sounds real good yeah so not a lot of pinball but enough people some people i think i put in i wound up playing uh also a game on indiana jones pinball adventure and also a game on twilight zone but it reaffirmed my thoughts about that location uh Ground control, not as well maintained as Quarter World was. Not new rubbers, playfields, kind of dingy. Even dialed in wasn't sparkly. And you're like, it's a brand new machine. Why isn't it sparkly?
    22:52
    Yeah, you should clean that thing every day. It's going to be getting to use. Yeah, yeah. So that was my only issue. Just not the greatest place, but at least they had a lot of machines.
    23:05
    I guess we should probably move on to digital pennies now. Okay, let's start off with... Let's go ahead and talk about Xen.
    23:16
    Okay. Because the trailer for Back to the Future... So Xen has done... Yeah, Back to the Future. We've finally seen the... We've seen Jaws, and we've seen a bit of that. But now the final game in the Universal series has been revealed. And it looks okay. I think they'll look really good on Steam and all those platforms with decent graphics cards. There's lots of playfield fun things happening on that game. Like the DeLorean is pretty much everywhere on the playfield, flying in and around it. Which kind of did... We were talking about how Plants vs. Zombies wasn't getting ported in. There was a vehicle in Plants vs. Zombies that would drive around the playfield and park in lanes and you'd have to hit it to move it. And again, I went, hey! That's what we're doing with the DeLorean. They just re-skinned it. They just re-skinned it, yeah. But not really. I'm sure it's a lot more than that. They have two spinners on the table, and I kind of liked them, just their choice. One was, I believe, a quarter. Looked like a coin of some sort. Oh, yeah. And then the other is the license plate. This is out of time. Oh, yeah. That falls off of the car and spins in that final scene. Right. And so I thought, that's a good thoughtful use for a spinner. I like that. Yeah, that's cool. That's very cool.
    24:35
    Yeah, I think it's looking okay. There's like a big central sort of, what do you call it, the flux capacitor. Yeah, it looks very central to the game. And it actually reminds me a little bit, if you've ever played the Data East Star Wars, how everything on that game goes through this center part of the upper ramp system. yeah it reminds me very much of that how it actually diverts either way through that sort of ramp that might be the mode start it hits that thing a couple times and that starts the modes it could be yeah I don't know it seems integral enough to the game that it will be probably used a lot or have some sort of thing I don't think it will just be there for decoration so it'll be interesting and they've got the classic zen the now standard cardboard cutout type of things. Yes, with cowboys making an appearance. Yeah.
    25:36
    So that'll be fun to smash away at. And the... What was the other thing that they had? Oh, the ball trails do look pretty cool in the video, I have to say. Yeah, for multi-ball, you fire off the... That's when all the pinballs leave fire trails behind them, which is the interesting variation on the light trails that a lot of people hate going on with Xen. Yeah, I think you probably want to have them on for this game because that looks pretty cool. Well, I would guess you can't turn that particular effect off. No, I hope not because that's sort of like... Like it's the inter-girl. Yeah, absolutely. I think it should be a fun game. I think probably the voice acting isn't as bad as I thought. No, the Mardin had the cracking voice going on, so that was good.
    26:23
    And I think the top voice is a little bit meh. yeah the doc voice oh it's yeah christopher lloyd i don't think would have said hey yeah i'd love to do a pinball so i had to fester his voice exactly um that being said i think i was gonna say that the michael j fox voice that they got in the back to the future zen version is nowhere near as bad as the one they have in the dark east back to the future table that was absolutely terrible right this also appears to be and Zen kind of does this with their table pack releases this would be the most pinball, realistic pinball table of the batch I think I mean obviously Jon has all sorts of crazy things going on with tilting playfields and stuff and ET has all sorts of floating planets and things going on in the playfield and this looks more just pinball.
    27:28
    Yeah, you could almost make this one barring all the visual effects from the cars zooming around the playfield and the flaming ball trails. That would be a little bit hard to do in real life. It would be cool. The layout of the table, if you just wanted to create that table in real life, I reckon you could do it. I reckon it would map pretty well. Could you imagine if they put flint on the playfield and as the ball rubs over, it creates a spark and then a little... I don't know. the interesting. I always said what they really need to do is figure out how to put fog inside of a playfield. Yeah, so the lights could actually shine through. Yeah, that would be pretty cool. Wouldn't that be awesome? They could do it, but then I'd have to have an extractor to get it out. If they could do it, it'd just be a maintenance nightmare. That's all. Oh, yeah. Could you imagine? It wouldn't be weekly cleaning. It'd be daily. Daily, because that fog juice would be everywhere on the playfield. What a mess. Yeah. It'd just be a greasy mess inside. Yep.
    28:28
    So, yeah, it looks like we'll know more. Obviously, we haven't gotten any pre-advanced playing on the Pinball FX3 at all, let alone these tables. But they drop this Tuesday, probably when this podcast is out.
    28:43
    And I think probably Android and iOS later on in the week. They usually delay it a couple of days so the servers aren't slammed. Yeah. So, yeah, that would be interesting. I was watching the other day on the subject if you follow my Twitter account you will have seen me tweet out how pinballs are actually made I'm not talking about machines I'm actually talking about the silver balls themselves I never knew how they actually made the balls but it's like a six step process to make ball bearings and the unless you watch a video on how they're made you would not know how they're made.
    29:23
    It's a very, very long process. And the whole chroming that you get on the outside of the pinball machine, that's just, that's not actually, they're not dropped into anything. That's just polished metal. That's all that is.
    29:38
    So, yeah, it's really interesting to watch it. That's just basically going through this big, round grinding wheel with finer and finer textures inside until it gets to that really shiny stage. And that's all it is. so it's and then they heat it and it gets it's sort of like the whole ball expands and uh it's it's worth watching it's about a 15 minute video to see how it um it all goes together but it's pretty cool to watch so go follow jared on twitter at jared morgues and then go through his history and you'll see that video and then you can check it out um i saw the post i didn't click on it because I see things at work and I don't always have Wi-Fi and I don't always have time and then I forget about it days later and now I going to have to go look and see and watch for myself I put it in the show notes I think I go back through my Twitter feed and put it in the show notes I think it be interesting I came across it purely because I went down the YouTube rabbit hole one day at work I was watching a video on – it was actually like a Write the Docs Australia meetup video where people recorded this session. Then in the suggested videos, it's how are ball bearings made? I went, how do you even jump from a video about technical writing and sort of stats and stuff to how ball bearings are made? But anyhow, let's go there. So I went there, and I had no regrets. So I was going for that one there.
    31:08
    Moving on, let's talk a little bit about Farsight. I got a link sent to me that I was kind of like, I don't know about this. and that was apparently Farsight and I'm going to kind of throw out speculation but I'll just do the announcement first. Farsight has a new game out and they've paired with another company for this but the game is called Pinball Cadet. It's available for download right now. At the same time they are also doing a Kickstarter for and I'm trying to think of what the name of it is. Do you have the Let's see if I can bring this up real quick.
    31:56
    Pinball Invaders Space Warfare. Yeah, that's right. Pinball Invaders. I've got a page up now too. Yeah, so and the company that they're pairing with is Trick Gaming. Thank you. Trick Gaming Studios. So at first I thought, oh, is this one of the projects that Farsight has mentioned to us that they're working on other things, but this was the other things. And this was the other things. But then it was like, wait, but this is a whole other studio. And it leads me to kind of believe that is Farsight licensing out their physics engine? Yes, they are. So they've actually yeah, that's exactly what they've done here. The team at Trick Gaming tried to use the Unity pinball physics engine and found they had to basically go back and rewrite it from scratch. And when they met Farsight at, I think it was SBX or whatever that gaming thing is, that gaming sort of thing, the show, the thing. I'm going to use thing another time. Was that over the summer?
    33:07
    Yeah, that's right. Replay effect. Yeah, something like that. No, GDC. That's when it was. Okay. So, yeah, they went to Farsight and showed them their prototype, and Farsight said, yeah, we should probably give you access to our physics engine, and what we'll do is we'll publish it through our platforms, and that'll get you out of the problem there, and we'll take a reasonable cut from the game probably. So the reason I bring that up, because the immediate, you read comments, and this goes on Pinball Arcade fans, this goes on Facebook, this goes on Twitter. Everybody's immediate response was, hey, how about making Stern Pinball Arcade actually work? And how about releasing Simpsons Pinball or blah, blah, blah. And I'm thinking to myself the whole time, I'm like, guys, I literally don't think this is Farsight working on it. This is another studio just licensing. It's like the Unreal Engine.
    34:16
    Yeah. Basically, Fast Side, in this instance, is becoming a publisher. The only skin in the game they have is the fact that they've got their physics engine in, at the moment, Pinball Cadet.
    34:27
    And the idea moving forward is that they'll do that in the Pinball Invaders. Now, the interesting thing is this game is totally 2D. so they say in the Kickstarter page that yes Pinball Cadet is most definitely a nod to 3D Space Cadet on Windows and they wanted it to be like that, like they actually designed it to be 3D but they wanted it to have, the one thing that you'll probably find with a lot of 3D titles on both Play Store and everywhere really is that their physics are totally rubbish so the thing with this game is it actually does have the physics already baked in. You can tell. You can actually do the shots. Yeah, you can actually do drop with it. What's interesting that I found, because I messed around with it this week, and it reminded me a lot of Snowball.
    35:23
    Yes, that's exactly what I said, basically. Which we talked about earlier. Except for the fact that the physics are way better than Snowball.
    35:31
    Snowball was very frustrating with its, you know, I put pinball in quotes on that one. Yeah, but this will work around that. It is, it's got solid gameplay. Like you can do the same shot over and over again, repeatedly and it works as you would expect. Yeah. So that's the difference here. That's the killer feature of this particular game. It actually has good pinball physics, but in a 2D world. It also reminded me a little bit about, what was the one that you were high on? Was that Pinout? Pinout. in terms of you advance the pinball to other playfields.
    36:08
    Yes. And that was a little bit like Snowball as well. Like Snowball, you sort of moved up the board to the high levels of the playfield. Whereas this one, I think Pinout is more linear in its style. Like it's a continuous linear playfield. Yes, the object is never to fall backwards.
    36:26
    That's right. Yeah, to always move forward. And this is a bit different to that. When you start the game, because I installed it on Android, when you start the game you get this big top down overview of the ship that you're actually that's basically the play field and it's all different regions of the ship that you're playing through and as you progress through them of course the view follows the ball in classic 2D scrolling style so you get to explore the ship in that way so I think what they're doing with the game they're trying to kickstart here is they actually have it more like discrete levels So I'm seeing screenshots in here. They grab chapters, basically. And each chapter has 15 levels within each. And they will actually have boss battles in this game as well. So the idea will be you... It's a little bit... The interface at the moment that I'm seeing is almost a little bit like Candy Crush Saga, where you go through each different level, and each level is in itself a mini playfield sort of thing.
    37:28
    So... And the idea is you go through and collect power-ups and you can power up your ball and that will actually help you defeat the enemies that are at the end of the stage and that sort of thing. So would you say that Pinball Cadet would then be essentially what one level would be? You might say. Yeah, that's pretty much what they've said in the thing here. I'll see if I can... Because Pinball Cadet, if you play it,
    37:58
    you mess around with it for five minutes and you're like, okay, but then once you clear all the, you know, there's little, call it coins or stars around that you're collecting. Once you've collected all of them, it kind of was like, okay, now what?
    38:12
    Well, yeah, I found the bit of text that I'm looking for. So in the, but why wait, play it now, section of the pinball on the Kickstarter, they said, since action speaks louder than words, why don't you go ahead and get a taste of what we're building? Of course, it's not the full game, else we wouldn't be doing the campaign, but we put together a pretty awesome board where you can test the core game mechanics and see for yourself what we mean by the game feeling great. The size of this board, which is the one in space, get it is what we are planning for the later levels in pinball invaders. So keep that in mind. So that is basically an advanced board, a preview of what they were doing in one of the advanced levels and that's full. So there's going to be sort of maybe, I think probably like 15 of that size board. perhaps in the table. That's a lot. If you're following the Candy Crush model, that's what they did. The first level was like, oh, that was simple. Second level, oh, and you're slowly building up until finally you get a level where you're like, okay, that one kind of sucked. That was hard. That was actually hard. I'm feeling challenged now. That's exactly how you should build an in-game experience. You should start on a feed so they get hooked and then bring it back in and then keep them spending their money, which unfortunately is the next point I'd like to make. This particular game. So what they've done, Trick Studios in Space, not Space Cadet, Pinball Cadet, have introduced an IOP model. So the game's free, but there's IOP. And unfortunately, it's not by the game outright. It is by credits. So you'll buy coin packs and they range from, I think, 10 credits or something like, hang on, I've got the thing on my phone because I took a screenshot of it when I was playing yesterday. Let me just go and have a look at it somewhere in here.
    40:06
    They definitely use a model where it's quite... So your 10 credits is $1.99, 20 credits, $2.99. You can remove ads forever for five bucks.
    40:24
    But the weird thing about that at the moment with Pinball Cadet is that the ads allow you to get things like the Holy Balls and stuff like that if you watch an ad. So I don't know how that's going to work with the whole mechanic. If you remove ads, how are you going to earn Holy Balls? Or maybe Holy Balls are just given to you for remove ads. It's not clear in the IOP screen. Maybe you can still elect to watch the ad, but instead you're given the option to skip past the ad immediately. The most you'll pay for the full amount of credits will be 400 credits, and that's $20.
    41:01
    So that would last you for a while, but this, at the moment, apparently if you have Space Cadet installed and you back the project, you're going to get unlocks in Space Cadet. Oh, sorry, Pinball Cadet. Excuse the copyright infringement. Pinball Cadet. So they're going to actually update, they plan to update both titles in the game after the Kickstarter is out. So there will be some cross-buying happening in the two games. But I'm a little bit dubious about the whole pricing model at this stage. I prefer to pay $10 and just unlock the game completely and just have free pay, basically. um yeah but the whole idea for me of like going paying five dollars to unremove the ads and then paying twenty dollars that's a twenty five dollar game yep and i'm not i wouldn't be confident in saying that it's a twenty five dollar game if it was 3d and it was like perspective based pinball and it was a big universe pinball like that that's a very different story um but you know we're sort of if you're looking at IAPs as a way to play a game you've got to be offering a pretty compelling experience I just I don't think they're there yet but I'm almost willing to back the project and getting the basic supporter tier which is I think 10 bucks so you can get pledge $3 or more you get pinball cadet ad free you pledge $5 the more you can get that plus Pinball Cadet Holy Ball.
    42:49
    So it might actually be that when you remove the ads, you get the Holy Ball for free because this reward tier says get Pinball Cadet with ads removed on a select platform plus the Pinball Cadet Holy Ball, which acts as a permanent fourth ball. So I think when you pay for ad removal, you do get that Holy Ball removed for free all the time. So that's good. Yeah, I do wonder, you know, Farsize has been for years trying to figure out how to get the money out of mobile platforms. And I do wonder how much of this is them and how much of it is Trick Gaming? I think that this is pretty much Trick. Trick is sitting everything here. Okay. It's their game. So, again, it's Farsize. It's their game. It's Farsize Publishing. in. Farsight's using their name to help them out in promotional terms and giving them a platform, you might say, or a bully pulpit. But beyond that, it's not...
    43:54
    None of the artists at Farsight are working on this. Nobody is dealing with the marketing of this at Farsight. It's a completely different entity. Trick Game Studios is actually an Argentinian-based studio. Okay. So they they're doing everything. They're doing the art, the whole game aesthetic, the level planning, the whole story, the story plan for it. Everything is theirs. It's just Farsight, as you say, licensing the physics engine to make it better and publishing the game to the platforms they already have agreements with. So there you go, people. Get off Farsight's back. They're still working on the games the same way that they have been working on the games. They're just going for different revenue streams. You know what? If they can turn out...
    44:41
    I guarantee if they can turn out an Unreal Engine for pinball and it gets used for various other things, that would only benefit us with Pinball Arcade because they'd be flush with cash.
    44:58
    Well, that's right. I'm just looking through the upper tiers. You pledge $15 or more and you get all the things, all the unlocks and pinball cadet. You get an ad for Pinball Invaders, but you then get $5 credit in Pinball Cadet and Pinball Invaders. I just don't know if I would. That's the thing. I really dislike games that nickel and dime you just for wanting to play it. And yes, I understand you have to earn your money somewhere. But there's got to be a cap. There's got to be a cap where you say, you know what I'm fine with spending X amount of dollars on this game but beyond that you've lost me and if you want me to play it for years to come you know yeah like if you planning on like extending this and doing more things with the game and building your brand as a studio like really you got to put a ceiling on it Like, it really is getting to the point of ridiculousness when, you know, if you really enjoy the game, you're actually punishing players because to keep enjoying the game,
    46:09
    you know, you've got to keep on, like, buying IAP. Yeah, I was playing Candy Crush, and then it got to the point where I stopped playing because I would hit the energy bar. It was like, okay, I've tried this level three times, and now I have to wait seven hours before I can play it again. Or I can pay money. Well, I've got news for you. I'm not paying money. So now you've got me not playing your game for seven hours, which means I'm not hooked. And once I'm no longer hooked on your game, it's really easy for me to delete it. And now I'm never playing it again. So, that's why I've been... Yeah, my son got me playing Clash Royale, and they're very savvy with how they do this. They make it very easy for you to not pay any money at all. They also make it painfully slow to earn ways of upgrading faster. and you reach a certain level where you realize that other people are dumping money and it kind of frustrates you because you're like, oh my God, I really love to get past this, but at the current rate of earning, it's going to take me a month and a half. That's where the frustration is. But in the meantime, they don't stop you from playing it as many times as you want to play it. Yeah, you keep on grinding it. Exactly. You keep on grinding the game. That's the thing. If Frick Studios put in some sort of way of earning credits, like collect 100 coins in the game and you'll get one play or something like that. Right. You know, that's fine. That's no problem. And I hope that that's what they're going to do. In Pinball Cadet at the moment, you get one free play of the table and then it locks you out. You have to actually spend money. So you get one chance to experience it. So if you're listening to this and you want to give it a go, make sure you don't screw it up because you'll get one free go of it. That's not my experience with it. Yeah. Now, I had loaded it for iOS. Immediately, I had to watch an ad. That let me play the game. Wow. As I was playing the game, I lost my ball. You had to watch an ad on load? What's that? Yeah, I had to watch it on load. You had to watch it on load. Wow, that's terrible. Yeah, before I could even... Well, no, no, no, I take it back. The first time I downloaded it, it let me play. The next time I went to play, I had to watch an ad in order to release it for being able to play. And then I was able to play, and then if I kept on hitting, it asked you if you want to continue. I pushed continue and it said, no ads available to watch. And so then it immediately let me play the game again. Well, that's a bit different on Android. Like when you installed on Android Oreo, the latest version, you can tell the game or tell Android what permissions you're comfortable with, given the game and it has three two of the two of the permissions um are related to unity themselves and their basic unity permissions because the game is built on unity platform but the the one that's unique to the game is i think that the unity ones are make and receive calls and um access location are the two ones that unity is specific okay the first one is right to the right to your device like read and write from your device and i thought i know exactly what they're using that for that's how they serve the ads so i went deny on that one and i was still able to play the game but it didn't seem to have any effect the ads were still served so getting around the problem like that didn't actually do it the other trick i've heard um on forums and stuff is to turn your phone into airplane mode and what that does turn it into turns to airplane mode before you start the game and what that will do is it will disable the ad server that's um hooked into the game okay If you want to get an extended play. Now, I wouldn't recommend, obviously, developers need to make money. Ads are in there, so they actually make money. So don't do it all the time.
    50:10
    But if you're just trying to get a taste for the game and then want to support the studio later on, consider doing Unlock if it's your thing. But don't try and get around the ads just because you're being a tightwad.
    50:23
    If you want to play the game, you need to understand that ads are the way they get their money. so just suck it up but other things other thoughts that I had while playing it the music is very uninspired and very repetitive the music as well is really like you listen to the onboarding like you know game studio animation like what would you call it logo animations and even the Fast Side Studios one actually has stereo separation and the Trick Game Studios one has stereo separation. Then you go into game and it's mono and it's terrible bit rate. And it just sounds horrible. You think they could have included some stereo music? This is the difference between me and Jared. I immediately go for the artistic aspect of the music. Jared immediately goes for the technical aspect of the music. I wouldn't be so worried. It's 2D. You can sort of like pass off some of that stuff with retro sounds, right? But if it's mono as well, it just sounds mono and poor bitrate even worse. Like, I just can't. I can't even. I'm just saying, it's literally, to me, a 20-second loop of synthesizer music. Now, they're saying that they're trying to go for an 80s-style theme or whatever, then put in some 80s-style 8-bit music. I don't know, but even classic 80s arcade games had more music going on, it seems, than this. It's just generic, boring synth music.
    52:03
    Yeah, at the moment, in space, I have to probably agree. It's a little bit boring. And then the noises, table noises, you might say, the game kind of has, it's very youth-oriented, is what I would say. even the load screen is very kind of what is this a kids game just with these little face aliens hanging from the earth and the robot like a cutesy robot and stuff like that it sort of does feel a little bit sort of aimed at under 10s which is unfortunate I hope they work around that I don't know maybe that's what they're going for maybe they're going for the younger market I guess and then once again I went really another space theme I don't know it's not very inspired to me. Um, that my initial thought was, but you know what? It's better than Orville's. Oh yeah, it is. And honestly, it's better than most 2d games in the play store at the moment. I've played far too many of them. Yeah. When I was doing pinball on Google play and I can guarantee you that this, even with the IAP, this is better than all of them. and I certainly think it's better than Snowball which we've messed around with I think it probably is I think it's probably a little bit better than Snowball just because it's got a bit more the flipper feel is better that's the only difference I think like I said it's worth checking out yay for Farsight licensing their physics please people don't get mad at Farsight because it's actually not their baby it's not taking away their assets time wise or people wise and yeah so there's that what else you were going to mention something you mentioned it earlier regarding Fathom which is going to be that's the next table on Pinball Arcade yeah it should be coming out I think probably a couple of weeks. I think they might do another week of testing on it, certainly on Android. I don't know. I'm not sure about that, though. It's coming along pretty well. And the first thing, I've never played this game in real life at all before, and the first thing that I noticed when I started playing it, I was like, wow, this is like reverse 8-ball deluxe. Like, the drop targets are on the left-hand side, the big bank drop targets on the left, and then it's got the flip on the right, but the shot is almost the same, maybe a little bit flatter the only difference is that it's got a lot of stage drop targets and that's kind of cool I like the stage drop targets in the game and it is a narrow body as we worked out last time we spoke it's not a wide body and it plays pretty well it'll give you a 3 ball multiple it's got the squawking torque sound system that 8 ball deluxe has in it and centaur
    55:12
    If it's got multi-ball, that's something that A-Ball Deluxe does not have. That's true. Yeah, so it does. You can look up to two balls, and then you have to complete the drop targets to release them.
    55:23
    And, yeah, it seems to be quite fun. I can see why people wanted this in the game. I think it'll be a fun game to play a bit more.
    55:34
    So, yeah, wait for it for release. It should be fun. Good to hear, too. anything else pinball related that we can think of maybe but I'll talk about that next show after I actually confirm if it's going to happen or not intriguing that's Jared dangling a carrot yes I don't have anything else
    56:04
    beyond that I'd like to say that I'm glad we're able to do a podcast that we haven't devolved into nuclear war yet.
    56:14
    Yes. This is a good thing. And I think I need to go because I need to go to the Costco wedding that's happening at a Costco in...
    56:28
    I think it's actually not in Brisbane, but it's actually in New South Wales, I think, one of the Costcos. Somebody is getting married in Costco. shouldn't it be a whole lot of somebody so they're getting married in bulk it should be a pallet of somebody's uh and you need to buy at least 24 um buy 24 marriages and you'll be uh saving money that's right it's kind of bizarre i instead of um instead of throwing rice as the uh after they walk down the um aisle and that'll be aisle 13 um you'll be throwing almond rockers um at them from a big massive bag.
    57:07
    And then the groomsman will be one of those giant teddies. Right. And you'll also have a procession of Dyson vacuum cleaners that you can just get off the shelf. And plus there's no need for a registry. You just give them a gift card and they don't even have to, you know, they can just go shopping. Absolutely. Load up right there and that, you know. And let's be serious. Get your housewares and your food. The catering is all taken care of in the food court. Right. You've got pizza and hot dogs and soft drink. Tents are available. Yeah, exactly. This is like it's a perfect place to have a wedding, really.
    57:41
    Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Apparently this isn't the first one. That's funny. That they've done either. Wow. Costco weddings, man. It's the new budget way of doing a wedding.
    57:56
    Nuts, right? That is fairly nuts, indeed. I kind of like it. All right. Well, folks, we're going to let it drop there, and hopefully Jared did not push. I'm just going to say it so you don't have to edit it out otherwise, but the movie talk stayed at the front and the pinball talk stayed in the back.
    58:17
    Yeah. Jared sometimes does not trust you, the audience. He thinks that you need your pinball fix immediately, and I say you need to make him wade through the BS that I like to talk about first.
    58:31
    That's okay. The timestamps will work around that. People don't want to do it. Just go to the website, folks, blackheadpinball.com, and look for the timestamps where I'll be noting it as blah-de-blah stuff that isn't pinball. And then it'll be like the first topic of pinball. So it'll be fine. You can jump straight to it. That's why we have the website.
    58:52
    And you'll notice how easily that website rolled off Jared's tongue as opposed to if I had tried to do it. But what I can do is, hey, you've got a show topic you'd love to talk to us about. Is there a comment in general that you want to throw our direction? Do you want to yell at us for being ignoramuses about certain things that we speculate on, let's say? Yeah. Drop us an email, blahblahblockade at gmail.com. You can also follow the show on Twitter, at Blockade. That's a very good thing to do. We put links. We always post when we're actually recording these sessions live if you want to join us and say hi.
    59:30
    And then if you follow that, you might as well go ahead and follow Jared at Jared Morgs. Follow me at Shut Your Traps.
    59:38
    And you can then, with Jared, you'll get lots of writing documentation and coding kind of things. And product management. Product management, exactly. Product management stuff. With me, you'll get movies and on-set photos now and then and things of that nature. so really good accounts to follow in other words exactly it's a summation of the show in written form you can learn things and you can look at things what more could you want on Twitter okay we're wrapping up that's it for us folks again thanks for listening and we'll be back next week again like I said hopefully I'll have gotten a chance to play with Pinball FX3 I'm very much looking forward to it so until next time later bye bye
    60:27
    wizard amusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter bugs easy to install totally unique mention blockade podcast for 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some pinball you