BlahCade Pinball Podcast

http://blahcadepinball.com/186-the-last-zaccaria Magic Pixel has caught up with all their excellent remake tables and released the last table (Star God) a few weeks ago. We do a live playthrough of the new tables. There are also status updates about Force 2 pinball and details about new gigs for Chris and me.

https://blahcadepinball.com/185-some-news-is-good-news There are some stuff and things that we can share with you this episode about Williams Pinball! We also take a look at the new Elvira pinball from Stern. Jared also gives you an update about how restoring Force 2 is progressing. It's a short podcast just like this is a short summary. Get listening!

http://blahcadepinball.com/184-are-we-there-yet I take a leaf out of Chris' book and do a live verbal walk-through of what the new Zaccaria Pinball app feels like the first time you load it up. Because I was bored on the trip home, I also decided to revisit Williams Pinball on Android after a long break due to IAP gripes. What will I think after all this time? Star Race has got it's new brain and...

https://blahcadepinball.com/183-star-race-declared-brain-dead The BPAC event at the Ekka is over and Star Race couldn't quite make the distance. Listen to find out what happened to the old girl and the lessons learnt from operating old machines on-location. We also cover some sentiment that is growing towards Zen Studios about their lack of release information and that this means they are struggli...

https://blahcadepinball.com/182-whos-the-aussie There’s a lot to catch up on in this episode because Jared has been tied up for a few weekends now doing stuff. There’s impending news about Zaccaria Pinball on Android, a huge Quality of Life patch for Williams Pinball, Star Wars Pinball on Switch cartridge pricing, and a large block of coverage for the Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective (BPAC)...

https://blahcadepinball.com/181-rhymes-with-switch It's another week on little to no news about Williams Pinball and other Digital Pinball platforms, so Chris and I go into other stuff as we typically do. I talk about the prep I've been doing on Star Race to get it ready for The Ekka this year.  Chris talks about getting decals printed so that he can bring Fire Power back to life again. Well, that...

https://blahcadepinball.com/180-creators-gotta-create We have great success with OBS this week which means we can focus on pinball. Chris and I talk about the improvements Zen Studios has made to Williams Pinball’s gameplay experience concerning in-game currencies.  This episode also covers some questions we’ve been asked over the last few weeks.  Is it worth repurchasing all the Williams Pinball...

We’re back and everything (barring my video in the YouTube vid) seems to be working.  Zaccaria Pinball (Magic Pixel) has surprised us with a really nice graphical refresh of the app on Steam. It’s miles better than it was and it paints the game in a much better light. Great job, team! We also discovered this cool little device that is going to allow arcade operators to remote-manage their physical...

We pick up where we left off from in Episode 176 and talk about the possibilities that could result from getting the cabinet out into the wild later in this year.  For now, we’ll have to hunt down some of the test cabinets in the wild and see if we can get hands-on: they are not located where you might think. It looks like Zen are also up to their now standard trick of reshuffling everything when...

We go through some of our thoughts about the tables announced as part of Volume 4, and go through some of the observations we've made about the upcoming release. So pull down the episode and listen to a bit more info about what's in store for you all for Vol. 4. See https://blahcadepinball.com/176-vol-4-reactions  for show notes and timings and stuff and things.

https://www.blahcadepinball.com/blahcade-175/ Here we go, folks. It's the moment you've been waiting for when Mel Kirk joins Chris for his regular Williams Pinball release announcement chat.  This time there are three tables on offer: Hurricane, Roadshow, and Whitewater. So pull down the episode and listen to what's in store for you all with Volume 4, and in the future.

There’s not much news to report in the week that was in digital pinball so Chris and I use this opportunity to exercise our right to randomness. Check out the show and get ready for an interview in the next one. See https://blahcadepinball.com/174-volume-4-announcement-eve  for a pile of links to great videos in the show notes.

In this episode, we open with exciting news about a Magic Pixel Zaccaria Pinball table remake that features the voice of one of your favourite co-hosts. We then give props to the excellent Buffalo Pinball reveal of Jersey Jack’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory pinball machine. We round out the show with some discussion about what it would take to open a successful pinball location today. Che...

Chris was about ready to drop this really helpful document for folks new to Zen Pinball's Williams Pinball app on iOS and Android. But as you'll hear in this episode, these best-laid plans were thrown out.  We spend this episode discussing what has changed in the freemium model within Williams Pinball and offer some suggestions about what you can do to get maximum enjoyment out of this game. There...

If you’ve ever tried to diagnose a fault on a Pinball machine, you’ll know how frustrating it can sometimes be. Jared had just such a problem last week with his Star Race. Chris has been diving into the stats side of Williams Pinball more and has yielded some interesting insights from the data collected. There’s some interesting movie talk in this episode as well that breaks up the show a bit. Enj...

Chris has had the opportunity to give Campaign Mode on Zaccaria Pinball a go, and he's got plenty to share about the gameplay and features. Stern has also dropped a new Black Knight table on us and we go into a little bit of detail about our thoughts about the overall package and our hopes for balanced gameplay in the title. We round out the show with some Williams Pinball discussion and include a...

Plenty of hardcore pinball app folks on Android and iOS have been complaining about how much grinding you need to do on Williams Pinball to get ahead.  Zen Studios will be releasing a table pack approximately every 8–10 weeks. We know that those all-important table parts are randomly dropped across tables. Because you now have seven tables to spread your parts over, it may become difficult for new...

In predictable fashion, Zen Studios released Williams Pinball Vol. 3 across all platforms today after announcing the game a few weeks ago. We got early access to a press copy of the latest release just before the weekend (yeah, not a huge preview but we'll take it), and recorded this episode so we could push it out on the day of release for you. Vol. 3 enters the ring, distracts us with a card tri...

Yep, this is a bit of a weird episode, because it is out of sync with the timeline leading up to the release date announcement for Williams Pinball Volume 3. That doesn't mean there's nothing good to be had in the episode. Far from it!  There's news about Zaccaria, Farsight, Zen, and a bit of front-loaded movie banter to ease you into the weekend.  We're back to our regularly scheduled shows after...

https://www.blahcadepinball.com/blahcade-166/ Now that the Williams Pinball Vol 1 and Vol 2 Beta has run its course on iOS and Android, it's time for Zen to channel their inner Ariana and say "thank u, next" for the latest Williams Pinball DLC drop across all platforms.  Hear Mel Kirk and Thomas Crofts (apologies from Akos Györkei who had to bail early to get Zen's Twitch stream set up) lay down w...

There was an update recently to the iOS Williams Pinball app from Zen Studios. Chris gives us an update of what changes were made in the app, and what clues it gives for Android users still suffering from the 10x mark-up on IAP in-game currency pricing. We also clarify a few things said in the previous beta coverage podcast about graphics and stuff. There is also a question at the end of the show...

https://www.blahcadepinball.com/blahcade-164/ Thomas and Mel take time out of their work evening to chat with us about how Zen goes about engineering their tables, and the experience that goes along with designing the premier mobile pinball experience. It's a short but oh-so-sweet interview and will fill the gap you have between the slightly longer episodal gap we've been having of late. Enjoy, an...

In software development, running experiments to test out hypotheses is an important part of product management and product development. We've already worked out that Zen Studios has been doing this for a while on mobile. They were testing out their free-to-play models on mobile, so they could gather the data they needed to implement it correctly in Williams Pinball on iOS and Android. We explore t...

Chris took the drive from La Habra to Banning, CA to visit one of the finest collections of pinball on the West coast: the Museum of Pinball. Open only three times a year, the museum flung its doors open to pinheads for what was an amazing couple of days of pinball action at the It Never Drains in Southern California (INDISC) pinball tournament. Chris talks about his favourite experiences at INDIS...

The folks at Zen Studios have punched out another beta for Williams Pinball Volume 2, and Chris gets some hands-on time with it. There's plenty of iterative improvements over the first beta, so we go into some of the juicy details. Then we get our thinking caps on and try to do some extrapolation about what titles Farsight Studios could theoretically and affordably produce from the Stern, Data Eas...