BlahCade #157: A Box of Chiclets

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 East and Sega back catalogue. You'll find out just what this could look like if you take a listen now.


Jump to https://blahcadepinball.com/157-a-box-of-chiclets for a whole bunch of links to stuff we cover in this episode.

Yes my audio is crap in this episode.

I liked the part about pie.

Interesting stuff. Sounds pretty bad for Farsight doing newer Sterns, but I can live with that as long as they do some decent pre-DMD stuff with what they have rights to,
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Oh and unless they’ve followed Wrigley’s and only make that rubber stuff that passes for chewing gum, the main thing Chiclets had going for it was being made of actual chicle, which is the tree sap (sapodilla, I think?) all chewing gum was all originally made from. It doesn’t hold flavour well, but it’s way nicer to chew as it’s softer than modern, synthetic chewing gums. Plus you’re supporting rainforest conservation. There’s a couple of brands that exclusively use chicle you can get in most health food stores like Whole Foods: Peppersmith is one, I can’t recall the other.

Sean said:

Interesting stuff. Sounds pretty bad for Farsight doing newer Sterns, but I can live with that as long as they do some decent pre-DMD stuff with what they have rights to,
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Oh and unless they’ve followed Wrigley’s and only make that rubber stuff that passes for chewing gum, the main thing Chiclets had going for it was being made of actual chicle, which is the tree sap (sapodilla, I think?) all chewing gum was all originally made from. It doesn’t hold flavour well, but it’s way nicer to chew as it’s softer than modern, synthetic chewing gums. Plus you’re supporting rainforest conservation. There’s a couple of brands that exclusively use chicle you can get in most health food stores like Whole Foods: Peppersmith is one, I can’t recall the other.

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Whoa! Chewing gum fun facts I had no idea that's where the name comes from, and I live in SoCal.

And yes, if FarSight leaned into pre DMD stuff and really knocked it out the park with some classic Gottlieb and Stern tables, they could reinvent what they are going for with "conserving pinball".

I haven't been playing a lot of digital pinball of late but its even harder to go back to TPA after Zen's efforts. So listening to the potential tables they could do, based on your hypothesized license restrictions, the only table that had me interested in going back for would be Laser War. I know that's not a hugely requested table but when going to Vintage Flipper World that is one of the tables I'll play over and over as its so much fun. Think it would work well in TPA for a non-serious gameplay table.

The only other ones that had a mild interest that they could possibly do are Grand Prix (e.g. Nascar), Rollercoaster Tycoon, Transformers, and Monopoly. But even those I'm not sure if I'd really put all that much time in to them given I'd rather play the Zen physic tables.

Not sure what Farsight can do to remedy drumming up interest again. The TPA engine is 6 years old now and while they've tacked on a ton of features and improvements over the years when you compare it to a newer engine like FX3 (or even Zaccaria) it appears pretty well aged. So that's a big part of the problem. A TPA2 engine which has many of the requested features built in, with more realistic physics engine that improves upon FX3s, along with some meaty tables from Capcom, Stern, Gottlieb, and even other companies (e.g. Houdini, Oktoberfest, Total Nuclear Annihilation) would garner interest again. But that would take quite a bit of time, expense, and without the Williams license may not be worth it in the end.

Ninja Turtles is based on the Mirage comics sort of. However It borrows from both the cartoon and movie as well. their bandanas are colored instead of all being red like the comics, april is dressed in her yellow reporter suit from the cartoon (never a reporter in the comics and never wore that yellow outfit). The foot soilders are draw in their costumes from the movie which differs from both the comic and cartoon. The logo is from the cartoon. Their tales have been removed, they have little tails in the comic like real turtles would but the toon people felt this may be mistaken as genitalia. Nickolodeon currently holds the rights to the cartoon, IDW currentlt has control of the comics under contract of nick and 6 different production companies are entangled with the movie.

Great episode. I would say that it's worth taking a chance and buying a Costco pumpkin pie - I have never known anyone who doesn't like it. If you have a chance, try sweet potato pie - it's similar but a little sweeter flavor.

I had the chance to play TMNT on location a year or so ago, and all I have to say is - it's a skip for me. Kind of like an uglier version of Phantom of the Opera. In real life it was too easy and after a while I was thinking, "will this game ever end?" Basically one main ramp shot.

I have to hope that Farsight is able to get around some of the licenses. Either that, or that Stern jumps ship to Zen - as much as I dislike a monopoly on principle, Zen has proven that they can do real-life machines and can get them done better (less buggy) and faster than Farsight was able to, and can do it for a lower price. I can't imagine that Farsight hasn't already violated some part of the Stern agreement, with massive delays and unstable releases being pretty much par for the course for SPA since the partnership started, so I would bet Stern can either get out of it or possibly just decide not to renew.

I'd LOVE to be surprised by Farsight and get a couple of good modern Sterns and/or classic Stern or Gottlieb EMs announced in the new year. But as weeks pass with silence, my main hope now is that Farsight keeps the servers on so my Android and iOS purchases continue to work for the foreseeable future.

shutyertrap said:

And yes, if FarSight leaned into pre DMD stuff and really knocked it out the park with some classic Gottlieb and Stern tables, they could reinvent what they are going for with "conserving pinball".

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This is really what they need to do. And after your analysis of the post solid state era of machines, it seems they don't have much choice. Although, as you can see from my wishlist, there are several possible machines that I would be glad to see (CSI, Transformers). I'd also love to see Roller Coaster Tycoon, Monopoly, and NASCAR since I love Pat Lawlor's work. And did you mention Sopranos in the podcast? What's the possibility on that? Anyway, the few EMs they have done were great and I really want more classic Gottliebs. I know I'm not the only one who really liked Big Shot. I could play that all day. Let's see some Abra Ca Dabra, Fast Draw, etc... On the Stern side, I still can't believe they haven't done Seawitch yet.

You forgot Time Machine, the best unlicensed DE.