Volume 3 announced for march 19!!

[shutyertrap]

I took a look at a video of Theatre of Magic to get an idea, as unlike most of the forum members, I didn't play TPA and I unfortunately don't have access to real tables here in South Africa. Anyway, in the tutorial video of Theatre of Magic, Bowen Kerins time and time again live catch the ball on the right flipper as it come out of the right loop. He states that it is probably the most important and critical play for success on this table (e.g. 26min15). I don't know about you guys, but I have been trying to do a live catch since the get go with the Williams / Bally tables, and I just can't get it right (even by mistake). Not even talking about all the skills that he employs in the video (e.g. tip-flip of the edge of the flipper - 24min05). I know there is skill involved with these tricks, but I do expect to get them right by chance every now and then and I just don't see it happening. I hope Zen fine-tunes their physics engine as they did show that these skills were possible to do in one of their first videos on the Williams tables.

Bowen makes it look easy, but if it were then everyone would be doing it! I've pulled some off in FX3 using the pro physics, but it's tough. Practice on Fish Tales when launching the ball. Hold that left flipper up, and then experiment with your timing to do the live catch. I've found you have to do that quick button release/press earlier than you think to pull it off. It's going to take quite a few launches before you finally get a live catch, and then quite a few more before you can replicate it. Then of course it's going to take a crap load more to get to the point where you feel you can pull it off more often than not. And then the real fun begins, doing a live catch with the ball coming from anywhere else on the table than what you've been practicing.

One other thing about those tutorials. I own an Eight Ball Deluxe machine, so I watched Bowen's video on that. He was doing a particular flipper trick that was letting him nail the 8 ball drop target from the right flipper with ease. I tried and tried on my machine, and the ball wasn't even remotely doing what was the initial step to setting up the subsequent shot! A bit later, I changed out my rubber on the table and I'll be damned if I wasn't able to set up the shot now the way he did. Turns out that was the easy part though, as learning the timing to then hit that shot from that flipper has still eluded me. Point being, just because he can do it doesn't mean you can, and a lot depends on how the machine is even set up.

 

[Citizen]

What did Corvette ever do to you man?

 

[Cloda]

Bowen makes it look easy, but if it were then everyone would be doing it! I've pulled some off in FX3 using the pro physics, but it's tough. Practice on Fish Tales when launching the ball. Hold that left flipper up, and then experiment with your timing to do the live catch. I've found you have to do that quick button release/press earlier than you think to pull it off. It's going to take quite a few launches before you finally get a live catch, and then quite a few more before you can replicate it. Then of course it's going to take a crap load more to get to the point where you feel you can pull it off more often than not. And then the real fun begins, doing a live catch with the ball coming from anywhere else on the table than what you've been practicing.

Thanks for the tips. I’ll practice releasing the button earlier to see if it will make a difference. The thing that gets me is that I have been playing the game quite a lot, always on pro difficulty and am a decent player (e.g. completed Medieval Madness - Battle for the Kingdom), but I can count on my one hand where I have pulled off a live-catch... only by chance. I would expect that it would happen from time to time from chance but it happens sparingly. I try each time I launch the ball on e.g. Fish Tales and the other tables where it should be possible, and it is not happening. I specifically look out for it in Pro videos (e.g. LUP’s Club guys) and the same story there, it is not happening. So, from my perspective it appear to be a lot harder to pull off than in real life. Anyway, I’m still enjoying the tables but hope that Zen will fine-tune the physics so that these skill tricks become more doable in future.

P.S. - Here is an old video of mine (pre-Williams Zen physics) that hopefully give the idea that I'm skilled enough that I should be able to pull of some tricks from time to time.

 

[kinggo]

Well, if all that ZEN cares for is to suck up with existing customer then they didn't even have to bother. I still don't know how their real physics feels like thanks to their terrible grinding system. But regular arcade/tournament one isn't really better than TPA. And the fact that every table behaves differently for 5, 10, and 15 stars does not help at all.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

What did Corvette ever do to you man?

Too right! Not on the list and it'd be one of my choices.

If you're aiming for a non-TPA, "real pinball is old and boring" audience, licenses that mean anything to them - as opposed to being good tables - are probably (in vague order):

Star Trek
NBA Fastbreak
Corvette
Indy 500
Terminator 2
Indy Jones
Flintstones
the rest

I mean if someone's not a "real" pinball fan and is in FX3's demographic (which I assume skews more toward millennial than gen-x), who cares about TAF? They probably never heard of it.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

 

[tomwaits]

I'll definitely leave the enhanced graphics on CP if the boxer changes.

I'm not a fan of the Zen enhancements, but changing the boxer's face would be a case where it makes sense... hopefully they'll add a progression of opponents.

 

[shutyertrap]

Oh man, Corvette wasn’t on any of the lists I kept looking up when I compiled mine! My bad, that makes it 11 tables that weren’t done in TPA.

 

[wolfson]

shutyertrap , I don`t know how long the licence is for .do you know ? you are right that they will pump as many tables we already have , then I can see us getting new tables . I`ve never worried about graphics but Zen has done a great job . I have every table on PA , Zen , Zaccarria and some single tables . I`m bloody hooked on the animations , it doesn`t bother me what tables come out . I`m waiting for Zaccarria coming to my XBOX , should be very soon . I like Zen because now I have my fantasy tables together with my real tables , you could say I`m jumping for joy !!! when I started with Zen nearly 7 years ago , who would`ve had thought we`d have around 260 tables . for this old bludger , I`m so so so happy !!!

 

[shutyertrap]

shutyertrap , I don`t know how long the licence is for .do you know ? you are right that they will pump as many tables we already have , then I can see us getting new tables .

It's not a question of how long Zen has the license for, it's how quickly can they get a return on investment, thus maximizing profits.

I'll show how this works in a completely different scenario...the custom car world.

If you watch any of these shows on TV, there are 2 basic approaches; one is to build a show quality car over the course of a year or two (West Coast Customs, Custom Hot Rods, *****in' Rides, Fantom Works) which typically will put the car into 6 figures for the customer, while the other is to build the same type of car but within a month or two (Fast N' Loud, Misfit Garage, Iron Resurrection) and being able to sell for a lower price but higher profit. The parts cost the same for all the garages, and the skill level is all on par resulting in top quality custom vehicles. It's the overhead, how many cars that can be worked on at the same time, and how much your labor force costs that varies. So Gas Monkey has a crew of roughly 8 guys that do everything, while Kindig Design has closer to 20. Say both garages want to build the same car, with parts and vehicle costing $60,000 before fabrication. Gas Monkey turns it out in a month, all labor devoted solely to that vehicle, turns around and sells for $90,000. Kindig takes a year, but their labor force had 4 other vehicles they were working on at the same time. They sell the car for $140,000 which seems like it would have the larger profit, but having the vehicle occupy space during that time, all the extra employees, and the time spent with that vehicle wind up making the profit relatively equal to the shorter build while costing the customer more.

So how does this relate to Zen? Well right now they are cranking out unlicensed machines for the Williams collection. This is the bread and butter, where maximum profit is going to be made. If they have all 19 DMD machines for sale before doing one licensed table (this is all assumption by the way), they essentially have a war chest built. Now they can pay for licenses from that, which will continue to generate revenue for some time to come, all the while never having to pass those costs on to the customer. I imagine this is why Zen has never had to do a kickstarter, nor ever will. FarSight had a tipping point where the back catalog of seasons was more than paying for future returns from current seasons, or that was the case while they had the WMS license. If Zen winds up making 'original' tables from licenses they secure for classic ones, that will only further stoke the value in investment.

I think that Zen also knows the Digital Pinball Fans audience does not want to wait 6 years for all these tables, and if they have their sites set on getting the Stern license, they'll wanna crank through this catalog as quick as possible.

Folks, this is nothing but my speculation. I'm seriously pulling these notions out of thin air, but I do think it makes a lot of sense. I would love nothing more than to be a fly on the wall during Zen's strategy meetings to see how on the mark I am. As usual, I'm happy to eat crow when we look back at all this, but more often than not I've been in the ball park with my guesses.

 

[Narc0lep5y]

Too right! Not on the list and it'd be one of my choices.

If you're aiming for a non-TPA, "real pinball is old and boring" audience, licenses that mean anything to them - as opposed to being good tables - are probably (in vague order):

Star Trek
NBA Fastbreak
Corvette
Indy 500
Terminator 2
Indy Jones
Flintstones
the rest

I mean if someone's not a "real" pinball fan and is in FX3's demographic (which I assume skews more toward millennial than gen-x), who cares about TAF? They probably never heard of it.

You could make a solid case that Gen-X is their target given the last two years of film licensed originals.

Jaws (1975)
E.T (1982)
BTTF (1985)
Jurassic Park (1991)
Aliens (1986)

TAF (1991) and its sequel (1993) fit right in with the audience for those batch of films

The good news is that so do Demolition Man (1993), Shadow (1994), Indy (1981), Terminator 2(1991) and ST TNG (87-94).

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Seriously though, who has actually seen The Shadow? I have, on TV, but only after playing the pinball and coming to realize it was a movie. I don't ever recall seeing it being advertised in theaters. That being said, the year it came out - 1994 - I was studying abroad in France so maybe the movie just wasn't released there. Ironically I spent a lot of time at the movies that year (the rest was spent playing pinball; I don't think any studying actually happened).

 

[Narc0lep5y]

Seriously though, who has actually seen The Shadow? I have, on TV, but only after playing the pinball and coming to realize it was a movie. I don't ever recall seeing it being advertised in theaters. That being said, the year it came out - 1994 - I was studying abroad in France so maybe the movie just wasn't released there. Ironically I spent a lot of time at the movies that year (the rest was spent playing pinball; I don't think any studying actually happened).

'll agree the Shadow is a stretch in the company of the rest of those movies. There was a wave of "comic book" type movies after Batman (1989) came out. Dick Tracy, The Shadow, The Phantom, The Rocketeer. They all have about the same recognition now. They aren't in the same class of the rest of those other licenses. Congo was the same time frame too but it tanked terribly and has almost no recognition now. One would hope the licenses would be appropriately priced too but that's not necessarily the case.

I saw them all when they came out. But I also worked in a comic book store while in college, so If it was a genre movie we saw it.

 

[jrolson]

Anyone else notice the "ball skins"?

 

[Gorgias32]

The Shadow (like Dick Tracy, The Phantom and The Rocketeer) is pretty slow and dated now. Pacing in comic book movies was not great in the late 80s/early 90s. Even the first Batman with Michael Keaton is only watchable because Jack Nicholson's fantastic performance; the action/fight scenes are laughable and look really low-budget.

I was a sophomore in college in 94 and was a fan of the genre, but I skipped The Shadow. It definitely wasn't a big or popular release at the time.

 

[Citizen]

But we can all agree that Dolph Lundgren Punisher is a cinematic masterpiece, right?

 

[shutyertrap]

My high school graduation was the same night that Dick Tracy was having it’s midnight release on (remember when they wouldn’t release on a Thursday, so it’d be 12:01 instead?), so after my party a group of friends went to see it. We were so hoping for another Batman experience, but man what a disappointment. I didn’t like any of those ‘comic book’ movies then and they are painful to watch now. All those stupid Dutch angled shots with pillars of smoke everywhere. I didn’t care for Blade, Spider-Man, Ang Lee’s Hulk, none of it. Except X-Men, that struck a chord with me and the sequel was fantastic. I had no intention of seeing Iron Man, but something drove me to give it a shot on opening night. Holy crap, I had so much fun watching that! I’ve enjoyed all the Marvel movies to varying degrees since, but it wasn’t until Spider-Man Homecoming that I got the same surge of fun that I got from Iron Man.

I never gave a lick about the tables for The Shadow, Flinstones, Congo, Johnny Mnomonic, or Demolition Man precisely because I thought they were all terrible movies. It’s only been recently that I am so far removed from those feelings that I’ve learned to appreciate the machines.

 

[zmcvay]

Why Safe Cracker? Because Thomas at Zen is a big fan, because there's only 19 unlicensed DMD machines to choose from, and we'll have all of them (presumably) by August. Oh, and TPA did all 19 of those tables already.

And that, right there, is why I'm concerned. Doing these three packs like this means they will run out sooner rather than later at which point their options are:

1. Release mostly or all non-DMD tables with presumably much lower sales than the all or some DMD packs would get

or

2. Stop releasing anything once the low hanging fruit is gone and go on to something else.

Either way, at least Farsight showed more willingness to release tables from before the 90's. The way they are going now, I'm not sure I see Zen releasing non-DMD only packs. I'm still happy about what we're getting, but I'll admit, I played pack 1 a lot. Pack 2, not so much, even though AFM is one of my favorites. I don't see these tables holding much sustained interest for me either. I've heard the speculation for the future, but until it's announced I can't get very excited for it.

Maybe Zen will do lower sales packs of older tables. Maybe they'll latch onto the Stern licence. Maybe they'll do a 1 licenced + 2 originals pack. I keep going back to it sounding like Maybe this is the year Farsight will do that Lord of the Rings or Simpsons kickstarter. If they announce it, I'll be excited. Can't get excited about maybe. I'm along for the ride, but I can't lie and say I'm particularly thrilled about the current pack. That's all. And I can see that Safe Cracker could easily be a favorite of someone. But I still maintain it doesn't translate to digital anywhere near as well as a lot of other tables would.

Edit: Okay, that sounded a bit more frustrated than I intended. But long story short, given how enthusiastic Zen seemed about the pack 1 reception, I was hoping they would mix it up a bit more by pack 3 with a non-DMD table or 1 low level licence. Obviously not. Still eager to see how their take on Theater of Magic works out, and maybe I'll find out I'm over the PTSD from getting that 26th token in TPA and can give Safe Cracker a clear shot.

 

[Gorgias32]

All those stupid Dutch angled shots with pillars of smoke everywhere.

This made me laugh, and I don't even know what a Dutch angled shot is - sums up comic book movies of that era perfectly

 

[shutyertrap]

I get your trepidation. Zen had 2 main concerns before releasing Volume 1; would this here forum’s audience be willing to double dip on tables they already own, and would the Zen audience have any interest in real table recreations.

If you had taken a look at Zen’s Facebook page after the announcement, indeed there was quite a vocal outpouring of people that only wanted fantasy tables, who felt pre DMD era didn’t have deep rules and would get boring quick. I think the enhancements have gone a long way toward appeasing that group, hopefully Zen will be able to further change their minds as they become more open to these real world offerings.

On the flip side, there were tons of comments here from people that saw no reason to buy again, and on top of that hated the Zen fantasy tables as well as their physics. Since release I’ve been hard pressed to find anyone that prefers the TPA physics over the new Zen ones, and the few that have tend to not have touched a real machine in some time. On top of that, the enhanced visuals have won over quite a few naysayers, even to the point they are giving the Zen originals a chance.

We are 6 months in to Zen releasing tables with the WMS license. The tree has so much fruit on it, it’s all low hanging right now. By year’s end if they stick to their ambitious schedule, they will have released more tables than they ever have previously in the same time period. I’m not the least bit concerned with them dumping the license and moving to something new.

 

[shutyertrap]

This made me laugh, and I don't even know what a Dutch angled shot is - sums up comic book movies of that era perfectly

It's when the horizon line of a shot is set to an angle of 15 degrees or more. Comic book panels use it a lot which is why it became the go to look for such films, but it has been and continues to be used in all manner of film.