Volume 3 announced for march 19!!

[GET]

Theater of Magic, Champion Pub, and Safe Cracker! Me excited!!!

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Like I said in the speculation thread...

ToM - yay
CPub - gimmicky with a bugfest of a ROM
Safecracker - I'd rather stick needles in my eyes

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

I'm bored. Safe Cracker has a poor ruleset. Champion Pub is already difficult to play in TPA. Theatre of Magic? Table is ok, but played too much in TPA.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Of the unlicensed WMS DMD tables, what hasn't already been played a lot in TPA? From a personal point of view, I'd love to see WH20 (I proved that even when I was paying actual money to play it, there was no "too much"), and really they need to start exploring the System 11s. Bundle WH20, Whirlwind, and, I dunno, Taxi or Diner? That would work for me.

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

We need tables not already published in TPA. Demolition Man, Indiana Jones, Rollergames…
Or at least a few of the top pins like TZ, Addams Family...

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

It's clear they're going after the low-hanging (unlicensed!) fruit.

And reading between the lines and judging by various speculation, and licensed tables will be either packaged on their own, or possibly with Zen Originals complimenting them. The example I recall is, say, WMS Indy Jones + two Zen Original Indy tables.

They won't be mixing-and-matching licenses, which is going to make a lot of the licenses tricky to handle because they're essentially standalone with nothing they can be paired with. Probably only MB and CfTBL can be bundled together in that sense.

Otherwise they probably have the exact same problems securing 3rd-party licenses that Farsight had. If agents/rights holders won't even start negotiating, it doesn't matter who you are.

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

A full TPA remake with better physics is ok, not great. The pinball community melts slowly. Zen: Do something!

 

[shutyertrap]

I knew people would love/hate the Safe Cracker listing. Funny thing is I dislike Who Dunnit as much as I like Safe Cracker. Assuming Zen is only going to do DMD for now, there are exactly enough titles to do 3 more volumes with before needing to do licensed machines. All the non licenses were already done in TPA, so we won't see anything new until then.

I'm hoping their plans for alpha numerics is to create a DMD for them as part of the enhanced mode. The base Zen customer that didn't play TPA (that was a large portion of their customers, btw) views anything without a DMD as foreign and old. So I'll be curious to see Zen's solution.

I can confirm that licensed tables will be their own releases, no mixing of IPs. We will see these sort of tables before year's end.

As for Champion Pub, I'm most looking forward to proper lighting and the toys having actual shading and depth. The video has already alieved my concerns in this department.

 

[Plungemaster]

Every pack has 1 table which just aint fun. Please bring one for one buying on the switch. Now 9 tables out with pack 3, and only 3 i want.

That sucks.

 

[Fungi]

Ooh. It just occurs to me, if the Zen Visual Extras in Champion Pub means the boxer bash toy changes with each match, that'll be awesome.

 

[shutyertrap]

Ooh. It just occurs to me, if the Zen Visual Extras in Champion Pub means the boxer bash toy changes with each match, that'll be awesome.

I don’t think it does, but that was my thought too.

 

[timxtr]

That would be very cool indeed

 

[Citizen]

I'll definitely leave the enhanced graphics on CP if the boxer changes. Honestly, even if he doesn't, I love how they animated him.

I was kinda disappointed that it doesn't look like they enhanced the jump rope and speedbag toys, but maybe the enhanced graphics were turned off when they showed those.

 

[wolfson]

me myself and I , want heaps of animations . and I will be a happy bludger . .

 

[rehtroboi40]

Theater of Magic-one of the first TPA games and needs a more modernized touch up. The only one of this batch I am excited about.
Champion Pub-Glitchy and has no flow to it. Has some funny dialogue to it though. ("I don't feel so good, bloccch!)
Safe Cracker-NOT AGAIN! Was interesting at first, but I may lose all respect for Zen if they make the achievement for it "collect all 26 unique tokens".

I'm sure Zen has better offerings planned for the future. Wait and see.....

 

[Citizen]

Collecting all 26 tokens for the FX3 achievement wouldn't be as bad as the wizard goal if Zen managed to find a way to code their version of SC so that it doesn't forget which tokens have been given out after each session.

 

[zmcvay]

Ain't gonna lie, haven't seen much in the way of new tables in the last year, I was hoping for a new pack of Zen originals or at least one table TPA hasn't done to come next. It will be nice to see ToM get an update, but why Safe Cracker? I don't have the hate for it others do, but there's not really all that much to do on the table and integrating the token gimmick just doesn't work as well digitally.

 

[Cloda]

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.

 

[MBeeching]

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 table, 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 are 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.

Agreed, I find live catches and general ball control unrealistically difficult with Arcade / Tournament physics, I have more success on real cabinets and I don't play those as often as I'd like. On the other hand, ball traps on standard single player are absurdly simple and as a result neither mode feels satisfactory.

 

[shutyertrap]

Ain't gonna lie, haven't seen much in the way of new tables in the last year, I was hoping for a new pack of Zen originals or at least one table TPA hasn't done to come next. It will be nice to see ToM get an update, but why Safe Cracker? I don't have the hate for it others do, but there's not really all that much to do on the table and integrating the token gimmick just doesn't work as well digitally.

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.

I'll just repeat myself in various threads to help manage people's expectations...

Zen has said they wanted to do DMD tables because a) they tend to be the most popular, and b) their Zen originals audience that had no desire to play TPA wants DMD style games like they are used to as they view alpha numerics as 'those boring old style pinball tables'.

Licensed tables will not be part of the Volume packs, as the license holders want their product to be the sole focus of the purchase. There are 23 licensed machines, 13 of which appeared in TPA. Outside of Indiana Jones, most are going to want to see those 13 again over the remaining 10.

So where does that leave us? I see people wishing Zen would put out a 'new to digital' pinball, but where's it going to come from? Hell, I was making the same request myself until I wrote down all the tables and realized the reality. We're going to have to wait for licensed tables. Let me list the 10 not done by FarSight...

Congo
Demolition Man
Dirty Harry
Flinstones
Indiana Jones
Johnny Mnemonic
Gilligan's Island
NBA Fastbreak
Popeye
The Shadow

My head would explode if NBA Fastbreak got picked ahead of something like TAF, but who here actually believes that will happen? Other than Indiana Jones and possibly The Shadow, I'd bet 7 out of 10 would want to see the likes of Monster Bash, TAF, Twilight Zone, T2, or ST:TNG ahead of those other 8 when push comes to shove. Yes, playing something new would be nice, but before getting the gold standard tables?

Even if Zen does start doing alpha numeric machines, there's no way I'd want something like Future Spa or Vector over the likes of Whirlwind or Centaur. I for sure would want Rollergames over most myself, and I'd take a lot of yet to be done machines over the likes of Dr Dude or Firepower II, so I think this era of machine is the most fertile for mixing new with old. I just think Zen is going to knock at as many DMD machines as they can, as quick as they can, as those are going to be most profitable for them.