Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2023-04-15

Hello, everybody, this is Shane Armand row, you’re in the passenger seat with me it’s passenger seat radio. It is Saturday, April 15 2023. And as you can tell by the copious bubbly sounds behind you, that I am indeed in the hot tub. So, yeah, I’m just sitting out here. It’s a gorgeous day, not a cloud in the sky. Temperatures nice. The hot tub is warm, but not too hot. The air jets are going I love it. So anyway, I had a few items to go over. So I thought why not? Let’s, let’s hop on. Let me bring up my list here. So, okay, so let’s start off with giving you an update on my mobile phone dilemma. Yeah, you thought I was done off the last show, didn’t you? Wrong, sir. Wrong. And it is not over? Well, it’s over now, I think. But time will tell. So is it turned out? We thought everything was good. But for some reason, neither my son’s phone nor my wife’s phone could accept an incoming call. That’s right. So they could call out they could text in and out SMS. But they couldn’t receive a phone call. And as it turns out, I never I mean, they don’t receive that many incoming calls anyway. So they didn’t really know. Well, it turns out they were going straight to some sort of a voicemail system, and nobody knew. So we figured this out, you know, since the last time you heard this show, and today, we figured it out. I had to get back on the phone with Verizon. Well, it turns out, according to the representative, the porting was never completed. Again, despite the fact that they said they had all their shit squared away last time. Nana now, once again, there was an issue. So I said, Okay, so what the hell’s going on? In there? Like I said, I gave him the account number, I gave him the porting number. Everything should have been fine. And so essentially, the port number expires after 72 hours. So the port number expired. But do you think that Verizon called me, or reached out to me in any way shape or form and said, Oh, by the way, these two numbers, you want to transfer it over? We’re having difficulty. We need you to help us. Help us help you help them help us help you help them? No, not a word I had to call. And they’re like, Okay, well, we’re gonna have to get you a new port number. And I’m like, Oh, my God, you know what it takes to get through to T Mobile, and actually get them to divulge any information. So we went through this whole bullshit again, we gotten a three way call with a T Mobile representative. The T Mobile representative would not accept any means of identity confirmation, other than ready for this, sending a text message to a T Mobile Number on my account. Unlike my dude, we’ve been over this. None of my phones have a T Mobile SIM in them anymore. They’re all on Verizon. And they’re like, Well, do you still have the SIM and I’m like, I don’t know. I took all that packaging and chucked it in the trash. I don’t even know if I still have one of these. And I’m like, listen, there has to be another way you want my social security number blood sample urine sample, what do you want? There’s got to be some way that I don’t have to go dig through my trash to find a SIM card. That may not even be in the trash anymore. You’re not small SIM card is. I said there’s got to be some other way. Well, you can go down to a T Mobile store, present valid ID and then we’ll get you a new porting number. I almost lost my shit. I mean, this is absolutely ridiculous. Listen, I get security. That’s fine, whatever. So anyway, long story short, I finally dug up one of the Sims. It happened to be my wife’s sim, not my son’s sim. My wife was at school. I didn’t have her phone. I only had my son’s phone, because it was in the early afternoon. And he had been home. So I ended up putting her SIM in his phone God only knows what kind of crazy fucked up shit that did. And that allowed them to text me a code which I gave to them and they gave me a new pin for porting and now my other two phones appear to be working right. So I really hope this is the last time I have to deal with this. You know, I told the woman on Verizon, I said, I said you realize that I bought The House easier than it was to port these lines over. I told both of them on the line. I said, you both screwed up. Both of you have screwed me over. You know? It’s like, it’s like, you guys screw me over and you guys screw me over too. So, you know, it’s like, don’t ask me why I’m leaving your service, go look at my records to find out why I might be leaving your service because you all suck. All of you. Anyway, so now you’re up to date with the newest up to date. If you need Living Proof, positive proof, empirical proof, things that you don’t require a leap of faith to accept Sylvester Stallone and his family are doing a reality show. If you had any, if you had any. Any doubts that we need a meteorite to hit the Earth right now and wipe out life as we know it. Question mark. That’s it. You’ve got it. The question mark is no longer a question mark. It is fact. Sylvester Stallone, his wife and his daughters are going to do a reality show in the form of the Kardashians. Right? Yeah, okay, Meteor. Now, please. This just proves that the end of the apocalypse is nice. It’s coming. And I mean, that’s one of the signs, I’m sure of it somewhere. Let me tell you what’s really wrong with the world right now. People do not take action for their disparities. I was reading this article about this woman. She looks like she’s like 15 years old, but I guess that’s part of growing older, right? Everybody loves 15 It’s not 40. And apparently, this woman went through a Panera Bread drive thru to get a bowl of tomato soup. What ended up happening apparently was they essentially stole her debit card. They pocket they the drive thru attendant took her card, put her the card in her pocket. Right. And then when the woman who was posting her complaint went into the store to say, Hey, you guys have my debit card, the worker didn’t come forward. Something to that effect. Anyway. That’s not the moral of the story here. The moral of the story shouldn’t be you are screwed over by a business. The way you react to that. The way that you handle that is to blackball them. They fuck you over, right? If you get fucked over and you continue to do the same thing and you expect different results. That’s that’s the sign of lunacy, right? That’s a sign of the deranged mind. So if you go to if you go somewhere and they fuck you over, if you go back, what does that say about you? So this woman says, I will never be bi, I will never go to Panera Bread for bullet tomato soup again. Unless I have cash. Like you fucking dumb twit. This is the problem. This is the problem. You know, I can make fun of these guys that are boycotting Bud Light because of their transgender spokesperson. You know, I can make fun of that, because it’s absolutely ludicrous. It’s ludicrous. You know, because these people are buying beer from the same company. Anyway, I’m not even going to get into that, because that’s going to stir up a bunch of bullshit nonsense, but at least at least these guys took action on their conviction, whether it’s right wrong or indifferent. It’s right to them. Maybe not right to me and different to me. But listen, you know, the guys are willing to go into their fridge and pull out hundreds of dollars for the beer and run it over with their car a steamroller to make their point, despite the fact that they go out and buy Anheuser Busch beer and advertise that they did so on. Fucking tick tock so there you go. But at least at least, unlike this stupid bitch that goes through, it’s probably in the Panera drive thru right now. Buying tomato soup. And guess what? I bet she ain’t using cash. I bet she’s still using her card, which means she hasn’t learned jack or squad from the whole situation. I saw that and it’s like, yeah, I gotta have to comment on that one. Let’s see some interesting news with all of the the plethora of Star Trek. Rien reimaginings rebooting re nonsense with Picard and and be the What’s that other ones stranger worlds whatever the one is where they’re basically rewriting TOs history. Yeah, so what else can we tap right Deep Space Nine we got that we can still fuck with and of course we’ve got one of my favorite Star Trek Star Trek Voyager. Now Voyager has sort of been fucked with already. They brought it back in some sort of a Nickelodeon cartoon. And they got Kate Mulgrew to come back as the voice of Captain Janeway, and a couple of other people have made some appearances there. And apparently there’s a Star Trek cartoon below decks or some shit like that, which apparently is popular, but I’ve never seen it. I have no interest in seeing that. If I want to watch animated Star Trek, I’ve got Star Trek The Animated Series to watch which is actually far better than people probably remember. Especially if you watch modern television and movies sorry, I need to get a drink there. So there is now rumor mill that Voyager is on its way back in some way shape or kind and, you know, listen, you want to fuck over Star Trek The Next Generation would Picard Be my guest. You want to fuck over Deep Space Nine. Be my guests. You start messing with tos and Voyager the claws are gonna come out. I do not like being I don’t like those two franchises messed with and TOS has already been fucked with endlessly. And now we’re ready to take Voyager and throw it in the shake can now the only thing the only thing that gives me any sort of hope whatsoever about Star Trek, Voyager. Whatever they’re going to do with it is Kate Mulgrew is able to come back. But she says it’s got to be right now is what she thinks is right, what I would think would be right. Hard to say. But, but listen, at least there’s going to be some sort of quality control standard here of some sort. Even if it’s just the leading late listen to candy Voyager without it right. I mean, that’d be like doing Picard without you know, Picard. You can’t do voyage without Janeway. So the only thing I hope for is if it’s a complete piece of shit came over, we’ll be like, No, not interested. But thank you. Come again. I don’t know what kind of gig she’s got going on. Other than that other Star Trek cartoon gig. But, you know, maybe she’s doing okay enough where she could turn down something like that. You know, what’s weird? Like? It turns out that the best non Star Trek show? Well, I mean, outside of the Oregon, which I think is the best. It’s really the best version of Star Trek, it’s been out since Voyager. Even though it’s not Star Trek. But like, take a look at enterprise. Now, I wasn’t a big fan of enterprise. But I’m a big fan of what they did with it. Right? They didn’t try to erase anything. They didn’t try to reach re imagine anything. They didn’t try to white or black or whatever color you’re into wash anything. They just went to make a prequel. They just went to exploring area. It didn’t have to mess with anything, didn’t have to impose a will on an existing franchise, it was actually able to literally stand on its own two feet without destroying anything else. And while I may, I mean, I watched like half of the first season wasn’t working for me. But I admire what they tried to do with it. You know, I admire the idea behind it. So yeah, we’ll see what happens with Voyager. I’m not holding my breath though. Let’s see, I had a couple other things in here. We’ve talked about that. We talked about that. So I was recently trolling through my smart news feed. And there was an article for Mental Floss called The Seven misconceptions about the 80s. And I’m always interested in 80 stuff, even though the 80s have been taken over by Gen Z, Stranger Things, fuckers. And so tired of listen, you want to talk about cultural appropriation? Right? Why can’t I be pissed and 80s culture being appropriated? If if African Americans and Asians and everybody else can be pissed about their culture being appropriated? Why can’t I be pissed about the 80s being appropriated and turned into the flavor of the month? Okay, off this off the soapbox. Seven misconceptions about the 80s. Some of these may be you know, some of them maybe you don’t know. I learned a couple of things even though I grew up in the 80s. And of course, they mentioned Stranger Things in the first paragraph, which of course always pisses me off the A’s were around long before God damn stranger fucking things was around. Misconception moments were actually called moments. Actually, they weren’t. According to this anyway. They weren’t called mullets until 1994 When the Beastie Boys released a song called Motorhead. So although The bullets were there. The the actual haircut was apparently called a by level haircut. And you can take that however you want to read into it. I didn’t personally have a problem with the mullet. But the moments were certainly easy targets. And they still are. I mean, even somebody who was like 19 years old, if you say the word mullet, they know what you’re talking about. That’s something that can actually would stand the test of time. How about that? Misconception stranger danger plagued the country. And you could fit inside a car truck in the 80s you’re constantly warned about the perils of interacting with strangers. newscasts and newspapers were rife with stories about missing children, cautionary tales about child abductions, and of course, the catchy name stranger danger. But was there an epidemic of kidnappings? And then they go on to say there was not there were a few unfortunate circumstances that led the public to be afraid, though they mentioned a couple of them. widespread coverage of these incidents made it seem like the dangerous, omnipresent decide to make heads on milk cartons, blah, blah, blah. I would like to point out something. Okay, is it possible I’m just gonna throw this out there call me crazy. Is it possible that there really wasn’t a problem with stranger abductions because of Stranger danger? Maybe the stranger danger campaign actually stopped the stranger danger problem? Maybe that’s why, right, because there were obviously things that prompted it. And yet after the stranger danger, things started up. There wasn’t a problem, or you know, it was minimal. It wasn’t what everybody would like to say. So I mean, listen, it’s sort of like, you know, correlation, versus causation, that sort of thing. I don’t know. Let’s see. Next up was the 80s. We’re all about greed. And here’s something interesting. So 80s, weren’t so much about greed. I don’t think I grew up there. It was more about keeping up with the Joneses, materialism. But that doesn’t necessarily equate to greed. Which is kind of interesting. In the so basically, one way to find greed is by the amount of charitable giving being done, or lack thereof. Now, see, this is where I think this article goes a little sideways, but we’re going to work with him. So by the end of the decade, that number had grown to $100 billion $100 billion were given away by Americans in the 1980s to charity was that generosity a result of greater wealth could be but growth and charitable giving outpaced were the people in the 80s were spending on material goods. So it’s easy to see why people stereotype the 80s is the me decade. But apparently, we were given away a shitload of money. And we were very charitable in the 80s. Right, I remember a lot. I remember a lot of aid stuff going on the Live Aid farming, there was a lot that we charity was definitely part of that decade. So I thought that was kind of interesting. But in terms of greed, materialism, right? That’s what it really was. People tried to keep up with their neighbors. And yes, it was an age of, of acquisition. Right. But then again, there was actually exciting things to acquire back then. All sorts of like technology and such were actually maturing, right. It’s not like, it’s not like you were buying the same computer that you bought last year, right? People buy phones every year. And for very little ROI. In the meantime, take a year in the 80s in technology could have doubled in a year, triple depending on the situation, right? So, you know, when you start looking at things like, you know, cordless phones or answering machines or, or computers or televisions, there was this huge rate of increase in the 80s. I think that has something to do with it outside of greed as well. pay phones were untraceable criminal hotlines. Okay. I don’t think anybody believed that. That mobile phone or cell that I’m reading, and I’m talking the same time, the payphones were actually completely outside of criminal activity. Me It says, you know, many people thought that nobody can trace a public phone allowing drug dealers to cover their tracks. Some communities even lobbied to have payphones removed, citing concerns over criminal activity. Well, okay, I don’t Like anybody believed that these phones were untraceable, right? And I think it’s funny because, you know, we didn’t have mobile. We didn’t have mobile phones. If you had, if your car broke down, you were hiking to a payphone, or at some stranger’s house, were you asked to use their phone? This is like the standard trope of every good horror movie. No, my car broke down, can I borrow your phone and you go in and kill a family of six? You know, I don’t remember there ever being a stigma with anybody that I knew, or in my realm of payphones being a hotbed of criminal activity. I do remember, though, that they removed incoming calls from phones. But I don’t know if that really had to do with criminal activity, or if that just had to do with something else. Right. You don’t want people treat treating a payphone like their personal phone. That is that that wouldn’t make sense. So anyway, let’s see misconceptions, the Amy’s hair damage the ozone layer. Now see, I don’t think anybody believes that either. Once again, I think this, this article is reaching a little bit. Because the problem with fluorocarbons was actually a 70s problem. And I do believe without having any research in front of me that most of the fluorocarbon problems, or at least, the source of the problems had been regulated by the late 70s. So the Aqua net, or whatever it was, that was used to make big poofy here in the 80s really had nothing to do with, you know, the ozone problem. But I did learn something interesting 1987 There was something called the Montreal Protocol that was passed, banning most ozone depleting substances from use on a global level. I’m curious how that actually worked out I need to do more research on that, because I’m not sure how you get a global agreement on anything, at least not these days. Number six was the misconception that everybody hated the taste of New Coke. Well, I think most people didn’t like the taste of the New Coke, to be honest with you. I do know I do know that those who drank coke were very loyal to the brand. And they didn’t really care whether it was new or old coke. But you know, it does mention that there was somebody in here that sunk an entire amount of a huge amount of money $100,000 into a campaign against New Coke, often cited in the media, getting interviews and buzzworthy quotes. But it turns out he he might have been looking for a payout. He was trying to get like a Pepsi gig, or to get some hush money from Coca Cola that I believe, right? You hear all the time. Today? Hey, we’ll be as in by the way, we do have somebody in the chat this morning. You do hear all the time that the disinformation that we get on the internet comes from like five or six sources, and then it just, you know, catapults from there. This sort of falls into that it’d be funny if this whole new coke thing was really just about this gay Molins guy. I can’t believe his name is gay. That’s great. But then again, listen, who am I to judge gay Molins hated the taste of New Coke so much. At least that’s what he said that he started he sold bumper stickers and hotlines. He was waging war. Apparently he was doing a good job because that made it into this article some 5 billion years later. Grunge killed the hair bands. Okay, well, abs were ruled by Motley Crue boys and Van Halen gods and Brock Grundstrom popular but it wasn’t the exact expensive hair bands. Vince Neil said they he bought Nirvana’s Nevermind and passed it around encourage people to listen to it. Grunge offered a new sound but it wasn’t like New Coke. It wasn’t replacing other genres. So what happened to hair rock Dee Snider Twisted Sister once said that hair bands did themselves in were already in decline. By the time grunge turn, took over became too commercialized. And then it got unplugged and became nothing but power ballads and acoustic songs. And it wasn’t metal anymore. It had to go there was needed for a change. So there you go. I just thought it was some interesting things to kind of look back at the 80s and talk a little bit about that decade. You know, I kind of miss the 80s there’s some things I miss about the 80s. And there’s some things but I’m happy to have now. But you know, maybe it was just being in my youth in the 80s where, you know, I wasn’t inundated with news and discord and all the nastiness that’s going on right now. I don’t know. I’m sure we’ll look back differently and 1020 30 years if we all make it of course, we’ll have to see. But yeah, interesting. I do miss the 80s though, I missed the excitement of the 80s. And again, that could have been my age because I was under you know, those are my formidable years where everything was new, new to driving new to girlfriend’s new to, you know, getting some, you know, new to, you know, getting a job, everything was new, fresh, getting out of school, going in the military, there was always something new and exciting going on new toys, new technology. Everything seemed to be exciting, fresh and new. And now just seems like more of the same old shit respond over and over again. least that’s how I feel. Let me see if I’ve got anything else. I think that might have knocked down all of the items that I had. Let me see. Oh, we can talk about one more thing. So I’ve been waiting patiently for a whole year for pinball effects. That is the Zen pinballs new package to hit steam. So epic paid them a shitload of money apparently to make pinball effects. A epic game store exclusive. And you guys know me that the game school store can kiss my airy fat ass. I have no interest. Nor do I plan on having any interest. I don’t care what game they get that new game that came out with Danny Glover in it. And all of those celebrities, Danny Trejo, it was supposed to be like this kind of a Grand Theft Auto sort of thing passed on it. Don’t care. If it’s an epic game store, it’s loosen. I would rather pirate it than to actually buy it on that platform. So I’ve been waiting. And epic game store makes them wait a year, so almost a year to the month. Zen Pinball announced that steam was getting pinball effects. Along with that, we were getting a new Addams Family Table Twilight Zone table, three new Godzilla King Kong tables. It sounded good. But for those people who have been living in pinball effects world over at the epic game store. It’s not been it’s not been a good time. So let’s talk about this for a minute. Because I was able to get my hands on pinball effects. I gave it a good thermal rogering. And I’m ready to render a verdict. Later today, I’m going to be posting a video of pinball effects 2022 or the latest version against pinball effects three, which is the one that many of us sunk tons of money into, of which we were all going to be ignored in favor of rebind tables again, on pinball effects. So it’s okay, so let me let me let me paint some some pictures here. Because there are people that believe that when you buy DLC for one platform, you deserve it on every other platform. So let me let me just let me just paint this out. So if I bought all the pinball effects tables on the Nintendo Switch, right. I should not get them on the PC. I should not get them on Android. I should not get them on x box. Right. And the reason being, listen, I’m gonna play devil’s advocate a little bit here. It’s not a simple port. It’s not just copying the files into a Nintendo Switch container and calling it a day. Right? The entire pinball effects package had to be rewritten from scratch, to run on the Tegra X one, right. So, versus the PC versus the Xbox. Right? I mean, I understand that it’s all unity. It’s all Unreal Engine while it is now but it wasn’t thin. Right? So I understand that people don’t want to buy the same table twice. I get it. But to say that it’s it’s unfair to require any additional purchases for those tables when they’re ported to another platform. That also doesn’t sit right with me. As a developer, I understand what is going on, and why they’re looking to do that. However, there needs to be generous compensation for people that have burned a shitload of money on your company. Right? There needs to be a severe generous situation, and it needs to be cross platform. If I spent the equivalent of $200 on tables on the Nintendo Switch, and I would like to have it on my Steam deck or my Steam account. If I need you to have a little bit of fucking compassion, I am willing to pay you a reasonable fee to port my tables over. I’m not willing to buy them again. So then we ask ourselves, well, what if you if you bought the if you bought tables on FX three on Steam, and now pinball effects is on Steam? Shouldn’t those tables come straight across for free? Again, we’re back to the point where, okay, yea and nay, yay, because it’s on the same platform, right? That’d be like buying a PlayStation four, or Playstation five and having the PlayStation four or three version of pinball effects and having them say you need to buy him again. Sorry, my wife’s pinging me. The platform itself hasn’t changed, but the core. The core code has changed, right? They moved from a custom engine. To this. I think it was unreal engine or unity. I don’t remember which one it was. But they changed engines, which requires every table to be touched. Re optimize them hand tweet again. So is it changing platforms? Yes and no. So you have to ask yourself, again. Okay, you’re changing platforms, it’d be like going from Epic to steam. Honestly, if you bought it on Epic, you should play it on Epic, right? I mean, that’s your mistake, not mine. Right, just like if you bought a game on EA on the EA App Store, you can’t play that in steam. They’re two different lockers. They’re two different distribution things. So well, it’s really splitting hairs. Whether or not FX three versus FX on Steam is a different platform. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that there was a lot of work time and money invested of which epic probably gave them a shit ton of it to to upgrade these tables and to make these tables into a newer, smoother engine. Okay, so now we’ve looked at it from that point of view. Let’s talk about what pinball effects and Zen Pinball are actually doing for these customers. The bottom line is not enough first. Second. I’m not a fan of how they’re doing business. And I know a lot of other people aren’t either. So let’s talk about what they’re doing. For limited time, if you own certain tables, not all your tables, certain tables in pinball effects, three, they can tell on your Steam account that you own those tables, and you will receive discounts on certain tables and bundles on pinball effects. Which is better than nothing? They could have done nothing right. I mean, that’s something they threw us. One of the little small dog milk bones and fortunately, we’re not a Chihuahua, we’re actually a frickin Newfoundland dog. It’s the size of a frickin horse. So we need something more than that little milk bump. So that was the only concession they made by the way if you spent $1,000 on tables on the Nintendo Switch, so sorry nothing for you if you bought them on Xbox on PlayStation so sorry nothing for you. No, no campaign no writing it in no sending screenshots are proof of ownership, nothing like that. You are screwed. The only way you’re getting anything is if you spend a shitload of money and uncertain tables for pinball effects three. So what is so that leaves you with what does FX offer you now? What do you get for your pinball effects? Opportunities? Well, first off, of course, just like FX three, it’s a free download. You get three tables for free. I don’t know how long it’s going to be that way. But it seems to be maybe this is a forever thing. You get three tables, you get fishtails you get sourcers layer and you get wild west. You those three tables, everything else is locked behind a trial. So you get two minutes or two or three minutes. I don’t remember what it is to play every table that they have. Even me weird premium ones. So you can try any of them. What it costs you to buy them depends on many, many factors. First and foremost, is it By the age of the tables, right, the older ones are going to be cheaper. The in house bills Zen ones are cheaper. Anything that requires a license is going to cost you. And it can cost you big my friends, Indiana Jones tables still 15 bucks. You know, Adams family’s 10 bucks, I think Twilight Zone is 10 bucks. And I don’t remember what the new Godzilla tables are, I’d have to go and look. But they all range anywhere from the lowest price I’ve seen is I’ve seen a four pack for 10 bucks. So that’s what 250 Again, that’s the cheapest price, but you have to buy a bundle to get that most High, Most tables are 550 apiece, so not even $5 you have to pay that 50 cent markup, which is probably a fuck you to the steam people. I bet they were $5 or 499 on epic game store. Because, you know, epic was probably not taking a fee out of their out of their monies or less money. So now that it’s on that evil evil Steam platform, we have to ask you for more money to pay for our percentage. Right? So those are marked up now by 50 cents a table less than six bucks a table for the right table. It’s not It’s not ridiculous, right? 10 bucks for four tables, not ridiculous. 15 bucks for one table. Opinions vary. So the other opportunity that you have is to get the pinball pass. And the past is available as a monthly buy in or a yearly buy it the yearly buy in will cost you less than if you bought 12 months at $15 a month, right? It’s 100 bucks a year. You know, I it’s getting crazy how many $100 A year things there are right like until they raise the price by Google OneDrive was $99 a year until they raised the price Amazon was $99 a year. DVD Fab $99 a year. Now Pinball FX $99 a year. So what does $99 A year get you? Does it get you unlimited access to every table in the fleet as it should? No. It gives you access to anything that Disney doesn’t own. Marvel TV tables Indiana Jones, right? Anything that that Disney owns the IP for is not included in the pinball pass. Now that to me, I mean, that’s sort of a slap across the face, right? I hear the word pass. That means something. It no longer means some it means all right. You don’t see you don’t see Xbox Game Pass, offering you a whole bunch of titles, but only some of them. Some of them you can play for you know, three minutes, but then you have to buy it. Now. If it’s on Game Pass, you’re going to pass from having to buy them. So the pinball pass is anything but a pass. And as a bonus, and at least they at least I mean, this is so goofy. They also have another currency involved because of course they do called pinball coins. And the coins are how you buy stuff, not tables. But you buy trinkets and show offs and trophies. Skins, right. So it’s another one of these ways of shucking money from the end consumer. But what’s funny is, you can’t pay cash for the pinball pass, you have to pay in coins for the pinball pass, and I know what you’re thinking, they’re gonna make you buy sets of coins, that are more coins than you need to buy the pinball pass. So in other words, if the pinball pass costs 150 coins a month, you have to buy him in increments of 200 because that’s how they get you. But I will give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, you actually can buy the exact amount of coins you need for a month and the exact amount of coins you can buy for a year. I’m assuming they’re hoping you’re gonna buy more so that you’ll buy the stupid little trinkets and shit to design your own game room with. Right. But at least they didn’t lock it up behind the by more than you need model. So I guess that’s something. So okay, let’s let’s let’s dig into this. Let’s answer the question. Is it worth it? Right? Is it worth it? So we’ll talk about what you can’t let’s say you say I love pinball effects three, I own every table, or I pirated it one or the other. And I’m totally happy with it. I don’t think I need pinball effects. Why do I need or want pinball effects? Okay. It’s a great question and it’s fair. So, some things you may want are the physics engine It is apparently better. It’s almost too good. Because I can play the shit out of pinball effects three bad pinball effects. I have a little more trouble adapting to the ball physics. And it’s probably because let’s be honest, they’re probably more accurate. They’re probably better. And that’s, that confuses me. I’m used to having sort of Arkady loosey goosey effects, three, Pinball, physics and that, listen, that’s a choice, right? I like arcade versions of stuff. It doesn’t have to be exact. Sometimes it can be an arcade version of football, it can be an arcade version of wrestling or whatever. I’m okay with that. I don’t need everything to be stat perfect. But that may be something that a pinball aficionado may be interested in. There’s definitely a lighting and graphical upgrade to the tables. Some tables, it’s much more obvious than others. Some of them look really damn close. And it’s like, Hey, I’m okay with what I got. But the lighting definitely gets a very nice uptake. So the lighting does listen that you can’t argue with shit like that. higher resolutions look really good. There are some benefits. And in some cases, because I’ve done this this morning, I played a ton of these tables against pinball effects three. And I realized that it’s not just a graphical upgrade. There’s also audio fidelity upgrades happening now in something like the Addams Family were the were basically sampled off the original board. And those samples were already like 1200 kilohertz or something, or 12,000 kilohertz, not super high to begin with. Yeah, though, those those didn’t really get any upgrades. You can’t get rattled Juliet back in the studio and heaven record that shit. So they left the original ones in there. And and listen, when you start bouncing it off him send tables where they had access to the original audio and all that other stuff. Yeah, you can tell the fidelity of the audio is very much increased. Now, if we can have a black knight 2000 table, we could definitely make a nice fashion or a really nice opinion. Because frankly, that’s one of the that’s one of my favorite tables for audio immersion. I love that frickin table for that. I love the music. I love the samples. I love all that stuff. I like the dark nights voice. So I’d be interested in seeing that table some somewhere down the line. So better physics, slightly improved graphics, much better lighting, increased audio fidelity, right? It’s not like these tables are the exact same tables. I mean, they are but they’re not. So a lot of people I think are taking the stance of I’ll ribeye my absolute favorite tables. But it’s not like the old days where I bought whatever they put out. Because I want to, you know, I want to own as many tables I want to support now. Now it’s a matter of God. I’m never going to get Twilight Zone on FX three, it’s not going to happen. You’re not going to get Addams Family on FX three not going to happen. Right? You’re not going to get these Godzilla tables on FX three not going to happen. So some people are saying I’ll buy new tables on FX but I’m not really buying anything else from there. That’s what’s I mean, what are you gonna do? You want Addams Family, you’re freaking buying it on FX, there’s no other way around it. It’s just the way it is. Now, you could always wait for sales, right? It just came over. Next sale, there’s going to be stuff on discount, right? That’s how a lot of people picked up FX three tables, right at the towards the end of life. These things were going for bargain basement prices, and we bought tons of bags, because they were cheap. Probably not going to happen on this platform not for a while, if at all. So are there going to be sales? Of course, are there going to be deep sales like we saw in FX three? I don’t think so. So really, what you need to do is and again, I can show you I’m gonna show you the difference running on the Steam deck. I’ve got four or five tables that I meticulously captured on Steam deck on both FX and FX three, I put them side by side split screen. So you can see yourself the differences in the ball physics. I separate them into audio channels. So you can hear each side each side of the screens table. In the new audio now it’s it’s going to be in mono. Right? But at least you’ll be able to hear the fidelity of the samples and how they’ve improved. So what you really need to do is so you can watch that and sort of say okay, well listen, I’m good, I’m good. Or you can watch that and say okay, I play this table like a fucking maniac. I want that in the new physics engine. I want that with the new graphics. I want the new audio for that one. And you’ll pick and choose what you want to buy. Right now effects is getting slammed on Steam. Everybody’s pissed off at him. I get it. Nobody wants to pay For the same thing twice. I also understand if you know Zan pinballs situation. So what’s what’s gonna end up happening? And I hate to say this? Because listen, I dabble in piracy. Most of my piracy these days is accessing things that I can’t get any more. Right that have been delisted are no longer available. You know, or, or I just, I’m not, there’s no value in them to me until they come down in price. Like I don’t own Spider Man yet. I mean, playing a copy from a friend. Right? I mean, literally, a family share from a friend not my friendly neighborhood Skid Row cracking group. You know, I’ve been playing off of a family share for Spider Man. Will I buy Spider Man? I will when the price is right. My price. My price point for Spider Man is 25 bucks when it hits 25 bucks. I’ll buy it. Until then. I’ll play it off the share or I won’t play. Now. It’s just that simple. I don’t It’s not food, water shelter people. I don’t have to have anything. I don’t have to have pinball effects. Right. I don’t have to have whatever game of the month epics has purchased and locked behind their paywall. I don’t have to have anything. You know, it’s just the way that it is. There’s plenty of other shit to play. So, yeah, I mean, here’s the thing. There are enough people that are so Zen Pinball at one point. I know we’re running a little long here. My wife’s like, why are you still out there? Zen Pinball at one point was the community savior of pinball. They had it all. They had people buying pinball tables, they didn’t give a shit about people were buying packs willy nilly. People were supportive. They were inclusive. I mean, it was it was like it was listened to was it was the best of times. Now what they’ve done is they’ve pissed everybody off. Even people like me who have you know, we have compassion and empathy. They’re my my interest in input into their new you know, super defense system sucks their their new system, I don’t really want to support it. I don’t want to buy coins. I don’t want to pay $15 for a table. And here’s the truth, the mortgage. Now the community still cracked, packed and hacked. Pinball effects three, right? If you know where to look, you can get pinball effects three with every single table unlocked, top to bottom and play it to your heart’s content. That’s what’s gonna happen when pinball effects they have now pissed off enough people where the community is no longer generous to a fault, and they will retaliate. And how they retaliate is ripping off your shit. So that’s what’s gonna happen. Pinball effects. By the way. The other thing that I think I mentioned it, I don’t remember if I mentioned it here, or in a post on Reddit, everything kind of blurs together. You have to install all the tables, whether you’re you own them or not. So the entire package of pinball effects three with all the tables. I know this because Skid Row told me it’s about eight gigabytes, right? That’s every single table included pinball effects, with all the higher resolution graphics and all that other stuff. 32 gigabytes. That’s a lot. That’s a huge difference. But if you didn’t pirate pinball effects three you only downloaded tables that you owned. So you could effectively have you know, a one gigabyte or two gigabyte install with a whole shitload of tables, but not all of them. Pinball effects doesn’t offer that. So while it’s kind of nice that you can trial, any table that’s in the pack, because it’s already downloaded. The same time, if you’re tight on space, like on a steam deck, man, 31 gigabytes. It’s almost the entire free space of a 64 gigabyte steam deck, which has 46 gigabytes free when you power it on out of the box 32 gigs, and that’s before shaders or anything like that. That’s just the download. So yeah, so that’s sort of a mistake, I’m guessing that eventually they will patch it to where you will download tables on demand. I’ve looked over their download package, and it looks like the tables are broken up into individual packs. So it appears you could probably go in and delete the ones that you’re not playing, but they’re not identified by name, there’s some number, so you’d have to do a lot of trial and error and probably steam would recognize it as being a corrupted install, and at some point would probably just reinstall everything anyway. So we shall see. Once again, the pirated version might actually work out better because then you could delete tables and not have an effect the game hard to set up All right well you had almost an hour show out of me I’m gonna crawl my wrinkled waterlogged out of here and go work on that video for pinball effects on Shane are Monroe with presidency radio we’ll see you next time take care