BlahCade 218: Star Wars Pinball VR

We get to go to a virtual pinball galaxy far, far away in April 2021.

This whole episode is all about the news revealed in Zen Studio’s The Pinball Show Ep No. 2 about a certain Oculus, Steam VR, and PSVR pinball game coming in April 2021. To prime you for the discussion, here is the trailer for the full package.

And here is Episode 2 of The Pinball Show.

We break down the footage segment by segment and react to it.

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Show notes

04:15 — A correction… sort of

In the last show, we discussed how pricing is a bit hard to find on the AtGames website. It turns out that the pricing is available on the site, but as we show it is still kind of obfuscated and kludgy.

12:00 — CoolToy and converting Arcade 1UP pinball to a Steam

Doug from CoolToy covers how to convert an Arcade 1UP into a custom pinball cabinet.

The point here is that if your cabinet dies for some reason, you can turn it into something else. But if you are looking to buy this just to gut it for a custom pinball cabinet, don’t do it.

16:30 — Zen Studios reveal Star Wars VR

The release trailer above pays homage to the original Star Wars. This part of the episode is quite visual so you might want to check out our YouTube video so you can tell what we’re talking about.

Gorgeous “life under glass” shots here.

The game is not going to be available on FX3. But if you have Steam VR you will be able to get access to it. PlayStation VR players are also going to get it.

28:45 — Will all the VR apps be separated?

The fact this app is going to be released as a stand-alone app may not be to everyone’s tastes. But when you consider the storage constraints on the Quest 2 it starts to make more sense.

We also speculate on what a separated app ecosystem could look like, and what this could mean for brand-specific experiences on VR.

36:00 — Will we get rich environment changes in SWPVR?

In FX2VR we get complete environment switches when you go into a table VR experience.

We speculate whether we’ll get this type of deep integration in SWPVR, and why we might not see this.

40:00 — Star Wars Collectibles table

We talk about the other Zen original table coming with the SWPVR package: Classic Collectibles.

The table seems to revolve around collecting licensed Kenner figurines (12 apparently). There’s an X-Wing loopy ramp that appears to move and a direct homage to Pinbot and Jackbot in the Tie Fighter ramp.

The licensing on this one is definitely interesting, so we go into speculation about this aspect as well.

54:00 — Holding out for Pinball FX

People are not happy about having to wait for Pinball FX given that these tables do not seem to be available through FX3.

We challenge the thinking out there with an opinion that Zen may actually be doing us a favor here. It may be that they are deliberately not offering them for sale because the tables may not be transferrable from FX3 to Pinball FX 😑

Will these tables come to FX3 eventually? Maybe after an initial exclusivity period on Pinball FX? We really don’t know, but we seem to think that FX3 will be dead after Pinball FX is released.

On mobile, I think you can expect that Pinball FX is going to be split up into brands. But the PC and console (not Nintendo Switch) audiences are most likely going to get a stand-alone Pinball FX app like FX3.

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