BlahCade 225: AtGames Taito Pinball Reaction

With this podcast, we can officially say that Farsight Studios is no longer in the pinball business. It turns out that AtGames did not contract Farsight Studios to produce the announced Taito pinball tables last year.

The good news is that Magic Pixel got the gig to produce the licensed properties from Taito. We had to give our reaction to the news and detail what we thought about the playfield layouts and overall graphical design of the tables.

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Show notes

03:30 - Arcooda is getting very active on Twitter

Arcooda is blasting out a lot of discussion on copyright infringement on their Twitter account.

Chris and I can’t work out why they are doing it, but I’m sure there is a reason. Maybe we’ll see why this information is being released in the coming months.

10:40 - AtGames announces Taito Pinball designs

AtGames announced the line-up of Taito tables releasing over the next few months.

The tables included in the first pack are:

Darius
Frontline
Rastan Saga
Space Invaders

Darius is an electro-mechanical design (it has reels on the backbox).

This table has an odd flipper layout in the mini-playfield area. It has a color palette of Banzai Run and a layout quite reminiscent of Gottlieb’s Genie.

Not sure what this one is about, but it does appear to have a regular DMD.

Space Invaders seems to have animated characters on the playfield. This move appears to be the studio’s first attempt at adding Zen-like animated characters into the playfield layouts. This table does have the full LCD screen design.

Based on the designs of these four tables, it appears as though each pack will have a table design from each main pinball era.

31:30 - How much are these tables?

Chris asked me how much these table packs were going to be. I thought it would be about $16 for the pack. But it is going to be US$25.

The other packs are coming out throughout this year.

In the (United States) Autumn, you’ll be getting the following tables:

Operation Wolf
Zoo Keeper
Chack’n Pop
Elevator Action

Coming out in November, you’ll get access to the following tables:

The Legend of Kage
Rainbow Islands
Bubble Bobble
Arkanoid

39:45 - Availability outside of the AtGame universe

In short, you won’t be getting these tables on any other platform at the time of writing. You will need to purchase an AtGames Legends Pinball to get access to them first. The games will be releasing on other AtGames platforms over time.

40:30 - Could this arrangement be a blocker to Zen getting Stern Pinball?

We explore the possibility of what this partnership with Magic Pixel might mean to the competition (Zen Studios) related to the Stern Pinball license.

We both came to the same conclusion. However, we also evaluate what we see with the Taito tables compared with what Zen Studios is doing with Unreal Engine.

50:22 - What does this mean for future Gottlieb tables?

In short, nobody knows. We aren’t sure whether Farsight owns the rights to Gottlieb or whether they had a license to use.

What a shame it would be to leave the incredible back catalog of EM pinball machines in mothballs. I hope someone can pick up the license and put it to good use.

55:10 - The next The Pinball Show is coming out

We are out of sync with the pinball show again, but we’ll be sure to catch up again next episode to break down anything worth breaking down.

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