Hey everyone, Bobby King from FarSight Studios here. We just got back from Dallas and the Texas Pinball Festival. It’s a tremendously fun weekend that includes playing hundreds of classic and rare pinball machines to the latest tables from Stern Pinball, like The Avengers; and Jersey Jack’s first table, Wizard of Oz (which looks and plays great and features the first LCD backbox display in pinball history).

Next weekend, we’ll have a booth in Milwaukee at the Midwest Gaming Classic, so if you live in the area, stop by and check out the show. There will be everything from classic video game consoles and coin-op to tons of pinball.

In Dallas, we were lucky enough to get to spend some time with legendary pinball designer, Steve Ritchie. The “King of Flow” even took some time to check out our latest PS3 feature, stereoscopic 3D before heading back to Stern where we know he’s working on his next pinball design destined to be a classic.

This week we’ll be releasing one of his designs, Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s an amazing table and on pretty much everyone’s top 10 all-time list.

Based on the hit television series, STTNG puts players in the role of an honorary Starfleet Officer serving next to their favorite characters from the show. Features include eight different U.S.S Enterprise missions, many Multi-Ball Modes, Holodeck Video Modes and opportunities to advance in rank. One unique feature is a patented, below the playfield multiple ball delivery system, which results in continuous gameplay when balls on the playfield fall into a cellar hole. With its amazing feature set, custom speech by eight original cast members and the show’s theme song and music, this table appeals to all players but is a Star Trek fan’s dream come true.

While we were in Texas, we recorded an interview (to be released next year) where Steve shared some stories with us designing/developing Star Trek: TNG in addition to his favorite features of the the table. For example, when they had their first meeting with the Star Trek licensing executives, they were first told that photon torpedoes could not be in the design. With the help of Roger Sharpe’s diplomatic rhetoric and Steve’s insistence that he was not about to design a “mamby pamby” game – they were able to come up with compromises that led to a deep and compelling rule set. During gameplay, the player gets to choose missions that change up the objectives on the table. All of these missions are fun and make every game different. Steve and I share the same favorite mission, Battle Simulation. In this mode, the two probes are loaded with pinballs and given targets to fire at and hit. The satisfaction of getting on a roll hitting the targets is a blast. Once the player gets through all of the missions, they can earn Final Frontier multi-ball — one of the most intense and spectacular pinball experiences ever created.

For those who don’t know, we owe a huge amount of thanks to the generosity and dedication of our backers on Kickstarter. Without them, the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball project would not have gotten funded. We continue to be amazed and humbled by the tremendous outpouring of support that our game has received from all of our fans. On behalf of the entire team here at FarSight Studios, we are very proud and excited to be releasing Williams’ Star Trek: The Next Generation table into The Pinball Arcade! Backers can expect vouchers for both the Pro Version of the table and the custom balls over the next couple days.

This week at FarSight Studios, we’ve been packin’ up our new expo display and gettin’ ready to head to the Texas Pinball Festival to show off our latest tables and features!

March has always been one of my favorite months. The fact that we now get to spend a couple weekends each March at pinball shows has made it even better.

In Texas, we will be showing off the stereoscopic 3D support on PS3 that we just implemented. It looks amazing and really adds to the gameplay experience.

We will also be running contests each day to win a Cactus Canyon t-shirt, so if you’re in the area and like pinball – you should definitely stop by. You can check out our game and play unlimited real pinball for the price of admission – it’s a ton of fun!

Later this month, we’ll be releasing Star Trek: The Next Generation for PS3 and PS Vita on the 19th, and Table Pack 10 on the 26th which includes Gottlieb’s great widebody classic Genie and another one of our all-time favorite tables, Bally’s Attack from Mars.

Unfortunately, we can’t bring everyone to Texas – some guys have to stay back and work on the PS4 engine. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention…

THE PINBALL ARCADE IS COMING TO PS4!!!

We are super excited about this. Pinball Arcade looks really nice on PS3, but just wait until you see it on PS4! We’ll be adding rendering tech for per pixel ray casting, area lights/shadows, point lights and screen space ambient occlusion (which is a fancy way to say even more shadows). We’re very confident that we can add all of these features on the PS4 and maintain the smooth 60 fps that you need in a pinball game.

We’ll also be updating the physics and gameplay on all of the DLC tables we release. The Pinball Arcade on PS4 will be amazing!

Stay tuned next week for details on our release of the Star Trek: TNG table.

Happy Halloween week guys and gals – we’ve got a special treat for you all! In our on-going quest to re-create as many of the best pinball tables of all time, we were able to get the licenses needed from Bally and the Mistress of the Dark herself, Elvira! This means Elvira and the Party Monsters will be released in Table Pack 6 tomorrow, and Scared Stiff will be released before too long in Table Pack 7.

Elvira has been super cool to work with. She invited us to part of her Macabre Museum at Comikaze Expo last month. We got to show off the Party Monsters table right along with a real machine. Some of the guys here on the pinball team got to meet her, and she even came over and played our game for a while. She’s actually pretty good at pinball!

This is also pretty cool — X-Play just gave us the nod for two of their top five favorite video game pinball tables; Funhouse at #3 and Theatre of Magic at #1.

When they get a hold of the two Elvira tables, they might have to adjust their list.

So… check out Table Pack 6 when it’s released on PSN for PS3 and PS Vita tomorrow. It’s a great table. I find that the key is to earn an Extra Ball as soon as you can, and earn another one when you lose a ball – you always want to keep that Party Again light lit up. Then get multi-ball and start racking up the Jackpots by hitting the ramp shots.

In addition to Elvira and the Party Monsters, Table Pack 6 also includes No Good Gofers which has been re-tuned and is also a blast to play. As always, the purchase is available on PSN as a Cross Buy, so you’ll just need to buy it once to own it on PS3 and PS Vita.

A huge thank you to Elvira for being a part of our pinball game, and also to Sid and the guys on PlayStation Blogcast for all of their support.

It’s always a pleasure to get feedback from hardcore pinball fans telling us how much they appreciate the attention to detail we put into each table. We actually own a real, physical machine of each table, which we re-create digitally. Our studio’s rec room and half of our conference room are already full! So full, in fact, that I’ll be moving my favorite machine — Creature from the Black Lagoon — into my office to make room for the some others that we just bought!

We’ve already released four new tables with two great DLC expansions: Add-On Pack 1 (Medieval Madness, The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot) and Add-On Pack 2 (Cirqus Voltaire, Funhouse), both of which are now available on PSN.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you’re encountering issues downloading these expansions, click here for further details and a fix.

Today, we’re announcing more great new tables that will be coming your way this August! Both Add-On Pack 3 and Add-On Pack 4 are scheduled for an August release for PS3 and PS Vita, with each expansion adding two new tables. All four tables are historically significant and are treasured by pinball enthusiasts for their exquisite craftsmanship and cutting-edge mechanical design.

Add-On Pack 3

Monster Bash was originally released in 1998 and was designed by George Gomez. The goal of the table is to get six of the most iconic Universal Studios Monsters to form a band the likes of which has never been seen! If you can dig out the Mummy, he’ll dust himself off and plug in his bass. Dracula will fly out of his coffin, dying to sink his teeth into a mean guitar riff. The Creature from the Black Lagoon will crank on his sax! Frankenstein will jump off his slab and jam on his keyboard. The Bride of Frankenstein will start to sing about her Ball and Chain and the Wolfman will give you a howling drumbeat. With the help of the Phantom Flip auto-play feature, you can let go of the flippers and watch the game complete your shots! The manufacturer released 3,361 units of the table.

Also included in Add-On Pack 3 is Gorgar, a classic 1979-era table designed by Barry Oursler, a legendary designer credited with Pin·Bot, Cyclone, Comet, Space Shuttle, and Jungle Lord to name just a few. Gorgar was the very first “talking” pinball machine. With a vocabulary of seven words (Gorgar, Speaks, Beat, Me, You, Hurt, and Got), Gorgar is able to say phrases such as “Gorgar speaks,” “Me Gorgar, beat me,” and “You hurt Gorgar.” It has a magnetic Snake Pit that holds your ball captive as he thunders, “Me got you.” The audio also features a heartbeat sound that races faster and faster as the action of the gameplay builds up.

Monster Bash alone fetches a very high price if you want to buy the real machine, but soon you’ll be able to enjoy it and Gorgar for just $4.99.

Add-On Pack 4

Creature from the Black Lagoon was designed by the legendary John Trudeau. Doctor Flash, as he’s known, was involved in the design of over 50 games for Gottlieb, Williams and Bally! “Creature” combines the excitement of watching a famous Universal monster flick with the fun of a drive-in movie date. The player has to save their date from the Creature and, if successful, is rewarded by seeing the world’s first ever pinball hologram! This classic table also features story and dialog from the movie.

Black Knight was designed by Steve Richie — who also lent his vocal talents as the voice of the Black Knight. This table was the first ever to introduce a split-level playfield, with three ramps leading to and from the upper playfield. This classic also featured the first ever Magna-Save: a magnet that allowed users to push a button which saves a ball from draining down the outlane. Another first was Bonus Ball. In a multi-player game, this feature awards the player with the highest score a few additional seconds of free play.

With our successful campaign to help raise money for the Twilight Zone table and other great tables already in development, FarSight is very excited about adding many more amazing classics to our collection in the upcoming years!

With the PS3 and PS Vita launches of The Pinball Arcade on PSN this week, I thought that I’d share a few more details about our game and offer some general gameplay tips.

The launch tables include one from each of the four major manufactures that we’ve licensed. Tales of the Arabian Nights (Williams), Ripley’s Believe It or Not (Stern), Theatre of Magic (Bally), and Black Hole (Gottlieb). Tales and Black Hole were part of the Pinball Hall of Fame games. We’ve spent a lot of time improving the physics and the graphics of our pinball engine over the past few years, so we feel that they’re definitely worthy of updating.

When we first made the Gottlieb collection we gathered references from the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. We took a lot of pictures, recorded the audio with microphones, and took notes on the rules along with gameplay video reference. We actually re-programmed all of the rules from scratch.

That was a huge challenge! Now, we buy all of the tables and take them apart. Plus, we now have a bunch of physics experience and improved technology to make the tables look and play almost exactly like the real thing. ROM emulation is a huge part of the improved technology, so our simulations now run the same exact code as the original tables with authentic music, sound effects, and voice over. It’s been a learning experience, and it’s our goal to continue to improve.

When choosing tables, we look for tables that are universally recognized as being great (ipdb.org and pinside.com are two sources that we highly respect); we throw in a large helping of what our fans want, what our pinball expert friends think would be good picks, and what tables we at FarSight love and think will make for great videogame simulations. Of course, the final decision is also impacted by what’s feasible to license.

To score well at our game, I strongly recommend that you master the art of nudging the table without tilting. In general (i.e. video game pinball “and real” pinball), the key is ball control and knowing what to expect as much as possible. It is usually much easier to be consistent with a shot fired from a cradled position than when you hit the ball with a live deflection. But equally important, you should try to learn where and how the ball feeds towards the flippers as best you can and how to keep the pinball or pinballs (in multi-ball) under control as much as possible by mastering different passing and catching techniques.

Our first DLC pack is going to include Medieval Madness and The Machine: Bride of Pin.Bot. These are two of my personal all-time favorite tables. We hope that you enjoy our digital versions as much as we enjoy getting to recreate these classics!

We’re very excited to be launching the Pinball Arcade on the Sony Entertainment Network. We have four great tables running on the most accurate pinball physics engine ever developed. What’s more, The Pinball Arcade will offer players the ability to buy our game (and any DLC tables) once and own it on both the PS3 and PS Vita versions! The PS Vita version supports the front and rear touchscreen and will be a great way for people to play our game while they’re on the go. We can’t wait for the game to be launched on April 10th. We can confirm that the game will run at a smooth 60 frames per second, and the lighting effects and real-time reflections make the graphics look stunning. This is the best pinball simulation we’ve created so far!

If you’re a fan of either real pinball or video pinball, we’re pretty confident that you’re going to love our game. FarSight has been making digital pinball games for years! We have received overwhelming support by the mechanical pinball community – and these are the people who insist on realism in their pinball games. We have acquired licenses from Bally, Williams, Stern, Sega, Data East, Gottlieb, and obtained other ancillary rights like Monster Bash and Creature from the Black Lagoon from Universal to name just a couple. We are focused on building the greatest possible collection of classic tables that we could distribute digitally ourselves.

A couple of weeks ago, we attended the Texas Pinball Festival, where a lot of people asked us how FarSight got involved in pinball simulations. People also thought it was interesting that we decided to transition from being a console game developer (with millions of retail unit sales over the past 20 years) to self-publishing our own games digitally. The fact is – we’ve been waiting for the age of digital distribution to get to where it is today for quite awhile.

If it would’ve been possible, FarSight would have made this transition 10 years ago when we created an original puzzle game called Mojo which featured a rolling ball. We saw a lot of potential in the game (and we still do!), but we had a difficult time finding a publisher whose sales department believe that our puzzle game could be successful in the retail space. Crave Entertainment saw a place for the game as a value title. After it shipped, FarSight and Crave together thought that making a pinball game from the engine created for Mojo would be relatively easy. Looking back – wow, we were pretty naïve about all of the nuances needed for pinball physics back then!

We loved pinball and were very excited to make a pinball game; however we knew that great pinball design is a skill that takes years of experience so we looked into what manufacturer license/s would be feasible to obtain ourselves. Our first pinball game, Pinball Hall of Fame: The Gottlieb Collection was successful. We followed this up with a game that had much better physics and a better collection of tables in our opinion, PHOF: The Williams Collection. However, despite great reviews, the sales were not nearly as good. We weren’t about to give up, though.

We knew that we had a great game. We just needed more people to get their hands on it – and this was the perfect opportunity to get into digital publishing!