Zen Studios Acquires Bally And Williams Pinball Licence, Tables Headed To Pinball FX3

Pinball FX3 is going to land me in the poorhouse with all these tables.

I want Tales of Arabia!

Will they have to rebuild new sims or do they get to release what was done before?

If they have to rebuild, it may take a LONG LONG time to see some of the older tables.

I want to see if Zen makes any changes to TPA formula here. Would be nice to have a balanced mix between the 2.

It'll be nice to see those classic tables remade to Zen Pinball standards. I'm specially looking forward to Medieval Madness.

Hopefully they won't add anything new to the tables and keep the 'classic' gameplay.

Close ninja, I was just about to post this after spellchecking, was wondering what took you so long.

This must be like Christmas for you @Spoony_Tech Better hurry up and finish Octopath.

@rjejr I always play pinball no matter what else I'm gaiming lol.

Holy crap! Yaaaasssssss

Sooo it’s great that we’re getting those classic tables back but now we will apparently have to rebuy them under the Zen label?? At the deadline of FarSight’s license expiration, i made a mad last minute dash to buy as many as I could afford thinking these tables were gone forever! Probably spent $120!! Ugh! Oh well...

I also asked on FB “Switch?”

Exciting news now it’s confirmed.

So they are doing realistic pinball tables like everyone else,instead of keep making the unrealistic ones that are much more unique?

Maybe it's me, I'm glad old tables are being preserved this way and all, but to me pinball just doesn't have "it" if it's not a real table. Half of the thrill of pinball is the visceral impacts of the table, the spring on the launcher, the unpredictability of real physics and rubber bumpers occurring in this little minature environment, and the marvel of all the tiny motors an d moving parts. Pinball, simulated, is just kind of boring without that real physical object.

Wow. So they basically pulled the rights out from under FarSight. . .

I'm down though. I was not interested in Pinball FX since it's not "real" pinball but now I'm interested.

Great news

@Spoony_Tech Yeah I know, I was up playing Yoku around 2AM Saturday night/ Sunday morning and saw you on playing pinball. My wife came down and told me to go to bed and I was like "But Spoony's playing pinball.". Polarbear (sp) was on too, some guy I knew back in the Splatoon days on Wii U from here, you probably know him.

Still want a way to pay for all tables instead of having to buy them seperately

I'd love to play these on the Switch, but already spent a lot of money on PC for many tables (after previously having bought some on my Xbox360 back in the days)... I'd prefer having all my current collection of tables on a single platform, thank you, as I'm not going to buy these twice...

But good news nonetheless.

I love pinball! Yea!

Meh. I don’t like their ball physics.

@Kobeskillz They made the ball physics realistic for those recreations. Just try them out for free on the Steam Beta.

Cool news for people who want it, but I'm still waiting on the Star Wars tables. Really, the only tables I'm interested in.

Can you play tables in TATE mode? It'd be great to pair this collection of tables with my soon-to-arrive Flip Grip.

@mobilesworking Yep,you can indeed.Since the 60fps update it's a treat to play full screen TATE mode in tabletop,as it will be with the flip grip It's even better docked with the TV turned on its side,looks superb.

@OorWullie Excellent! That keening you hear is my wallet mourning the loss of many, many dollars.

Not buying any unless it's pins FS never got around to making. Hope Zen makes Radical! Not buying pins that's already in TPA.

I already shelled out a lot to buy many of these table in their last days on the Pinball Arcade back in May-June.... unless they're like totally new revised table with new SFX like the other Zen table, I'm not going to buy for A LONG TIME...

@rjejr Yeah I know him and He's also on my friends list. Also pay no attention to me playing that late. I don't get home from work till after midnight on Saturday so both Saturdays and Friday's are my late night gaming sessions. You wont see me that late during the week. This morning was a struggle waking up lol. 6:50 but I was kind of awake at 6.

Welp, time to redownload it.

At first I wasn't sure how to feel about this. Felt kind of bad for Farsight and have never been a big fan of Zen's games.

Then I tried the beta though and wow, this is top notch. Physics are fantastic, the games look beutiful, and the difficulty is pretty much perfect (You won't be getting marathon game after marathon game in this like you would in The Pinball Arcade). This really is the best of both worlds - You gets Zen's quality and their fantastic interface, mixed with real-pinball themes and rulesets, something Zen's original games just can't hold a candle to. I hope that long-time Zen players try these out and get into playing pinball IRL because of it.

👍 👍

I love Pinball FX3! Take my money!!! The Switch has been missing a lot of tables from their collection due to licensing issues with the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, so this is great news for Switch owners.

On Switch you've got Stern tables, Gottlieb tables, Zaccaria tables... and now Williams and Bally. What's left after those?

@Bunkerneath not going to happen, unfortunately. I actually prefer the "a la carte" method of purchase, myself, as there are some tables that I'm not interested in purchasing.

Still hoping for Rick and Morty, Metroid, and a bunch of other favorite series to make it on here. TwT

Budapest has a pinball machine museum! Worth a holiday for that alone.

@Spoony_Tech Yeah I figured it was after one of your legendary 16 hour double shifts and you were just unwinding a bit before heading off to bed - otherwise you would have been playing Octopath - but I wasn't telling my wife that.

School starts tomorrow for my kids, I slept today until 10:00 after spending most of the weekend sofa shopping with the missus, and buying and installing a new ceiling fan yesterday, she's on a remodeling for Thanksgiving warpath of new paint, furniture, pictures etc since I told her we shouldn't borrow $40k to remodel the kitchen. So I was up to 2AM unwinding myself, normally in bed around 11:00. Maybe 10 the next few weeks with school starting.

@mike_intv I can all but guarantee you that Zen will re-building the tables...

1) Zen purchased the license, not the assets/work created by FarSight (to my knowledge)

2) The FarSight tables run on a completely different engine (to my knowledge) and are frankly outdated tech

@joey302 I also bought up all of the TPA seasons before the deadline... so that I would have them "forever" on Steam and can play them on my HTPC and laptop...

At first I was a little annoyed that I "wasted my money", but after thinking about it I realized that it's going to be a long time before Zen releases a significant amount of tables... and it is likely that a large portion of the lesser known tables will never make it to FX3... so I'm not too heartbroken.

I probably spent about $180, but it also motivated me to finally build a new HTPC that can run the tables at 4k. It was a fun summer project that I completed on my birthday.

@rjejr 'But Spoonys playing pinball!' that scenario made me laugh, thanks for sharing!

@holygeez03 cool on that project!! And I feel a bit better now lol. Yea I’ll take them in stride and wait on sales etc. you’re right in they’re not gonna blow all those tables out at once! 😊

Super cool news!

I would actually prefer the Zen would create a separate app for the Williams Collection tables... like they did with Star Wars pinball... then the menus and interface could be more classically themed and the FX3 table list won't be so crowded.

@MartyFlanMJFan Nothing like a wife to turn a 53 year old man into a 15 year old again. But not in a good way.

If they bring back the Elvira Scared Stiff table I'm in:
https://www.thepinballcompany.com/product/scared-stiff-pinball-machine/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2sbToq2T3QIVBdvACh3RaQh6EAYYASABEgJ8K_D_BwE

@Syntaxkita I'm that person who travels for pinball. What farsight provides is great and zen grabbing up this licence is only going to help grow real pinball.

@NEStalgia This is why, if you feel this way, you build a Virtual Pinball Cabinet, with lights and force feedback. It isn't a "if it's a video game, it isn't visceral". Check Youtube for stuff from TerryRed. Vpins are great if you love pinball

@MrKai That's pretty cool! I've never seen that kind of thing before. All that said though...the ball still feels so wrong. There's just a "feel" to real pinball with the fluid motion of the ball that the 60fps motion can't replicate, and the physics make them so linear and "snappy".....I dont' know...product of the 80's I guess I know the real feel too well and it it gnaws at me that the feel is off.

I had a little tabletop plastic toy company pinball machine in the day. I wish I still had it. The game wasn't quite a Williams table, but the ball moved the way a pinball should!

@NEStalgia Yeah. You have to actually experience a properly build pin cab to get it...even things, like you say, the ball are fine with a display with a decent refresh rate, and with "Surround Sound Feedback" exciter-based haptics, you both hear and feel the ball at the right place, when the ball impacts small rubber bumpers, it is proportionate to for example the impact of a pop number (jets) of the slings.

It is not "the same"..but the gap is much, much tighter than you might imagine and there are hundreds of recreations and original tables out there.

So yeah, not the same, but it isn't like "playing on a poster" either

This is awesome news, some of the best pinball tables and licenses are now under one, very capable roof. Super excited for the all-in-one access of this; now I don't need to have two separate applications to represent pinball. Also ZEN just knows how to design better UI and presentation, too.

@MrKai That's really cool! Though it also makes me wonder....if it takes that much tech and sophistication to emulate a simple ball and bumper system they managed to build in the 1960s....why are we not just building more ball and bumper machines? It feels like inventing space ships just so you can discover Saran wrap.

I’ve been playing the Pinball FX 3 open beta of these tables on Steam, and I can attest that their new physics engine for these real tables feels great! Way better than the feel of their virtual tables. These tables also look fantastic, better than I’ve ever seen them look in The Pinball Arcade. This was the absolute best thing that could have happened with the Williams license after they bailed on FarSight Studios. I’m going to definitely buy all the Williams & Bally tables that Zen releases, so long as they perform just as well on Switch (my preferred digital pinball system).

@rjejr 53, oh my gosh remember when you were coming 50?!

WOW. And, DAMN!

Zen seems to do a good job with pinball, but this is the first time they have actually replicated real tables as opposed to creating their own unique ones. Considering all of the special effects they use that aren't possible on real tables, I can't help but to wonder how this will turn out.

Anyways this is good news for Switch owners as those tables were only available for a brief hour or so on the eshop before they were gone forever. I got them on my ipad version of Pinball Arcade, but it should be nice to have them on my Switch with Pinball FX.

I may have spent more than I should have on last-minute digital shops purchases this year, Pinball Arcade included. I'm happy that the licenses are alive again, and I'm super stoked that they're not using the same PFX physics for these based-on-real-life tables (their lighting, perspective, and rendering looks good, too). But, I'm not going to jump on board so quick. Maybe not for another few years. I'm going to wait until they get their library up, and also to see if they'll cover other tables than Pinball Arcade did. And even see if some of the same ones that Farsight did Kickstarters for, like Star Trek:TNG and The Addams Family, will make it into this version.

Also, I know the Steam version looks nice (after seeing Crow's video: https://youtu.be/O-u40a4aC2w ), but will we see this same quality in the PFX version? Time will tell.

As of right now, to me, Zaccaria Pinball is the best looking, customizable, most realistic-feeling, pinball sim on the Switch (though it's full of real tables you've probably never heard of in NA, myself included). It's not without its flaws, of course (UI, camera transitions, back glass art looks awfully low res), but Magic Pixel made a very competent pinball simulator with Zaccaria and it's a nice option for classic pinball.

I think people will be disappointed by this. Zen pinball has a certain feel that works well with their own tables. I don't think it will translate well to classic tables.

Have the FarSight tables. Can't justify double dipping when happy with them.

@masterLEON Wait, since when has Zaccaria been on Switch? How did I not know about this? I'll definitely have to pick up a few of those tables!

@blackknight77 @JayJ They've completely reworked their physics for these classic games. I've spent a bit of time playing the beta now and I can safely say they're pretty fantastic! I think things could still use some tweaking (flippers are too strong when it comes to smaller swings, for example), but overall it's way better and feels much more realistic than TPA. Hopefully the other small issues will be worked out before the official release.

@mystman12 Zaccaria showed up mid-July, IIRC.

Well this is.....weird.

Not complaining, but I do find it odd considering Zen Pinball is more about its fictional tables....and it's the main alternative to Pinball Arcade in that aspect.

One of the more important details of this news story that I feel like a lot of people are missing is that "Zsolt" is the coolest name ever.

@MartyFlanMJFan "remember when you were coming 50"

Yeah the whole website remembers that I wouldn't shut up about it all month long and I kept changing my avatar like every day. Crazy it was 3 years ago though, pre-Switch.

Let me ask you something, does it seem to you like a lot of people from back then are gone now and it's a newer, younger, angrier crowd? I barely recognize anyone anymore. Sligeach disappearing was like the last of us old schoolers somehow. I still know there are a dozen of so of us but the ones I know post a lot less and a lot are just gone. Could just be my senility talking though.

@SuperWeird
SS is an awesome table! They have it in my local pinball bar and it's one that always gets me to play just one more game. Such a rush when it turns out the lights and SS mode starts - and achievable! Even for an amateur like me.
It was one of my faves on TPA on the PS3, too, in which I invested heavily back in the day. I was sad to see Farsight lose the license before I could build a pin library on my switch, but will definitely check to see if Zen does them justice.

@rjejr yes, for sure, it's kinda comforting to see yourself and a few others still here and actively involved! What's that old song, 'oh the times they are-a chang-ing...' ha well I still love Mario, DK, Yoshi and MJ so some things never change.

I've played these tables in real life, in TPA and have a virtual pincab running Visual Pinball X.

Played the beta on Steam last night - they totally nailed it! Physics feel great and the graphics are top notch, nice lighting and shadows. Really excited to see it on Switch.

@holygeez03 I figured as much. What I fear is that it will take a lot of time for the older tables (which I prefer to play) appear — if ever.

@holygeez03 is it really outdated tech though? Maybe it’s older tech, but if it replicates an old pinball game properly than the tech is good enough

Bummed pinball arcade lost the license. They had such a deep library of their games, feels like it would take forever and would cost fx3 a bundle to pay for all the licenses that P.A. already had for sick games like Addams family. Plus I’m not interested in the least with games they’re starting out with. When they get a good Bally’s/Williams game I’ll try it out but I feel that’s a long ways away

@NEStalgia Because you can play more than one table in a pin cab

And Pinball Machines are, well built by hand.

Also there are companies still surprisingly building Pinball Machines, but with "modern" stuff. Check out Jersey Jack Pinball

-K

@rjejr I remember that and I was just lurking without an account to post back then

Yeah it's a younger angrier crowd now, because Switch is actually a popular product relevant with modern gamers, unlike the previous 8 years or so of Nintendo history A popular, gamer oriented console was going to make the community look a little more like PushSquare than like Wii. Not all a bad thing, but it does drag with it the internet bile. Actually I take that back...the angry people are the old folks The young folks are the "NDF"

@MrKai Yeah I was aware of Jersey Jack...I haven't checked them out in a while, but those things are exotic and wonderful That's kind of what makes me think "why not just go with the real thing?"

@NEStalgia Pretty impressive you remember that from 3 years ago, I couldn't even remember what your tweet was about from only 3 weeks ago, I had to go back and reread them.

And I think it's less about the angry newcomers, more the lack of people I know b/c they are all smart enough to stop wasting time on this site but here I am 10 years later, like one of those old TV ads about guys wasting their youth away smoking dope.

I was referring to this one, b/c it amused me even then:

But this one has me thinking I should change my avatar to Trey.

@Captain_EO Hey when did you change your name to Captain EO? Good thing you kept the MJ pic or I'd lose track of you. I mean I do remember Captain EO but don't think I'd make the connection just looking at names and reading comments. I've changed my avatar but never my name, it's my name. Using it now in DQXI is cool, the other characters talk to me all the time.

@rjejr hello sir, just recently! I should probably have grown out of using Michael Jackson related names by now but... I haven't ha

@Captain_EO No need to outgrow MJ, I'm still using Kermit the Frog from my childhoid. 😀

I'm so excited for this. anyone know the date these machines come out?