Hi all,
Those of you that are pinball fans likely know that The Pinball Arcade offers fantastic virtual versions of many classic pinball tables for play on a number of platforms, and specifically has great versions of the classic Bally and Williams tables. You might also know that Farsight's license to the Bally and Williams tables expired at the end of June this year, in part because of the way they handled the Nintendo Switch release of the game. Details are a little sketchy but it seems like what happened is that Farsight thought their license from Bally/Williams extended to the Switch platform and Bally/Williams disagreed. This caused them to pull the game almost immediately from the eShop after it launched.
The game didn't make it back to the eShop until much later, at which point the Bally/Williams games were no longer available for purchase.
Bottom line is, though to my knowledge the Bally/Williams tables were briefly available for purchase on Switch they no longer are now. And likely never will be again. Which sucks for us pinball fans that would have happily paid for the tables.
I figured it would be a fun project to try to make the tables playable on Switch via SXOS, and it looks simple enough after extracting the two available .nsps of the game:
- the original release .nsp only has the Tales of Arabian Nights table files (.rez)
- the update file has quite a few more table files (.rez), but not surprisingly none of the Bally/Williams tables.
- the update file does have the 'enums' for the bally/williams tables-- the sort of metadata about the game I assume-- but the .rez files aren't there. They are very likely delivered to the device when you buy them via .DLC.
As far as I know the Bally/Williams tables were briefly available for purchase as DLC when the game first released, but without the .rez files from a Switch that happened to buy and download them during the very brief window of availability, there's nothing that can be done as far as modifying what we've got to play these other tables.
What we'd need to try to make some progress on this is to track down the downloaded .ncas from a Switch that had been pulled down upon purchasing the tables as DLC. Is there anyone out there that might be able to assist? I'm assuming installed .ncas are encrypted in some way so some work would have to be done there.
Another option would be to compare .rez files from other platform's releases to see if they are the same as those we currently have for Switch. If that's the case (I kind of doubt it, I assume the Switch ones would be downrezzed or somethign) then that could be another option.
Those of you that are pinball fans likely know that The Pinball Arcade offers fantastic virtual versions of many classic pinball tables for play on a number of platforms, and specifically has great versions of the classic Bally and Williams tables. You might also know that Farsight's license to the Bally and Williams tables expired at the end of June this year, in part because of the way they handled the Nintendo Switch release of the game. Details are a little sketchy but it seems like what happened is that Farsight thought their license from Bally/Williams extended to the Switch platform and Bally/Williams disagreed. This caused them to pull the game almost immediately from the eShop after it launched.
The game didn't make it back to the eShop until much later, at which point the Bally/Williams games were no longer available for purchase.
Bottom line is, though to my knowledge the Bally/Williams tables were briefly available for purchase on Switch they no longer are now. And likely never will be again. Which sucks for us pinball fans that would have happily paid for the tables.
I figured it would be a fun project to try to make the tables playable on Switch via SXOS, and it looks simple enough after extracting the two available .nsps of the game:
- the original release .nsp only has the Tales of Arabian Nights table files (.rez)
- the update file has quite a few more table files (.rez), but not surprisingly none of the Bally/Williams tables.
- the update file does have the 'enums' for the bally/williams tables-- the sort of metadata about the game I assume-- but the .rez files aren't there. They are very likely delivered to the device when you buy them via .DLC.
As far as I know the Bally/Williams tables were briefly available for purchase as DLC when the game first released, but without the .rez files from a Switch that happened to buy and download them during the very brief window of availability, there's nothing that can be done as far as modifying what we've got to play these other tables.
What we'd need to try to make some progress on this is to track down the downloaded .ncas from a Switch that had been pulled down upon purchasing the tables as DLC. Is there anyone out there that might be able to assist? I'm assuming installed .ncas are encrypted in some way so some work would have to be done there.
Another option would be to compare .rez files from other platform's releases to see if they are the same as those we currently have for Switch. If that's the case (I kind of doubt it, I assume the Switch ones would be downrezzed or somethign) then that could be another option.
I was gonna say that. lol
