...other than:
hurry ups at the saucer and castle
shooting each shoot 3 or 9 times
a ball lock for 3 ball multiball just left of the main bash toy
a mystery shot just right of the bash toy
destroying the main toy 5 or 6 times as part of the advancement to wizard mode
troll and martian modes are similar
mini wizard for making all shots ( TA, etc)
no real traditional modes
and probably a bunch more. They're very similar.

That being said, I like AFM a lot more, I feel like it's more balanced scoring wise. On MM it's just pound the castle I feel like most of the time to get a good score.

I'll agree with the first part; AFM a lot better to me.

I also thought they were too similar, that AFM was the better machine and that there was no need to own both. Then PPS announced the MMr and I just couldn't resist the allure of a brand new...yes, I said BRAND NEW Medieval Madness.

Multiball strategy in MM? Bash the castle. AFM multiball rules much better.

TA is much different then royal madness, and better.

RTU in how you get there is different then BFTK.

Combos in AFM and victory laps are sweet when u take them into MB.

Similar layout? Sure. Hardly the same rules though

Actually, that's my old AFM. Bryan Kelly did the restoration but I did the LED's.
I don't remember exactly what I used but mostly white with red frosted in the title and green by the spaceship.
I also recall not using all sockets, just a few.

Looks great next to MM Nevus, wish I could have hung on to it until MMR gets here.

Kevin

Yea why would anyone own both of them? And have $15 grand wrapped up. Doesn't make any sense to me.

Nice score but I agree they are both peanut butter... almost the exact same shot map. Rules are close.

Fun games for a larger collection. I wouldn't have both in a small one. I prefer AFM just my opinion though

Maybe some aren't as concerned as others about how much they cost?

The real Peanut Butter and Jelly would be MM and MB. MM and AFM obviously too similiar.
You could say easily say AFM and MB also

There is no doubt that AFM has better balanced scoring.

But in a home environment, who cares? I always play MM and AFM for the wizard modes (Battle for the Kingdom and Rule the Universe) more than I do score. Of course to get to BFTK, it means you have to defeat all the castles anyway.

I don't think anyone said they're exactly the same, but they're very similar (which makes sense, since MM was based upon AFM, that was the entire goal of the project according to interviews). As such they used a lot of the elements that made AFM so successful. It's not a bad thing at all, but to deny that they're not even close rules-wise is a bit of stretch in my opinion...MM is just an enhanced next level version of AFM's ruleset (which for some reason, I actually like less than AFM).

Actually, even when you take out scoring I like AFM better. When you take scoring out and go straight for the wizard mode, I feel like the game devolves into this "start multiball, hit the castle as much as possible" sequence that you just rinse and repeat over and over. In fact, regardless of whether you're going for scoring or the wizard mode, pounding the castle is one of the best strategies. Because of that, it's not one of my favorite games...I feel like every game kind of plays out the same way. I could play it differently, but why? Wizard mode and points both favor the multiball castle attack.

AFM though on the other hand has some things that make it more difficult to do the multiball strategy like that. One, you have to collect a super jackpot to make it to the wizard. That by itself means that you can't just ignore jackpots in multiball. Second, the ships don't respawn during multiball, you can only kill one per multiball, whereas in MM you can kill all of them if you're good enough. AFM also requires a 5 way combo, so getting that going also requires some thought. Basically, the goals are more varied so my games aren't all the same. Now I've heard that destroying the last couple saucers can get monotonous but I've never made it that far or played enough to find out (although I have made it BFTK in MM).

I'm definitely in the minority in my feelings though, most people prefer MM. And in a tourney I would rather play MM, a lot of people are unaware that just shooting the castle is better than actually hitting the jackpot shots for the most part unless certain things are setup.

You're not that alone, I'm with you, I like AFM better too. MM at $8k was too much for me, but if there's an AFM remake for less than that ... I might be tempted.

The only thing similar really is the shoot 3 shots to complete. But MM you can continue to shoot shots to build hurry ups (one of the few things I like on MM) but AFM has the 1bil hurry up so that kinda cancels it out. What is exactly the same on AFM and MM anyways? Rules wise that is:

Wizard mode different. Even how you get to it
Mini wizard mode different.
Multiball rules different.
One game has combos one doesn't

The only thing both games have are 3 inserts Infront of each shot but as stated before after you complete them both games act differently.

But if it makes everyone happy I'll agree that yes each main shot has 3 Inserts so they are exactly the same!

I agree, I don't think it is some kind of huge minority opinion to like AFM more than MM by any stretch at all.

I think AFM is the better playing pin, faster, and generally more in your face and challenging vs MM. But MM has a hell of a lot going for it too!

Is it a bigger minority to like Shadow more than both? I like it because of the difficulty. MM and AFM seem a lot like LOTR to me in the extremely long ball times. Shadow just cuts to the chase and kicks your ass! Last poll between the three, Shadow seemed to be gaining ground.

Just messing around. I have both and love to play each.

It got my vote! It's tough to compare all three given the huge monetary discrepancy, it distorts the playing field.

I have an obvious bias about Shadow's art, but there's no question stock that Shadow doesn't compare to AFM and MM.

Say what?

I can understand saying MM has longer ball times. But AFM? Not in my experience. Maybe I just suck?

It is a much faster game than MM, and I can't remember that my ball times were that long while standing in front of yours, but I only played it once. Others it was never that difficult to keep playing for a while. Now that Shadow you used to own takes serious planning and effort on every nudge and shot or you can expect the worse. I have been playing it almost non stop since it got here. The white rubbers only make it tougher. But I love it!

I wasn't necessarily talking about price or artwork, although you did a very nice job! I was referring to raw gameplay, including layout, modes, and the challenge to complete it. Being that all three were designed by Brian Eddy.

Two awesome games. It's a shame this always has to turn into a $hitstorm about which game is better. I sold my afm. I miss it. 'm sure I'll feel the same way when mm is gone. I don't think any game over $2500 will earn it's keep, so I'll likely have this scenario playing itself out again at least twice more. Lol.

Maybe it's just because I'm a software engineer, but I can see exactly how they did it. They basically just started out with AFM as a base, increased the shots to 9 from 3, modified TA to Royal Madness, changed the martians to trolls (including the bombs, lol), changed the saucer to a castle but still have to destroy it 5 or 6 times, kept the main multiball but changed the rules slightly, kept the random saucer/kickout hole logic, modified the hurryup. This isn't rocket science here, I do this kind of software stuff on a daily basis. TZ is just a derivative of TAF in the same manor. The details might be slightly different, but the underlying structure of the base software is very obvious. They didn't just start from scratch with MM.

Two of the best games ever. Some days I think AFM is better and other days I think mm is better

I agree. I like shadow more as well, hence why Shadow is still here and MM is long gone.

This is why I got another one. It was one of my first machines, and at the time it seemed like too much work. But now I like that work.