mjruser's ratings

This is just a great all-around pinball machine with perhaps the best theme out there, great toys and the soundtrack ranks up there with Star Wars for nostalgia! So many I find on-site are getting pretty long in the tooth and often don't play right. This weekend got to put a lot of games on a decent example for the first time in a long time. If I had this game in our collection it would be a keeper for sure. I really think you can keep coming back and having fun on this for a long time.

EDIT: Dropped playfield artwork by 1 after thinking about it a bit more.

This is the game I played the most growing up, they were everywhere and I worked at a carnival arcade that had it as well. For its time this game was really great. I always thought it had the Fonz in the artwork.

This is always a fun game to walk up to and play a few games. Doesn't hold a candle to today's games but I've played it a ton during my drinking years at the pub! The artwork was great for it's time.

IM is a terrific game, the calls outs are easily among the best in the business and you always know what you should be shooting for. It's a very deep pinball machine with excellent rules and lots of great shots. I would of liked the graphics on the big display to be more tied in with the theme and graphics of the machine. Don't get me wrong the animations are fine, but they don't look like the machine. Lighting is good but not great, guess that's why pinstadiums are flying off the shelf for this title. The 'toys and gimmicks' are 'decent' but sitting next to our TZ I can't rate it any better than decent. Without our external sub-woofer on the sound isn't as good as other newer machines I've heard.

We are the second owner of this machine, there is plenty of dimpling on the playfield which is impossible to see playing the machine or running your hand on the playfield. But it's there in the right light.

The cabinet on the standard was clean, but was missing side graphics it's just the title of the movie. I didn't grasp the rules right away, the sound callouts could be improved. Callouts are displayed on the LCD display in the playfield. The skill shot is difficult to figure out. But I really (really) liked the machine (I'm 56 so this is a movie I grew up with and love), the lights on the playfield are amazing. It was sitting next to Dialed in which also has a colorful playfield and it was even better than that. Lots of small 'candy' cut outs in the playfield that sparkle with color. I haven't been able to play the LE, so I don't know how much the wonkavator would add. There were plenty of fun shots and with 4 flippers it was much more interesting than many other machines I've played. e.g. MM only has two flippers with all the shots sitting at the top of the playfield in a 130-degree arc. More inline with TZ's close shots, long shots, skinny shots to the sides. The captive ball rotating hole worked well and was cool. The far upper right shot reminds me a lot of the TZ lock and has a similar shot geometry to it.

I played most of the top 10 games on Friday for over 8 hours and kept coming back to Wonka. It's a great game and will be in our game room someday soon.

I saw dimpling on the playfield after only two weeks the same as on our Stern IM, so I'll be keeping a close eye out for owner reports on issues before I pull the pin on this pinball purchase.

Had this game in our collections for almost twenty years, the kids played the heck out of it and it took far more abuse than our TZ over the years. It's a very fun game, though it's not particularly challenging. If you got it and played it heavily you'd beat it in a few days. Even now I can step up to it in line and get monsters of rock in a handful of games. The ramps are easy and going ramp to ramp over and over becomes almost habit. The artwork and theming is excellent. We bought it NIB and though at times I regret we sold it when the new remakes came out, I was tempted but opted for IM instead and I'm glad for that choice after having IM for a couple of weeks now. Not even close to cracking that game open. Played this again last weekend, revising my ratings a bit. I liked this machine better than I remembered, even after owning it for 18 years :)

We've had our Monster Bash and Twilight Zone in and out of storage for 20 years and they have only seen a couple of years of active play. I've still never gotten lost in the zone, but I've beaten Monster Bash many times. So the long term playability is better in that regards. It's not really the most accessible game, in my opinion, it's not as obvious as Monster Bash or Medevil Madness as to what your goals are. But that adds to the long term playability I guess.