Quoted from C0untDeM0net:The problem with Munsters (all related to the pro as I have not played a premium) is it lacks polish and diversity and I don't think it's noob friendly at all. It's nice you can get a quick multiball on herman as a noob but that's about it. Spot is not fun for anyone, no one knows what lily does (ooh yay switches score more but not enough to do much), I've only a few times seen a noob start Raven and that was via the grandpa scoop, and grandpa is flushed out and the best non multiball mode. Marilyn and Eddie are wasted characters. Dragula awards meaningless bonuses. Once you make it to munster madness you have seen everything there is to see. Not one noob I've seen has hit the zap button or even figure out what that means. It really does quickly become a grind to get to the multi balls as that is where the fun is. I have zero motivation to go through the 5 modes to get back to munster madness after getting there the first time and I never had.
Plus it has quite a few bugs that have never been fixed with multi player modes and the fact that you can stack grandpa on spot if you do it in the right order. Actually part of my strategy to get to the multiballs with 6x playfield. Pretty sure that is not intended though. The light shows are pretty blah and the callouts get old quick. There is very little build up to the multi balls and no fan fair once you complete munster madness. Game just quietly goes back to going through the modes. It has serious score balance issues favoring the kitty shot over all else which is not NOOB friendly at all. Funny that secret mania and midnight madness have been touted as the best modes in the game lately.
Anyway, I think there is a ton that could be done to this game to make it a real winner if the care is put into it. It's not clear at all if that is going to happen and I do feel ripped off that they just stopped working on this machine after a few months. Dwight might have said the rules were done but that doesn't mean the coding is done, the care is done, the polish is done, or the machine is finished but apparently in this case that is what it means. When I bought I was not aware it was "done". Not everyone has stern insiders and gets secret info. I watched the reveals but didn't hear the one little sound bite and all the talk on the forums was just wait as the code matures. Stern never published that the game was done in their marketing material.
Over the years it's become the expectation that Stern ships machines with bare code and then improves on them over a year or more and you at least feel like you get your 6k+ money worth. 3 months is about what was given to this. V0.96 - March 11, 2019 was the last big code change release. Since then it's just been topper support and minor tweaks to lighting and scoring. Had I bought Black Knight instead I'd at least feel like I got my money out of it even if it's not the best game out there. At least it's still getting major updates.
To me TMNT looks like Munsters with a third flipper, a more interesting magnet, and deeper code so IF that machine does turn out good in another 6-12 months maybe I'll replace my Munsters with it but not holding my breath at this point and certainly going to wait. My 2 cents anyway
I really do hope they take the time to do a proper polish update to this game. I really love the layout and the look of the machine.
You’ve made some very good points here that Dwight should be made aware of. Please email him directly: [email protected] and [email protected] and [email protected] and [email protected] and [email protected]
Please don’t give up the battle to help reverse the travesty on Stern’s lack of lazy coding on our fab Munsters machines. It takes us all emailing them to light a fire under what Otto correctly identified as “lazy coding” on Sterns part.
It is marketing nonsense talk to say this game was intended for Noob’s. If they are going to discount their coding effort with that lame excuse, then give us all a couple grand rebate and we’ll accept that as being fine.
As Otto stated, if Stern had put half the code in that Dwight has put into turtles, we wouldn’t still be discussing this and Stern would have many more sales of Munsters; a game that has everything else going for it. Tired of hearing a near $14k game here in Oz was intended to be simple, with a price equal to TMNT that is intended to be deep and have more code and depth than Munsters by leaps and bounds.
This doesn’t mean I don’t love and enjoy Munsters. For the price we all paid, it deserves the similar treatment TMNT, BKSOR, JP, ST, DP, IMDN etc. have all received. Shallow unfinished coding is Munsters current state, with no modes for Eddie, Marlyn, Lilly, nor much for Grandpa or Herman for that matter. There are small holes and errors all over the place on Munsters code, with few call outs or included show material modes. These coding omissions by Stern is the only thing that our Munsters machines lack. It’s a joke that we are all regarding secret mania and midnight madness, which can only be seen at midnight, as some of the best modes in Munsters.
Yes, Dwight takes his marching orders from Stern. I hold them accountable as we all should. Email them today with your thoughts and ideas. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Don’t give up please and accept the tired old worn out nonsense this USD $9,000.00 game was just meant to be simple. That is hogwash to the nth degree and an easy way for Stern to get away with jilting us, after seeing what they put into TMNT. Night and day difference in code. Each at the opposite ends of the code effort scale.
I’m buying a TMNT LE and wasn’t going to because Dwight coded it. But have decided, it’s not Dwight’s fault, rather it’s Sterns fault not allocating enough resources to make our Munsters machine great! Please email all parties about this travesty of Munsters coding omissions. That’s the only reason why Munsters resale values are lowest of all the modern day Stern’s and that is pure greed and laziness on the part of Stern. Munsters deserves the same treatment as all their other recent offerings. TMNT is a shining example of what our Munsters code should look like period. After all it has the same lead coder, just not given the same amount of time by Stern to make Munsters great, as he’s done for TMNT!