Who is getting the 2017 Hobbit Update Thread ready? Too early?

There will be people who put money down on Hobbit 4 years before getting their pin. Ouch.

Those pics are great. Looks like real progress. Really looking forward to seeing the first new owner threads being posted within the next month.

That Hobbit stream is very cool. The game play on Hobbit looks super fun from watching this. Certainly no issues with speed or weak flippers. LCD looks great. Pin overall looks fantastic. I can't wait to play one of these bad boys. Glad to see that they are shipping!

Well, I got to play Hobbit. I'm not going to go into a real deep review, but I will give some brief impressions.

Game is gorgeous in person. I mean it looks great in pictures too, but it just isn't as impressive as seeing it in person. I think the LCD screen looks incredible in terms of quality, sharpness, contrast and overall how it is implemented. Very impressive. This is much more impressive to me than how the LCD is used on WOZ.

When I played it, I was thinking how big and empty the middle of the playfield was, and I really wasn't sure that I would like it. However, this changed pretty quickly. The pop ups (aka "trolls") can quickly make that big open playfield seem much more crowded, especially if you get all four of them going up and down at once (I only noticed that during MB). The trolls do come up quite a bit, apparently with every other roll over in the inlanes. But they don't stay up for long since they are hurry up shots. They are very well lit by LEDs from below. Nice.

The thing I was probably the most surprised by and was very important to me, was how satisfying and smooth the shots were. I think there is something about the open wide body playfield that makes those long shots to the ramps and orbits more satisfying than normal. The orbits really feel great when you hit them cleanly, and the sounds of the spinners help tremendously with how good those orbits feel. The ramps are similarly smooth and satisfying. The one I played seemed to have the flippers dialed down a bit so they were just slightly weaker than I would have preferred, but based on other videos I've seen like the one above, I know that this will not be an issue.

As for code, I know that there is a lot more to come, so it's probably not really even worth commenting on at this point. I would be surprised if the code doesn't turn out great given who is working on it.

So glad that this long delayed pin is finally shipping. I will be ordering one.