A dark night for Stern

Cgc - customers are tired of waiting for shipping and pricing info on mbr. Stern showed toppers for older games at the factory. Nothing at expo new wise for Stern and Jjp so far. American pinball may steal the show with Octoberfest. Circus Maximus who knows when - if they will ever ship Circus, let alone get Kingpin into production.

So my opinion is that all companies are dark accept American Pinball at this day 1 of expo. Day two could be a diff story. Hopefully some surprises are revealed in the next couple days.

I think Octoberfest will be a return to the whacky, campy humor we all loved about 90's games. Dialed In had a touch of it, but while I love that game, it wasn't really all that funny. My utterly baseless prediction is Octoberfest will be a huge hit.

Don't say all because while I didn't mind it then I really don't care for it anymore, even back in the day I much preferred Terminator and STTNG, DM, Shadow to SS, MM, AFM etc. the bad jokes and terrible music get real tedious real fast. I doubt I'm the only one.

Fair enough, but since Stern is the major player these days and they only do licensed themes, only Deadpool has been even remotely comedic recently other than Dialed In. Big Lebowski too, but I'm one of a relatively small number of players who have had enough time on the game to hear all the dialogue. I think the interests of your demographic have been well sated recently. Give me something stupid, cringy, over the top, filled with beer barrels and bad oom-pah music and I will die a happy man.

I like all the details in Oktobefest and wish Stern would do this once, hoping Elvira 3 has everything. Sterns pins always seem to flow good that others can’t match just wish more in them for the price.

Stern has always had the flow with gameplay.

Ritchies next game is unlicensed

Yes I know that’s what I mean always flow in Sterns that I can’t seem to find in other company’s as much.

A good number of Stern games flow so well because there's a standard left ramp and right ramp that return the ball straight to the flippers and two orbits on nearly all of their games. Combine that with little else on the playfield in terms of items that actually interact with the ball / player and any game with such layout will play fast. I like flow but at some point it starts becoming overrated with the games costing $5500+ for a pro, $7500+ for a premium, and nearly $9k for an LE. At those prices I want multiple interactive features as that's why I'm personally paying the $5.5k-$9k for a new pinball machine of all things.

Stern must love it when they read "that magnet slows down the game", "that toy will stop the ball", "oh that mini playfield just stops the flow", as it's all the more reason for them to put less in games and increase their profit margins, lol.