In light of how every pinball project goes, this seems "normal" or "above average" for pinball in light of them actually delivering games.

Only Stern is able to announce games and deliver them in short order. JJP obviously is very late for the 2nd time. Heighway - first customers are still waiting for their games. Skit-B - money gone, no games. Jpop - money gone, no games. Spooky - trickling them out but far more MMRs have been delivered than AMH so far.

Not saying it is great that they have taken so long, but, we are seeing a trend with all companies.

I guess it is more appauling to me because these guys did not even design or make a game. Pathetic that they are taking this long. Shit, they could have given Wally the parts and he would have them all done by now. WTH is the hold up. Over 1 year late on a remake??? WOW!

My take away from this is seeing how difficult and slow it has been, what a joke it was that we believed people without a factory could deliver us games (skit-b, jpop).

It's funny to see certain a certain someone shout this project down, considering his track record on other upstart pins.

Yeah, but we probably need to put PPS in that same category. I would say they have done less total work at this point. The have 'remade' a game and contracted for Stern to build them and that seems to still have not made it work.

If anything the real take home for me is how amazing Spooky is. These guys have built a brand new game from scratch, built a small production facility from scratch, built their own dedicated board to run the games, and have done all of this crazy quick compared to all these other morons.

The stark dichotomy of Rick attempting to remake a game where most of the parts were previously remade and his inablity to get the job done in a reasonable time vs Spooky full startup from scratch, delivering weekly, and already designing #2.

Lets see >> Predator supporter = fail
Spooky supporter = win

batting 50% is better than not even taking a swing yancy.

I am just utterly amazed that this project is not even done. What is the realistic excuse? Rick has all the money in the world, more than half the mechs previously remade, and a contract for Stern to manufacture, yet it still sits with 200? made and over a year past his own promise of delivery. Seriously, what is the root cause for this failure?

Making pinball machines is hard.

Why not just be happy that it actually got done? Happy for those that are going to get one? This drives right back to Robin wanting pinside to be a friendlier place. Why continually pound on the negative of something? Yeah, it took longer than they originally expected it to. Sure, it may be longer than you personally think is reasonable. But does it do any good to keep braying about it?

I would say if anything , the negative is 8million dollars (8k per machine for 1000 of them?) sucked out of the hobby and the pause button being pushed for so long with so little positive coming out.

Hopefully the good that comes out of this is more of us waking up and not giving rich guys our hard earned money to play with for years.

I don't care if it is a startup or a well recognized manufacturer of pinball (PPS), this is just more evidence of the failure of these greedy guys playing ua all for a sucker.

If Robin really wants Pinside to be a friendlier place then stopping people from discussing the failures of pinball is not going to help. He needs to dig to the root and remove any discussion of the failures all together. Let's not forget that Rick (just like SkitB) was using Pinside to communicate all the time at the onset of this when riding the hype train.

Congratulations, you're officially as smart as a coin.

LOL, nice!

I have bet on others and hopefully very soon my batting average will go up.

This project is very late, which is a tremendous bummer, but it's the opposite of a failure. The games are being made and generally have been very well received. I would think you of all people would appreciate the difference.

the latest info updated within old posts...

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/mmr-nib-repair-kit

No, by chicago gaming.

I mean, the 'design' phase of the game is the easiest part, honestly. Coming up with art / ideas and flipping whitewoods is not the time consuming part of the game! (That's why Kevin and JPOP were able to sell so many games having only executed the easiest part). The software had to be ported. The hardware had to be redesigned. All the parts needed to be tolerance tested. The manufacturing process needed to be refined. Vendors need to do test runs of cabinets, artwork application, etc and then resubmitted if it isn't right the first time. beta games needed to be evaluated. Any mistakes happen. I'm sure KISS or other games had mistakes and were delayed too. The only difference is that KISS was only announced after everything was ready to go. To think you can just copy/paste the Williams version of the game and manufacture it flawlessly is misguided.

UL testing took a lot of time as well for MMR and added many months to the production start, and Spooky did not do that.

There's about 250 MMRs delivered so far, twice as many AMH.

I love Spooky, but let's be fair here.

Very true. Both MMR and AMH came on the radar around Expo 13 and Spooky shipped completed games first.

Spooky understands and cares about their customers and realizes that being open and transparent helps them regardless of the situation. Charlie doesn't spend his time telling us how wonderful his games will be or bragging about his expertise - he just quietly and tirelessly works to build a company he would be proud to buy a pinball game from. And that has garnered him an incredible amount of well-deserved admiration and goodwill in the hobby.

True, but the UL issue just exposed the incredibly poor project management by PPS/CGC. Almost all of the delay introduced should have been avoided in the first place, especially with the self-proclaimed master of Project Management involved ...

Not really fair to compare the number of games built to date when you are comparing Stern's assembly capacity to Spooky's. The decision by PPS/CGC to approach Stern to do the manufacturing was one of their best moves. I'd hate to imagine where the MMR project would be if they were manufacturing it themselves (though the decision to have CGC do QC is still a head scratcher for me)

still no word on what happened to our games that were promised back in april?

I can confirm PPS just posted yesterday on their forum that the line is restarting early (today), with more silver, and then black and gold. Nice to get this going two weeks early. Hopefully the start/stop crap is over.

UPDATE: I ordered black from JJP in August 2014. I was just told there are about 60 people w/black ahead of me in line. So if you ordered from JJP maybe this helps you figure out where you are in the queue.

I don't think Whysnow was saying that MMR itself was a failure, but rather that the management of the process and customer expectations was.

Listening to Rick at the Expo announcement, he was confident he was going to avoid all the problems that had tripped others (with not-so-subtle jabs at JJP). Everything was designed and ready to go - for the most part all they needed was the green light from WMS. As it turns out, that was pretty much all wishful thinking and the project wasn't righted until long after the first games were supposed to be shipping.

The other key point was that $8M was (theoretically) frozen from any other pinball purchases, at least for six months. That wasn't good for anyone other than PPS.

Rick says there are plans in place for quite a few more remakes ... If they can do 2-3 titles a year and meet demand and quality expectations, I think we'll be able to call the WMS remakes a success.

Yes, let's be fair.

Spooky designed a game from scratch. Rules, Art, Sounds. Making sure the layout was fun and worked. Ramp shots, . . . .

MM has been around for a decade and a half. Rule, Art, Sounds . . .

PPS and CGC and Stern while the Spooky guy are putting them together themselves. Wow, let's fair?

Oh, and AMH shipped with coin mechs (ok, that was sarcasm)

That will never happen. I would call one title every 2-3 years a success.

well if we want to be fair then lets talk more accurately about number of games actually built by the company...

Spooky > around 75 currently?

PPS > Zero and waiting on the people they contracted to do it.

Games designed:
Spooky = 1 and working on #2
PPS = Zero

Games with positive, effective and personally accuontable communication:
Spooky 1 and working on #2
PPS = Zero

If this was a report card I think we know where the clear A student is and whom will be going to detention.

bingo

I am happy for all getting the game that are happy with it.

Appauled at the poor management which is compounded by the really bad (cocky some would say) expectations set by Rick/PPS.

What a ridiculous post. Those are meaningless metrics (other than communication). MMRs and AMH are both shipping. Abandon the absurd semantic gymnastics, it just weakens your point.

It wasn't pps that delayed anything. Church hill and development, licensing etc. Even Rick said he should of waited to say anything until production started, which is what will happen on future games... Learning experience.

Oh man that is ridiculous. Spooky is their own everything. Where PPS has to work with CH and stern and Williams.

You would call 10 titles in 20 years a success?

How many people will want to buy a Theater of Magic remake in 20 years?

PPS has already pretty much squandered the remake window. One title every two years (or even a year) is not going to excite many potential customers. And if Stern, JJP and others continue to move forward, WMS remakes will appeal to fewer and fewer collectors as we get further away from 90's pinball.

One title every 2-3 years will absolutely doom the remakes unless they can seriously undercut other NIB options on price and become a value alternative.

I get this argument with regard to JPop and Skit-B, where millions that could have been spent on other pins simply "disappeared." But how does it apply here, where people were able to get refunds on MMr if they wanted (as both you and I did) or sell their pre-order spots, and I doubt even the biggest skeptic would bet that the remaining MMrs won't eventually ship? In fact, if PPS had shipped quickly while enthusiasm was highest they'd probably have sold more total units, leaving even less money for non-MMr pinball purchases!

You need to go back and listen to Rick's announcement at Expo. There was certainly no indication ANY of these items were an issue. The two outstanding items were WMS final approval and where the games were going to be made (though that was only briefly mentioned). While PPS technically may not have delayed anything, this was a PPS project until things started going poorly and then it became a CGC project.

Easier said than done. Only Stern has shown they can do this.

"Rick" and "learning experience" are terms that generally don't go together.

AFM @ $4500 please. I will even provide my own coin mechs for it to go on route.

I don't think there are 10 economically viable titles. Three or four titles over the next 6-10 years is about the best scenario I can envision. If that's not success, then I guess success isn't realistic. But as long as I eventually take delivery of an MMR, that's good enough for me.

I agree with yancy, just don't see why they've got to pump out new games at Stern's rate to be a "success." Unlike Stern, PPS/CGC doesn't have the overhead issue where it needs to keep its line running constantly. There are a limited number of titles that will sell well as remakes so it could make sense to spread them out a bit and try to maximize sales on each title, rather trying to burn through them all in a year or two (especially given that only a subset of the buying market is going to be interested in remakes).

Ultimately they'll be a "success" if PPS and CGC (or whoever else ends up licensing these titles) makes a profit on the games going forward. If they're "doomed" it will be because they cannot refine the inefficient (and presumably costly) manufacturing process that lead to the MMr delays, not because they can't pump out 2-3 titles per year.

It wasn't that $8M was lost (or had the JPOP/SkitB risk level attached) but the MMR announcement essentially tied up that money for 6-10 months before we saw significant numbers of folks getting their deposits back and "freeing up" their $8k for presumably other pinball related use.

As for potential lost sales - I think you're correct. Someone else speculated that demand for MMR has dipped to the point where there may not be a need for many/any standards to be produced. That's not good for the long term viability of remakes as it shows the demand/interest is very time sensitive.

I don't think there are either, but Rick was the one that came up with the numbers.

AFM, MB, CC(C) and BBB might have a shot. Any other title appears to be very wishful thinking.

i don't even care about their profits. they'll be a success if i get my game and it's awesome.

Agree. The risk I see with spending them out is the subset of the market interested in remakes is more likely to shrink then grow over time. I just don't see a 10+ year window/market for remakes at anything near MMR price or unit levels.

AMH doesnt have UL approvals...so there's that.

Edit: CGC had design to do for MMr...the game design was done, sure, but the hardware and emulation is all new. You act like they just had to build something that was already done. That just isn't true.

I hope you're not trying to corner the market on coin mechs. No one likes a profiteer.

i would add TAF (yes, i know, licensing), TZ, TOM, IJ, TOTAN, and WH2O, although not quite at MMR's price point. maybe even secondary titles like Scared Stiff, if they really get the remake process refined and streamlined.

Yes, this is true for any type of product though. Hype sells, long waits damper enthusiasm. The longer the wait the greater the reduction of hype and a more lethargic view is taken by many.

I want MMr to be a success and I want to see more remakes come down the line. I hope PPS gets their butts moving and Stern helps them do so to get these MMr's pumped out and to people in one big massive run.

Why do people feel this would be a hard license to acquire? Old movie assets like this just are not in demand (they could be acquired fairly cheaply I am sure).

the rumor is Raul Julia's estate is really hard to deal with. The Pinball Arcade had to do a kickstarter to get all the licenses involved, and still couldn't use the likeness of the actor who played Pugsly, or Christopher Lloyd (who played Fester).

Pinball Arcade got the TAF license recently, but had to change the art to modify likenesses of Fester and Pugsly because the actors were playing hardball. So I imagine a similar deal could be worked to make a physical table, but there's the question of whether buyers would be put off by the art changes moreso than they were with a virtual table.

[EDIT: pezpunk beat me to it]

Ya but we are seeing and thinking this as all hind sight. He didn't know then this would be a cluster f. We also aren't in this business making the deals and doing the stuff...so it is way to easy for you me and everyone to bitch about it.

Ah, makes sense. Thanks.

I didn't know the art was changed! I never looked hard. Interesting.....