If the mods are electrical in nature they would require some level of modification (voltage differences, different connection strategy, etc). Presumably anyone selling said mods would be pretty quick to offer an MMr compatible versions as I'm guessing there will be an immediate market for such a thing in a couple of months.

New system would not support a regular DMD.

I am sincerely not wanting to stir anything up, but you have a combination of true and not true in the above statement. The new games do use the flipper opto boards (good thing), and they do use double-wound coils as Lloyd pointed out in another thread (good thing), and the mechanical parts of the flipper seem to be genuine WMS as well other than I can't speak to the pawl/bolt issue that was mentioned. But the boardset/OS that is driving the flippers is a new design, not Fliptronics. In the interest of fairness it could end up being proven to be better than/as good as/worse than the original, we really don't know at this point until Rick gets some games out in the field as he has said he is planning on doing. Roger Sharpe made no public declaration that the game was using the Fliptronics system.

Yes, I did. But you can at least see my cause for pause at your statement? Someone reading your post would certainly infer they are getting the same system as was used on the old games when they are not. It could be better or worse than old, it's a tad early to declare either way.

The upside of this delay is at least folks will get to hang on to the rest of their cash for a couple of more months since the games are not shipping out in August as was once assumed.

The pre-pay model is kind of a double-edged sword though. When you collect folks money it is natural they are going to want to be informed of progress or problems. The emails and messages are a reaction to the silence. When the last deadline was going to be missed I'm assuming it was known weeks ahead of time given how long it takes to get something ready for an assembly line, why was nothing said earlier? Obviously I'm speaking to the game itself, not this video issue.

If you decide to build your next game without deposits it will totally eliminate this issue. Just announce one day that ??r is coming off the line next week for $?,???.95 each, who wants one?

If pinball has become so twisted that simple capitalism doesn't work here anymore than God help us all Lloyd. In any case I guess it's safe to say that "fear of missing out" is the only reason folks still have money on Wayne's build, if that ever does happen I would hope those dozen or so are completely prepared for what shows up on their driveway after all those years of waiting...

Has there been any talk of the games making an appearance at the Chicago Expo? Or if not will there be any open houses at Chicago Gaming that week?

Rick seems like a good guy but I hate to tell everyone, he made it clear in the big thread that he last posted in (and then subsequently had shut down) that he would no longer be treating anyone to updates on the game progress. So all of us can plead in this thread, or even more hilariously, brown-nose him in the fanboy thread and it won't change this fact. When Rick needs something from the buyers (money, etc.) he will be back.

Frankly I think instead of worrying about the Sharpe video being posted folks should be asking more questions about what happened with the game that if failed testing. Game makers have been putting transformers in pinball machines since the 1930's and they are generally a robust component. The ones that were put in the original MM certainly have held up nicely.

Has anyone else noticed that there have been 2 new adjustments added to the Configuration screen? What do you suppose a "Popper" is? Is that the pop bumpers or would that be like the moat eject or damsel up kick mechanisms?

So does that mean games will be at Expo to try out?

I can think of one great test location that will be coming available in about month. Lots of pinball enthusiasts will already be there...

Rick's silence says MMr won't be at Expo this year which is a bummer if it's true.

I never made the 2015 prediction, but someone that seemed to have insider knowledge of the situation did in the big, gigantic MMr thread just a couple of days before you asked for that one to be shut down. I think the exact quote was "Spring 2015". Could be right, could be wrong.

If you really wanted to dispel these rumors nothing satisfies like some good pictures. If these really are going to be shipping to customers mid-October 2014 there should already be trucks full of cabinets and playfields heading toward Stern...

I hate to always be the resident historian in these matters but I guess that is my lot in life as an old guy. But when the project was first started it was announced it would be "nothing like" the previous MMr project. That all information was going to be above-board and shared with everyone. That the new team "had learned from the mistakes of the past project". That may not be an exact quote but it's close to what Rick said at Expo, I was in attendance there. Oh yea, that the games would also be shown at as many public shows as possible so that everyone could try them out for themselves (Expo yes or no?).

Now we seem to be going down the same communication road that Wayne did. Sorry for mentioning that dirty name here but things would seem to be progressing the same as last time. Folks seem to be keeping it civil so why is the discussion moving away from here?

Makes you kind of wonder why they would go to all the trouble of setting up their own forums if things are that close? But no reason to ask in this thread since all the announcements will come over there, and cross-posting seems to be a violation of the new order of things.

Does that mean we are now free to wildly speculate on this thread?

Except for the fact that you agree to such to even get in over there. I have to admit since I clicked on that I have been incessantly washing and re-washing my hands, and.... I ... just... can't seem to get the shame to wash away. Freedom of speech is overrated anyway.

The really funny thing is you go there expecting to find information and this is all I found:
Babies.jpg

That makes sense. Where else could they make such announcements where a lot of pinball people could see and read about them?

I've never said these will not ship. My exceptions with Rick are not being honest about ship dates, and the assumption that an OS designed by a company with one (failed) other pinball machine is going to be better than the WPC boardset OS. Frankly with what people are paying for this beast I sincerely hope I'm wrong on that second point. I've always said that I hope the games are great and the buyers enjoy them.

Rick himself stated goals for how this project would be handled at the beginning, and ducking into a private forum is not in that spirit.

A sincere Thank You for continuing to keep everyone updated here on your progress. I really hope you are able to meet this schedule as I think it would be cool to see MM on the line being built the last time the Expo crowd will tour the current Stern facility.

Since folks that have paid money toward this are investors in the project maybe you guys could knight one person to sit in on the weekly conference call and report back on Pinside what the status is? That would skip the private forum step and free up Rick for dealing with more important production related issues. A win for everyone involved.

That is interesting. But hasn't U.L. approval been the reason the game hasn't been shown at any shows since Texas? Wasn't that like 6 months ago?

I've been somewhat critical of this project and even I agree with this sentiment. Stern would never churn out something junky as it would impair their own business going forward. Given that they like making money and contract manufacturing is easy money...

What they would do is insist that anything presented to them to build would meet certain standards, and would be designed in a way that it can be integrated into their existing processes and assembly line. I think it's possible that going to Stern to build the games could be introducing some delay in manufacturing the games. But who knows, maybe it really is taking 6 months to get a transformer to pass certification testing?

I've always viewed what Rick is doing as him building a commercial product. Some here seem to think he is starting a religion which they have joined via their $8000 tithe offering. When statements are made that this remake is going to be "better" than the original game I only seek proof of such statements related to the tangible aspects of it's engineered systems. If the answers given are causing you doubt that is between you and the seller.

I'm not even remotely bitter or upset. Are you toward me? Because I ask technical questions about Rick's commercial product?

And also, Wayne DID something?

I'm a fan of the truth in such projects. I'm not a fan of people spouting off anything that is quantifiable that hasn't been actually proven. If someone at this junction wants to say "MMr is going to be great" I have no problems with that. However if they say "MMr is going to be more reliable than MM because it's all new" I call crap on that. Might end up being true, but with no reliability data on the new game it's too early to make that statement. Stuff like that tends to get repeated over and over on forums, and all of a sudden it is accepted as fact.

Believe it or not I support what Rick is trying to do. I just think folks going into this should have all the available facts. This game will be different from the original one: some of those differences will be an improvement, some of them may not be. But whatever it is is what it is, and discovering as much of that now really should be in everyone's interest. When Rick finally responded to my list of questions and posted his FAQ wasn't that a good thing?

Also, there is an update on the project on Rick's forum site in case anyone missed it.

This I will own up to. I do have theories on this project but I have made an effort lately to not post as such anymore. We started this exchange because of my comment about the 6 months of U.L. testing, that isn't a wild theory, that is just me paying attention and following along with the facts as Rick has been presenting them. The fact that someone else then posted from U.L.'s own web site that said such testing should only take 6 weeks... well, anything I said at this point would fall into the conspiracy theory category so I will keep it to myself. Your welcome.

Hopefully at least one decent circuit can be found to plug these games into. No better place to stress test them publically than Pinball Expo with a line of fans playing it constantly. Personally I believe they have been working in the past months to refine their system and the games are going to do great there.

First off, the big general information thread was closed months ago when Rick himself begged the moderators to close it. There is an official MMr discussion thread which has an extended set of rules that everyone must agree to, essentially disallowing anything that would fall out of the category of cheerleader or fanboy speak to occur. There are MMr discussion forums on Rick's web site but clearly nothing but the aforementioned fanboy speak is going to be allowed there.

If you really read what folks are saying in this thread what is being labeled as "negative" or "hate" is simply folks that are seeking proof of what has been said about this new product. If not blindly believing everything a salesperson tells us about his upcoming product really makes us trolls then so be it but I think there have been some good revelations in this thread about this new game. Most recently that we have finally hashed out that it won't use Fliptronics to drive the flippers, but in fact we don't know yet if the new system will be better or worse than the old. This should be important information that everyone should be aware of, anyone wanting to squelch such knowledge would seem to be the true trolls in this debate.

Along those lines there is a new update today that would appear to be good news for folks that are Expo-bound this week.

I tried to post this yesterday but my network connection dropped.

I was going to get some photos during the tour but decided to respect the posted policy not to. The new line is along the far wall from where they always have the tour come into the building. If you have been on past tours it's the area along the back wall where they used to always have stacks of cabinets that had come in from Churchhill. There are several labelled workstations just for MMr production and there appears to be dedicated playfield rigs (not sure what these are called officially) along that wall. There was one assembled game, several populated playfields, one populated whitewood playfield, the cabinets shown in the bootleg photo. I can't think of anything else to report. There are many parts bins at the dedicated workstations but I didn't see a lot of parts, they let the tour get close to this new line so maybe they didn't want folks collecting souvenirs?

All in all it appeared to be what Rick has been saying. A dedicated line that is pretty close to startup as soon as they get their final approvals. In any event they certainly appear to be intending to run these games at the current location before they move to the new facility.

The info from the tour guides concerning MMr was a little boilerplate ("address all questions concerning MMr to the PPS folks"), but they did tell our group that in addition to this separate line they were able to run MMr cabinets down the main line when they get started, so they will be utilizing more of the factory than just this dedicated line.

Sorry I have no pictures to show but hopefully this is all good news to those that are patiently waiting for their game.

Whatever the next show was after Texas (Pin a Go Go?) until today is how long it's been going on. Maybe 6 months or so?

It is interesting that folks that seemed to be knowledgeable on the situation claimed these games wouldn't ship until Spring and they were summarily shouted off the forum. Even claiming 2015 used to be met by hostility, usually led by Rick himself. But here we are at the doorsteps of 2015, and I can tell you factories don't tend to get much done during the winter holidays. Fair to say that there is no longer a chance of everyone getting their game by Christmas, hopefully some still will...

I used to have shameful thoughts like this as well. Folks here fixed me right up! A game this good should take 7 months for UL approval...

The PPS Forum is being restricted to only buyers in the near future. Not sure why they would do that now if the games were really going to be made in 2014. I think you are probably correct.

So what problems have they had with the current forum? I haven't noticed any noise at all on the PPS forum, even in the MMr threads. The implication is he is expecting noise soon, or at least that this is going to be a protracted endeavor or else why put the work into verifying everyone's order number if all the games will be shipped in the next couple of weeks?

Spring.jpg
Too soon?

Chicago Gaming is building all the cabinets and playfields at their facility and transporting them over to Stern for assembly. Neither of those two components would be impacted by UL issues and I have to believe there is a fair amount of lead time on each one. If they are shooting for 2014 shouldn't there be pictures of that production process already cranking those out?

I'm curious how that can happen at this point in time. From a mfg perspective November is done. After that there are 3 work weeks until Christmas week which, unless their work force really isn't into that holiday (and the displays we see setup on the tour say otherwise) I have to assume the place will be a ghost town for the last 2 weeks of the year.

Not to continually agitate you guys but nothing about this situation says 2014 for anyone unless Rick can produce some production pictures right now showing actual work. Historically in the remake endeavors it has been the one thing that keeps everyone honest.

Christmas and Christmas Eve are right in the middle of the production week this year. Same thing for New Year's and New Year's Eve the following week. So you will have significant numbers of folks padding on either side to give themselves long weekends.

Also I took a good look at that secondary line that everyone saw at Expo. It was pretty light on the production setup (no rolling assembly line, just rolling carts). No air lines for pneumatic tools, etc. Expecting them to churn out 250 games with that setup, especially with a lot of staff vacation time being used in December is pretty optimistic. IMHO.

I'd say it's more prophetic than pathetic on Rick's part. All these threads have been fairly civil for a good while now, and yet Rick continues to push this information isolation agenda on what should be the beginning of the great times for everyone that ordered one of these games. Either they are not really as close to production as they are claiming, or Rick is expecting folks to not like what they find under the tree when it does arrive. Otherwise why is he doing this, right now he should be wanting everyone talking about this game as much as possible to entice the fence-sitters to jump on board and order one last minute...

Are you serious? He had an entire thread shut down and locked for that very reason. And for the record what he just asked to be removed from this thread was actually positive information which means his control issues have no limits at this point.

And all of this is preparing for one inevitable conclusion. When the games start shipping Rick is going to make it very clear to his buyers that any problems cannot be discussed anywhere except for his cell phone or his private, locked down forum area. Basically, by agreeing to purchase his 8 grand consumer product he is going to ask you guys to forfeit your right to free speech. "Because to mention issues elsewhere will only invite noise and problems that we don't need", etc. It's coming, guaranteed. And folks that go along with it will be doing neither themselves or their fellow pinheads any favors.

Hopefully the upcoming updates will start to be more visual than text. "Pictures or it isn't happening"

And as far as who should get their games first I vote for the guys that have been on Wayne's list since 2006. Regardless of which trim they picked. Everyone is crapping about a 6 month delay but there are folks that will have waited 8 YEARS for this beast...

If you are referring to my interactions with Rick and his project, he thought enough of me to use my list of questions as the basis for his published FAQ list. And a lot of useful information was learned by all with that. It is possible to be a fan of what someone is doing and still have critical or technical questions about how they are doing it, a point that seems to be lost sometimes on the interwebs.

If you are referring to my history with Wayne and his project please point out anything I ever said in that which wasn't proven 100% true in the end. Critics did not derail that effort, Wayne's lack of a pinball factory (outside of the sign he hammered up) killed that. Assembly lines and the workers that run them are not glamorous, they are expensive to setup and maintain, and contrary to the beliefs of the fanboys of 2006 they are never invisible...

Very true my friend. But that is always referring to unauthorized pictures. They routinely allow (and publish themselves) authorized pictures on the factory floor. It was cool enough to see Gary Stern standing in front of one MM on the line, how cool would it be to see 20 of them lined up?

Just from the recent threads we know there are at least 2 Pinsiders that converted their Wayne order over to a Rick order. Honestly it was kind of shocking to me that anyone was still hanging on this long. Personally I think those people should have gotten their games for the original price quoted but it certainly wasn't up to Rick to do that. I'm just glad they are finally about to be rewarded for their patience.

I have been undeniably interested in the technical aspects of this product. I have stayed out of a lot of the drama (coinmechgate, market devaluation of remakes, the 1200 posts devoted to powercoat color, etc), but the new OS and drive system does interest me. Will it be better than the original? Or worse? We will all soon know which is exciting.

This is the big deal of it all. Everything they are offering as an option adds incremental hassle and cost for an assembly line. The different trims to some extent, but when you have to identify a specific buyer at build time is a real pain.

It is sometimes cool to say you have the 1st/Last something that was built. I think that is a driving force for a lot of the folks that are doing this, I'm not sure if everyone has got the memo that the number is not really driving the build order. But if it makes folks happy so be it.

Production will commence once everyone has picked and paid for their serial number.

They did. It was the only post that ever really got Rick's attention, and that thread got closed on his request about a day later...

I wonder if this has been considered as a solution? Instead of expecting CGC to suddenly become experts in the color DMD process why not just start with the platform they are already providing (the all important color LCD panel that is already on the game) and have the color DMD guys build an add-on solution? It might not be as clean as the software update that CGC could have provided, but they are already in this business so it seems like there would be some motivation on their part.

Because if not you know how this turns out. Either a forever wait on CGC that pisses everyone off. Or, they actually come out with a solution but it is colored differently than the color DMD. So then we begin 100 years of debating which solution "looks nicer" than the other.

Let me go on record right now as saying that if remake #2 happens it will cost *at least* $7995. You guys can bluster on about how you won't pay more than X for any other title, but all Rick has to do is look back on the memory of you all basically knocking him unconscious with rolled up wads of cash at Expo '13 to realize he has zero motivation (or need) for any future discounting...

I'm in for $20 for MSRP for XXrLE #2 being at least $7995! No payment until production games ship. I'll start setting aside my money now so I'm able to cover this bet, I'm thinking 50 cents per month should get me there in time, I can even earn interest off the balance while we are still waiting...

That's actually kind of sad. Has it been empty this whole time (since Alvin G shut down)?

Is everyone forgetting that it was stated a while back that Stern was moving to the new facility around the Feb timeframe? Honestly now that everyone has been forced to come to terms that 2014 isn't happening I think it's time to consider if they will build these prior to or after the move. The "spring" that was predicted a long time ago seems to make more and more sense all the time...

It was always said to be done this way from Rick unless there has been a change. He even mentioned it would be an efficient process because the same trucks hauling cabinets and playfields to Stern would be used on the return trip with the finished games for inspection.

They don't send over 1000 cabinets and playfields at one time. The truck goes back and forth with loads as they are built. Same truck hauls completed games back to CGC.

Did Rick ask you to help out with publicity related to the new game release, or are you just doing technical support?

The issue doesn't impact gameplay at all. Best way to describe it is when the DMD gets really busy (during multiball for instance) you can see this distortion in the center of the screen, running horizontally. It's usually visible for just an instant and then the game seems to catch up and everything is fine. The person playing would not notice it because (presumably) they would be too busy keeping balls in play to look at the screen, but spectators can pick up on it if they are watching the display.

I honestly couldn't say but my guess would be option A. I'm pretty sure I saw it tear during the multiball introduction which would be prior to all the balls getting introduced to the playfield. Plus if you watched it for a while it always seemed to tear at the same times during the animations.

The key takeaway from everything that Rick has said is folks need to be happy with the game in the state that it's been demonstrated to be in at shipment. He has not ever promised there will be any updates or enhancements after the fact, software or otherwise.

As far as the colorization of the dots I am not an expert on that but I did sit in on the Color DMD guys Expo presentation this year. What I saw looked pretty labor intensive for a process and required some proprietary software which they had developed, maybe with CG already having access to the low level code game code none of that would be necessary for them to colorize the dots on MMr but it still seemed like something that would be a lot of work. You have to wonder, will they be working on doing that on the games that are already sold or will they be working to design the second remake title?

You should play one in person before making that assumption. I felt the same way until I saw it at Expo, the emulation does do a nice, old school fade for sure but we noticed that it also caused a delayed effect on turning an insert on or off. You can particularly notice this when you hit the flipper buttons to do the lane change on the lit lights in the lower lanes. I'm sure it can be fixed in software (and may already have been?) but if I were playing it I would probably set the mode to LED and just reduce the brightness a bit, even though I'm an incandescent fan personally.

I would disagree with that in regard to PPS. They are here all the time when they have wares to sell (MMr, Gene garage sale, etc). They just lose enthusiasm when the two-way communication kicks in and folks want to ask question or air grievances. Hence the creation of their own forums where they can censor and delete posts as they please, only it doesn't have nearly the traffic as here which is why they won't abandon this completely.

Stern may have the right idea using Facebook for their propaganda. Wide audience, and as long as you pay someone to monitor it constantly you can delete/remove all of the offending stuff. You better believe Gary Stern would have his PR team here promoting his stuff if they could control things like you can on FB.

The trick is folks today pretty much insist on a 2 way forum, but manufacturers would obviously prefer a one way billboard approach.

You guys can keep preaching this but I guarantee it won't happen. Rick sold out his first title in like 1 day. If the second title take 5 days or even a couple of weeks to sell out he would rather do that than start slashing prices. Comparing these remake games to Stern Pro is not apples to oranges, folks will pay more for the legendary titles from the past than they will for the latest Stern title off the line.

If anything I would expect a price increase down the line now that they know everything that is actually involved in producing these things. And more importantly, that you guys will pay pretty much anything for these games.

If they were exact copies you would be correct. They are not, all new board system and OS running emulated original code. And this will be the first game for the new system, designed by a company that has only one other pinball machine to their design credit. They may have hit the ball out of the park with their first commercial pinball attempt, to early to tell just yet.

The differences have been discussed on these forums pretty extensively but it boils down to one system having 20+ years of usage versus the newer system that hasn't been delivered to any end customers yet (but soon will be). It's the difference between tried and true versus new and unknown.

I'll admit, my skepticism is impressed most by the Chicago location report for MMr. But nothing beats getting it into the hands of 1000+ end users to tell the real tale. I honestly hope it goes well and everyone loves it. The only reason I posted is that it's not like they are cranking out 1000 more of the same thing from 17 years ago, this really is a completely new design and should be judged on how it performs when delivered to the new owners.

I think folks are using the "Report" link when they see an obvious hoax account. When many folks report the same posting I'm guessing the Moderators jump on it pretty quickly.

There are glowing eye trolls and other light up mods for sure for MM. Just be careful that whatever you buy states that it will work with MMr as the voltages and hookup points for electrical mods are going to be different. I know several of the major mod providers have said they will re-engineer their stuff for the new system but you will need to give them time to do that once they get their own games and can figure it out.

Stern does seem to be stuck in a rut of just inventing the next new game, building it, and *then* announcing that they built it and its for sale right at that moment if you want one.

So nobody that has gotten one yet has mentioned the manual/documentation that was included with the games. Are they updated for the new OS? There was also supposed to be included a cross reference for the built-in help screens on the game. What are the goodie bag contents?

Congratulations to all the folks that are getting these new games!

Well, that confirms there is a spiral bound document of some kind included...

Were they not dimpling the playfields with the big press to accomplish this on the first run?

There is a rumor started on the PPS forums that production is temporarily stopping due to a parts issue.

In some ways you almost cannot fault Rick for what has gone on. He is a salesman, not a hobbyist or enthusiast. His job is to hype the product and squash bad talk and problems that might cost sales. What I never understand is the not-on-the-payroll folks that hype a project like this almost maniacally, and squash all attempts at asking technical questions or proof of the product claims as though the act of asking such a question will somehow threaten the project or the timeline...