I think you mean lack of fudge.

You wouldn’t start paying car insurance on a car when you put a deposit down so why would you add a pin you don’t have but only put a deposit down? Your deposit is just a place holder. You don’t own the game yet.

As I explained on previous occasions: if a game is listed in my collection, people know by looking that I don’t need it in trade. I do a lot of trades and people even sometimes ‘cold call’ me via PM asking about a trade. You might not like (or approve of) my reason, but there it is. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why it would matter to anyone - you manage your list, and I will manage mine. I might just go add a half dozen titles that I have no intention to even aquire…just to make some of you crazy! How will you even KNOW? MUHAHAHA!

Damn nice collection, @Gribbs, even if it's imaginary.

If you’re on a family road trip to Wally World, and you see this…that’s Christie Brinkley, you in-disguise hotel chain owner you.

1D409ECB-7693-4249-BA93-6D2AC07219B5 (resized).jpeg

I do feel as if I’m living some wild pinball dream sometimes! I’m a bit addicted!

Like you're the first to do so. You think I really own a Big Bang Bar just because I list it in a collection on the internet?

I heard they considered hiring Christie for the live action but her acting was deemed not “campy” enough.

Ok, I know her know now.

You play pinball with the face pressed to the glass? Does it increase scoring?

Hmmm. My spouse, Donna, is a wonderful wife and mother to our kids.

Neither Bo nor Christie can compete with her then (when we met in 1998) nor now. She supports my pinball obsession with enthusiasm and that, in itself, makes her a 10.

Screenshot_20230413_203357_Google (resized).jpg

Screenshot_20230413_203517_Gallery (resized).jpg

Screenshot_20230413_205840_Google (resized).jpg

See, this guy is gonna settle for nothing less than injection molded toys guys...

Awesome!
Any chance she is also enthusiastic about a game involving tanks and ice cream?

I get it. It is the same reason I have Christie Brinkley listed as my wife on facebook.

meh, I think you can better. Was Bo Derek already claimed?

…because she is GOING to be soon? Sure, that is a PERFECT corollary! There is only ONE difference: I don’t give a SHIT what you list anywhere.

Been a while since I visited the thread. Went back 2 or 3 pages and didn't see any mention:
https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/pnp-ep-525-christopher-franchis-last-interview

I have too much time working on a PC 8-hrs a day to listen to meaningless stuff. So funny though, Franchi literally says again: "All I was saying is that nobody gets the hottest wife, like when you got married you settled for someone that wasn't truly perfect and doesn't have everything you want". Either that dude is a virgin or he really is not happy with his wife.

“Well, we did our best”

7398970B-1085-44C6-B817-88C5FEA07527.gif

If he's married he's oblivious to the silent heartbreak an insensitive comment like that would instill in any spouse. He should have simply said, "I regret that comment." Instead, he keeps steeping in his own fudge.

It’s alright. Franchi’s come and gone. He’s said his peace. Ail is quiet. What happens next? My guess is he raises his head sooner. It’s alright to step back, take a deep breath and disappear from podcasting to reclaim your life. I was sad to hear Franchi say he feels the need to stay focused on work so much. Everyone deserves downtime, every day and they should make it a priority, if possible.

Here’s another fitting Galactic/livestock pun...

“Why buy the cow when you can have the milk for free”

I’ll throw some coin into a GTF if I ever see one on route but I’m never buying it.

Milk it for all its worth!

Got a chance to play this at pinbrew. Game looks amazing. New cabinet and artwork is a+ . On screen stuff better then I thought. Gameplay is a dog

Why did you think it was a dog?

Giant bash toy took up too much space. Not many satisfying shots. Code seemed disjointed.

It was a stupid comment, but I think heartbreak by spouses is a stretch. I don't know about your wives, but my wife is not affected by what somebody on a pinball forum says.

I also played it at Pinbrew, I assume it's the older version without the reinforced stand ups on the tank because it was constantly bouncing up over the flippers and against the glass. The one loop shot felt good but other shots were just okay. Didn't play enough to have a strong opinion on the code, but the modes felt fine. . . not super inventive or interesting, but adequate.

It definitely looks beautiful in person though. Best lightshow since Tron and just lovely playfield art. Couldn't hear the music or voices so no opinion there. I'd play it on location but nothing made me feel like I needed to own it.

Just got back from PinBrew in which I played this game over the course of 3 days, probably amounting to playing it 5 times and watching others play it. Here's my overview:

Let's start off with the most important fact, and that was despite having two games there, they were both malfunctioning constantly. Both of them. Every time I looked over, whoever was operating them either had the glass off, or the playfield up in the air. It was funny and then it was just sad.

Every single game I played on them, I had an issue, despite what machine I played on. Here's some I catalogued:

-Ball would get hung up on an orbit switch. Happened on each machine, different orbit.
-Balls would get stuck/jammed in the right VUK
-Magnet would sometimes not catch the ball when it should.
-Ball got stuck under the upper right spinner gate.
-UFO wasn't moving on one of the machines.
-The plunger was whobbiling up and down on one of the machines.
-I asked the tech to turn the sound up b/c I had trouble hearing it. He did, and then it was SUPER LOUD. I asked him to find a middle ground, he said there was none. Apparently when he would hit the volume to go up or down, instead of going 5, 6, 7, 8, etc... it would go 5, 6789, 10. The switch was too sensitive or something. It was either 5 or 10, no in between.
-Speaking of sound, I don't know what was up with the speaker system, but it was a bit high pitched. Some of the callouts I heard fine, but when there was lots of sound effects, voices were drowned out.
-Sometimes I would see a character pop up that was supposed to be talking, their mouth would move, but no audio from them.
-I'm not sure if there was a ball search
-The cowabonga mode had stupid high scoring. Like, one shot would be easily over 100M. Was super easy to do. I saw a friend's score jump by a billion from that multiball.
-There were frequent air balls from the tank.
-The glass rattled horribly
-The auto launcher was intermittent on one of the games, so I had to manually plunge the ball during multiballs.

I managed to get grand champ on one of the games. Basically just avoided shooting the tank unless I was in multiball or got so bored that I shot it anyways. For a good player, the game seemed pretty easy if you ignore the tank and just shot the other shots.

There's probably much more, but I'm exhausted. I'll talk more in detail about the positives on the podcast, but seriously, they should be ashamed of shipping a game this broken.

Did you get fudge packing champion too?

Our game is playing on location for weeks now without any of that... after being beat on at TPF... so I wouldn't expect Nick's experience to be the norm.

The game on location I played was great.

Totally different from the GF loving Nick. Almost none of the BS he is describing.

Played it 5 times. That’s hilarious. When you look at a person’s “collection” to get a feel for “bias” and/or wtf they know what they are talking about. It’s right there on full display. All you need to know

These guys like him and Kaneda need the drama to “tune in”.

The podcast?

The jig is up guys, iceman44 caught me. If you look at my collection, you will indeed note that I have a bias towards working games and ones that don't involve fudge packing, er, "pumping and drilling".

Others may note that this is nice way to respond to my personal experience. It wasn't a personal attack, just letting others know that he has had a better experience, which is great. I'm only here to share my experience, and it wasn't good due to the numerous documented issue.

Oh! I remembered a couple others:

-The flippers started getting weaker over time
-The balls weren't releasing from the locks and had to be fixed.

Both games were beautiful. Both games were a hot mess.

It took me 9 tries to lock 3 balls up top. The post kept malfunctioning. When I finally started the multiball, I locked a ball up top during the multiball. It never came back down. It just was stuck up top. The ball search wouldn't clear the top post. I was having a fantastic game and had to reset it

Wow sorry you had a bad experience, clearly those games had issues. Other than making GC, did you find anything positive about the game?
Maybe not - Yikes!

There are....lots....of issues with GTF, regardless of what some folks want to think. I played it a ton at TPF, mostly up in JJ's suite, isolated from the noise.

I wanted to like it a lot, but alas, not anything I'd want.

But that is ok, in no world are we all going to 100% like all of the same games. If folks are willing to be GTF owners with the current state of the game, so be it.

You said it. Right there on full display.

Wtf are you talking about? Packing fudge?

Well to be fair, early games often have some issues regardless of manufacturer. Appreciate any being brought forward now on these location/show games.
You may not have had issues with Halloween but that was not the norm initially for owners and Spooky began addressing them.

Nobody cares about your 5 games or the podcast where you will reveal whatever.

But thanks for the analysis.

I had a great experience on location twice. Judge for yourself though.

Fits what I like. Look at my collection of games. Getting GFCE too.

Drama queens?

I thought the art was great: cabinet, playfield, and backglass. Someone else mentioned a couple of weeks ago that it reminded them of Cinemaware games from the Amiga, and I would agree.

The lighting was fantastic.

The trend with games being released these days is to make them longer playing, with safer shots. So in theory, a game with dangerous shots like the tank is up my alley, if anything to break up the monotony of these longer playing games. But at the same time, you're pushed to avoid shooting it, so that it tends to play longer if you're a good player, somewhat negating the intended shorter experience.

I found my shorter playing fix there with Pulp Fiction. Absolutely loved it. Didn't see them working on any issues once, despite the fact that it was constantly played. Going to add that to my collection when it's released.

Thanks for feedback. I too enjoy shorter ball time games. Believe AP mentioned they were working on code where tanks would get harder (and more critical) as you rank up and advance. I’ll need to watch stream again.

Would be interesting to see code address avoiding hitting the ‘advancing’ and ‘attacking tank’ with some kind of penalty:
- reduced point percentage for other modes or
- reduction in your overall score (as your base takes damage) - animations of the tank firing on YOU.
I mean, you are in a battle right? Has to be some kind of penalty for not engaging the enemy
I’m confident Joe will address the unbalanced cow scoring we saw on JD’s threat and the mechanical issues will be addressed by AP. I have more confidence in that than my experience with the MULTIPLE fixes I had to do myself on JJP’s GnR out of the box.

I walked away from it when 2 balls got stuck in the VUK.

Bummed to see all the issues with this game. It looked so promising. Just a shit show! Hope they fix with code and better QC before they ship any of the games to collectors and arcades.

I had a ball hang up on a orbit switch at TPF. I know American is getting their playfield from Bader, same as Spooky.. are the playfields slightly thinner then usual like new Spooky games?

Must have recovered some way as I haven’t cleared that myself. Sorry you had an issue

Are you sure? Must be “user error”.