OK...have some time to organize my thoughts....
ASSEMBLY
All the lower cabinet needs is the legs bolted on. All the main assembly effort is putting together the backbox. Everything is pretty straightforward to build...very much like an item from IKEA. One little gripe is the holes for the dowels are drilled a little too deep, so when you go to assemble the other end of the joint, you only have about a 1/8" nub of dowel sticking out to guide you. Otherwise, all the joints go together pretty easily and simply. Having an electric screwdriver makes this process go much easier.
PART QUALITY
The cabinet and artwork is really nice. Bright, vivid colors on the sides of the cab and the backbox side panels. One thing I might have changed is to bring the background "starfield" look around the front of the cab. It's just plain black with the Marvel and Arcade 1up logos. The translite is direct printed onto a piece of plexi, but it still looks good.
As I mentioned above, my only gripe is some of the tactile surface edges are a bit rough. While I can forgive the edges of the legs being that way at this price point, it's not excusable on the corners of the lockdown bar where your fingers rest. In addition, be VERY careful if you ever take that bar off, as there are two Philips head screws on the ends that hold it in place. On mine, one of the screw heads is nice and smooth, but the other is a bit rough, as though it had been re-torqued at some point and the "+" part stripped a little.
Also, the corners of the shooter rod metal housing are quite pointy. Since you need to use that button underneath to select a game (or even do some actions during a game - looking at you Thor), it can rub you a little wrong if you go for it quickly. I'm actually giving serious consideration to re-locating that button to the left where a traditional Start button would be. Also some plastic flashing around the shooter knob itself is still present. Clean up your injection molding die seams, guys.
SOFTWARE/GAMEPLAY
Here's where my major complaint in the game lies. Yes, there IS flipper lag. It's more noticeable on games I know like X-Men and Fantastic Four, and less on games I don't know. However, at the end of the day, making your shots is all about timing, and it definitely takes getting used to the delay before you can start really hitting what you're aiming at. As I mentioned above, there's even bigger delay from the button push to the solenoid firing. I really wish there was a menu setting where you could manually change the delay. But since there is not, you just have to get used to it. It's a bit less distracting if you turn off the solenoids, but then you're killing one of the main selling features of the game. "Seamless"? I don't think so. Meh.
The graphics look pretty good so far. I haven't noticed any glitches or other hang-ups. Everything seems to run pretty smoothly, except for the aforementioned flipper lag. Oh, one item that's kind of funky....the "DMD" screen has the single color dots from the original FX games, but it almost looks like there's a slightly bigger gap between the top half of the pixels and the bottom half. Makes it look like a tiny black line is running through the display, and I don't remember seeing that artifact on my Xbox.
Otherwise, everything else is ported over almost perfectly from the Zen/FX stuff. One thing I noticed is that some of the video modes will only take up a portion of the screen (Baxter Building in FF), while others (Serpent in Fear Itself) take up the whole screen. One cool detail is that when you play a multi-player game, the color of the DMD changes for each player. For example, on X-Men, Player one was amber dots, and Player 2 was yellow dots. Kinda cool, but to be candid, I've been spoiled by ColorDMD and would have liked to see those dots fully colorized.
OVERALL IMPRESSION
Let's be real folks. For $550 bucks, you're not going to get top of the line stuff. For what it is, I think they did a pretty good job. I'd have much preferred them to maybe have the screen a bit bigger at 27", but I understand they have to keep tight reins on the BOM somewhere. I like the overall 3/4 scale package, as it reminds you that this is not a real pinball, and really can't be held to the same standards. The main word my wife and I use to describe this little guy sitting next to our other real pins is "cute". I just wish they would have dialed in the flippers a bit better. Because ultimately, that's what makes or breaks your game.
FINAL GRADE
B.....minus
(come see me after class 1up, I know you can do better!)
Later,
EV