I used thin black weatherstripping foam, which is pretty dense, and cut to fit behind the targets so they didn't compress so much and get stuck on that metal post at their edges. Bending the post away from the targets may work, too, but I didn't try that.

Come on guys lets see if we can hit 100 pages before code drops! Lol

I think Stern finally hired someone (Zach Sharpe) who knows how to communicate with its customers.

My understanding is Lyman quickly made it clear to George that fortnightly updates just wasn't realistic and his desire to get a v1.00 release that is top 5 Stern worthy is the reason for the year long wait - he is personally and financially invested in this game.

Although the fact only major villain cliffhangers are mentioned is a little worrying, but trying to look at it positively, that might just be highlighting a particular feature Lyman is personally proud of? If the cliffhangers work like the shows cliffhangers and it makes you feel like your playing through episodes of the show to track down the villain, escape their trap and finally capture them then that is theme integration at best!

It does sound like a cool feature, I'm just hoping that they don't think that will atone for almost 5 months of nothing on a game that isn't even to beta-level code.

Agreed. I was REALLY happy when I saw the update, but that turned to concern when I read what was updated. You'd think they'd be proud of any and all new features that the code will introduce and want their customers to know about it.

Looks good news to me! And good that stern are communicating!

Yes this is good news and hopefully will be a recurring thing.

So based on the screen grab it looks like you play a villain mode then after a certain point you have the option of collecting points and ending or to you can keep going and possibly risk losing your points?

Does Lyman have anything like that in his other games?

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Kind of reminiscent of MET Crank it Up.

Why is the score reading 00?

How does that mode work?

I think we need a reverse graph that counts down to Expo.......lol But I'm still not convinced it is going to happen in the next week....I think they would have said something to that effect.

Knowing what stern will now have on their stand at expo fills me with more optimism now as batman 66 is included. Thus the update to it must be significant and they are wanting to promote. A good sign

Like this:

Crank It Up becomes eligible after you do a series of qualifying

Scoop lights up for CIU

When you put the ball in the scoop, you can select a song for Crank it Up mode, or take a 5 million point cash out immediately.

Shoot the lit shots for that song, missed shots move the shot.

After some time, the scoop lights up again, and if you hit it, you can cash it in, or keep playing CIU.

So then it's how long do you press your luck, or take the points.

I can see this translating to Batman episodes/villains.

It was a great addition to MET at the time.

Thanks. Sounds like a nice risk vs reward option during gameplay.

I really like how Lyman is linking fun elements from the series (like the emergency bat-turn and cliffhangers) into the playfield features and modes. It truly integrates the theme into the game vs other games where the theme almost seeks like an afterthought.

It is the little things like this that make the phrase "in Lyman we trust" ring true, I am hoping that if you continue the episode, you then have to escape the villains trap just like in the shows cliff hangers. Once you escape the trap, you can once again continue if you choose to track down and catch the villain, following the same structure as the shows episodes.

This would be perfect theme integration and make it feel as if your actually involved/playing as Batman and Robin though an episode of the show, would love a couple more teases like this leading up to potential code and expo next week.

Time vs content would be an interesting graph. Don't give me any ideas.

What gets under my skin, is why even come up and promote a '2 week code update til we get you there' promise on a game, when they had never done this before, if the design team members thought it was not feasible. You are just going to piss people off when you pull the plug on it????? It makes no sense to me. As i said before, when i saw this i expected them to have thought about it carefully beforehand and put appropriate measures in place so lyman would not be bogged down with whatever else came along later.. I mean it doesn't take a genius to work out that 1 guy doing 2 weekly updates with need to be solely on 1 game for a good length of time.

They also created a special flyer and a mailing address for receiving updates on the game which i though would be used to communicate more than just 'hey this xxx code release is ready..' Again this was a total non starter.

This was George, speaking off the cuff, without Lyman in the room. I can almost guarantee Lyman didn't know George was going to promise code drops every two weeks. NO ONE with any software development experience or smarts would have ever thought that was a smart idea.

This particular topic has probably been beaten to death more than any other as fas as Batman 66 goes. What's important now is what Stern does (presumably at Expo) to convince customers that they understand that delivering a rich code experience is key to keeping the home collector market happy.

What's a good score on this thing?

1.1b?

rd

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About double that. The last update 4+ months ago increased scoring overall, IMO.

Cool. I did everything in that game, Villain Escape, bat turns, 3 multiballs, multipliers, 100m + bonuses ..

And there'll be more to do in the new update. Noice!!

rd

Abusing Commissioner Gordon before answering the phone can net 50 million+ each time just for answering the phone, and the multipliers from the rollovers and mystery awards are valuable.

George making that comment clearly shows he was (hopefully no longer) out of touch with the development process of code which is ridiculous as he is VP of Game Design. I was told he has been kicking himself for saying it and honestly it wouldn't have been a problem if he came out and said "look sorry guys I promised this being a little naïve/over excited , we wont be able to do the 2 weekly updates as I promised but we will keep you up to date and the promise of getting you there isn't going to change". Hopefully Zach/Josh? Can't remember which joining and now showing a new sign of communicating with us all is signs of this never happening again.

As for the flyer thing, I think that was a great idea but once the regular code updates where knocked on the head that was probably forgotten about and lost in the mix. Things sound very archaic at Stern, like they are running things like its still the 80s/90s, departments clearly don't talk to one another, but hopefully Zach is going to address not only external communication to us but hopefully internally from marketing to the end product!?

I'm convinced that they mentioned the regular update thing before Gomez even reinforced it. Saying it was brain fart from Gomez doesn't ring true to me. The flyer and the comm update idea was inside my game staring at me before I even plugged it in so the better comms and regular update idea was created long before any promo live streaming

Yes - that's pretty much want can be done. Sometimes you get huge super jackpots i.e. for cat woman. Shot multipliers are important (Gordon target to qualifiy)...

Dave - seems you got your machine just in time. I was about to sell it since I havn't played for weeks. Now I am looking forward to get a really nice update within the next two weeks (hopefully!!!). But it should be a comprehensive update not only the polishing of two modes.

Lyman, George, Franchi and a few others who are/have been on the development of BM66 have personally brought BM66 games so that's also good to know, although Lyman has never let us down with code, its always good to know that someone as high up as George has the game at home, hopefully that means he will allow Lyman further development of the game after the rumoured big v1.00 expo update, to really polish and add to it and make it a classic!

I think it was an idea George had from the beginning, whether it was discussed with all the guys developing the game is a question only he/they have the answer to, but everything seemed to be put in place, the Commissioner Gordon newsletter/flyer and then the follow up comments regarding regular code, just seems to have been a massive error of judgement, which is no excuse.

But with a an update good enough to blow our socks off, it will go a long way to repair a lot of the damage caused by this entire process.

I think i've hit 4 billion or so. Pretty cool game right? You timed the update just right.

If that cliff hanger mode that was teased works out to be half as good as it could be, we are in for a treat ice!

How does one do that?

rd

When the phone starts ringing, ignore it and keep hitting the thin standup target next to the scoop on the right (the one where you send the villains to jail when complete). Every time you hit it the jackpot for the phone increases. Answer the phone to collect. With just a little practice 50m per phone answer is not unusual.

Nice.

rd

Goodness!! It keeps going up ....

rd

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Once you master making that shot to pump the phone score, it becomes addictive.

Absolutely agree!!!

Holy Bat-phone exploit. That's huge!

Rotordave, thumping on the commissioner.

BAM!

Watch Lyman change the commissioner target behaviour in next weeks "rumoured" code drop making it more complex to exploit.

It's no different to the old Batmobile hurry up on BMTDK. Exactly the same scenario ... with that, you can keep shooting the right loop over and over and raise the collect up to 1b points.

I'm sure Lyman put it in as a "tribute" to that.

Both are very risk/reward ... you drain or time out, you get nothing! So I don't think you'd see people doing it in a serious tournament. There are lots of other points around the PF.

rd

Indeed, but after awhile the phone ringing sound starts to drive you nuts and you hit the target just to shut the damn thing up. Hoping for some better more varied sounds/speech calls here to add variety in the update to.

Looks like star wars just got a new code drop.

Maybe Batman66 is coming later today as well?

Well, new SW code just dropped? Could BM66 also hit today??????

Edit: You beat me by 18 seconds.

Holy don’t believe we will see code thIs week batman

They already got rotordave's money, so what do you think?

Rotordave can either be a hero for being the reason the code has dropped

Or be a villain for being the reason it hasn’t!

LOL

Actually, I'm just prepping the code battlefield so that I can get a petty whine chorus going about SW getting another update before BM66. Speaking of which, I think it's unfair that SW owners get an earlier update than BM66 owners! We're still on Alpha code and we've been waiting longer and we got inserts that don't work and we were promised every other week updates and we paid more and.....................

I noticed the new stars war code had a Sept 29'th date on the readme file. I guess it was in test for a while before they released it today.

I'll claim the Hero status.

rd