Once you ignore the price, and code, and quality, and issues, and cheap manufacturing and cheap parts, bad design... then rate BM66? That is a tough ask, because all of those factors go into a rating. When I play it, I'm still shocked by the pricing of it. This wasn't pricing by the market (rare game that everyone wants), it was pricing by Stern. And even playing the Premium the number in my head is $15k.

But putting all that aside, it is an ok game. It follows that sparse playfield thing Stern does now. Long shots at the back with some targets in the middle sides you just hit randomly on bounces. The code is generic right now, but we have seen Lyman do cool things with generic code. On location I find it a great game to dump tokens into, but I don't want to own one even though I'm right in the correct demographic. Stern has much better games out there. And the turntable seems clunky. Metallica doesn't have much more in it, yet it seems miles more fun. AS is much more fun, TWD, ST, so many fun games. BM66 just doesn't stack up in that light. It's better than the 2k Stern games (NASCAR, RCT...), but nowhere near as good as the good Stern games (MET, ST, LOTR, IM, Tron, AS, TWD, AC/DC...).

Privately, Stern. Publicly, bitching customers. One fact is that Stern will do the minimum code needed. There is no public timeline, and there has never been a public declaration of code being "done" for any game. Not once. If there are a lot of customers bitching loudly, they will update it.

The one exception is sometimes Lyman games get a later update. But those can't be counted on. Not even if Lyman is the listed programmer.

I don't know what you're looking at, cause the topper looks fuggin awesome in real life. Say what you want about the game, but that's the best topper I've seen.

You are not "supposed" to like anything. Where is this list of games you are supposed to like? I haven't seen it. If you are basing it on ratings, we all know ratings are manipulated bullcrap.

Here is my list of games YOU are supposed to like. 1. The games you enjoy playing. 2. RCT, because when the troll yells "Multiball" I giggle, so because I like it, you are supposed to.

AND, they sold out. So be prepared for more bad tasting SLE games going forward. Yummy.

We don't really discuss price in the thread, as the OP requested we put that aside. However in this case, price. If Stern said it was just a remake of BDK, there is no way they could charge 15k. Nobody would buy it. So it was advertised as a whole new game with the things we loved (crane) and with new Lyman rules. Lyman makes pinheads stand up and notice. Otherwise they would have sold 12 of them.

I'm the first to admit when I'm wrong about a game. Normally it's because a fundamental change took place, for instance a code update changed the game. Sometimes code can change a whole game. AC/DC was kind of rough, and then blam! Metallica was meh, and then turned fantastic as things were added (CIU was the big one). When Stern puts their mind to it, they can put together a great game. I was very late to the party on IM. It stayed in my dog house for years... and then I bought the VE. Is it still a one ball game? Sure, but omfg is it amazing. Even Walking Dead which I thought was crap ended up being fantastic with its quirky layout.

But not every game can be that. Avengers could have a complete rewrite by Lyman and I don't think I'd like it. NASCAR can't be saved by code. WrestleMania can't be fixed. And I know people don't like to hear this, but I don't think GB can be fixed unless the redo the entire game with a rule set that matches the playfield.

And then there is still Batman 66. A game which I enjoy on location and at other people's houses. But it still feels generic to me. It doesn't have that special pop yet. Plus the game has a lot of things going against it. The pricing is still damaging it. Even on the secondary market there will be no bargains going on. And again, it has to compete with other Stern games. If you put BM66 and AS next to each other and say I can only play one, AS by a mile. Because AS came out of the gate being fun. Stern has 4 current games that I'd pick first. That's it's biggest problem.

You do realize that Data East became SEGA which became Stern, right?