I love your passion for the game.
Tron 2.0 on steroids? Not.

'Real pizza'? Have you ever heard of this outlandish place they call Italy?

New yorkers think they own the world.

Best looking Bond girls were in the Moore era though- another missed op ..lol

I grew up eating home made pizza from my Italian mother and her sisters. I do like the thin New York style pizza, but the best is Naples style. Look for "Napoletana" style pizza. If you are lucky there will be one near you. I have one about ten miles away and its the best pizza by far in the county. One more note: pizza is not pizza without mushrooms.

Back to Bond. Once again I am so glad the cornerstone game is just Connery. Don't muddy the waters with the pretenders.

Give it time, this one’s Connery only ignoring the the 60th thing, Stern would be complete idiots to not bring out a Moore Bond pin in a couple of years.

It will be interesting to see if they do anything more with the licenses. We have the Elwin 60th coming and I hear rumors of a Goldfinger edition ...

Gomez pretty much said he wants to do a Goldfinger version if these sell well.

Any updates on the shipping dates? When can we expect LEs to start arriving?

End of November.

https://www.knapparcade.org/post/stern-pinball-james-bond-pros-for-regular-consumers-won-t-be-produced-until-april-2023

Gomez did post on Facebook in response to the April thing saying it’s not true or accurate.

You have the 60th edition on the line normally when the pros would be and then they have the cornerstone release at the end of the year so not very much of a window to get consumer pros made after the initial run for operators.

With all this talk of product shipping has a gameplay video been released yet?

It’s been hard to know what is true or accurate from the beginning.
What a wild launch for a game.

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I thought Bond was the last cornerstone for this year?

Rush and Bond would only be two cornerstones this year, supposed to be three unless they announced skipping another one due to delays that I missed.

Just the one player shot one here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bond-james-bond-stern-007-hype-club/page/95#post-7160437

No official stream yet unfortunately

I imagine they will move back to the regular schedule at this point, so another game in production just after new year. They basically skipped Venom for now to produce Bond around the anniversary. So they basically had two games ready to go. Good move to release Bond first. Many people, myself included would have held onto their money and skipped Venom to wait for Bond. Not many will do it the other way around. Bond will be a huge seller and Venom will get a few extra months of software updates before its release date!

Bond was released before Venom so they could piggyback with all the hype of the 60th anniversary of Bond happening on Oct 5.

Based on what we've seen so far it looks like the game isn't fully cooked code wise, but they did the release anyways to ride the publicity wave associated with the 60th anniversay.

Very similar to the Batman66 release in fall of 2016. Game was rushed to make the 50th anniversary but code wasn't ready yet.

Hopefully the code will develop faster on Bond than it did with Batman66.

Some of my favorite shots I can think of, not ordered, in pinball are all Gomez and never get old:
-Deadpool katana lock
-Avengers 2012 Hawkeye L orbit/ramp, especially when it travels the arrow
-Batman 66 left ramp

Context:
An example of an amazing shot that does get old: medieval R ramp.

There’s my hype.
Stoked to play and experience this with others. Tick tock.

The medieval R ramp is ton of fun if you combo the L ramp first!!

I always enjoyed drilling the Stugots (boat) ball lock/multi-ball start shot on Sopranos.

The back and forth L R combo does help, but it’s still not quite on same tier of the shots I listed imho.

Yes Stugots is great too.
GG just knows what he is doing.

If you're wondering where all those LEs went, there are always great folks like this. At least he's not making enough on the zeps to be worth the aggravation of sitting on them and tying up capital. Hope he's not making room for a bunch of bonds to horde.

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/143628

WOW!

Funny; when I made this for the BTTF thread I didn’t know how right I was... RE: Elwin’s 60th Anniversary game.

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It will certainly be a challenge to create a fun and exciting game of pinball on a single level. Not all games need ramps, but a game that features all the Bonds, all the villains, and all the movies?... You most definitely need ramps to do the theme justice.

I suspect they will rely heavily on the LCD mounted in the playfield, to dazzle the player. Best place for the screen in an all-action game, as I demonstrated in my Bond game, a decade ago (and later in Alien at Heighway). You don't miss a single frame when the screen is at eye level, but it only works well with very clever coordination, which matches movie clips and animations with the action on the playfield.

So yeah, if they nail the LCD integration and offer a fully immersive experience, then you won't even notice the game has no ramps.

Who knows what Keith and the team will come up with, but I think, in general, trying to incorporate 25 movies over a 60 year period, into one pin, is way too much. I think the game could be great, and feature more of a 10,000 foot Bond overview, more superficial theme integration, which could suit a simpler era of game better. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do.

I'm really glad they decided to focus the theme for the cornerstone release on one era. Makes for a lot more cohesion in the theme I think.

When Gomez talks about a shot he's never seen before, I wonder if it gets the ball vertical w/o the use of a traditional ramp. Like using a small flap to let the ball ride the side/backpanel. Or if he could lean a "snikt" target a few degrees back to purposefully create directed airballs to a scoop only accessible from the top.

Agreed. Connery is James Bond, just like Adam West is Batman. OG. It’s who people will see 100 years from now, who represents that character. This reminds me a lot of what goes on in arcade collecting. When people take an original game and convert it to a 60-in-1 multi, even though the games are fun to play it destroys the game value and desirability of the single theme because it becomes too diluted or like a ‘greatest hits’ compilation of music and after listening you crave some of the songs on the individual original release recordings the most. I just bought for 73.00 all the Bond assets, lol, all the Bond films on Blu-Ray, highest definition possible and thoroughly enjoying them right now, starting with all the Connery films. It’s Terrific. I’m looking forward to Thunderball LE! I think the Jetpack theme is 007 to the T & GG nailed it! I’ll decide on this 60th one once I see the price but no way I’m paying top dollar for various snippets, limited songs, small lcd, and a single level playfield. I do like Ramps too, especially these on the cornerstone, very much so!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01IQJ3LOI

Same here. I've always been a DMD and newer pinball guy. T2 was the first pin I really remember playing a lot at a bowling alley when I was a kid, and I've always wanted the ramps, more complex rules, and mechanical features that newer games have.

If there was a single level pin that would get me interested it would be a Keith design with a theme like Bond.

Yes, I owned a T2 at one time too, restored it & loved it. It's the game that really got me to appreciate Steve Ritchie.

I'm still intrigued about the Elwin game but lots of questions remain, want to be sure it's worth it.

I agree with the last sentence, but it seems to contradict your earlier assertion that "You most definitely need ramps to do the theme justice".

It's interesting...BM66 had broad video content from the TV show, but the ramps killed it for me (they felt dull). Shots and flow just seemed clunky...didn't last long in my collection. An example where it covered all the villains and many episodes but just didn't have a fast, flowy feel to it.

Just seems like we all love fast games with flow. Some of GZ's cooler shots & flow have nothing to do with the ramps. If someone can design a fast, flowy game without ramps it's KME. Will be a blast to see what they come up with!

Very cool that you innovated in the area of PF LCD integration. I think it's an interesting domain, since so many of us play alone at home and we rarely benefit from all the wiz bang graphics on the backbox. As you say, it requires clever coordination. I've never played Alien.

I hope Stern decides to make more than 500 of them. I think with that limited quantity, the price is going to be really high.

If it’s more than $6k I’m out!

I think you left out a digit.

I think with their massive backorder list, their reasoning is, we can make more money with less work if we limit it and charge 20k, or something like that.

I hope I'm wrong, and they just aren't sure of the demand since a game like that is not their normal kind of thing. Maybe they change their mind after gauging interest and talking to distributors. That's probably just wishful thinking though. I bet it's 500 of them...50k by Christmas

I need to make a correction. I had my details mixed up a little. From how I understand it now, Lyman's contribution to KISS was (at least) Heaven's on Fire mini-wizard rules, but that was done prior to the last code version. The final large update that elevated that game from good to great was all MikeV and Lonnie. More food for thought...

How about the ramps on LOTR?

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Ever play Iron Maiden?

For the Pro guys

https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-print-models/miniatures/figurines/james-bond-jetpack

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Also for the pro guys - https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32998858943.html

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Unpainted resin kit that will be beyond the skill level of many to assemble and paint, but nice cheap deal for those that can!

Might be a nice upgrade for prem/le owners too, the stern models don’t look the most detailed.

Thankfully I’m in luck, plus got a mate with a resin printer so going to knock one of these up myself.

I gave this comment an up vote because it is thoughtful and well written. However, I have had the opposite reaction to Batman 66. This was my first game purchase and is still in my collection of 25 pins. The theme integration and gameplay for me are phenomenal. I am a baby boomer and this game just kills it. I get the same vibes from the James Bond game with the 1960s campy humor and filming style. Godzilla and Elvira house of horrors also kill the theme. As far as gameplay, Batman 66 can be clunky, but when your shots are on, it is fabulous. I will admit my favorite shooting game is Godzilla, but again, that is just an opinion. Like everyone else, I look forward to actual gameplay on James Bond. Chances are it will be another winner.

Cheers!

Totally agree, anyone could slap some paint on but getting it to the shown pic stage is unfortunately beyond some. Could also need a shitload of cleanup before even the painting stage, they conveniently don't show pics of the unpainted model

Thanks! Wild that BM66 was your first game purchase and you are already up to 25 games...nice collection. Yeah, I decided a couple years to downsize and only keep the games that really turn me on. BM66 is a beautiful game, but the gameplay did nothing for me. I didn't find it "clunky", I just didn't like the lack of flow or shots. The video content and audio was cool, however. Just my opinion. I'm glad you like it, along with many other people...