This makes me want a Godzilla even more now…. Not sure about you, but a collapsing building way out classes a Bond on a wand… as a matter of fact, I played a right leaning Godzilla last Saturday that sent all three balls SDTM on MB start and I am positive I had more fun playing that than anything I see in this shaken, not stirred pile of dung. Enough said.

IMO this whole mess was caused by running out of time before the big shin dig in the UK. So they did what every company does when caught with their pants down, they went for “make it work”. Does this mean this code is anywhere near finished, or even, well started? I think they got to code and said, fake it using Stranger Things code, just throw a pile of crap against the wall and what sticks is what we reveal, we can catch up after the big 60th blow out. Then we rework this into a sellable title once we get past the weight of this very visible and “dick swinging in the wind” disaster of a release that, honestly, feels just like what it probably is, a hot mess waiting for IP owner approval that ran out of time before the big dance. I expect to see a better showing at expo, at least hopefully they will have fixed a few things by then. My take on layout and flow is, it seemed to shoot ok, but it isn’t a Godzilla, nor do I get the feeling it will be anything as thrilling as GZ or JP, or for that matter even Rush.

I heard Shrek came about because of poor FG sales and the need for a more “kid and family friendly” title, thus utilizing the parts and turning around sales. I don’t think this applies when talking reusing Bond layout for multiple Bond versions, but how does one incorporate a jet pack toy in Goldfinger? Would the Bond on a wand need to change to match the actual theme? Then there is the Missile… kind of hard to reuse the layout without reimagining all the toys, so if reuse of this GG layout were to happen, would it be simply an artwork change, making the Goldfinger movie the central art, adding modes specific to the movie, etc… but keep all the toys and most game play the same? Or is he (GG) alluding to a Goldfinger stand alone layout we have not yet seen? So maybe put out the 60th with a different flatwood layout that can be customized to create differing Bond Mahines, each centered on a specific movie, or Bond, and artwork adjusted as needed. That seems like too many if’s for Stern but first we have to like the premium… and nobody has even come close to flipping a real Bond premium in any state yet except half assed, much less a 1.0, .9, .3 and certainly not even any super secret double alpha versions Lonnie has on his key ring thumb drive.

You would have to add sharks with frickin’ lasers on their heads in the underwater scene to do it justice…

Ok, just what is in your pipe, man? I mean I haven’t seen someone this trippy since the 70’s…

Bond has a government issued “license to kill”. Seeing as that is the ultimate violation of a persons rights, why are we talking about all the other felonies he commits on a regular basis? Seems he has plenty to ask forgiveness for from that alone. And M is the one with real blood on his/her hands by granting the license, but I digress. For King and Country! as they would say…

Mech-wise, this stream was way underwhelming. This looked more like a "Stern Hurter" than anything they have done recently. I would rather wait 2 years for a GZ premium used. Seriously.

And the candidate for the worst over hyped mech in a pinball machine since the BEER CAN in Family Guy, (which I own for the sake of transparency/relevance)

You can’t really blame Stern. The price increases are our own fault. Since games no longer depreciate as a rule but retain their value in the HUO market (our fault), this makes them a great way of making money if you have a related coin op business. Flipping a machine you have written off the books as fully depreciated but which is still worth close to what you paid for it is pushing the average hobbyists out of the market. This is quickly becoming a rich man’s past time where only the wealthy can afford the new shiny and us peons can’t even pick up a beat to death players machine for less than $2k. The days of cheap pinball are a long way off in the rearview mirror.

I’m itching to find and play one just so I have the opportunity to address the negativity in the room. Although my initial impression from stills to videos of game play have left me skeptical, I won’t pass final judgment until I play a premium and get it really rocking. But my unflipped opinion so far does not bode well for my final take on it.

This is maybe the most honest and funny thing posted on Pinside in the last few minutes… lol

You spend a fortune on grooming products and manscaping equipment and you still end up with comments like this… can’t please everyone.

Pops have been firing simultaneously for years… does it grind my gears they did it on the premium and LE? A little, because all I can think about when I see it happen is those cheap, plastic, battery-operated POS “pinball machines” that are still being pawned off on poor children come Christmas morning as they are left with nothing to stand on since, well, “Santa did bring you a pinball machine” but in name only. Those dreaded cheap plastic bastards have been firing pops simultaneously (if they even actually fire to begin with) since the dawning of the word “ripoff”. This is exactly why it would grind my gears if my brand new $$$ premium or (god forbid), $$$$ Limited Edition toy arrives and it fires pops like a $59.95 Hasbro Christmas morning reject. Now bring over your buds and see what they think of your new simul-pop toy and the embarrassment just continues.

Yep, and more than a few… probably at least 10 to 15 that would notice in my league alone, not including my relatives like brother, his wife, my wife, my nephews, um, half the people in my brothers league… my best friend from high school, plus my pinball buddies from college.

People would be more aware the more experienced they are, the more they have played older equipment where tied slings and pops were more common. It’s not hard to catch, not easy to miss. Maybe we just have more attention to detail than you? Or maybe we have just played way more pinball?

Are there any other kind?

As long as it fired simultaneously with itself, no.
And of course with no pops at all you are just playing No Fear or Junkyard and I know that they both annoy a lot of people, just not me.

My take on Bond on wand-
Several ways to incorporate it…
First- having the player shoot a second ball to hit some target that releases the magnet- thus the player controls the “when” the ball drops using a timed shot to another target/ramp/switch. Seems like that’s how it would be incorporated, increasing the back-forth speed with each subsequent capture/drop.

Second- use the action button to release (what we have seen so far) and then “where” you want to drop it changes due to rules.

Third- tossing the ball via software. Timed release to send ball in known direction, no target intended.

Forth- how many balls can this thing pick up? Can it daisy chain them?

Can the machine load a ball onto the wand without the player making the shot? Does the player always have to “load” the wand?

As a real time systems programmer, the aspect of coding the wand intrigues me, but I doubt Stern will put that much thought in how to use this thing or spend the dollars to develop it much further than what we have seen. They might surprise me, but I’m not holding my breath. I figure one more method we haven’t seen will be about the max breadth of their “expanded” use. If everyone is pretty meh about it now and are buying the Pro, they will probably not care that much about developing it more unless the Premiums/LE’s take off like Godzilla.

Yes, toss it somewhere else useful, not just on the tank.

In that “not a pricing” turd thread, they are listing R911 as a machine you couldn’t give away 3 years ago, and it’s sort of known as the fruit cake of the pinball world. Nobody ever wants one and everyone is trying to get rid of the one they have, and it’s been theorized that there is only one but it exists in 1000000 places all at once in the known and unknown universes.