Fog machines leave residue. The inside of the machine would quickly be a mess if this were attempted.

Hopefully Tanio's still in the running. I want to see if Deadpool was a fluke, and that was the last Gomez pairing.

No. Hands are extended on the toy gomez showed, AND they had knives in them. Forgetting the knives, just the fact that the hands were extended disqualifies it from being the jetpack Bond where his hands are at waist level.

My main question from the pics is WHY is the arm for jetpack bond SO ENORMOUS? It's a huge eyesore. I can't believe they couldn't have gotten the job done with a slotted rod like 1/3 or 1/4th as big. What weight is at the end? A coil, a bracket, and a plastic figure? C'mon, Stern engineering, try harder.

jetpack-arm.jpg

Ball, coil, bracket, and figure do not need a (HOLLOW!) rod that huge. A solid, slotted rod (on one side, to hold the wire) would be plenty strong enough.

Cranes go bad because their wires are dangling free when the claw drops, and a claw has WAY more weight than that jetpack assy. This jetpack arm is just lazy engineering.

Well, my OCD has made that enemy #1.

Ah, yes, the "idiot sandwich" design.

RUSH Scoop confrontation.gif

I hope so, and that it's not just a PF molded toy exclusive to the LEs that will be on top of the plastics near there...

A 3/8" steel rod isn't bending from that load. It might SAG if the pivot point isn't properly designed, but bending? No way.

That naked, exposed ramp edge on the left side of the right ramp going into that shot is going to be hell on balls. Missed shots will go full steam into the exposed end of a metal ramp. That's some engineering there.

I get every Stern these days for mods and temp testing, so that's a foregone conclusion. I don't KEEP any, but I have them all for some period of time.

Weird there's no 007 iconography on the backglass art, when they have it on the apron.

007 is all over the apron, but it's the wrong 007 if Gomez was going for the retro look. So there can't have been a prohibition on using 007 because it IS on the game (wrong era logo - Roger Moore's 007 logo), just not on on the backglass.

Here's an article about the evolution of the logo:
https://spycommandfeatures.wordpress.com/the-evolution-of-the-007-logo/

Here's an era-appropriate (ugly) 007 to match the ugly backglass:
dr_no_backglass_007 (resized).jpg

I added the era-appropriate retro 007 logo to the Dr. No. There is no "007" or "James Bond" on the backglass at all, despite the Roger Moore era 007 logo being all over the apron and apron cards.

James Bond and the wrong era "007" are all over the aprons of the Pro AND the Prem. (Pro is on the right, barely in this pic)

e450c35dcff226420d111f20a3037ea23dc5c171 (resized).jpg

Look down. It's right there in the pic on the cab of the Prem, too.

I don't know if the blue would be less distracting. A mirror-polished arm would at least reflect what's around it and make it less obvious.

For the slot, I was thinking like blue car-wash microfiber fingers or something to fill in that giant black hole and still allow the arm to move unobstructed.

It's also a san-serif font on the backglass. The original posters I've seen from the era have "Dr. No" in a serif font. Makes a difference. But maybe a serif font looked weird that gigantic.

Solution? Don't make it THAT GIGANTIC.

EDIT: Some of the posters have san serif fonts.

I would have much preferred to see some kind of original art using Dr. No characters for the Pro backglass. More like this...

dr_no_pro-revised (resized).jpg

The guitar mistake on RUSH art for their most recent release says you're late with this assessment.

Speed is the unknown here, but I don't see this moving much faster than the Rescue 911 helicopter that's basically functionally the same idea (even more elaborate with a motor that turned the 'copter, in addition to grabbing and transporting the ball), and that had a very small rod:

Never seen a bent one of those, even decades later.

Or, ditching the yellow frame and blocking the title and James Bond would still be better than what they did, IMO.

dr_no_pro-revised2 (resized).jpg

Super-ugly, and MUCH less design effort than The Shadow. Seems like a bad joke.

Tilt bob cam needs to be a thing on streams. I've been saying it forever. The tension! The drama! The near misses!

That's it. Something bad's happening around Philly.

Your mom's getting scared. Says you're movin' with your auntie and uncle in bel air.

Click on image gallery at the top of the page in this thread. Pics start on page 2 of image gallery (NOT page 2 of thread, the image gallery).

Or maybe a stealth seizure inducer? What's wrong with that Spinal Tap PF insert LED programming in attract mode?

Hidden Lazenby Bond confirmed?

I didn't realize until I read the wiki that 007 Magazine's reader poll put On Her Majesty's Secret Service at the top of the Bond pile:

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Goldfinger
3. From Russia With Love

It's a great Bond movie. There's a section on how retrospective reviews have boosted its reputation compared to all the Bonds of the Connery/Moore era, and I agree.

As long as Lawlor is out of the building, JJP will be ok. He's tired and is not well suited to the 2020s pinball scene.

Knowing Stern, it's more like 70 SLE licenses to kill. 001, 001.1, 001.2, 001.3, 001.4, 001.5, 001.6, 001.7, 001.8, 001.9, 002, 002.1, etc.

No, that was just the insane markup on the KISS fan club. Not a special version.

KISS LE is a beautiful pin. I had the Prem then the LE and the LE was a work of art (except for that cheapass fake mirrored backglass).

I'm pretty sure KISS LE was the one where they had segments of mirrored material adhered to the back of the translite for a fake mirrored backglass effect. It wasn't a "real" mirrored backglass. I remember being really disappointed in the quality. I think Stern has since changed to actual mirrored backglasses on the LEs. RUSH LE I had seemed very nice and didn't look like the crappy KISS LE fake "mirrored" backglass.

Hmm. I wonder which Stern LE it was that had the cheap-o glued mirrored segments...I know it was one of them, I just thought it was KISS...

Thinking through the LE SLE and Special editions I've had...maybe AC/DC Let there Be Rock edition? I dunno now...

This wasn't "pinstriping" in the classic sense of painted on. It was cheap cut vinyl decals on the lockdown bar that came off from the heat of your hands in probably 30-40 plays. SUPER CHEAP.

As a one-time owner of a NIB Batman'66 SLE, I can confidently say it was a huge Stern money grab (for what, $6K over LE at the time? And NO distributor split, so PURE PROFIT once the modest BOM was subtracted.) with MAYBE $1000 BoM on the stuff added, corners cut on things like fake pinstriping and FEW or NO REPLACEMENT PARTS. My SLE was defective and the awesome cabinet stickers were delaminating around the shooter plate almost immediately. Stern's response? Sorry, we don't have any to replace that. They sent me a regular batman'66 coin door sticker as if that made it better.

On a $15k item.

Karl already streamed GZ's new code (as a beta) this past Sunday and I think the week before, too. Has the Ultra Final Wizard Mode in it. When you finish KotM if you haven't qualified for Ultra Final Wizard mode, the game ends. If you have qualified, you get the UFWM and THEN the game ends.

Not like it's the first Elwin to do that. Jurassic Park ended, too:

But if most people never get there, does it matter? Karl was saying the requirements to get to Ultra Final Wizard Mode and they are severe. He said he hasn't seen it yet after a week, and he's one of the best players out there.

After getting through Eternal Life Multiball in Indy my arms were too shot to even think about doing it again. Wrangling a widebody for an hour is no joke. Ending the game with a bonus for unused balls is the right answer.

Licensor approved it, and actually the licensor may have required it. We don't know.

That fast. Already gone.

.


Kidding. Depends on which model you're looking for: Pro, Prem, LE.

Yeah, should be a lottery. IC members that want one sign up and are told on launch day if their number is pulled. Much more fair way to do it given the level of interest in the LEs.

Oh, no. Hopefully Lonnie isn't the lead on this. Guaranteed just "good enough" software when his name's on it. Really disappointed it isn't Tanio. If Lonnie's the lead, no wonder they kept it on the down low.

Gross. Can't they just leave Lonnie on system level programming stuff? God knows there's a mountain of work left to do so it's not just emulating DMD era sterns on the Spike system menu.

Lonnie's games are the definition of "good enough and no more." Boo.

That's sexual assault in some states.

$25k seems to be the consensus guess. But if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Seems to be Lonnie coding (boo) with MXV assist on rules.

Don't take the common phrase about expensive stuff too seriously.

Order of operations:

Small location-only Pro run
LE Run
Prem Run
Pro Run

The regular pro run is supposedly APRIL.

The main extra of an LE is the mirrored backglass. If you prefer them (and having had a few, I can see how you might), the ONLY way to get on is on an LE. Ditto the custom LE-only art blades. Some of the LE packages are very nice. For example, Deadpool has a beautiful LE with better art blades than Stern sells for the other machines, and a really beautiful backglass and orangey-red sparkle powdercoat. Really pops in real life.

Says Bond 50, not Bond 60.
No Totan-style lamp mech with the oddjob hat.
Ramps - not street level.
Looks like bad digital pin.
Pretty sure the one you can kind of see a bit of in the mockup leaked pic is closer to the real deal.

I want to go to there.

Supposedly late November. Seems very premature. Maybe trying to get you to back out so they can mark up and sell to someone else.

Why are you paying 6 weeks before shipping? Has Stern moved up the production?

Got it. I've ordered launch LEs from a number of dists over the years and never had to pay longer than a week or two before they shipped, so it seemed weird for payments now with Bond LEs 6 weeks from shipping at the earliest.

I mean, it's ONE midpage ad per thread page. One. That's a huge stretch to call it clutter. I get plenty of value from pinside to support it with pinside+. One ad isn't changing the value equation.

But as long as we're airing grievances, it would be nice if robin added the ability to embed 10mb or less mp4s for paying members. Gifs go to 10mb, and they're allowed for everyone, paying or not. It's just a pain not to be able to do mp4s too, even if they're limited to 10mb also. I don't want to have to upload even short/small videos to youtube just so I can embed them (or go through the hassle of converting them to gifs and losing sound).

I think the more fair version for robin to implement is if you pay for pinside+ you have the option to block the midpage ads (the bottom ones remain). But if you're mooching pinside with no financial support, the ads pay for your service, so no block option.

Really, though, it surprised me, too, but it wasn't a life-changing negative event some are making it out to be.

I think the mid-page ad is the shocker a few people are objecting to because it's a new development, and also large and pink.

Also, sometimes the pages don't have them. I don't know why.

I don't think anyone outside Stern or maybe their key dists know yet, but I strongly suspect it's similar to Elvira 40th, where Stern sells it to dists at a high price and the dist gets whatever they can for it. It sits in dealer stock until they get the price they want and Stern is paid up front.

I'm not contesting that viewpoint at all.

Maybe robin can only make the "super exclusive" ad option available to people with a certain length of time as pinside+ members (1 year? 2 years?) or only with a certain number of completed pinside sales (10? 20?) so it's not just anyone coming in for the first time with the intent to flip and being able to immediately place a high visibility ad.

Also, maybe a prohibition on super-exclusive ads before a machine has started shipping.

Gomez/Lonnie Ropp combination has produced "meh" results before with Transformers and the 2013 Avengers Premium, so I remain concerned by Lonnie being the lead on Bond without a heavy duty assist from Dwight or Tanio.

The first pros at the mid/end of Nov are for locations only, and a very small run. Not available to the general public. That's the April 2023 run of Pros from what I was told.

Yeah, looks more like the delay might be so it has a bit more code so doesn't ship like Batman'66. Bare bones at the moment. Jetpack multiball was what I was looking for and it didn't even give a ball to drop on the tank.

Dunno. The premiere video for premium is chopped up too much to understand the sequence (multiple different takes/angles for what should be a single action), but in that London video when jetpack multiball starts, bond "flies" back to the place where a ball should be (and isn't) before moving forward to the target over the tank with no ball in tow. Seems like it's just not finished.

Ah, right. A mystery "high stakes" award from the scoop by the 3rd flipper. Thanks for clearing that up. I wasn't paying attention to the cards because I thought they were part of another mode and didn't think they'd have mystery awards on them.

The system menu for Aerosmith had "KISS Army Multiball" in the settings of the first release of the code. OOPS.

Also, the song select bug from KISS code was also imported accidentally.

Yep. That's how the Lonnster rolls.

Heh, yeah, I've done a fair bit.

It's not a surprise, but how hard is it to do some cleaning sweeps on the code to remove references to the prior use? It's not like he couldn't have searched the source for the word "KISS" - it just wasn't done.

He seems to do the reuse code thing with little change more than most at Stern, and bringing in a previously documented bug to Aerosmith with the reused KISS code was not that surprising.

He also is on record as saying Rolling Stones being one of the best Stern music pins. Really.

It's more about the sloppiness than the fact that it's done. Not sweeping code for old names and bringing forward known, documented bugs without fixing them is just lazy.

Yes, I get that, but the patter is that it's often Lonnie's games that suffer or languish with boring code marked "finished."

Dwight has the occasional misfire, Rick Naegele rocks it with Elwin's designs, Lyman was almost always great to legendary, even if it took a bit, Tanio was AMAZING on Deadpool on his first time out as the lead, but Lonnie's are usually just "good enough" and sometimes not even that, UNLESS he has strong support from other coders.

Kicking myself for not grabbing it. I thought since it was a public showing it wouldn't be pulled. Guess I was wrong. Boo, Stern.

I get that, but if it were the only reason, then there would be lower quality across the board from all the coders, and there's not. Lonnie is usually at or near the bottom of the heap, imo.

It doesn't change the fact that I've already committed to buy a Premium for temp testing/mod work but it has definitely deflated my expectations a bit since I was hoping for another stellar Gomez/Tanio teamup after their great work on Deadpool.

You can't upload video to pinside. The best you can do is embed a video uploaded to youtube.

The Thunderball LE is $12,999
The 60th LE is unpriced as of yet, but speculation is dealers will set the price.

For sure. I hated Deadpool until Tanio added stacking and mechsuit at like .95 or something. Made a huge difference and really upped the funfactor of the game.

Stranger Things is okay in the end, but it's still a tale of lost opportunity. I'm still pissed Lonnie removed awards rather than coding them all as expected.

Check the topic index at the top of any page in this thread.

For sure, but supposedly the direct print glossy cabs can chip on location and can't be fixed at that point. We had one out for 2-3 years and never had a single chip, even at the corners. I still prefer the ECLE direct print over the radcals.

Watched the London video again and concentrated on the screen. It's using Stranger Things fonts and animations for Jackpot, Super Jackpot, etc. Not even modified, just straight-up the same. I hope they're temporary, but...well, Lonnie.

Probably because Lonnie isn't that familiar with Batman'66 code since it's Lyman's and it's very well integrated. Must look like an alien landscape to him. Not super-encouraging that he's starting from a base of Stranger Things code (and that he thinks Rolling Stones is a great music pin).

Still, maybe Bond is Lonnie's time to emerge as the code swan he's always wanted to be. Fingers crossed.

Yeah, putting a slight close delay spring on the hatch so it opens quickly, but closes a little slower would make it more interesting to watch happen.

One of the first things I'll investigate.

It'll likely have to be an improvised solution if it's possible. I doubt there's anything off the shelf that will work in a scale model that small. But hey, maybe I'll be surprised!

Some GZ are showing up with REALLY THIN clear. Maybe Stern is still using multiple vendors for the printing and clear and some are better than others? Both the Pro and Prem NIB GZs I had came in looking fine, but I've seen some with water-thin clear recently. So thin the ARTWORK ink was raised above it.

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

If you're an operator with a location, late Nov for the Pro. If you're a home user, you *might* get one out of that small operator-only run (according to Gomez, but I think he's just dressing up a pretty dire situation for home use Pros), but most will be waiting until April 2023 for a Pro. LE and Prem are December.

Yeah, Stern has walked that back when people freaked out they were being made to wait 7 months for a Pro, or being forced to buy a Premium to get a Bond this year. They now say (to distributors) in Nov they're making a small amount of ones BEYOND the location-only ones and those "extras" are specifically to seed the home market and calm the angry hordes that make up most of their market. Dists are supposed to put in for the Pro allocations very soon. We'll see if this is true or BS in about 6 weeks.

I haven't seen any. There's supposed to be another crack at it once the machines in London are successfully updated with more recent code. It'll be interesting to see if the Stranger Things jackpot, super, etc fonts and animations are still in it.

It just suggests that at least some of the code and graphic assets from Stranger Things were copied to Bond as a base. Pretty lazy not to even change the font and animation, though. Made it very obvious Stranger Things code and some graphics were in Bond.

So if 60 years x 25 films is 1500 units of the 60th. Maybe they'll have Bond-specific art packages for Connery (500), Moore (500), Brosnan or Craig (500). Or, maybe Stern really does just want to make 500 high priced units and be done with it.

I have plenty of experience with commercial-level code, thanks.

The point is if that is being used in the rushed base version shown, what modes are also being repurposed like Lonnie commonly does, like the Aerosmith code he brought forward from KISS, with a known bug and all. He's the only one I can think of that is this sloppy with reused code from prior games he did.

KISS and Aerosmith SHIPPED at 1.00, but the numbers are essentially meaningless at Stern, so not a good guide.

Here are the days to final large release of a Lonnie-lead coder game (I didn't count the Insider Connected updates since they came years later for most games):

KISS - 1261 days
Aerosmith - 650 days
Guardians of the Galaxy - 1337 days
Stranger Things - 350 days

So based on this recent sampling, best case for Lonnie Bond is a year to final code, but AVERAGE for his games is about 2.5 years for final code.

Yeah, I've owned every recent Lonnie game. It's his MO. Generally speaking, sloppier, more boring code than all the other top level coders at Stern. KISS is my favorite that he did, but he had help. Lyman's mode helped a LOT. The rest? Meh. He's generally Mr "good enough" and I'm not a fan of that.

IMO, of course.

I hope he does, too, because it looks like Gomez designed the crap out of that playfield to maximize opportunities for flowy combos. But I can't understand why Gomez didn't go for Tanio again for this. Their Deadpool teamup turned out fantastic after a rough code start. I can't point to any Lonnie game that I would call "fantastic" that wasn't fixed up by another coder to make it so.

I'm just put out about taking things out of the game and calling it done since I had a Stranger Things as code development progressed toward final and was playing each changed rom. The video mode could have been awesome with shooting Demodogs like the one in Dracula, but they just deleted it (and the hidden mode, if I recall correctly) from the awards and called the game done. Stranger Things is probably the best Lonnie of the LCD era, but it will always be less-than. Unmet potential.

Completely disagree. Attack from Mars is a flow monster. Stranger Things...is not. There are similar elements but the sum of the parts is a totally different feel.

MXV has great ideas from what I've seen, but Lonnie has to execute. The "Lonnie has to execute" part is where the trouble starts.

Probably some truth to that, but it's pretty cynical. Great way to risk ruining a top license.

Haha. I'm not condemning Stern et al. Mostly just Lonnie, but that's earned.

Other coders of note at Stern:
Dwight? Great. (We just won't talk about Munsters)
Tanio? Golden.
Naegele? Platinum. (really, is there a better team than Elwin/Naegele in pinball currently?)

The majority of coders at Stern do a bang-up job. I just am constantly let down by Lonnie. I'd like that to change, so hoping Bond is the turning point, but not super-confident.

No, I'm judging where it ended up. I had one through the progression of code.

Very best of all time? It's good, but I wouldn't put it up against a Walking Dead, Godzilla, or a Jurassic Park, all of which actually ARE in the "very best of all time" class. JP and TWD had a rough start with code, but ended up amazing. GZ was white hot out of the gate.

So, I get that you're enthusiastic, but that Shaq Attack in your collection has made me understand your criteria for "very best of all time" may be looser than most.

You're confident Bond with Lonnie will be incredible, and I'm hoping but not confident it will be great. If we end up in the middle, it will be a miracle.

Fingers crossed.

Toes, too.

Haha! You have to really abuse my trust to get a chart. Gomez promising updates to my $15k SLE batman'66 every two weeks then skipping out for 140 days did it. This kerfluffle, however, will not.

All the fans I sell are in the best class on the market and OEM customized for me direct from the factory in volume. They're not off-the-shelf.

And thanks for bringing that up. Since you did, I'll announce there's a new "deluxe" flipper cooling kit level debuting for Bond that will be better and quieter than anything to date. It won't replace the existing kits, just provide an "ultimate" option for those that want it.

What a salesperson for me you turned out to be! Thank you!

But Batman'66 is just Batman:TDK reworked (mainly remove coffee can, add batcave rotisserie, and remove teeter-totter), so it's was not really a "new" design. Bond looks like a mostly new design

The rotisserie is the worst part about Batman'66. Really slows it down, and usually that doesn't bother me in a pin. There are settings in the system menu to speed the rotation up, but it's still a momentum-killer.