Well, who produced the ramps for MMr and CCr? Did CGC manufacture them themselves, did Starship Fantasy do them? or someone else?
Assuming that CGC didn't make them, then I would imagine the order would be with whoever it was that did...

Of course, it could all easily be BS.

I am on a list waiting for the next run of MMr, but a new TZr might make me re-think that...

Maybe we have different definitions of grindy. What I like about TZ is the variety of shots and how, depending upon the mode, those shots are either very important or irrelevant.

For example, in most modes the clock target is irrelevant (and a drain threat), but in either of the clock modes it becomes important (and valuable). The Camera shot and the Dead End shots work similarly.

And as for deepness of rules, TZ is plenty deep for me. While I like GZ, the rules are so complex (and unintuitive) that I can't even understand it, much less complete it.

Except that Indiana Jones is a very "active" license, with a new movie on the way. Even if you could get the re-approvals of all the actors and such, Disney will be wanting to promote the new movie, not the old ones. And you can be sure that the "Indiana Jones" license will be a lot more expensive than the "Twilight Zone" license (which is certainly not "active").

A lot of times it comes down to who owns the rights to stuff.

For example, if you get the Mission:Impossible rights from Paramount, that doesn't come with the rights to Tom Cruise's likeness. That would have to be negotiated separately with Tom Cruise.

Sometimes though, the rights to stuff like that comes with the property. In the case of Bond, did they have to negotiate with each actor (or their estate) separately for each of the Bond Villains, Women, and Henchmen? I don't know, but I sort of doubt it - since that would have taken forever and would have probably been excessively costly.

Did we ever figure out WHO that order was (supposedly) placed with?
Who made the ramps for MMr?

Sure, there are "lots of TZ machines available", and even some at decent ($8-9K) prices.

But when was the last time you saw a NIB TZ available? And even if you found one, what would its price be?

And yes, you can get a "high-end" restored one that is as good as NIB, but you'll be paying big bucks for that...

As long as CGC can sell them for a reasonable price (and these days I'm not sure what that even means), they will sell as many as they want to make.

Why would you think this? A "nicely restored" MB does not "blow away" an MBr. Sure, there are some people that "only want originals", but most everyone agrees that CGC's build quality is excellent.

And CGC's larger color displays, color-changing LEDs, and enhanced sound are distinct improvements over the originals. Yes, you could add ColorDMD and Pinsound into your original, but then you are adding even more cost to your "nicely restored" version.

Hence my comment that "some people only want originals", and that's fine. But it is not a true statement that "a restored original will blow away a NIB remake".

Some will prefer the original, others will prefer an improved (big color display, changing LEDs, etc.) remake.

As to how the two "feel", I won't claim to tell you what you feel, but to me...every original MM feels different from every other original MM, and the remakes feel well within the range of differences between them all.

Besides, I haven't played a NIB original MM in a very long time, so I can't say how that might feel nowadays.

My EBD-LE feels very different from my brother's one, even though they are both original. If EBD gets remade, odds are it will feel different from both of ours.

When the owner of Starship Fantasy (who makes repro ramps for many B/W machines) was asked if he got a 1500 count order for TZ ramps, he replied with this...

Just one more piece of information...

I asked them if they were going to start producing self-driving cars, or spy balloons...they didn't respond.
So, obviously that must be what they are working on.

Yep, got on a list with a well-known distributor, a couple of weeks ago. He said that the rumor was "strong", but had not heard anything specific.
I was already on his list for the next MMr run.

Why would you say that? There is no one building better quality machines at this time.

Sure, CGC is bad at keeping to schedules, but I'd much rather have a great machine eventually, than a mediocre machine sooner...

That might just be a little TOO optimistic...

Do we really know this? Which games does CGC have the rights for?

Obviously, they don't have all the older Bally rights, hence the Fathom remake being done elsewhere.

Do they only have the DMD machine rights, or do they also have System11 machines? Do we know for certain what machines they do or don't have permissions for?

Sure, that makes sense...but then, again, how does Damonator KNOW that CGC has the rights to TZ?

I'm not saying he's right or wrong, I'd just like to know the source of this supposed info, and what other machines CGC has the license for.

I believe that Centaur is on Haggis Pinball's list for a possible remake (though who knows when that will be).

As to how it looks...I hate the look of Centaur, though I love the layout and gameplay. If I ever had the time and money (and talent), I'd buy a Centaur and do a complete re-theme. It doesn't even matter what the new theme would be - anything else would be a vast improvement.

And yes, I realize that I have the minority opinion on this...

I have no idea what this means...

Well, it's safe to say that the cost to produce a TZr would be higher than that of CCr, so it would be likely that a price increase would be needed.

I would think an extra $500 to $1000 would be reasonable...but that's just a guess.

While I would love a TZ remake, I would think that (on top of the licensing issues) the re-tooling necessary to make wide-body machines might be costly/inconvenient. If they could spread that cost among multiple titles that would help a lot.

But, the only other wide-body remake candidates in the Pinside top 100 are Indiana Jones (#20) and Road Show (#87). Yes, the Pinside ranking is flawed, but it's still a decent list of what is popular or not.

IJ has its own licensing issues, and no one is clamoring for a RS remake (even though I think RS is underrated). Unless CGC is planning to release its own wide-body designs in the future, I doubt they would go this route.

Sure, there are new items made for each title, but, the cabinets and playfields are not "hand built". I'm sure that having a standard cabinet size makes life a lot easier in many respects and the same goes for the playfield. I believe CGC is the only company still doing silk-screened playfields, who knows what additional costs/tooling would be required to do wide-body silk-screens?

The real question (and I've never heard a clear cut answer), does CGC still manufacture cabinets for any of the other pinball companies (they did at one point in time)? And if so, are any of THEM wide bodies?

And yes, the licensing is certainly a huge issue when it comes to TZ and IJ. If there were several popular non-licensed wide-body remakes to be be done, maybe it would be worth re-tooling for - but the only one is Road Show (which is unlikely to be a huge seller).

So, unless CGC really can get both the TZ and IJ licenses, it's probably not worth the effort.

I think you have some items backwards there...

It was CV that the distributors were "giving away". I don't know why you thought that was TZ. I've never heard of TZ failing. If it had, Williams would not have followed it up with a bunch more "Super Pins".

The problem is we have different criteria for "success".

Some consider selling a lot of machines, and those machines seeing lots of play, and see "success".
Others see the high BOM cost and the low reliability of the mechs, and see "failure".

I always saw it as a success, but I was a player back then, not an operator or a tech...

I heard that CGC is going to remake Hercules...

Yep. I've been on a MMr wait list for two years now, but if they announce a TZ remake it will be a real hard choice.
And I don't have room (or the cash) for both.

I would hope that the people at CGC would be smart enough to avoid anything even remotely connected to Jpop or Deeproot...

You do not put your foot into the Bog of Eternal Stench.

I really doubt that Stern will start doing B/W remakes. They have plenty of their own machines to build.

I believe that this was somebody's complete speculation (as in "wouldn't it be nice if..."). AFAIK, there has not been an announcement by anybody that TZ is being remade.

There has been a lot of "I heard" that CGC is not doing any more remakes (or that Planetary is "mad" at CGC), but no one can seem to say where they heard it.

That old rumor about ramps being ordered was always fishy to me. The rumor couldn't say either who ordered the ramps, or who the ramps were ordered from. If they don't know either of those, how did they know anything at all?

I would love it if CGC would remake TZ, but I think it unlikely. And somebody else remaking it seems even less likely.

As for Gottlieb remakes, I would think Haunted House would be a popular choice.

They have two production lines running now. One line is finishing up CCr and the other is doing Pulp Fiction. They haven't stopped CCr production to make PF. Once the CCr's are done, they will be doing another run of MMr. After that, who knows? (though TZr would be nice...)

Well, that's what they told me at TPF - but no, I haven't seen the lines running myself.
If they have a staffing problem, they (understandably) didn't mention it to me.

You are assuming that they are making a choice to not deliver the CCrLE machines. Maybe they are still only getting the wood apron parts in slowly. There could be several reasons why CCr deliveries are slow (other than "we just decided to make PF instead").

Of course, some sort of info from CGC on this would be beneficial.
Slow deliveries is a problem, slow deliveries with no explanation is a bigger problem.