I sent my final payment on LE #2021 yesterday for delivery early this week. This is my first NIB and I can't remember being this excited about anything in along time. Thank you Jack, Pat, and the rest of the design team for all the hard work and innovation. I'm hoping to catch up with some of the folks that made DI possible at Pintastic in a couple of weeks.

I received DI LE #2021 last night with a born on date of 6/16/2017. I thought I would relay some of my initial thoughts. Please keep in mind I'm an average player at best and this is my first NIB. I'm normally pulling a machine out of some dark basement with rickety stairs that can barely support my weight let alone a pinball machine where my initial impression has to do with how many replacement parts I'll need to order before getting the machine in working order. I had invited over a few friends that have unboxed NIB machines from other manufacturers to give me their thoughts and to be honest so for once they could drool over one of my machines. Also, I apologize for the lack of pictures, I just haven't had a chance to upload them yet.

I'm a person who is big on customer service. For me, little things mean a lot, those things that indicate that you're more than just a pile of cash, but your a valued customer such as hotels where the desk clear refers to you by name rather than "hey you". The first thing I liked was the unboxing instructions taped right on the outside of the box. A small thing, but both my friends commented that they would have appreciated that on their machines as it represents that little bit of effort to make sure you have a good experience. Upon opening the top right there on the flap is the hand signed certificate with your machine number hand written. Again, a small thing, but something that says right up front that this is your machine and we're proud to have delivered it to you. They certainly could have just had a computer generate the numbered certificates, but filling them out by hand says something to me about the pride that JJP has in its product and your value as a customer.

The machine was well packaged and undamaged, not even a scratch on any of the powder coating. After all the discussion on cabinet joints going on at the moment I carefully looked at the joints and found them to be of excellent construction. Upon unboxing the born on date and Jersey Jack's signature are hand written on the back box along with the nicely crafted Limited Edition numbered plaque on the front. Again, those small details that add up to a good experience. The legs were carefully wrapped and the remaining accessories individually encased in plastic bags within the coin box. These included the holder for the pricing card, the holographic shiny pricing cards, the tilt bob, optional camera cover, key fobs, etc. That brings me to the next thing I appreciated. The inside bottom of the cabinet is finished and varnished. None of my B/W machines had any finishing of the inside of the cabinet so I was favorably impressed by this attention to detail. There was a predominant flyer taped to the glass that indicated the printed manuals were on backorder and would be shipped immediately upon receipt. While it would have been nice to have the manual with the game I appreciated the upfront disclosure with the plan of action to remedy and the invitation to call the tech line or contact Jack directly with any issues or questions. I work for an engineering/manufacturing company and sometimes unforeseen issues arise. The way you handle those issues speaks a lot about your company and its integrity.

The friends I had with me who have recently received NIB games from other manufacturers were very impressed with the unboxing experience of DI and the attention to detail that JJP has. Personally, being my first NIB I was thrilled and impressed.

After setup, we fired up the game and started playing. Our group included my two daughters 10 and 12, my wife and I as well as our friends with the adults all being in their 40s. We all had a blast playing the game. A few things of note. Everyone agreed that the full compliment of RGB LEDs really helped make the game approachable. For example, when in the eruption disaster the inserts change color from red to orange and back like lava for the shots to hit. Plus the callouts, although perhaps not as animated as some folks would like, are very informative on which shots the machine wants you to hit. Everyone universally loved the theatre and the images including the spider spinner. My two daughters liked the game a lot and managed scores in the 300,00 to 400,00 range without knowing anything about the shots or strategy. My wife, who usually I have to bribe to play pinball came back for multiple games. I managed a little over 1.2M, a far cry from what crazylevi was able to achieve. We all agreed that the games various shots are readily achievable and the shots are honest. By that I mean that the machine doesn't seem to unfairly punish you like some games. The only complaint I had was a couple of times after the ball was captured inside the threatre by the magnet, the ball was released SDTM and a couple of times the magnets threw the ball directly into the left outlane. Other than that my drains were the result of bad play on my part not some aspect of the design. The only other complaint I have is with myself. There is so much detail being presented on the large backbox screen that I couldn't appreciate when playing as I couldn't look up without draining the ball. There are so many interesting detailed programmed into the backbox display from the buildings in the shape of the pop bumpers that move when you're in the jets to the airplanes towing banners to the lights on the train station in the display that match what's going on down on the playfield. I really have to commend the software engineers that again had just an exceptional attention to detail.

I plead biased as I really like Mr. Youssi as an artist. I have a number of machines with his artwork including WW, WH20, and TZ. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so my only comment on the art is I believe the colors are vibrant and clear and I see certainly no decline in the quality of what Mr. Youssi is able to do. Personally, I think he did a fabulous job, but as I indicated earlier I'm biased. I won't comment on theme as that is a total subjective thing, but I will say that we all agreed that the machine was very consistent and complete in terms of implementing the theme it was crafted with. Personally, I enjoy the music and background sounds, but then again I love jazz.

Overall, I couldn't be happier. Again a huge thank you to Jack, Pat, and the whole design team. My family and I are really enjoying your machine and appreciate all the little things you did on the machine and the way you treat your customers. We think the design is brilliant and it really is a blast to play. None of us are ever going to compete at PAPA so I'm not a good judge with respect to competitions, but as the father of two tweens, I saw more of the ever allusive smiles last night than I've seen in a while so thank you. For me that's a lot more valuable than any pinball trophy.

I had the same problem with mine. This past weekend I was at the Pintastic show and I found it interesting that Butch Peel had the same issue with one of the machines at the show when he was giving his talk. I put a ticket in with Steve at JJP and we talked about it through several iterations. The first thing is the key turns clockwise to unlock. I wasn't sure at first which way so I didn't want to force it. I was concerned about bending and perhaps snapping off the key so eventually after talking with Steve I took a T-15 Torx wrench and removed the two screws on the front of the speaker panel that hold the speaker panel in. I was then able to pull out the speaker panel and release the backglass. I reinstalled the backglass and the speaker panel with the lock unlocked and it appears the tolerances are just too tight as the lock tab meets up with the backglass at about the 2 o'clock position. Steve, from JJP, sent me a new lock and tab, but that tab was also a little too long. I ended up grinding down some of the material on the original tab and refinishing it to open up the tolerances and that seemed to do the trick for me.

After the recent discussion on clearcoat chipping near the sim card hole I looked at my machine and sure enough I have a semi-circular chip on the sim card hole edge closest to the backbox that took some of the artwork silk screening with it that is about 1/4" in radius just to the right of the post. I put a ticket into tech support. Has anyone heard from JJP on when they may be shipping the protectors? I was going to put a little finishing epoxy that I use on my R/C sailplanes to seal the upper edge of the hole, but figured I would instead wait until I heard from JJP. I stopped playing the machine as the edge with the chip is ragged and I can't tell if there may be further delamination so I'm afraid of the damage getting worse until it is sealed down or protected from above.

Sorry it took me so long to post the pictures of the chipping around my Sim Card hole. I've been working a proposal so not much pinball, sleep, or anything else. I haven't heard anything back from JJP yet on the ticket I submitted. You can see in the picture that the edges of the chip are pretty ragged so I'm concerned it will continue to chip unless it's either sealed or protected. I was hoping to hear back from JJP before doing anything.

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I agree that it's not a big issue at the moment. As another poster indicated, my concern is with adhesion. Pre-kids, my father and I used to restore airplanes. In fact I learned to fly in a 1942 Aeronca L-3B that we spent 5 years restoring. Between airplanes and cars I learned enough to be at least dangerous to myself on painting and I agree with the previous poster that if you cover up paint with clear too early without a proper cure you can have adhesion issues. We used to leave primer for 30 days before applying color to allow the primer to fully shrink prior to color. We would then leave the color for 30 days minimum before clearing and then we would leave the clear for another 30 days before reassembly or operating the vehicle to allow everything to fully harden and shrink to prevent adhesion issues and issues six months or even years down the road. In this case, I'm really just concerned that what you see will spread with further play without a protector. I apologize if I came across as whining, that wasn't the intention. I'm just being careful with a $9,000 toy to try and not make the problem worse until a good solution is available. On a side note, the game is still awesome and I still think the machine was executed beautifully. This is just an issue that needs to be taken care of, they happen.