Ok, here's my two day impressions on AMH. The first thing I noticed was how good the build quality is on this machine. The powder coating is really well done. The playfield has a nice thick layer of clear. The entire cabinet is all plywood and the game is heavy. Everything on the playfield seems robust. There are lots of metal parts, including the apron and real lockdown bar. This could easily be confused for a JJP or B/W game. The menu system is easy to navigate and the power is adjustable for every coil. Overall, the game looks stunning.
As for the lighting, the LED strips that are on the cabinet sides and in the backbox are awesome. Along with the ghost, they change color with the modes and have a wide range of colors and combinations. They can fade or they can change suddenly to create lighting effects. The only slight miss is that when the backbox strips are lit white, they tend to be too bright and wash out the translite a little. The other colors look great, though, and overall it's a nice new feature. The GI and inserts themselves are all pinballlife style LEDs in white. Some people have remarked that the game looks dark and I wouldn't disagree. Most of the playfield is just fine, but the back is very sparse on the lighting. Playing in a dimly lit gameroom, I can't really see the area where the pops and rollovers are very well. I think placing a few spot lamps back there will make a huge difference. Also, switching over to stronger LEDs would help for the GI.
The audio in this game is going to be a matter of personal preference, but it is definitely well done. The music and sound effects are top notch. I have run into a few minor issues where some dialogue is much lower volume than normal or two lines of dialogue collide, but this didn't happen often. Almost every line of dialogue has humor in it along the lines of Scared Stiff or the like. There is a lot of sexual innuendo, ball jokes and some lines that made every player stop and look at each other like 'Wow, did they really just say that in a pin!?' There were plenty of good laughs for us, but it may not be good for people who have kids. Fortunately, changing the audio is a breeze. I decided to try it out and only took me a matter of minutes to change a song in the game. All you need to do is swap .wav files on the SD card which plugs into the board and you're good. The audio hardware itself is the FF sub and speaker kit, but there's also cool amp mounted by the coin door where you have easy access to bass, treble, fade, volume, etc.
The flippers on this game also feel like a JJP or B/W game. They use 3 lugs on the coils. The flipper and sling strength was ridiculous at the highest setting on mine, but I had no trouble dropping the power down slightly in the menu to get it right where I wanted it. The game play is solid and the shots feel great. It's very satisfying to nail the ramps and bash the door, in particular, but every major shot is smooth and there's some nice flow and combos. I even found backhanding the right ramp on mine to be fairly easy. The shots also offer a good variety of challenge. None of the shots are too tight, but they definitely punish you for missing. One thing is for sure, this game is HARD. I would put this up there with BSD or FG and most ball times are very short. The scoop that kicks out on the right is also dangerous as the ball rockets out to the right flipper. I had to do some small tweaks to get the ball to feed to the flippers more cleanly, including the lane to the pops to prevent SDTM returns from there. Another thing that makes the game hard is that the slings are placed slightly closer to the flippers than on most games, so the ball is more likely to get tied up in the slings than land on the ball guide at the base of the flipper. The best players were only able to defeat 2 ghost bosses in single game, so far. There were no marathon balls for anybody, so the 4 player games stayed lively. We did run into a few code issues, like the photo hunt would sometimes not spot any camera shots or the ballsaver during Hellavator multiball would not expire.
Overall, this game is a lot of fun and it looks and sounds great. Some dialing in may be required, but my machine is performing like a tank so far. It leaves the door open for plenty of customization and personalization to suite your tastes. If you aren't afraid of a challenge and you like cheesy humor and spooky themes, this pin is the real deal!
Brian