Quoted from mof:Ok, so 3 out of 59 games have incomplete code. Reason for mild concern, but at least its not endemic?
-mof
The Stern code issues started with the SAM games...since you could update with a USB Flash stick instead of having to burn a rom chip, it was super easy for the user to update...and because of that, they felt more confident about shipping games with preliminary code. The first game that was noticeably “unfinished” was Spider-Man, as it was missing animation for the 3rd Sandman mode...that was clear to the user. Lyman eventually updated the game with the Sandman animation & TONS more that made the game sing. Wheel of Fortune is the most notorious one, as the game was a flop, Stern was downsizing, and the programmer (Keith) left. The game has 4 wizard mode inserts, but were never used. It’s also lacking some polish with some missing sound FX & some of the Multiball end with a 00 Points display. Had those inserts not been there, you could probably consider the game pretty finished, as it’s still very robust, creative & fun.
Anyway, this has snowballed into a combination of games needing finish/polish updates for years, but also users demanding their subjective desires to be added to code.