I’d qualify the possible awards in Tobin’s Spirit Guide with the Slot Pops. Basically, as awards are collected in the Slot Pops they are added to the available options within Tobin’s Spirit Guide. Generally, they start out smaller and become progressively larger. While still random, it's a little more fair since you have to collect the better awards by shooting the ball into the pops. Additionally, the Slot Pops should still be used to relight Tobin's Spirit Guide (perhaps with each three qualified awards). It might also be fun for the qualified awards to become “stealable” features in non-tournament play, so if one player adds an award to the possible options, it is added for all players until someone collects that award.

I'm not sure the modes need to be randomized. In fact, I would say they should not be randomized. You can already choose from three different ladders. The problem seems to be that the best strategy is to ALWAYS play the right ladder: Who Brought The Dog?, Spook Central, Gozer the Gozerian, and Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. You really want to get to Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. Just balance the scoring and the players will be more free to choose their pathway though the game. One options would be to make the other ladders more rewarding. Do something with The Library insert after completing the first ladder and make The Ballroom, with Slimer, a more complex mode. This would also fix two of the common suggestions about the coding: "unused library insert" and "do more with Slimer". Also, if there were more points in We Came, We Saw, We Kicked It's..., which is available at the end of each ladder, you'll have a much more balanced risk / reward for choosing the shorter or longer pathways to get there.

EDIT: One additional options might be for each completed ladder to increase the value of the subsequent ladder(s). That way even though the four mode ladder is still the most lucrative on it's own, the best strategy for someone hoping to set a high score would be to save it until you beat the other two for maximum points.

Stern has repeatedly said they will be doing a code update. While I'm loosing faith in them, I am trusting Zombie Yeti. He say's it's coming and I don't see any motivation for him to make a false claim on his personal page. Overall, I'm really disappointed in Stern's attitude, which seems to blame or mock those that are complaining, instead of actually taking some responsibility. It's similar to my opinion of the Stern Party at Expo a few years back. I was expecting the vibe to be, "Thank you to all those who have supported us for all these years." Instead it was, quite literally, "Three cheers for us." Both examples, come across as rather arrogant, IMHO.

I know very little about code. How easy would that be? Is code standardized so a new coder could look at it and immediately understand what and why everything is happening? At this point, I'm really hoping the delays are the result of years of work. The game could really shine with polished code.

So with the minimal update from Stern, can we start walking about more wish list items?

Spook Central
This is a great mode, but they really need to emphasize that it starts with a hurry-up shot. My preferred way of doing this would be to move the hurry-up to the right loop use display a cascade effect on the seven white inserts in front of that shot, similar to the start of We Came, We Saw, We Kicked Its... Shut down the other progress inserts during this period, so it's clear that this is an important shot. Also there needs to be some type of callout, letting you know that a hurry-up has started.