Some games have way too many multiballs. In my opinion it takes the skill out of the game. Very hard to feel rewarded making shots that were achieved during a multiball.

There's a lot going on, but the game tells you what you need to know for the most part. You just need to know where to look. At any given time there are a lot of options and they're laid out for the player to choose, which is why people used to a linear game have trouble with it. The longer you play it, the less overwhelming it is.

And if a light show alone can get me to play a song I formerly hated and get me to SEEK OUT and kind of like it over time, that's mission accomplished.

Is there such a thing as multiball talent or is it always just spray and pray? That is what I do.

Watch Karl DeAngelo's streams. He has great general control, even during multiballs on GnR.

I hope this style of play is seen more often. It forces trap players to PLAY THE GAME since they're penalized for trapping. Trap play is boring to watch. I want to see ball control gods emerge that can work a playfield that appears to be pure steel ball chaos.

Yes. Absolutely. The best players in the world can keep a couple balls trapped and make shots with the one free ball. Staging flippers comes into play and also cradle separations.

Apparently that's boring to watch!

Anything's boring when you have too much of it for too long.

Gotta go with Godzilla. GNR sure is pretty, but GZ is just fun.

Weird, that's what people keep saying aboot the MBs in GNR.

Taste. Only a few can have the best.

Did you see Defending your Life? There's a scene about that. Albert Brooks wants what his handler in the afterlife waystation is eating and he said he wouldn't like it because his brain isn't advanced enough to appreciate it. Albert Brooks insists, and it doesn't go well.

Only on pinside could you find someone that takes a major positive about a game (The GNR Light show) and turns it somehow into a negative (Why would you want it on a rock pin). I'm telling ya, people will find a way to shit all over a pin if they really want to lol.

BOTH are great games, just different in how they play, feel, and flow. I can't say that because I like Godzilla so much, GNR must suck. I like GRN for the experience it brings.. including an absolute killer lightshow. I love picking a new song out just so I can see what unique lightshow goes along with it. I like Godzilla because of the theme and actually love the part of the lightshow that goes along with the "stomping" sound.. it just feels good on the game. Liking one does not make me dislike the other.

I get it that there are die-hard Stern only fans or bitter JJP fans because of the problems.. but all in all this is a hobby for me and I just want to play games and have fun. And variety and styles of play make the hobby richer to me.

You make an argument against the binary nature of opinions and then offer the most binary argument in the thread.

Why is it such a sin for others to dislike a game, regardless of who made it? I dislike GnR for the amount of MB. It feels like the coder doesn't understand the less is more philosophy here.

That being said, I respect your opinion and genuinely want to hear why you like it. Debate is the foundation of human progress.

GnR multiball is something that I was really concerned about after owning more than one JJPOTC, where multiball is a main method to get through the modes, and at least to me becomes tedious. So it was a big surprise how much I enjoy the unique approach to multiball in GnR, after digging into the game at home. Within the chaos are specific linear objectives that are a blast to achieve. It seems against the grain, as I’m used to working towards multiball, but it just works, at least for me. I didn’t enjoy playing it until I had it in my home, and with my game, adjustments weren’t needed. This is way more than just an epic light show. It is great to shoot, has that fun factor I look for, after installing Pinwoofer even more amazing, and after adding a Polk sub to that, unbelievable. It is just a great game. Received GZLE, need to open it, but too busy playing GnR! My guess is I’ll love it as well.

So far, 3 tournaments and close to 1300 plays. A couple of easy tweaks out of the box, been bullet proof so far. So glad I got it before they upped the price $1000. U.S. Cheers!

I've found people that appreciate JJP games are cool with people buying and loving their Stern pins.But I'll be damned if it doesn't seem like Stern fans seem to want to stop people from buying or liking JJP games.I know it sounds crazy but that's what it seems like when you read some of these and other comments!

I never knew how bad it was until I bought a GnR JJP, You say anything good about it on Pinside and you're a Stern hater JJP fan boi, even that I own 13 Sterns with a GZLE on it's way

Says the guy with a Ghostbusters

I picked up gnr 3 weeks ago and gz le 2 weeks ago. Both are great games in their own way, but gnr is getting 80% of my play. I'm progressing well on gnr, but seem stuck on gz and that's part of the reason for the disparity on play but in my opinion, gnr is just more immersive and fun to play. .......For now,

If that is the case that is really unfortunate. I get tired of uninformed people on any side puffing up their chests and beaking off on a topic they seem proud they have spent zero time educating themselves about. Almost everybody gets excited now and again an falls into that trap, but I try to do it as little as possible. If people are proudly doing it as a second full time job, I don't know what to say.

GNR (all JJP pins, really) are very deep games that just seem to keep offering stuff to do, no matter how long you play. That leads to some longer games. But unlike nearly every Stern I buy, I am not getting the extra ball by default after owning the game for a few plays (7 rescues in JP). When I play Stern games on location, it seems like they are set to 4 balls by default. You have to have a pretty miserable game, or just try of some sort of alternate goal, to not get 4 balls.

Why am I harping on about that? Both companies make great games. Stern games are probably a bit better fit for location with flat/linear goals. JJP pins tend to give you a lot of options, and more ask "what do you feel like doing". If you have no idea what you are doing, one of those choices is going to be easier to learn (there is just less going on to learn).

And if you have either game at home, you can tweak the code nearly as much as you want. I did not feel particularly moved to increase JP's extra ball rescue amount, but I did drastically reduce the extra balls available in GNR (not sure what the rules designers were thinking by having multiple extra ball awards built into just playing a song...). I also cut down the ball save timer when you start a song (60 seconds was way too long for home use IMO, for skilled players).

I can like both Stern and JJP games, and recognize that every game is going to have a bit here or there "that I would have done differently". In the old days that was just considered common sense, and accepted that other people might have a different list of stuff like that for a given game.

Anyways, sorry that this has gone as long as it has. It feels like I am just saying something as eye opening as "water is wet". But if things have shifted so far maybe stating some sort of baseline is helpful?

I've owned 7 modern Stern's and only 1 JJP. I've never once seen JJP owners shit talking my Stern games on here, but the Stern army guys trip over eachother to chime in about how much JJP games suck. Both manufacturers have had their highs and lows and pinball would be pretty boring if every machine played like a Stern.

At this point my skills are such that without 60 second ball saver during songs, I wouldn't ever hear much of the song at all most games and that would be very disappointing. At 60 seconds it's still never enough. I'm stoked when I make it though past 60 seconds and completing a song I've maybe done once that I can remember... Making to the end is very rare for me at this point in my journey... I have a lot of runway ahead of me with 21 songs and tons of patch strategy that I haven't even scratched the surface on.... Love this pin and looking forward to getting into the unquantifiable number of different variations possible. Feels a bit like chess. The data east gnr was my first love and feels like checkers in comparison. I love all pinball machines for what they bring, and gnr is the first pin I ever bought and owned because of the obvious lights, assets, detail, etc, but justifiable for the game possibilities and how different each game within the game can be. Like chess, basic moves are the same but each opening, middle, and end game can be very different.
I know this is a gnr and gz comparison but I'm not hating. I can't wait to play gz on location, I couldn't logically justify cost to play gnr on location, I found it would eat up 50 bucks in half an hour at 2 bucks a game and I'd just not be able to fully enjoy it... there is a all you can play place but it's not as convenient to my house and I'd never get there enough. Plus so loud it ruins the experience. Gnr Target is a home use pin, imo. Maybe all of jjp is... Someone made the point about Stern being better on location, and I can see how that might be true compared to JJP machines... On location I don't see many people playing JJP compared to other brands either, which I think says something.
Anyway if you're still reading my rambling, I'm done.

This new claim that JJP fans have been so relaxed and civil while Stern fans are nasty and insulting is probably the biggest instance of gaslighting I have yet seen on Pinside.

Time for some polite PB fan boy's! I'm here and respect all the games that everyone loves here except for Led Zeppelin, wish Elwin or Meunier got to design that
title. Haha!

Geez let it go. So tiresome

KK, I'm out. Both GNR and Godzilla are both awesome games for different reasons. I'll have both! Cheers!

when the light show keeps going on, even during times you are suppose to see what is lit to shoot for, it's a huge problem. GNR does this constantly. What's lit? Who the fawk knows?, because there is a constant insert light show happening nonstop. GNR doesn't suck because it's being compared to Godzilla, it sucks, because it just flat out sucks. now if it was compared to the DE GNR. You would be matching 2 good games against each other. Not a lot of negative things to say about DE GNR, because it's an all around solid package.

Well GnR is more polarizing than GZ for sure… The game basically tells you what to shoot for, and is supposed to mimic a concert experience, which it does really well. How many games have input from the musicians? I think it shows. But time will tell, my guess is GZ and GnR will hang at the top. It always puzzles me when people hate MM, AFM, etc. as well.

jjp is notoriously slow in updating games, but unlike stern, they put out plenty of updates over the years. I believer woz had 5-6 updates at 3 years later, hobbit had 3-4. It might be 2-3 yrs before you get the game up to par, but just like woz and hobbit and dialed in, they will give us a good game in the near future, and gnr will be no exception.

Stern has been updating code, they just released code for JP (Goat Mania without topper) and SW had code updated 3 years out.

GOT as well

My dogs bigger cause he eats ken-l-ration!!

KISS and GB too. MET, AC/DC

Stern>>>>>>>>>>JJP

Was there any actual new code or is it all qr related?

Actual new code. Haha. Whatever that means. They received new code years after the game was released yes.

Yeah, but holy crap did the BK:SoR and LZ code updates make a mess. It clearly was just a thinly disguised excuse to get the QR code in the machines because the stuff they "fixed" obviously was not tested much at all. Really borked two games. Check the owner's threads.

It happens. It will get fixed.

I have no doubt, but why even release it if it was so poorly tested? And the releases were stacked, so the updates for many of these had to be sitting around waiting to go all at once. Why didn't they use their beta testers outside Stern to run through the code and at least catch a bunch of the obvious problems while waiting for release day? It's not like they PAY the beta testers, so it wouldn't cost anything. I'll never understand Stern...

Too excited to get them out for thanksgiving I guess.

Also I think only certain lead software people use beta testers. Dwight is a big one, but not sure others are. I don’t think Brian Eddy and Lonnie and Mike used any for stranger things.

They had one code revision that made half the switches stop working on stranger things. Haha

Lyman did use tester(s), too.

But it seems like a good position to create at stern. Software QA management with one person coordinating testing with all off-site beta testers for all machines. Use an online bug tracking database like they do in professional game development so the testers can report their bugs and the developer can check off the ones addressed. The trail for that kind of system has already been blazed years ago and mature software exists for bug tracking. Stern just has to care enough to adapt it to their business. They'd only need, what? 30-40 testers total to cover machines with overlap, and the only paid position is the QA coordinator that runs the program, so? But I'm really not sure they care enough about releasing well-tested code when they push updates. They're making money hand over fist right now as-is. Why do MORE?

I think beta testers should be able to send video into stern as well. Much easier for them to fix bugs when they are caught on video instead of people just saying, “my game acted weird for a minute”

And with online in the machines now, the beta code could have memory dumps and you could tell the machine to send that to Stern. Also, there are $100 devices that could be loaned to testers that continuously capture video and that could be sent to Stern as MP4s when there's a weird event as well. There are a LOT of not-that-hard or costly software and hardware solutions that could be used in a coordinated software QA program. Stern wouldn't even have to have the QA program coordinator work in-house at Stern. They could coordinate this program and interact with the beta testers and the developers from literally anywhere in the world.

It would substantially improve their releases and customer satisfaction, for not that much cost. Will they do it? Probably not.

Lmao I can respect that! But would you like GB more if i increased the ball saver from 9 seconds to 2 minutes..lol

This sums it up for me. I'm not a GNR fan. I bought an LE and sold it. But, I clearly understand what people like about it. We do need different manufacturers bringing games to the table. Everyone has super different reasons for liking a game.

I love these comparison threads until people start getting shitty just based solely on a manufacturer. I don't know that any of them are even close to perfect.

Anyway, carry on.... Godzilla has my vote on this one. ✌️

Me too Zeppelin is my band!!!

how many modes come with GnR and Godzilla, never had a chance to really go through them.
Alien has 15

I don't think Godzilla has a super abundance of modes, not like BM66 for example. JP has more modes (if you count all the paddocks as different modes).

Godzilla has 7 monster modes, plus several multi-balls. Overall Godzilla seems to be somewhat low in the number of modes but there is more than enough to keep you occupied, I rarely finish 1-2 monsters (modes) on a good game.

An unnamed podcasters argument is: GNR is a concert in a box, so who cares it shoots like a slow moving dog and has no mechs. He says its a different flavor of pinball on a 27” regular LCD screen, to be consumed at the insane concert in a box price of: $13,500.00!!!

Amazon sells a GNR concert in a box for $20 in Blu-ray, that plays on a 65 inch or bigger OLED screen, coupled to a high end sound system that blows away GNR’s comparatively weak stereo system. All for $20 you get a far better concert experience!!!

Godzilla has mechs galore and gives us real pinball players exciting pinball experiences. Not a GNR concert in a box with questionable geometry, that after playing the 50th time becomes so monotonous with no real mechs that owners want to get rid of it. Smart people are starting to sell them off and buy Godzilla. That should tell us something about how long a “concert in a box” experience will last in the home. Best advice: sell GNR, buy Godzilla and spend $20 for a GNR concert for a far better experience and own both for far less money!!!

Another fact filled endorsement.