This seems reasonable!

This seems less so! Full on kool aid swilling going on in some parts here. Both games likely are all time greats in their own ways. But maybe ship some more games and see how they hold up before crowning a new king?

If you don't know the rules and don't care to learn the rules... You won't know what's going on. Deep stuff I know.

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?