Put the first 20 plays on mine. I seem to be free and clear of most issues. Left orbit was fine out of the box. No right sling issue. Drops have no issues. Snake rejects are minimal. The left side stand up of the right ramp seems to be favoring the left side of it hole which kinda pinches the snake head into being a tighter shot. The orbit post seems to be good only sending rejects down the left side once in every 10 or 12 times. Functionally out of the box has been near perfect.

The hammer is bizarre. My game came with 1.3 installed and was made on June 29th. I played 1.3 for the first few games and the hammer was flawless. Always registered every hit and I swear every time lock was lit, the next hit would always catch and pound through the field. My mistake was not saving 1.3 before I loaded 1.65. The hammer on he newer code registered hits the same but it took consistently 2 additional hits to have the magnet grab the ball. First lock was 5 and it would take 7. The next was 7 and it would take 9 hits. Never got to the MB with factory settings. I went into the settings and changed the hits to 3, 5, 5 knowing each one would add 2 hits to lock and got MB on the 20th hit. Has anyone else experienced similar?

Even with the hammer I am really enjoying the game and glad I chose to go with the premium. On a side note there sure look like there is enough room to get a protector around the hammer magnet. Regarding the critique the cube prevents strategic ricochetes I can tell you this was not the case. I was able to consistently make the snake from the cube. Hit Sparky from the cube. Even make the left ramp off of the cube. The cube is definately getting a racing stripe from the ball hits. I opted to slow down the progress with a strip of mylar and that to is getting beat. Very solid right now, can't wait for more.

Cheers

I would give more details if I backed up 1.13 but I didn't. What I am confident on is it was faster (less hits to the cube) on 1.13 to progress to coffin MB than 1.16. That was my experience.

Just played a couple more games. Had the magnet let the ball go before the hammer comes down thing twice. For the record it doesn't record a lock when that happened. I also had once where the magnet let the ball go and the hammer didn't come down.. Will try to see what caused it. More to come. Other than that, by changing the ball counts on the locks to 3,5,5 it is functioning close to what factory settings are supposed to.

Alan