I'd be more inclined to rent a place with a pinball machine than one without...!

If I were to ever get a vacation home, and rent it out, I'd consider putting a machine or two in it.

Sure...the name is Tee's Tease which is in a gated community in Corolla. It's rented under Village realty (CC125). You can Google it. I'll make a donation to Pinside for rentals from here. There's a trolley to take you to the beach during summer months.

I just looked it up. Nice place.

Holy cow, that's a nice house!

Thanks, I bookmarked it for a later date. Really unbelievable price on it too, but I can't go down without my dog. She's 14 so maybe in a few years I'll get a place with a pinball machine. At the very least you've given me another company to look at for house rentals.

What I mean is WOZ and likely future JJP products have very solid feel that other machines don't have that you especially notice when going from WOZ to something else. I hope JJP can make them more dependable however

Dup post

Gorgeous house.... if it were a bit closer to the beach- it'd be on our favorite list.

You should have turned on the WoZ for the photos !

JJP just sent out an update:

"Greetings Pinball Fans,

Every day brings us more parts and closer to production of The Hobbit. In recent days our customers have become more excited to get their games. Every loyal JJP customer knows our commitment to make Great Games. We wanted to share more details of Hobbit as you will see an update on code, sound, and animations below. We went back to the drawing board to redesign The Hobbit so in that process we found a more artistic and suitable finish for the body armor of the LE and SE games. As always it took more to do it but it looks awesome! See photos below.

We are on track to begin Hobbit Production this Fall. To get a better understanding of our level of dedication and commitment to make the greatest pinball machines, please check out this video of David Thiel and Butch Peel's Seminar, "Making of The Hobbit Pinball" at this year's Northwest Pinball & Arcade Show in June - Click Here to Watch the Seminar

This weekend, Butch Peel will be attending the Cleveland Pinball Show and will be speaking at 9:30 on Friday Night. Gary of Abel Electronics will have a WOZ to Play and Hobbit Translites for Sale. Unfortunately, tight schedule and logistics prevented us from getting a Hobbit to the show, but soon everyone who has a Hobbit on order will have one to play. Thanks to Marvin Ortscheid for your commitment to the Cleveland Pinball & Arcade Show! - For more info, visit http://clevelandpinballshow.com/

Hobbit Code Update
Progammer, Keith Johnson says "Hobbit code is progressing nicely. Already 21 of 31 planned main 'book modes' are complete and are all individual different-playing story-based modes. All of the main objectives leading to the wizard modes are in the game, and finishing the other minor rules such as mystery awards and bumper rules is progressing now. There is already significant choreography in the game, particularly Smaug, so it already feels much more like a game than WOZ might've at this point prior to shipping. There are many things that haven't been divulged yet about how the rules and modes will work that will take the game to unprecedented levels, so look forward to that!"

Hobbit Sound Update
Here is a little progress report on speech and callouts from SoundMaster, David Thiel. Over a thousand speech callouts have been culled from the three Hobbit movies. Over a thousand sound effects have been extracted and used as raw materials to craft over 400 custom award stingers.

Hollywood's "Two Steps from Hell" have delivered 34 pieces of music for the game modes of The Hobbit Pinball. Each piece is a lush and epic orchestral background composed for the specific mode of game action. Each composition is luxuriously long and few will loop during play. David says, "No pinball has ever had such an 'epic' soundtrack."

All the CPU power and storage of the JJP system is being exploited for Hobbit Pinball audio. All cues and music are uncompressed 44.1, stereo assets delivered with authored dynamic mixing to ensure that the most important sounds are always being heard by the player.

"I've worked on 24 pinball audio packages since 1987 and what we have accomplished with The Hobbit Pinball is the most exciting and entertaining audio package ever. I've had the 'Expo' prototype for months testing audio cues and I am having a blast playing the game as it takes shape." - David Thiel.

Animation Update
Artist & Graphic Designer, JP DeWin says "It has been a joy to work with the high def. movie material from The Hobbit after WOZ. It's good to see so many positive reactions regarding the LCD, as I knew I wanted to make the user interface on our 2nd game even better than the first. It still amazes me how the animations run so smoothly on screen thanks to the great programming of Keith and Ted. Having been able to work on both the print-art and animations simultaneously on Hobbit has been great, as I can easily re-use playfield elements on the screen to clarify rules and seamlessly bring the design elements of the whole game together."

Smaug Gold Special Edition:
Smaug Gold SE.jpg

Limited Edition:
Limited Edition.jpg

Gold Body Armor:
unnamed.jpg

Bronze Body Armor:
unnamed.jpg

They changed the powder coating? (Edit: posted while I was typing. Hmm. Have to see in person to see what I think.)

Good update, love to see communication.

Thanks for sharing this update, cool to hear more details on code and sound.

Based on this, sound like JJP expects to have the first game on the line by Dec 21 (last day of Fall this year)?

Looks like it. They both compliment their respective lettering on the cabinet now. Nice touch with the golden font on the Smaug SE and the bronzed font on the LE.

Really like the look of the new Gold armor.

I really like the look of that as well. It just makes the whole cabinet feel more cohesive and well thought out.

I wonder how it feels under your hands?

One big advantage to the hammered look is it gives all sorts of angles for the eye to pick up the metallic flakes, so it's probably going to look a lot more gold than the flat style.

And it's different. I give it a thumbs up after looking at it more.

I like hearing this!

Each composition is luxuriously long and few will loop during play. David says, "No pinball has ever had such an 'epic' soundtrack."

Should hide fingerprints MUCH better than normal glossy powdercoat. I like it!

But the coin door needs powdercoat too!!

Agree it looks great! I would love to see some of the new modes and LCD work, every video I have seen is "SMAUG Multi-ball"

Nice update! No mention of the custom dialog - so that make me wonder if it is in or out. But the rest of the update looks very promising. This pin 'should' be really awesome and quite different from anything else out there.

I had a JP with a similar looking powder coat finish and I really liked the feel of the extra texture.

Oooh. Yeah good call. That coin door would probably look sick with the same treatment. Sometimes the brass coin doors are a little too blingy for my taste, but I could get behind the bronze for sure.

Along these lines, I need to ask Jack if the shooter rod housing will be powder coated as well. Or added for a small fee

It does look way more impressive than GOT LE.

Will be real interesting to see which is most fun to play.

It's kind of hard to tell from the two shots, but it looks like the housing might be of the same treatment (if you look back and forth at the Gold SE and the LE, the SE seems brighter).

Wow...i really HATE HATE HATE the new armor. I thought the old colors looked really cool, and Alex certainly pumped them up enough. Various applications have had this kind of crinkle finish on them for forever and I've always thought it looked tacky.

Way to downgrade at the last minute!

COMPLETELY disagree with you. The hammered look is awesome...especially improved the gold one! The powder color was the one thing LE had over SE, now I can truly say the SE is better all around! Thank you for the last minute upgrade!!

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/An-Update-on-The-Hobbit-Pinball-Machine.html?soid=1104524641178&aid=V50ByFa94Kg

great thing is that you can order a standard edition with stainless trim and not lose any of the toys/layout features.

I disagree. Looks 100% better.

Not exactly...the standard version is missing a few items like the axe slings and a pop-bumper barrel. Check that matrix they had released.

Guys, dont get your panties in a bunch, the armor will probably change next year when we get another update that we are waiting on parts still

Interesting choice of words. Something tells me this is not the last minute.

I like the armor color change as it fits the Hobbit theme better.

I don't think JJP would mind using standard armor on a SE or LE if you let them know.

I dig the gold. A little more unsure about the LE version. The main reason I changed back to LE was because I thought the seaside bronze looked better.

The new one looks really nice up-close but very brown (not my favorite color on a pinball machine) on the cabinet picture, at first glance.

Maybe I just need a better picture of the cabinet since I like it up-close?

Anyway, I really appreciate their attention to details like this. I probably just need to get used to it a bit more before giving final judgement

As a complete outsider observing in. The gold looks amazing and the smaug edition looks stellar! Can't wait to see what keefer does with this one.

That's one of the reasons I stayed with the LE. The second was that I preferred the cabinet art with the different characters on each side. The third was that without being able to see the finished machines in person, it seemed best the stay with the original vision of the machine.

Two of the three reasons are still valid so I'm holding onto the LE, barely.

Anyone interested in ordering give me a shout... With the GOT disappointment we've gotten a number of emails and calls in the last few days... If you're ready to jump - now's the time - when they start production / shipping you will see a big flurry or orders and also wait times then. Happened exactly like that for MMR. Hobbits - I have Day 1 ordered LE's and also a number of Smaug Gold's we bought as well both still available. Drop us a line for great service and pricing. Would love to hear from some new potential customers. Great to see that the communication from JJP is back on track with things ramping up to the finish line ! Looking forward to seeing a lot our friends at our booth at the York show next month !

Joe Newhart
PinballSTAR Amusements
[email protected]
570-357-0042

The axe slings not being there is a feature, not something missing.

When finished, the total package will raise the bar to a higher standard. Again!

LOL, possibly...I'm waiting for the final machine to be sure. If they blow the modders will remedy them. They don't bug me at present though and that's worst case.

I agree, put the axes in - If I don't care for them (unlikely) I will remove them.

What is the "Credit/Delete" fee one receives for this choice?

No idea, but I would definitely email Jen or call Jack to ask.

Touche! There are likely MANY MANY minutes until this game gets released.

Aside from liking the hammered finish or not, what pisses me off about this is that we were forced to choose LE or SE in a limited time window, based solely on the machine's cosmetics. Now they have changed the cosmetics. I stuck with LE mainly because of the seaside bronze trim. Now I think the SE looks like a better combo with the new trim options.

Since they revisited a main aspect of the differentiation between models, do I get to reconsider which model I want? Doubt it.

JJP must being having a good week after the build up and let down of GOT

11992027_10156070387805241_867340873_n.jpg

That's fair. I think the new armor is interesting, but I agree, you were given a choice on something and it got changed, and that doesn't feel good. These long development cycles man, it's tough.

Why not ask? I'd be interested to hear the response.