I was wondering about this while playing last night. The current effects and lighting are nice but they don't have a lot of polish in this regards in comparison to WOZ, which I have sitting close to it. I am curious if this is somehow a limitation of the P-ROC system? I'm pretty ignorant with regards to it's capabilities so please have mercy on me if that's not the case.

One thing I've thought is missing is some type of animation or visual representation of how the catapult to the trunk ties into a Houdini show. I get that we don't want the focus taken away from that sweet long ball toss with trunk opening / closing coordinated, but what is supposed to be going on at that point in a Houdini show, does it correlate to some kind of trick, etc.

As for more stuff hanging around inside the game, meh I don't think it adds much IMO. There's already an ample of amount of those and the included purple posts are a nice touch.

I had the same question and found this from TWIP's interview with Joe Balcer:

"TWIP: Can you explain the unique head shape on the game?

JB: Early on, when we first did the cabinet design, we had a design here from the engineering group to put marquee lights on the head, and being that Houdini did most of his magic on stage, we wanted to bring out the marquee lights. We weren’t going for the multi-colored crazy chasing lights. It was more of a marquee light – that kind of yellowish white that you can get out of LEDs and just have them chase up and down. And putting the curves in the sides of the box made the lights come out at you and then disappear under the box. It looked cool, it was one of the things we didn’t get in the game. I really wanted to see that happen but under the time frame and everything else, we couldn’t put our attention to that as much as I had hoped. The design look of it stayed the same, and it actually has provisions in the head to add chase lights at any given point. There may be an upgrade down the road. I would think that you might see that on another game we do. At least it is designed in. When we did have it working it was a cool effect and if you put 20 games on a wall and turn on all the games, your eyes would go immediately to Houdini just for that aspect. It was more of a “get your attention” aspect but I think we could’ve worked it into gameplay. But the time and effort and cost to make it happen put the skids on it for now.

TWIP: Do you think that could be something that a pinball mod company could do down the road?

JB: Absolutely. It’s on our list as something to get to, to make it available. It is just something we haven’t gotten to."

http://thisweekinpinball.com/exclusive-interview-joe-balcer-playfield-designer-houdini-desire-create/

Must....resist.....juvenile...response.....!