Xmen is phenomenal. Only Metallica has an art package that competes with it and only Tron has music that compliments the game better. The shot layout is great. The dots on the dmd are outstanding. The rules are deep and flow with the theme well.

I was the same. Old code bored me to tears but man did this pin grow on me. Got some quality time on a pro and I had to get one. It's super deep, super challenging and the art package is incredible. What a crazy turn around for this title.

I agree, its fantastic! I currently am on the fence about selling my Magneto LE to get one of my wishlist pins. The game is a blast to play. It has so much going for it. Not many other games can compare to the dots. Theme, Deep ruleset. Cool toys and features. And great flow.

Another reason I am having a hard time parting with it is because I feel like in the future this will be on every collectors wishlist. Should be in the top 20

Its a sleeper right now. Flying under the radar because of the initial bad rap.

I agree 100%. I think the XMLE will be a desired machine for many years to come. Since X-Men does not have a premium edition, selling an LE should only be done once you are absolutely sure.

I'm so happy I finally snagged a Magneto.

Marcus

Still in the camp of "meh". Maybe I need to play it again?

I haven't played x-men since I first saw it at CAX 2 years ago. I was very disappointed with it when I played it, and just haven't tried since. I will have to track one down to play it. It is a great theme for me, so if it turned into a fun game, I definitely need to look into it. I wish there was one to play locally.

It definitely has some cool shots. I just still can't get past that big ass wolverine that's so close to the flippers.

Thank you for helping me move that 500# air hockey, and I appreciate the high score targets you put up for me to shoot for on the game!

Yeah, I was extremely annoyed by that at first and it kept me away from the game, although after spending more time playing it I found myself barely even noticing that it was there.

The toy looks big but the actual area that it effects shots isn't that substantial. You can aim around it pretty easily.

I had just about rid the memories of this turd, and was at peace... till I saw this thread. Hands down the worst Stern I've ever owned.

Thanks for coming in this thread just to let us know we feel special and so are you.

I actually find myself playing it more than my ST LE these days.

Funny timing on this thread, I just posted something on this on the bash a few days ago. When the game came out, I thought it was ok, not as good as I had hoped, and then didn't think twice about it for a year and a half. Picked up an X-Men pro on a whim, the game is actually pretty awesome now. It is a total sleeper, it's had 2 years of bad press, people are just now starting to figure out that it's actually really good now with the new software. Reminds me of Iron Man in that way, Iron Man had years of bad press until people started catching on that it was actually a great game. I think X-Men is going to turn out that same way.

I hope so.

I still think the majority of the owners were happy with the game, even at the beginning. It's just that the negative folks were sooooo insistent, and they wouldn't stop.

The game really rocks...love the addition of Deadpool...

Pete

Yep, 500#
http://www.icegame.com/p-21-cosmic-hockey.aspx

My wolverine is my fave out of my line-up and AFM, Tron le, Tom, are all in said line-up.

I'm still trying to figure out how to use him. I get the combos, then see the flashing apron, but don't known what to do and have only used him on accident.

If you start a villain mode while the flashers are strobing you will hire dead pool and he will help you on that villain mode.

Ditto that.

Negative.

Have you played a pro with the latest code? I'm still not crazy about the LE features, but I can't really find anything to complain about with the pro. Sorry you're still mad about your preorder disaster with game, but that doesn't change the fact that the game is pretty decent now. From a pro standpoint, what do you currently hate about the game? Bad voices? Lack of multiball excitement? I can come up with minor things but nothing major.

X-Men is a good game, but I ruined it for myself thinking of what it could have been (which would have been much better than it is). I really wish I would have bought my Wolverine LE and kept it in the box for a couple of years before opening it or reading anything about it. It was nothing but pure frustration and disappointment seeing them drop the ball over and over again on the code updates. It still stands as the only game I have heard of that made such a leap backwards from one update to the next.

As it stands now, it's a fun game. The poorly designed Wolverine is still a poorly designed Wolverine and even worst on the LE because of it being repositioned into the Beast lane for no reason from the Pro. The game still needs another update to fix the bugs and reset the modes after Dark Phoenix.

The next to last update improved the game a lot because getting Deadpool makes the villains beatable, adds some strategy and also makes comboing the shots not only fun, which they have always been, but worth going for.

Xmen had bad press about code from the start.....took a year + to get where we are now.

Anyone remember the metallica fiasco? Mystery award, missing modes etc. Almost a year.

Iron man, spiderman. 2 years

Avengers still isnt finished.

Star trek has good code now after the christmas update, but owners are still waiting almost 9 months later for new code. I thinkits been around 10 months since karl urban speech was announced. Even with a commercal saying coming soon.

Par for the course with new machines.

Seems people were more willing to give up on xmen. And forget it still wasnt finished, and just assumed that was how the game would stay.
Anyone who did give up on it should give it a try again.

Still not as polished as it could be. But it is s blast to play!

One of my favorite pins without question. Shots are laid out very well with tight but super fast shots when your cranking out combos and shooting well. Deep as all get out with some very fun and hard to reach wizard modes. Art, dots, and theme were perfect for me and I still love playing it even though I've played it a ton.

Don't let a few take the thread in a negative direction. Best to just take it with a grain of salt don't respond some only do it to get a response without it they can't feel like life is all about themselves. I know sometimes reading these threads make it seem like the online pinball community is made up of whiny, grumpy, frustrated men that like nothing better then to hate on another mans enjoyment. However, I find that almost all of the pinheads I meet local or not are really cool people and I know some of those very people are online as well. You just got to do some filtering sometimes and pay attention to who and what you want to pay attention to. Makes it feel like a much more positive atmosphere.

Best pin in my collection that includes Sm, IM, ACDC Prem, and TOM

My magneto sits in the box 2years later. This thread has me wanting to crack 'em open.

This is one of those disappointing lines that gets thrown out there again and again. He isn't mad about his pre-order "disaster." He was expecting a game that he would like and didn't. Some just don't like the game so their opinion should be respected just as much as those that do.

As of this day more than two years later there are 10 NIB XM on EBay. There 3 IMVE left and it's been only one month.

nice thread. hopefully it will make others give it another chance after it's poor initial code.
I own a magneto.
Voices and big ass wolverine are my ONLY 2 bitches left about the game. Pinsiders are working hard to address both of those.
If you really like the game, now is the time to buy one.

I have a pro and love it.

Never played the premium so I don't know what I am missing.

This is probably a good thing or I would be wanting a premium instead of the pro.

The game is very solid.

I am a day one Magneto owner, and initially it did stink in a bad way and for a long time.

Patience paid off for me. I am enjoying playing this game, but I can see where some players don't find the game "fun".

The shot patterns are some of the most unique around in the modern Stern era. They are difficult and yet allow many interesting combinations. ( To an earlier poster, that is how you engage Deadpool. He helps you automatically. )

X-men requires a lot of setup to score decently and requires use of the whole playfield. There is no exploit on the game.

Contrary to what some might believe, the hit Wolverine all day long strategy is not the best option. If a player is a good multiball player, then it does make sense to go after the first Weapon X multiball, (assuming it is not on extra hard start) and it would be smart to bring in a villain along the way.

The rewards for completing other heroes and many other villains often surpasses the cumulative jackpot and SJP awards for Weapon X. The major benefit of Weapon X is to use it to complete the Villain modes.

There are benefits to playing as many heroes as possible before engaging Magneto multiball. In addition to earning an extra ball for completion (points in tourney mode), the Magneto multiball is worth much more as more heroes are played. Also completing all the heroes allows for playing Danger Room which is worth a lot of points.

There have been some complaints about the wizard modes. I am curious how often those issues are really a factor for players on factory settings. I know in competitive play reaching those modes is highly unlikely, particularly with no extra balls.

The art and light show is very good. The game suffers from a lack of exciting Jackpot call outs and has some mediocre sound bites (waiting for the sh/tty Beast comment in 3 2 1) which understandably bothers collectors. And some collectors think the toys are out of scale, and others dislike the effect and use of the Iceman ramp.

I am a bigger fan of rules and strategies and thinking how to play a game competitively. (The Iceman ramp will probably be off especially after watching that drain KME had, but adds for fun in a home setting). I like what the game offers and am looking forward to seeing it more in competitive play.

As with any other game, it has pros and cons, and as the kids say YMMV.

The magneto is one of the worst earning pins I've had in a long time. Gross earnings of less then 1k a year speaks loudly. For whatever reason, people simply don't like it

I find the machine boring to play. I can appreciate the deep rules, and think that if I did own it, and had one of the great games, and starting knowing what to do, I might gain some like for it, but it's lackluster to play in comparison to most other games. That's my impression for the times I've played it.

I think the point of many of these positive comments is that recent code changes have greatly improved the game. It seems that some of that some (not all) of the negative comments are not taking that into account. For example, see where the OP walked a way in the middle of one game a couple years ago with the early code, but didn't play again until now.

I might have been spoiled on it too, but the first one I had played was this one. The previous owner had never updated the code, so perhaps he didn't even know what he was selling.

I am definitely glad I kept mine. There were those few months where I refused to play it. But once they fixed that abomination it became loads of fun. To each their own though.

My LE will be staying for a long time yet.
One of Sterns greats imo.

I think you were right..................

Bring the NIB Magneto to me and take my Avengers. If you end up not liking Avengers I'll trade you back a nice HUO Magneto for it.

Exactly.

Pretty simple really. I don't like the layout of the pin. I don't like how it shoots. I played Eskaybee's pro that he bought (after selling his LE) with updated code. He told me he thought I'd like it better now. I didn't, because the code did nothing to change the layout or shots or the clunky feeling (to me) of the pin. Also, I felt like 90% of my games were the same as my score would always be between 20-30 million. When I played Eskaybee's it held true, I think maybe 2 games that I played were outside that 20-30 million point range.

Some pins just don't suite some people's preferences. X-Men is one of those pins for me. And believe me, it's not like I haven't given it a chance. Love the theme. Love the looks. Love the modes. Love the dots. Love the artwork. I'm one of those who actually liked the majority of the call outs and voice work too.

In the end, though, the pin isn't fun, and actually kind of boring.

It is still one of the first machines I play! Gets even better with time!

I think the functionality of the upper flipper is cool. You can actually make several shots from it. Kind of like a mirror imagine of the top third of the Tron playfield. However, I felt frustrated that the Wolverine toy effectively cuts off the entire left side of the playfield. It ways feels to me like I'm only playing the top of the playfield, and only from one side. Feels like the left flipper is only to feed up to the upper right.

I like the modes, love the dots. I don't mind the call outs one bit. Beautiful art package... It's the playfield mechanics that keep me away.

On the LE without the wolverine moved to the right, you are correct that it feels very cramped on the left hand side and really cuts down the flow (beast to storm combo is very very hard on base LE). On the pro he's shifted right to start so the beast shot isn't a problem, so you can hit scoop, Beast, Wolverine, Xavier, Magneto with a straight shot and backhand Cyclops or Iceman from the right flipper. All shots are pretty narrow though, you really have to be precise on everything to hit it. I can totally understand why somebody wouldn't like this, it's one of those # of shots vs smoothness of shots tradeoffs.

For me, the game is definitely a clunk fest right up until it isn't. If you can get the shots dialed in (and they are WEIRD angles for sure), it really opens up. But, honestly, a lot of why I like the game is THEME, so I tend to overlook a lot of stuff that would make a game *bad*.

I do think the geometry on Iceman could be better, its a fun ramp to hit but its so tight at that angle its hard to be consistent.

-Wes

...or exactly like SG

The tight shots at weird angles I think are what turn many players off. There are all sorts of geometric oddities in the game. I, however, like the quirkiness of it, since it does not feel like many other games. There are certainly times when there is a lot of combination flow, if the shots are spot on. Missed shots will feel clunky in X-men.

In contrast, a game like Stern's Star Trek is game I like that flows very nicely and is a pleasure to shoot, but the shot patterns do not feel unique. There is less of a clunky feel when missing shots. Steve is the master of flow

Avengers is fine. Its code is excellent. Way better then Star Trek

here's my take. I was a day one owner of XM LE.

It was not my favorite. I liked the theme and some of the shots and the toys (NC especially) but the early code was horrible and I grew to play it less and less or not at all. I didn't really mind not playing it since I also got Tron, AcDc premium, SM, and STLE in the months/years after XM LE.

I got to thinking XM was the dud. So I started to try to trade it or sell it, I offered it at a deep discount, but no takers unless I wanted to sell it at the lowest price of any Stern LE. People were throwing the number $5K around (or less) even with my game including a shaker. So I said to myself (?) is this a $5K game? Do I sell it that low?

In order to determine if I wanted to keep it. I started to play it more and more. Currently I play it more than any game (save IM VE which I just love). I found the more I play it the more I love it.

I had traded away my older B/W games like TZ and IJ and CFTBL and TOTAN in the past 2-3 years to get my new games. I was just playing XM today and thinking to myself if I like it better than IJ? I found that I could not say one was better or worse (to me).

I don't mean to sound like XM LE is now a classic of all time up there with TZ or IJ. Just to me, in my opinion that it can hold it's own. Or in some ways may be better than those classics I sold.

I am sure glad I did keep mine, and while not having a premium machine may have hurt it, since Stern did not have any more units to sell. But I would not be surprised if Stern did not build more pro versions as the game may pick up popularity slowly.

One thing I will say, I was at Allentown and as many people (maybe more) were lined up to play XM pro than AFM and MM. I don't mean to sound like that proves anything other than, when people had the chance to play it they seem to like it. And to me it's a game suited for the home environment since it's so deep.

I am quite bored with STLE, almost in the same way I was with XM LE. Almost don't play it, but hopefully the next code will do something with what could also be a great pin.