That seems pointless! Not a fan of that blue insert, devalues the drones insert.

This does suggest Stern knew about the Arc reactor bonus feature when they made these new RE-VE playfields though, in my humble opinion. And it wasn’t just a quick polish of the rules by Lyman (I.e there was a degree of forward planning and communication).

How about a pic of the insert with the machine off and just overhead lighting?

If I was anyone that purchased a new Vault from Stern I would be upset. A little false advertising using the same sale flyer from the original Vault run for the new ones. They made the changes to the play field without notifying their customers. Only to find out when you open the box. The insert I could maybe get over. But the magnets look bad. I'm glad I have my 2014 Vault.

Below is a pic of my friends insert. He is trying to get Stern to send him out decals for the magnets.
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They definitely should’ve re-did the art around the magnets. On the Spider-Man VE, the art looks fine around the magnet because they re-did it to make it work around the magnet.

I understand why Stern have made the insert blue, to coincide with Lymans plans of making it an award but visually it’s way off!

I'm not a huge movie buff, but was there any significance to the Mark III suit? If so, that may make sense, but to just tie it to an Arc Bonus award seems a bit odd.

It was the first red and gold suit.

Seems like it should have been one of those colors then (red or yellow) as opposed to blue. Swing and a miss there.

Yellow I could’ve stomached, it’s not a colour used much elsewhere on the game, hasn’t really got a meaning, but red is already taken for the Iron Man modes.

I honestly didn’t feel the white/clear insert on both the Original and VE was ‘broken’, white worked.

Mark III was the first none prototype armour, so it’s significant in that regard as his first true “Ironman” armour, which makes Lymans new bonus pretty great and shows he just gets how to integrate a theme.

But still a blue insert is just wacky visually, I always liked the white as I looked at the mark inserts as those suits arc reactors, building up to the mark 6 reactor, which is significant again as it’s the first armour that runs off his new arc reactor, that he designs in order to cure himself from palladium poisoning caused by his version 2 arc used to power armours 2 to 5.

Either the rules/inserts are a major stroke of luck or it’s some amazing little bits of attention to detail from Lyman integrating the code around the theme.

I setup the 'mark' inserts on my OG Ironman to go : red, red, orange, yellow, white -- which isn't proper for arc reactors at all, but looks nice aesthetically. The blue insert thing is just weird.

Are you able to adjust the iron monger sensitivity? Most of my shots against it are not counting.

Mine are all blue

Have been for years. Before a vault was even a thing.

Pic was during attract more, they were mid fade, they all look correct normally

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I put a changing colour LED on Mark III

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My LEDs are white, orange , blue, magenta, and white flash. A vault. I wonder if they just grabbed what they had. All inserts are clear.

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Thanks for the replies and opinions. Today I had the opportunity to buy a very nice previous run of the VE's. However, the price was around $800 less than the expected price of a NIB. I decided to pass and wait for the new ones which due to land here in May or June.

With the big ugly magnets and the blue insert I would go with the previous run of the VE's. Plus you're saving $800 you can put into mods for your Iron Man!

I agree with this and am revising my suggestion of a new machine. I'd recommend an earlier VE.

Which would you rather have?

IMVE 2020 or IMVE 2014?

You decide.

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Original or 1st vault, with the original as long as you keep the magnet flush with the playfield and deal with mushrooming of the magnet head early days you won’t ever have any issues with playfield damage.

To be honest, I don't see either as a big deal. Replica decals for the magnets and matching LEDs for the inserts if you absolutely have to have them coloured.

I don't think the point being made is that it is a big deal (at least that's not my point). It's more about what is preferable. Even at the same price (assuming near equal condition), I'd rank the 2014 VE at the top. Especially so if there is a lower price for the 2014 VE vs. NIB.

Only issue I really have is the blue insert.

There is no way to make for an end user to fix this. How can they make it like the others?
Add a comet matrix light splitter and add 1x green and 1x red led to it?
Then block the others so these colors don't bleed thru?

Sweet Jesus. Now I know what to look out for when I’m ready to buy a used one.

With the amount of feeling about the colour of the inserts, they must have some significance to the film?

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/iron-man-owners-club/page/79#post-5599558

That feels like a bit of a long bow you'd concluding regarding theme integration.

The blue is definitely wacky and so far out of theme its jarring.

Why blue? Why not red or yellow seeing that's the suits main color themes.
So I re-read the change note line to see if there is any other clue.

"Added a half-way bonus for the MARK SUITS. The bonus is lit after the third MARK SUIT and awarded at the SPINNER."

I do agree however on re-reading this that it might be a way to make a "blatantly obvious visual marker" to the player about the new half way bonus.
Aesthetically it looks nuts and seems like a really silly choice to bake it into the hardware.

So perhaps as they don't have color changing led's this was what they thought was their only on playfield way to highlight "bonus is lit" or that there is something to get to when its not lit.

A unique blinking pattern would have been easier, works on all machine revisions and would still draw the players attention when available.

I would’ve had less of an issue if the insert itself wasn’t blue. White/clear insert with blue LED? Ok. Better yet, red or yellow LED as suggested. But a blue insert? Why? Because the playfield color is blue at that location?

Call me crazy, but I actually like the look of the magnet protectors...especially the Monger one. It just has more of an "Ironman" look to it. Whiplash isn't bad. Honestly like both looks.

The blue insert is a really odd decision. Still seems like a mistake to me.

I miss my Ironman...

You're crazy.

Fair enough!

Just before the world went sideways, ColorDMD released for Mustang. And I jumped on it. Unfortunately I've been quarantined from my Mustang since then, and the new DMD was just sitting on my table. I finally got tired of looking at the box, so I ended up installing it in my Iron Man to celebrate the new code. I have to admit that I've never thought IM was a good candidate for color. The dots are really not that great. Nothing to do with the conversion, just the dots in the game itself are muddy. But at least it isn't sitting in a box.

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Also, this screen is different than the older LCD. The black looks darker. I think it is because the new panel is different. It's much thinner, and the finish is more of a gloss like a better laptop screen. So until the world restarts, it will stay in IM.

Did you get the LCD or the LED version. From what I have read, games with video capture dots like Iron Man look better with the LCD as the gap between pixels is smaller than that on the LED version.

Oh I'm firmly in the LCD camp. I have 5 of them right now, and they are all LCD. The LED version gives me a headache pretty quickly, and my eyes can't focus on it when I look at it. There is something about the offset in the color points of the LEDs that just doesn't work for me. They may have improved that over the last couple years, but when they came out with it I installed two of them, and just couldn't look at them. But the LCD ones work great for me.

Strangely i'd heard the opposite - games with video (IM, TRON...) look better with LED!

But I'm the same as Dave above, MUCH prefer the LCD set to DotsXL as it just looks a LOT clearer to me. Must've bought about 10+ LCD's over the last few years now. No experience with LED except playing games with them at shows, and generally being unimpressed.

At the end of the day, like anything else its all personal preference. I think the LCD is to dim for me. I'm in the LED camp.

Ever notice the play field glare on led? Not so on lcd.

The glare is no worse than the stock DMD and easily addressed with a piece of polarizing film over the display

I've got the '14VE w color DMD LCD and love it!!! The white inserts are just more of a smash to the face when you get past markV...tied a white LED strip to the emblem (under cab) so the game is just vicious to play (before I drain). As it should be....

The clips are fair at best w either LCD or LED imho (like SM and probably KISS if they ever do it) but to be expected. I'm a HIRES guy, and still like choice, so LCD in all mine....pros far outweigh the cons.

This game absolutely never disappoints!!!!

I'll be joining the club tomorrow if everything shakes out as planned. This was one of the first games that I really enjoyed when I first got into pinball a few years ago. Excited to be picking one up now. It's a 2014 VE that looks like it was routed for a short time but I still can't wait for it to join the Borgy line-up of TWD and XMLE. All my Sterns are Borg designs. Who wudda thought?

John Borg sent you a PM:

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Man, that guy makes some brutally awesome games.

I'm a glutton for punishment I suppose. TWD, TNA, Flash Gordon, R&M, and now IM, yeah I like my games fast and brutal

Welcome to the club my friend!! Truly one of the best pins in my collection.

Got the game. Trying to update to the most recent code but the game cant erase the previous version (fails midway through) and I get ERROR CODE 1.

Anyone see this before? I could only find this one instance online and so I swapped Flash RAM chips from my TWD (which i know works) over and I still get the same error.

I started a new thread here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-sam-code-update-error-code-1

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And of course the old code wont boot either, so I cant even play it.

And I sent Stern support an email since they arent taking calls right now.

Might sound like a stupid question but I’m pretty sure we have all done it once or twice. Are you using the correct code so Vault code if you have a vault? Not sure if the original code would work on a vault.

Yes I am using the Vault code.

And just to be certain, I tried to install the "non Vault" code and that didn't work either.

I posted the resolution of my problem in the thread.

1.86 just dropped? Or did i imagine it?

EDIT - it definitely did drop!

V 01.86.0 - 28-April-2020
=========================

- Removed ADD-A-BALL from the SHILED award for DO OR DIE MULTIBALL, as
the multiball continuously serves all of the balls from the trough for
the duration of the multiball, so ADD-A-BALL doesn't make sense here.
- Added settings for SHIELD EXTRA BALL and SHIELD SPECIAL; these allow
the user to enable (the default) or disbale these features as desired.
- Fixed a problem with the implementation of the IRONMAN TARGET
DIFFICULTY adjustment. The MEDIUM setting was implemented correctly,
but the EXTRA EASY setting was implemented as EXTRA HARD and the
EASY setting was implemented as HARD. This has been changed to a
new setting, 1ST HARD IRONMAN TARGET SET; the range is 1-10 and the
default is 4, which corresponds to starting the second IRONMAN FAST
SCORING mode, which is the same as the previous implementation for
the MEDIUM setting (most games).
- Reworked the 1ST HARD BOGEY RAMP (SET) adjustment to be more logically
readable; the behavior is the same, but instead of a default value of
'1' (which implies the first ramp set is hard, which it isn't and never
was), the default is now '2' (second set). The range has been changed
from 0-10 to 1-10, as setting the adjustment to 0 (the 0th set) also
doesn't make much sense.
- Implemented the MUSIC ATTENUATION and SPEECH ATTENUATION adjustments;
these were not implemented.
- Fixed a display bug in the WHIPLASH MULTIBALL background display effect
that was causing the number of hits left to light the super jackpot to
be displayed incorrectly.
- Updated default initials for some High Score To Date entries.