Yeah you guys are right, the last 5 sterns are the 5 greatest games ever. The relics of MM AFM TZ WH20 aren’t worth anything. It’s just us old timers holding on to the pinball past. We are just old farts who don’t get the encyclopedia deep rules. We also don’t get the wonder and joy of looking at our scores on our cell phone thru the insider connect. I’m sure the next stern will be the next greatest game of all time. I mean how could it not.

Yup,
Everyone who gives MM a high rating - Nostalgic goggle wearing old farts
Everyone who gives the latest stern thats been out for a month a high rating - A well informed and opinionated expert wearing the thickest of rimmed glasses while still staying fashionable.

It's all just some conspiracy that a game from the 90s still holds up and is more fun for 90% of the people. I mean it has NO shots and NO features - just a hallway to a castle.

I snorted a little.

I own both an MM and a GZ so I'm confused: which one gets the "10" and which one gets the "1"?

I've been a fan of pinball since the 70s and I am not sure that even the stinkers deserve a "1". On the other hand, the perfect pinball has not been made (yet?). There is no such thing as a "10" IMHO.

I agree
The thing is, I've had my MM for years and even when putting up newer games in the lineup, every single person that visits prefers MM.
They have no idea what DEEP CODEZ means nor do they care. More seasoned players of course can appreciate things like that, but let's face it - the code is only a mask/reason to make the same shots more interesting/ worth trying for. When I play MM or AFM, I go for everything but the middle first and it's way more fun, people just like to say it's all middle on these games because the points are weighed heavily towards those shots which I also admit. Bottom line the average person who plays pinball has no idea WTF is going on or what to do when they walk up or play a few games of the lastest stern or jjp.

Old Bally/Williams games have my heart.

New Stern games have my lust.

Well, the younger experts in this thread speak for the throngs of new blood taking over. Us relics should meander out and let them run things now.

Good luck. I’ll be playing my fossils and drinking my coffee. Wait. Is coffee still in? Or is that also unhip. Maybe I’ll use a $300 Supreme mug.

Gzuz….

My favorite part is always this dipshits saying something like "games for the 90s or before csnt possibly compare to new games and their lighting!"

Dipshits is a bit harsh. I prefer age-illiterate. Hell, I had the world figured out in my twenties too. Until I didn’t. Yikes.

I have no nostalgia for 90’s pins. I never played them. Grew up in a tiny town and there was no access to them. Didn’t play my first pin until a few years ago at CP Pinball and didn’t buy our first until about a year ago.

I could have picked any pins for the bar but ran hard in one direction because I believed the pins/manufacturer I chose most closely served my intended purposes. In addition, part/repair commonality was important.

So far they have been dead simple to maintain, robust and parts are cheap and widely available.

The wife made her first request for a home pin (and she’s played at CP as well) and her choice was an AFM.

Damned fine collection you’ve got there. Damned fine Sir.

89AC22DA-F257-43C6-BA2B-AE818D290057.gif

That’s the wife’s new AFM and the rest are the fringe benefits of pin rotation for the bar

image (resized).jpg

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Lol (sarcasm), but loaded with real truth. After 20 to 30 years, items become classified as antiques. MM, AFM, MB and now CC are real world antiques, but can understand why old skutters love their relics from the long ago past. Short ball times and shallow code, with difficult shots, operators love, because we keep pumping in the dollars. As a home owner, these ancient DMD old tech shallow code relics don’t cut it and the reason why after the FOMO fades, awakened owners, even you downvoting old geezers sell them off. Lol

GZ should easily stay number 1 unless the old geezers continue to manipulate the “false 100”.

I can see a 90’s DMD not cutting it in a limited collection home environment. If you are going to have only one or two pins at home a deeper more complex ruleset would be advantageous.

That said, that personal preference and environment is not what all people base their judgement on.

Personally I want to walk up to a pin, have short ball times, straightforward objectives and then move over to the next pin.

Very nice collection and you’ve got them in such beautiful shape too! I’d take these over the remakes: CC original, cool! Your collection is the exception to the rule.

From a hardware perspective…

There’s players out there that would rank a vpin over any of the real machines from any manufacturer.

You idiots buying individual games! I’ve got 120 games on my single vpin.

Sorry, vpins don’t hold a candle to the real mechanical pinball experience. Lights, mechs, sounds, callouts, music, LCD back box: vpin experience not even close. In fact light years apart. I’d take any manufacturers offering over a vpin loaded with 300 virtual pinball games.

As would I. But I guarantee that there are more than a few people out there who differ. Which goes to the point of people rating things differently based on their personal requirements.

Heist got review-bombed out of the top 50 but it looks like Godzilla is here to stay at #1.
All hail the new king.

Having a VPM eases the need for having a physical collection, I think some tables don't need made are ugly or outright trashy concerning VPMs.

The cost of buying a virtual pin maybe is born up at front but payment on actual tables would be substantialy lower.

Theirs also more you can do to make it "lively" like knockers, chime units, and units that give tactical feedback.

having that VPM gives someone an experience that they wouldn't have compared to other who has that
Spirit of 76.

Cameras would bring VPMs to another level, being able to cast shadows and adjust the image to be able to interact with the surroundings and allow the pinball to reflect the surroundings more "naturally"

Man! What a collection!

Thanks! So far customers really like the pins!

If a kid(s) have any input on where the family is going to go eat it's going to be us now.

I think there is room for both in a collection. I don't think either one is ever going to replace the other, so I think of them being almost complimentary. I have 5 real pins and a virtual pin I made myself before I ever got my first actual pinball machine. I love my real machines, and play them a ton, but I like that I can also play games I have sold off, would never want to own, or am never going to have a chance to own. It's fun to be able to jump from a game of Time Fantasy, to a game of King Pin, and then maybe an EM Pirate's Gold. Some of the pinball FX tables are also pretty fun, even if the experience isn't quite the same.

I have heard mixed reviews on the A1UP vpins. I like the 3/4 size form factor to be able to put it where you might not be able to get a regular 300lb machine. I like that they added some solenoids to give some feedback, but they run on a glorified android box that can induce some lag, or so I have been told, and not at 4K. To be fair, even my 4k cab I built myself from a gaming tower can have some lag on a poorly designed table (Visual Pinball doesn't take advantage of multiple processor cores).

In terms of camera stuff, there was a project where you could use an old XBox360 camera and it would track your body position and tweek the camera angle on the table to let you look around the edge of playfield elements. It's a pretty cool effect. There are also the VR goggle versions of tables that take it to another level. Of course it's not the same as an actual table, but still kinda cool if you like pinball.

Following that tangent, stereoscopic camera interactivity on a cornerstone pinball machine could make some cool interactive elements on a table. You could have a Pirates of the Caribbean game that requires the player to bob out of the way of cannon fire as part of a mode. Imagine if the TMNT technodrome topper eye followed the player, staring them down. It might actually be worth the crazy money they charge for it then! Of course doing the image processing would more robust hardware to run it, and that means it would cost more. Sounds like an LE or CE edition feature.

FT doesn’t have complex code. It is about shooting the ramps six times, and shooting the left orbit to increase the multipliers, and shooting the caster’s club four times. That is, indeed, the game. However, I got into pinball from playing a Tomy Astroshooter pinball to distraction as a kid - so I knew, getting into this, that I was quite happy shooting the same thing billions of times to get a high score. Hence, I love FT. I work from home. I shoot the ramps during coffee breaks. They make a wonderful whooshing noise.

Ultimately, the top-rated pins are, for the most part, either ranked for nostalgia or unadultered fun - often due to the theme. This is *REALLY* obvious to me because I’m a mother to two little boys (aged one and five). Their main play area is shared with our pins (LoTR and FT). The little boys love the pins. They rope their nanna (aged 75) into playing the pins too. Ultimately, it’s 100% about unadulterated fun in our household - silly callouts, memorable shots, and the occasional dramatic multiball.

For that audience, GZ is unadulterated fun - campy video clips, giant robots, collapsing buildings and monsters destroying Tokyo. MM is also unadulterated fun - attacking an enormous castle, Monty-Python-esque callouts and a huge dragon. You realise this quite quickly when your players include a toddler and a five year old who jumps around next to the pins yelling “MULTIBALL”.

NOTE: I’ve played MM onsite and on the Williams app - probably about 400 times. I’ve also played GZ Pro onsite 20+ times. My five year old has played MM onsite and on the Williams app. My one year old has spectated MM on the Williams app and has helped me plunge the ball on GZ Pro.

GZ seems like fun although I’ve only played about 20 games on it. I don’t own it. A couple of things that stuck out was that Godzilla multi ball was easily achievable by just hitting the building so no real sense of accomplishment, and it took about 15 seconds for the building to fall. That seems like an excessive pause in gameplay. I wonder if they will shorten it going forward with code updates. It would annoy me in a home environment.

Also the call outs. Very boring like AIQ. Maybe worse. I know they were trying to mimic the movies, but it’s a let down for someone like me that never watched the movies. Anyway, my take is that it won’t stay #1 for long and will settle in the top 10 somewhere. I think DP should be closer to #1. That game has it all

Then it leaks that JimWe5st is actually a morbidly obese 15-year-old living in the shed next to his grandmother's single-wide trailer. All the pinsiders nod in unison, thinking, aaaaaahhhh, now it all makes sense. Given the circumstances, the kid is pretty smart.

My biggest issue is once a new pin makes it into the top 10, usually pumped up by excited owners, the MM, AFM and MB fanboi’s come in to hate on it. Like absolute clockwork, bringing their pride and joy back up the top.

Do they not realise how the algorithms work? Once enough people have played the new game, and voted truthfully, it’s place will correctly settle. Heist is maybe the exception, as majority of voters will be owners given the lack of Multimorphic out in the wild.

The fools who vote 0’s and 1’s for these amazing new pins should be called out for their part in ruining the Top 100.

Maybe a Wall of Shame for most 0 votes etc would entice some users into actually using their brain. Adding an avatar or icon to show this in their profile etc.

Pinball is subjective, but objectively, no pinball machine made in the last 20-30 years is worthy of anywhere near a 0, in any area. Not even Thunderbirds.

AFM, MM, and MB are great pins in their own right, I’ve owned two of them, but they didn’t last long. I rate them highly, but in a home environment, they got stale pretty quickly.

Now that it is announced, how long before Rush is voted the best pin of all time by excited owners? (As was mando, led zep, etc.)

Letting LEs decide the score ruined the top 100 completely. I don't even pay attention anymore.

There's zero reason to rate each version of one game individually. Drives me nuts.

Even if you combine LE and Premium, GZ rates above MM. I agree with treating pro as it's own, but stern premium/LE is the same exact game in all instances I can think of.

Edit: Also it is probably time to change the title to something like "MM dethroned from #1 Godzilla the new king?" I think we're a couple months deep now, for sure MM hasn't ever been off the throne this long.

It was a white Christmas till I got into this thread. Now all the snow is yellow.

Top 100 disregards time spent and number of votes. Just like our customer surveys. One dealership gets minimum of 6 surveys at 100, they are the best. We get 60 100’s with 2 50’s, we suck.

The scores should be an average of pro (50%) and premium + LE (50%).

Scoring by LE makes the top 100 purely a home owners list and thus 100% useless.

Plenty of LEs on location by me

Okay, okay, you’re on to me now. Not 15, but 35 and live in a single wide trailer on the outskirts of LA. Its not what you’d call very new, but serves the purpose. Wall to wall throwback machines all over the place. Kind of tough getting those wide bodies through the front door….stopped eating bonbon’s and lazing on the couch, so trim again…had to, couldn’t fit through the front door either…

48D74D79-495F-4CB6-A871-C0254BE74DF1 (resized).jpeg My old MM is not in much better condition than my home, but GZ LE is on the way. So things are beginning to look up!

Makes perfect sense....although I'm pretty certain you've never owned a pinball machine

Come on over PtownPin, you’re not that far and you could see my collection….I could give you the ol Jim We5t pinball pro shooting pointers. Around a 5 hour trip is all and I’ll put on some dinner for ya, before playing some MM and WOZ…

What if 85% of games are in peoples homes? That would make sites 15% of the scoring?

I like the current system. My only changes would be to remove 1 or 2 points until the game is a year or two old and remove the top 10 % and bottom 10% of ratings to get a better representation of proper ratings

well one truth is I could use some pointers ... and I hated WOZ...tried to like it twice...

You probably didn’t like it, because you didn’t learn the Dorthy/Toto skill shot maneuvers. It’ll turn you around a third time.

I'll weigh in on this as I've owned my share of MMs, an MMr, and have a GZLE. For me, the main issue holding back GZ from the top spot long-term is the theme. As a kid, I'd see Godzilla on television and rapidly change the channel to something that I preferred, such as Star Trek. The campy retro TOHO theme is fun, but gets old after 150 plays on my machine. So I'm selling my GZLE to a buddy for a good deal, and receiving another MM. I prefer the humor and accessibility of MM to all players, the art, and music, and the mechs, although GZ has excellent mechs as well. Also, the commentator on GZ is reminding me of the deadpan television news guy on Dialed In, which at around the same number of plays got really old for me. The pauses, waiting for the building to drop, or for the magnet to release the ball, seem to interrupt the flow more than I'd like. Conversely, I'll never get tired of Tina Fey as the damsel in MM, or the trolls taunting the player, or the castle blowing up, or the catapult shot. Just my preference at the end of the day. Both are so great on flow, but man MM has personality and a soul, even after playing it thousands of times.

Speaking of Tina not getting old did you notice like Elvis she left the building??? Not even in the remake! Godzilla is far from done but I'm assuming you're not saying its soulless?

Not at all, GZ is epic. I’m probably bailing too fast and will regret it!

Ah gotcha thanks for the clarification. I had to ask cuz I think I seen a video or a in a thread that someone else was claiming it was soulless. I'll give ya it seemed like Thanos took the soul gem and the soul right from Elwins previous game and that really seamed to hold down that still great pin but I love the campy nature of this pin and can't wait to see whats coming!

I’m a huge fan of Elwin but strangely prefer JP over GZ. Not sure why as GZ flows so well, probably the theme. I didn’t know Tina Fey was left out of the remake, maybe they couldn’t get the rights.

Yeah I think it was a package deal with that second city at the time. I actually noticed it cuz i bought that liitle digital arcade 1up AFM and I'm playing MM on it right not actually. Anyway I did some research and yup she's gone. New girl does a great job tho probably why you didn't notice. I'm with on JP as well that game is so unique in so many ways I never thought anything could get in it's ball park but if anyone can top themselves I'll give Keith a punchers chance like I said it's so early.

That's a really good call, I missed that. Here is a clip from Dan Forden, the sound and music engineer, with some things that didn't quite make it in the game. Tina did the British woman in the last part. One thing I noticed in the remake is the call outs and music didn't sound the same as the original, perhaps due to the speakers, or digital processing of the original sounds. The original callouts and music really popped. Maybe the upgraded speakers on the LCD panel fixed that.

https://uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/danforden1.mp3

Prediction: The new Rush pin will vault to number one...

...for a week.

That clip is amazing thanks for sharing!