Stole this from the Reddit.

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No one has a sense of humor anymore

Hahahaha that’s great.
Although from the sounds of it lately, Mando might be on its way up for air and Deadpool will be the new bottom-feeder?

People always like the new shiny, and we have been blessed to have an avalanche of great games in the last decade or so.

MM will always be great, but will it always be the greatest? I sure hope not. There are so many great games coming out now that newer collectors probably can't fathom what it was like 15 years ago. We got one classic every couple of years if we were lucky.

Almost everything has improved pinball wise over the last decade or so.

You want better animations? Check. Deep rules? Sure. MORE flipper power; heck, here are airballs galore with 70v flippers (or whatever current Sterns are ). New never before seen mechs? We can start sprinkling those in more often.

Better sound? Better light shows? Co-op modes Are you not entertained?

About the only think I can currently knock Stern for is questionable repairability on Node boards, embarassingly loud ass power supply fans (I swear it sounded like my neighbor leaf blowing the first time my JP fan kicked on...) and not updating their menus since what feels like ~2001 (why not improve the user interface now that you have a better screen?).

None of that changes the fact I would take a collection of say 10 games released over the last decade over a collection of 10 games from the 90's any day of the week. It is good not to HAVE to choose that, but if you are a halfway decent player you will burn out on those 90's games way faster than the new ones. At least that will be most people's experience.

Please update the menu system for sure!

Another week on top.

Long live the new king!
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I love Godzilla but I have way more fun on MM

hail hail

I feel like a lot of new machines get an artificial popularity bump when they first come out, not necessarily because they're one of the best machines ever made, but simply because it's the shiny, new table that everyone wants. I feel like once the dust settles these new tables fall back down to earth and their score is way more indicative of how good the machine actually is. This seems to happened with the vast majority of new Stern machines. I mean, as of right now JP is #4, behind MM, AFM, and SURPRISE, SURRPISE Godzilla! Having played Godzilla quite a bit there is no way in hell it's the best pin every made, not even close. I'd even say JP Stern is a better table. I would like to take this opportunity to lament Rush barely treading water; we hardly knew thee.

If you say so. I find myself going back to 90s Bally/Williams tables way more than I do most of what Stern, JJP, or Spooky have released since the early 2010s. I agree that some of Stern's best tables have been released just in the past 5 years, but I still don't think any of them compare with the top 10 Bally/Williams machines of the 90s. I'd go as far as saying a handful of Sega and Data East tables have more lasting appeal than 95% of anything recently released by Stern.

I think at least the Elwin games are raising the bar on layouts. Stern is turning out awesome stuff. On the other hand I’ve been playing whitewater a lot lately. It doesn’t have nearly the depth or breadth of modern games but it does have serious magic.. especially if it’s running lightning flippers and whatever other difficult settings.

Stern Is the copy and past kings. Licensed themes need a low BOM to see someone painted or clip art on the playfeild.

This site will collectively wet itself over Stern pinball could release a LeBron pinball with an art package done by a five year old and people would still buy it.

The ball smacking the glass on a clean insanity falls shot is just brilliant.

cool story man!

I think the low rating is a big FU to JJP for increased MSRP, and not actual game play

TS4 has other things going against it too. The iPad taking up a third of the playfield is silly and distracting, and it's disappointing that the license is TS4 (nobody likes Forky) rather than the entire franchise. Yeah, the gameplay is fine, but it's fighting uphill against the other factors. The rating comes from everything combined, including the price. 138 might be a bit low, but there's a fair argument that its ceiling should be around 100 or so.

not being all of toy story or just the original is a big knock against it.