People are throwing out huge price estimates for this game and they probably aren't far off. My concern is that is based on buyers believing they will be making only 500 of any version of this game ever. This may not be the case.

I can see after it selling out having a other versions released that are basically the same thing aimed at other price points. They did this with TWD LE (the prem version was announced only after the LE was sold out), Elvira LE (the SLE was released later). There are also cases of the editions size increasing after it was announced (Munsters and Batman SLE). With Sterns investment in assets and design already covered and customers clamoring to buy one its is easy to imagine other versions.

Elvira was released at a number of price points initially. What I'm saying is we have no guarantee that Bond 60th won't be made in greater numbers and other price points in the future.

I assume your Elvira 40th had $15k in cash sitting in the cab when you bought it?

Just for reference this is the one that Stern uses:

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/500-7029-04

$270 and then you need to assemble it, install it, and have some way to control it.

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I wish Stern could have just sent this dude some art blades

1) The video and the PDF on sterns website both clearly stated the topper would be exclusive.

2) The topper was only shown on the SLE in marketing materials. The other 3 editions were never shown with a topper.

3) The topper was never for sale or marketed as something that could be purchased separately prior to the SLE going on sale.

4) Exclusive toppers are a huge part of the collectible pinball market (e.g. the BM 66 LE/SLE topper is easily worth $5k on its own if you could find it which you can't, the Star Wars topper is probably easily $2.5k, a lot of other toppers that are no longer produced sell for thousands). Stern understands this. They marketed this game as having an exclusive topper.

5) No reasonable buyer can be expected to make a purchase decision based on some obscure podcast interview of Gomez, especially when what he may have said was contradicted by official marketing materials.

Oddjobs and Slash are both known for their hats but that is pretty much where the similarity ends. Slash is a performer so his hat is bigger and fancier. Oddjobs has a hat that is supposed to look ordinary until it is thrown as a secret weapon. In both games the hat is appropriate to the theme. In GNR the hat is a static sculpt that doesn't interact with the ball or the spinning disk below it. In Bond the hat spins and it fits with the theme as Oddjobs throws his hat and it spins as it goes through the air. I have a GNR but still feel like the Oddjobs hat is pretty original and cool.

You had wanted to buy ad for one at $15k three weeks ago. How did that work out for you?

This is weird coming from the guy that craps on almost every new game and doesn't have any games in your top 10 ratings that even have an LCD. If they make a loaded game, with great art, great assets, big LCD, and well under $20k you still crap on it and give it a 1.0 rating (e.g The Big Lebowski). No one else is worried about a limited production $20k single level game with score reels becoming the new norm.

The high price on this game, and other recent offerings, has been beaten to death already, and I'm not going to defend it.

But it does feel like some people come here to crap on virtually every new game. After almost 6k posts it feels like some are just trying find stuff to complain about on a game they've never seen in person or played. Maybe Stern will listen to upset Pinsiders and go back to the days when you could buy a game like Met LE or Tron LE NIB for $7k or less. I'd love to see that too but it won't happen.

If you like DMD games I have no problem with that, I do too. We didn't need to watch the movie again on the game in the DMD era and maybe we don't need to do it now. It comes off as a bit hypocritical when big fan of DMD era games then complain about lack of LCD assets.

The pro is a great buy, and I think it is awesome that Stern allows buyers to also have that option. But, the pro has fewer assets than the DVDs you can buy for $6900 less

Its amazing how easy this is without the bother of licensing or property owner approval.

Unfortunately for Stern you've already foiled their evil plans and let to the cat out of the bag by telling all the potential buyers that there are "no assets whatsoever", "no reals in the back-box", and even that the release images aren't the actual game. Way to stick it to the man.

The same dozen non-buyers who have been telling us we should have been able to watch all 25 movies on the playfield screen will be back to tell us they told us so.

The off topic ChatGPT generated posts got old a while ago. Time to make good on your promise.

My guess is we see the assets that make sense in this game (audio, characters, and gadgets) but few if any movie clips (which wouldn’t make sense for a 25 movie theme on a small screen). After the stream those that were excited about the game will continue to be excited, those that wanted this to be something else (cheaper, playing all the movies on the screen, ramps, hat more like GNR, animations like Bond pro, the next BM66, etc) will continue to be disappointed.

What would have happened if this game were still limited to 500 and priced at $3k, $7k, $8k, or even $10k which are numbers various posters have thought to be "reasonable" is that they would have sold out instantly. Many of the buyers at that price would be scalpers who probably would have been reselling the game, on this forum without ever playing it, and probably for close to $20k. The discussion would have still been about pricing but then many of the same people that are complaining about Stern's greed would now the the ones making the profits and talking about "rarity" and the "free market".

I agree. I love the way Elwin games shoot and Maiden might be the best game of all time. For a player of my skill level his more recent games (AIQ, GZ) have had rules so deep I can't see a lot of what is there and figuring out the best strategy starts to feel like work. Multiplayer games get stale when ball times can stretch well past 15 min (see the tutorial videos Jim Mank did on my GZ). When friends who aren't pin heads come over it is impossible to explain a lot of modern games. For me, Bond SLE could be the sweet spot - a fresh new layout with relatively simple rules that is fun to play with friends. I feel this game could bring back a lot of joy from the earlier era of pinball without just remaking an old game that we've already been playing for decades.

My hope is this game will be popular and Stern and others might make similar games in greater quantities and at lower cost. I really don't understand the mindset of those that seem to want this game to fail.

If this is true then the this example of the game clearly needs some thing adjusted or replaced. This is the same mech used in other games (e.g. Deadpool, Beatles, and probably the FF you plan to buy) so it generally works reliably. If you weren't able to lower any of these MI6 targets then you wouldn't have been able to start any of the villain modes. These modes have a different feel all with specific tasks and sound package. You could stilll start the Mission Multiball (3 inline drops) which is a great mode but based on your comments it isn't clear you were able to play that either.

Did you notice at the start of the game you can choose the era (e.g. Modern, 80s electronic, a couple from the 70s, and 64 chimes)? The music and sounds change with each era. There are callouts. One of my favorite ones (that is available with all eras) is when you collect a Bond then that particular actor will say something like "I'm Bond, James Bond"

They are clearly going for a retro game feel and these games didn't have instructional callouts. But the rules for this game are more complex and modern players are used to getting instructions. There are some instructional callouts but it would get distracting if they had too many instructional callouts especially for players that understand the rules. The screen is nice because they player can tell at a glance exactly how may more spins for whatever it is they need to complete the mode and how much time they have left without taking their eyes away from the game. An apron screen would be hard to make use of in a game that plays this fast.

After you start the game but before you plunge the first ball press the right or left flipper buttons and it will let you cycle through the different options. It is "modern" by default.

This is Pinside, most of the posts are from people that made up their mind after 0 games.

I agree but won't be surprised if some elements (e.g. that loop on the left side, or drops behind a spinning post) find their way into other games by other manufactures in the future.

Yet ironically, the version of Pulp Fiction people seem to want is the one with an artificial cap on production.