At $9k imported (and maybe delivered), this is a great deal imo. Look under playfield of a regular Fathom and it is packed with drop target banks. Hardly any room to squeeze in 2 small lcd screens. Will the enhanced game shoot flawlessly and will the software transition work smoothly? We will have to wait and see.

Prepare yourselves for the waves of mermaid edition people in here that suddenly have "medical bills" and wish to sell their spots.

I'm saying this now as you can still pre order this at the time of me making this post; to anyone doing this in the future: fuck you. Buy it because you want it, you bastards. Not because you want to screw your fellow pinheads.

Rai,

Having seen your collection (TSPP was fun!) and hearing what you have said, I think a Mermaid is low risk. I am looking into one of these myself as I view it as relatively low risk. You are putting a deposit down on a game that you will likely get in 6+ months. If between now and then you decide its not for you, you should be able to sell your deposit for cost without issues. This is not always the case (Alice Cooper), but has been recently with high pin demand (R&M and GnR). The game does look beautiful.

I myself have started to fall for drop target games from this era and have a 1980 Black Knight at home sitting next to my Rick and Morty. Completely different games.

I can't make any promises, but you would likely be able to bail and sell your spot to someone else without issue if you do get time on one and decide it is not for you.

Keep in mind this is now a hype thread and Fathom is the shiny new object standing directly in front of you.

In a short couple of weeks Stern is due to drop The Mandalorian and that will be the next shiny new thing we will all want. Meanwhile your deposit money here will be tied up for several months and waiting on updates before actual results can be a bit of a grind for some.

That said, GO TEAM HAGGIS!

Thanks, I still miss Tspp and Tron that I sold prior to moving to Florida.

I’m starting to watch the tutorial video of Fathom to get a feel of the rules.

I see the Mermaid version can be preordered directly from the Haggis website. Did they wave the requirement to be a member of the Haggis clan?

Spot on. New shiny requires patience. I’m pulling for Haggis as they seem to be enthusiastic and ready to go, but stuff inevitably happens. Buyers need to temper expectations for game delivery based on unforeseen delays, but there seems to be a lot of goodwill all around.

Agreed. My expectations are that I **hope** to have my game by Christmas but understand it might slip into next year. Things happen but it seems like Haggis is trending in the right direction.

This game will still be out before RAZA though

So what are the 5 top classic Bally's that you think they'll also remake?
#1 is obvs Fathom
The other 3 obvious ones are probably Centaur and 8BD and Xenon

That leaves us with one mystery game. What could it be? I doubt it would be a licensed one. Probably not a wide body either. Medusa? Maybe Vector if we're really lucky

It appears so, I just placed order #232!

I don't know about Xenon because price is too low on originals. I doubt they will do widebody games. Maybe Skateball? My thought is that they didn't really think it through.

#233 here . looks like a sold out to soon follow on the ME..

Thats a reasonably good point, but its not like 8 ball deluxe is a real bank buster either. Centaur and Fathom are probably the 2 really pricey ones and then it goes down considerably from there.

I'm happy for Haggis. Really cool!

Yup, you have to look at where the money is and because a game is good, not rare. Centaur and Fathom are the two that make sense at this price point, maybe the only two from all solid state early 80's games. At stern pro prices a whole new market would open up.

It’s not like they have to price all five the same. It’s market based pricing, not cost based. Why wouldn’t you charge more for fathom vs xenon for example.

CGC lowered the price after Medieval Madness proved the formula. However, I think that the exchange rate is going to have a bigger impact on pricing here in the states than any price moves by Haggis.

Xenon or Medusa....I'm IN!

It is Wednesday the 28th in Australia.

This game is not going to play/feel like an original Bally Fathom.

It's going to play/feel like a Haggis pinball machine.

Like comparing Williams to Spooky.

Just took a look at the majority of the Bally MPU AS-2518-35 games and sorted by average price from Pinside...

A couple of licensed titles at the top of that list... I'd consider Voltan an outlier, not too many people have had a chance to play that one, but you'd think their 5 released would be found in the top 10 of that list.

pasted_image (resized).png

Even with code re-writes on them... I'm hard pressed to think someone would want to spend their asking price on the Mermaid edition when the original version is a third of the price or less for most of these games.

You have to keep in mind that the average price is not for completely restored mint games.

And dang you Haggis for doing this (but really, thanks!)

I’m in - order #238.

This. A super mint version of any of those games is at least $5k if not more. It's an all new cabinet, backglass, plastics, playfield, mechs, etc...

Now I don't think they could get away with charging 9k for Viking 2.0. But Viking is also much simpler than Fathom in terms of mechanics, so I can see that being more like 7k

Depends how far in what directions "era" refers to. I can think of some rare beauties slightly newer from Bally;

BMX
Radical
Escape From The Lost World (but not in a banana cab lol)
Heavy Metal Meltdown

so on, so on

Did I notice "Midway" in amongst all of that from Damian?

Looking at the top ten, the centaur is the obvious next one, and if I am happy with my ordered fathom I will most likely buy as well.
An enhanced 8 balls deluxe ( multiball ? ) would be very good too. After that they are all sub optimal to the 3 already listed. The embryon may have room for cool extra coding. Etienne

Looks like 12 to go! Congratulations Haggis Pinball!!

I’m going to start practicing my Tap passing right now!!

Wow! Looks like they may sell out this week!

These will be gone by today for sure

Yep, no doubt on that. I almost pulled the trigger and I don’t even want one that bad but just to play it and see how it is with the 2.0

Correct, I sold my restored Frontier for $6k

They should disclose the 5 potential games. They would sell more 5 game deposits. My guess.

2. Centaur
3. Flash Gordon
4. EightBall Deluxe
5. Medusa

Eight Ball Deluxe, Centaur are two easy choices.

Medusa would be challenging due to the zipper flippers, I'd like to put Flash Gordon into the easy choice column but the split playfield and licensing MIGHT be issues. Same with KISS, how ugly are the license issues. Voltan is up in price but only because it sold so few.

All I got.

And when you look at the list - you can see how the alignment of 'single license, desirable, and value' quickly shrinks.

Fathom, Centaur - meet all three
Voltan - 2 of 3, but would people pay 7-9k for one? Probably not
Viking - same..
Medusa - Complex build makes this one a challenge. Great pin but less demand vs the A-list
Kiss, Flash Gordon - great candidates, but need more licensing. These are actually where I think they'd try at least...
Spectrum - desirability kills this one... people aren't going to pay 7k+ for one
EBD - Another great candidate - but installed base is big. Have to really differentiate to make it worth the high price
Frontier - desirability with broad appeal probably kill this one
Embryon - Wide body cabs? Could be reason enough not to
Rolling Stones - lacking desirable, and 3P licensing..

All the ones below it suffer from the same key problem of.. will people pay 7k for one?

I do think it would be interesting if they would for go the 2.0 treatment and see if they could build a cheap skateball or NGS for instance. But unless they get to be a volume manufacturer... the dreams of 'cheap remakes' is probably just dreams.

I'm excited too but let's all slow down a bit. Invoice numbers often begin at the number 100 and sequentially go from there.
I was already a Clan Haggis member and ordered first thing I could on members only, opening day. My invoice number is #131

The Haggis clan got the exclusive right to make a deposit on Mermaid for the first 48 hours of release. After that, sales are open to anyone until the 250 are sold out.

I currently own an excellent Fathom with CPR playfield and backglass; it is my only old school SS game. I love the art, kachunk of all the drop targets resetting at the start of each ball, the theme, and the novelty of the mermaid traps, and the funky dual outlanes. There is always that moment of terror - will the 40 year old electronics still correctly pull down and reset all the drop targets? - that adds excitement to the game LOL. I'm getting a Mermaid not because it is a great investment (at 250 and availability of original fathoms, at best I think it will hold value at US $9000, if not drop a thousand or two in resale), but because it has some very unique things in the design - adding displays in the apron and updating an old pin with new rules and sound, and the option to go back and forth. This is a fascinating market test - the mid 90's W/B games remain in high demand and are still the pinnacle of integrated play, sound, callouts, and light effects, while the old school SS games can't compare. Perhaps what Haggis doing will stir up interest and cause all boats to rise for the older SS games by getting people at pinball bars to get attracted to old school play. I also want to support Haggis - they are doing some great things. I am highly dubious that they will be able to scale up production at anything like 50 per month; supply issues with just one part will kill that, and they are also moving to a new facility. If Planetary is deeply involved in the project, as in the design and production of components, then that will reduce the risk for sure. I will be happy if it shows up in a year.

Regarding the classic edition, I think it was a design mistake to put the diagnostics display in the back box, as it kills the original look. Putting it under an apron card would have been a much better choice, as you could then just cover it with a paper card to hide it, as well as maintaining production consistency with the Mermaid.
-gb

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not sure we can assume this, as it seems like other stuff may have been mixed in with these numbers. I would think they would announce if they were close to a sell out.

This is a giant gamble from a new and unknown entity. Had they included all the upgrades included in the Mermaid edition into just one model, I may've been interested at the $7400 pricepoint, but they're asking way too much for the new version of the game. As great as Fathom is, and as great as the new version could be, it isn't worth as much as a NIB Stern Premium.

If their price was a little lower and they resisted the tiered/LE model this company could absolutely be a contender with classic remakes. But enough of the peanut gallery is ponying up, so I guess this is the right price point for some.

I thought the price was a little high on the classic edition - but $9k for an LE with all mirrored trim & components, LCDs in the aprons and metallic decals is actually not horrible. It’s more effort than Stern puts in their LEs for the same price.

For the sake of comparison, I just added up all the money I have in my fully restored chrome Xenon and it is $8k without including the labor.

I agree.

I got AFM LE for $8300 all in. AFM (!) Topper, shipping etc.

This is going to be $8900 I’m not sure if that includes shipping to my door or will that be another $350? I’m not sure. If additional shipping that’s up to $9250 and we have not even seen a picture or video of the Mermaid edition.

You can pull the trigger and sell it to me on lay-a-way,by the time it's paid off you'll be ready for the next title to cycle through the game room.

I see that point too, R&M could have got to $9000 with extras so it is what it is with the price. I just need to think if it’s worth $9k to me or would I rather look for a Tron LE.

.

Dbl post

Or it would cause people to wait for the one they want instead of buying one now... I would not say there is value in putting out your plans ahead of time.

I think I would pay $7000 for a Centaur 2.0 without any bells and whistles, that is just a standard backglass, playfield, cabinet and apron displays and 2.0 ruleset. No topper, no powdercoat, no Radcals, no do-dads, gee-gaws, or trinkets. You need the apron displays to add more player feedback so they understand the story and the new extended rules, but the rgb displays are unnecessary gee-wizardry in my book. On a true recreation, with no significant external difference between it and OG equipment, I would go $6k, but being as it will be shipped from down under, and with the exchange rate, that isn't going to buy it.

I might be mistaken, but I believe Fast only does RGB serial lighting. So the lights will be RGB regardless of them being utilized in that way.

That said it would be neat if you could have the user option to select all warm white, all cool white, color matched inserts, clown puke GI, etc... in the service menu. It doesn't need a rainbow light show during the game, especially Centaur, but changing the GI to red would look sharp during certain moments

In the club. Are we locked in at the conversion previously of 8900 or whatever it is or is it subject to change?

Assume it may change, that true?

Thanks