I think Wonka and TS4 had different sound designers, because the company that did JJP TS4 sound doesn't list Wonka, they don't list slot companies as clients and they pretty much just list apps and d-level video games on their resume.

But their sound and mixing approach is similar. Thiel back for Matrix, please.

If "bean counters" cannot produce value for the customer, sales will go down and the "bean counters" will have less beans to count. Watch what that does to the sale price. Some things must be learnt the hard way. I think JJP have found and passed the ceiling on NIB pinball prices.

Whoah. Seriously? You seemed pretty dedicated to this purchase from your posts in the thread.

I am DEFINITELY not one to pump, or even really support JJP at this point sadly, but maybe play it first before deciding.

Or if the CE is just an awful outright value, and you feel that earnestly, RUN for the hills or even to the hills Maiden style, and get out while it doesn't cost you financially!!!

I love the new Toy Story 4 pin. It makes my $11,000 Wonka purchase seem like a good deal when $12,000 gets you less.

Who are these “bean counters” you speak of?

Any chance that there’s underlying code and a ticket dispenser coming?

This could be the merge of pinball and ticket redemption.

This would be huge in the two Tahoe arcades.

Edit: this is not a knock. If I’m a dad and have to suffer through taking kids into these locations, entertain me too. Have you seen the pins on location there?

Play this game before you come to your conclusion. It comes together so well between the music, the use of voices which make you forget Forky is even in the game (buzz and woody), the buttery flowing Lawlor shots, the really kick-ass jump shot, the GnR-like light snow, and just the overall fun.

If there is an issue, maybe it’s too easy (a few wide shots)?

I was ready to cancel my order (thought we had a pre-school theme empty playfield game), but after playing it, did the exact opposite and bought an LE while I have a CE still coming (had extra comfort due to the thriving stock market

My 2 cents on the topic that people seem to be getting bent about!

Wow thanks for sharing your opinion
It’s good to hear some positive!
Where are you able to play at CP Pinball?

Unless I am missing something, I did read the ad. Shows 12K in the price right? CE's go for 15K. Again, maybe I am missing something obvious though.

I thought he was implying he put down a larger deposit and the $12K was the remainder

That’s good to hear. Anytime you have recommend a game to me, it’s a hit for my family. Never hesitated from my CE but it’s nice to see people like you enjoy the game.

He’s asking for offerers. $12,345 is a place holder not a price.

I played at St Louis escape last night and in my home office tonight (he had one out of 5 LE’s left, delivered today)! About to go play some more!

There seems to be a ton of disappointed people with the game and pricing here on Pinside.

I get it but where are the 1,000 people that bought CEs and several hundred LEs that went delivered the first day?

There must be a whole other world of the pinball hobby outside of this place?

I suppose it’s true that Pinside is just a small part of the hobby.

It’s surprising to me that the CEs all sold through, some at higher than MSRP, and so many LEs have already been delivered.

Tough to argue with what the market is saying right now. Like it or not

Matrix 4, right?

Better question is how many people have actually played it and really don’t like it?

Well...it's only been a day and a half since release.

I think we’ll find that even tho we have are initial disappointments that the game itself is a shit ton of fun?

The reviews should start flowing in and thanks for yours. Great to hear

Will It have the addictive hit start one more time feeling. I hope so

Such a lame argument. As if we can’t tell when a game is fire or when it’s a lame duck from video playthroughs, from an empty play field, from a lack of mechs and subways, and from a third flipper that has nowhere to go.

Add upon that a misuse of a franchise theme…
The good news is it’s The Godfather. The bad news is it’s The Godfather part 3. -Eyeroll-

Hogbog wouldn't dare.

Watched a stream of it and I could not take the carnival style sound effects and interpretation of You Got a Friend In Me. Sorry but a tapped out. It literally looks, and sounds like a little kids pin.

If you love it great, but I honestly don’t care if I ever get a chance to play this. No way this is worth $12k. This should be priced along the lines of a Stern pro.

Oh, I definitely think most of us will enjoy some games! No doubt.

It's just many of us here are batshit enough to buy these things for some reason, so the question is never is about fun...just how much fun is it worth, for home ownership purposes.

Yaaad. I loves this. All machines have good and bad.

I actually looked into using Tim Allen for a voice commercial and I believe some agent said he normally gets a cut of the sales and sometimes smaller companies shares. It’s not cheap.

I’m on an LE here. The video from JJP had my kids (13 &7) eyes light up when the ramp popped up. Then the video tiki feels right out of Trader Sams. My wife loves TS. All of them. Especially the Dinosaur Christmas one. I voted for Godzilla. But the Cowboys n Aliens won. 3-1. Score one the JJP.

Very high quality ?!? You're definitely a victim of their sleek marketing !

900 CE's went to distributors whether there are deposits on them or not, once all the CE's are made and in hands of buyers then they will be sold out. Couple hundred LE's delivered first day is not surprising with demand being higher than supply especially with a new game that little is known about.

The team at JJP had to know people would find out about the cake toppers being the source of the figurines. I wonder if they just thought screw it, we are saving so much money we’ll just take the criticism? I wasn’t really expecting any ingenuity, but that iPad looks so out of place. It hides a huge part of the playfield like a big canopy where they could have put a really cool interactive toy. It feels like an afterthought, after the main mech was scrapped for being too expensive or unreliable.
I’ve bagged on Stewies playfield for feeling like a cheap toy and not what real pinball is, but at least it’s still mechanical. I can’t imagine FG with a big iPad in its place.

It seems to me Lawlor had in mind to make a carnival themed game and made this license fit his design rather than how it should always be done. A game should be designed around the license, not the license around the design.

This comment is completely ignorant of the recent history of JJP launches that follow the EXACT same pattern:

2016 - Dialed In reveal - massive hate and snarky "a cell phone pinball? Dad jeans on the hero?" comments that turned into, it's...actually okay! Some people think it's JJP's best.

2017 - PotC reveal - grousing and complaining about lack of wheels, non-functional chest, giant area with Depp's face. This feedback and the cancellations BEFORE ANYONE EVEN PLAYED IT (including ME, but I course-corrected a few weeks later and got one) in any numbers caused JJP to cut the run short. Then when people got to play it, it became VERY desirable and is now the most expensive JJP on the secondary market because of the very short run from all the initial cancellations and complaints (plus it's a GREAT game).

2019 - Wonka reveal - "It sounds like a slot machine" - "BRAT Multiball?" - "Where's the innovation?" - "Rehashed Lawlor's greatest hits" (some of these may have been from me) - Annnd, people like-to-love it, and sales have been fine.

2020 - Guns n Roses. "There's too many multiballs" - "I hate the songs" - "Can we replace the music?" - and yet, demand was off the charts. And, if it hasn't passed WoZ in sales, it eventually will due to the massive start.

2022 - Toy Story reveal - we'll see, but so far the pattern is holding with a strong start of complaints and whining about it being Toy Story 4, DESPITE persistent rumors that it WAS NOT going to be TS1, 2, or 3 and WAS, in fact going to be TS4. I'll have one next week to form a firsthand play opinion. Karl DeAngelo's supposed to have his any day now, too. Interested to see what he thinks...

They are “non refundable deposits” and my Distro says he has a long list of people waiting on dropouts which I had initially considered doing but not now.

I consider “non refundable” as sold out

Does anybody know of any available CEs?

The LEs? That’s cash and carry. People grabbing one after seeing the game and liking what they saw

There a few amazon reviews of the cake topper bases being bent or the figure snapped in two. I don’t know if these will be durable long term. There’s an extra set in the goodie bag. Prob replace mine with hood ones.

DI is the goat

On a more important note .....How about them Warriors

The first airball that hits one of these suckers it’s going to be plastic schrapnel all over the playfield if these are made of the usual brittle plastic most cake toppers are.

Any game is a shit load of fun! Hell, my old Cue Ball Wizard was a lot of fun too! The truth of the matter is that Toy Story 4 lacks a lot of stuff people were hoping for, especially for a 12-15K pinball machine.

Compared to Pirates and WOZ, this machine looks bare and lacks mechs (not to mention they based it of the worst movie in the franchise) for that price tag.

I guess we are all used to the good old loaded JJP games. Seems JJP is now going in the opposite direction, which is sad.

I personally know two people who had access to CE spots and backed out. I'm guessing if you're in tight with a distributor they will let you put the deposit to another game possibly. Not saying CE's won't eventually sell out just maybe not all above MSRP or even at MSRP.

Very true....expect the price tag keeps going up....most were happy to pay up for JJP games, because they were on a different level...that party is over

I haven’t heard of any distributor that has any CEs available, which is surprising to me after the number and price announced

Wonka just sat there and gathered dust until my distributor bought all the remaining CEs from JJP on a close out. That’s when I got one.

I know they pissed off a very big corporate distributor by the way they handled the rollout so they said pound sand

If you don't mind waiting, much cheaper on Alibaba. In JJP quantity that set is literally like $2.

Character shield mod incoming.

The PinMonk wisdom is sound.

Good nite!

55D525A2-6DE7-4081-AE18-855F29D3030B (resized).jpeg

I heard someone say the raising Jump Ramp was “innovation”.

I know a lot of you guys are new … but those were in Williams Fire and Jokerz back in the late 80s.

rd

79EEDB50-4042-4243-8BCA-BAE98146F2AE (resized).jpeg

Straight outta slugfest.

The only thing I would like be revealed on the DeepRoot BS is his work. I bet it is amazing! Like I said on another thread, if JJP 2.0 is about light and sound they need David.

Seemingly this game is sacrosanct unless you've played it first hand, but I'm scratching my head here a bit.

Saw some dude on twitter criticizing J.P. de Win's work on this game, asked him questions, and then proceeding to watch Joe's video from Tuesday, and then Jack Danger's as well.

I'm a bit taken back by some of the design choices he's made here. Definitely not his best JJP work, and I wonder if Disney demanded/instructed certain things, or this was entirely his own design, as I always find his work some of the best aspects of a JJP release.

Why is the main score floating that far up in the lower blue score box, with that big empty gaping area below it?

I don't like when Caboom jumps, and the hoop pops up and blocks Buzz. Buzz is a key element of the design interface frame, and breaking that frame with a quick pop up looks messy, and breaks structure in a way that compromises that frame.

I also don't like the weird detached focused eye frame and arm extending from Buzz in the same area. It's jarring in how detached those elements are from one another, and not enough space exists for those two comic book type frames to appear in a way that compliment one another or either establish a dynamic aesthetic or functional action effect.

I'm not sure what is going on with the ultra tiny BoPeep and Woody figures in the upper right, and how teenie tiny the numbers are below them.

Also at some point a bonus is hit, and dozens of very, very small scores echo off the top of the main score. It looks bizarre, size wise compared to the main score, and again, super tiny.

Definitely a lot of clouds floating in the middle of the screen for seconds on end, which the twitter user mentioned.

There's more I noted, but can't remember offhand.

In contrast, POTC created such a nice balanced aethestic for that game. It served as a backdrop more with maintained mode tracking information, more so than distracting entertainment. The lack of character clips help maintain focus for the player, all the while allowing game objectives to be monitored seemlessly and without jarring the player away from actual gameplay. (Kind of the ideal for a backglass usage for me!)

Add in the smaller screen, the hot rails, the playfield lcd's, and the sound effects, and man this game seems an explosion of stimulation that maybe is more targeted for a kid on a sugar rush, holding a phone, while watching a Pixar flick on a tablet. Viewing Joe's gameplay, I found it tougher than usual to distract myself from the backbox LCD, and actually be able to watch the playfield.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

This has been a JJP thing for a while now. PotC, Wonka, GnR and now TS4 all do it. Without checking, I don't remember Dialed in doing it, but I feel like maybe Hobbit did, too? Dunno. But the last four JJP games have had this. It's not a TS4 specific thing.

Recognize this Grogu ? He made it into Stern's Mandolorian:

https://www.amazon.com/Grogu-Mandalorian-Collectible-Stuffed-Character/dp/B0825SNHP1/ref=sr_1_4