Yesterday, I drove almost an hour out of my way to play the production LE game at SS Billiards, MN. I almost regret putting the ~10-12 games on it, because it has now made the wait for my game tougher. I jumped on the list almost 20 minutes after the Buffalo Pinball guys streamed the reveal and I have been excitedly following it’s production very closely ever since.
After actually playing it, I can say that the game has exceeded my expectations and make no mistake...it is a masterpiece. There are so many things to shoot and the game is so deep, it’s overwhelmingly fun. It’s difficult to describe...If you get tired of shooting for anything in particular, you can try and shoot for 15+ other things to progress through an entirely different feature of the game. In short, I can’t see myself ever getting bored.
I will say this, the guys on the streams make it look a lot easier than it is. All the complaints about being multi-ball heavy are unfounded. The game can giveth and taketh away as quickly as you can blink. Sure, I earned a few multi-balls, but I was not able to stack them as well as they did on the streams. I loaded the cannon once, but missed the ship and drained immediately. That upper loop off the upper left flipper is really satisfying when you get it going. Lloyd’s LE had the topper installed. The LE topper has some LEDs that allow it to pulse illuminate from its base similar to the laserrific toppers. The Mao Kun map in the middle of the playfield looks exactly like the one in the movies and it looks fantastic. The disc most definitely affects the ball’s direction.
My only nit-picky critical obeservations:
1) The ball occasionally stalled between the ship’s ladder ramp and the edge of the rocking ship. I actually got the ball stuck there a few times. The ball could be dislodged by repeatedly activating the ship’s upper left flipper, but it took that and some slight nudging to get the ball to fall free from that area. Lloyd said JJ was sending him some parts to remedy this.
2) With regards to the star map shot, there was a difference between what I perceived from the streams and what I observed playing it. When shooting the star map, under the interaction with the magnets, the streams show the ball bouncing around erratically during the chapter selection before finally getting held motionless, then releasing downward into play. During my play, the time between the shot into the star map, a chapter getting selected, and then released by the magnet into play was very short. I was not really afforded enough time to look up and observe the animations on the back glass to see what chapter was selected or the characters I needed to shoot. I’m not sure if this is a setting or if I was doing something to cancel out of the animation.
3) Not sure if it’s me, but I still had a few shots to the chest denied and this is the chest with the top permantely open. That’s a shot that’s going to take some practice, but I swear I hit that shot fairly a couple times and the ball just dribbled back out rather than going up into the lock.
4) The only other weird thing on Lloyd’s machine was that all four playfield spots were not on. I brought this up to him and he said he would look into it.
None of those critiques have changed my mind, I’m still onboard. It’s a pricey game, but there is so much value under that glass. I swear it’s like having five or six games in one machine.
It was a pleasure meeting Lloyd in person and I enjoyed the conversation. SS Billiards is a great place to get your hands on an early-production game, so if you’re in the area..do it.
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Vernon, BC
Pleasanton, CA
