I’ll play devils advocate - this could work...but only one way: it has to be FUNNY with lots of great characters, funny voices & scenarios. It has to be funny like Bally/Williams games were. It has to feel like it’s a successor to the WPC’95 games or Big Bang Bar. If it’s really upbeat and funny with appealing mechanical features that are satisfying to interact with, it could work. If it looks like another Sega game (Houdini art won’t work on this) or comes off as douchey or dated, it’ll be DOA.

The point that is almost always forgotten when discussing NEW games is that we were historically able to buy our favorite games with quirky themes or bad movies for like $2000 or less. Octoberfest will be what, like $8000? The higher the price, the more people have to be attached to the theme to depart with their money.

Art package - Alvin G. & Sega had a baby.

Notice Backalley Matt on the backglass amongst the weird hybrid photoshop “cartoon” people?

Wow. AP’s artist is terrible. This is just ugly ugly chop-shop photoshop. Legitimately convoluted mash of styles and techniques. You could say GB & DP are busy, but not convoluted. They’re absolutely consistent in their styles, drawn & colored by a real artist.

Look at MBr. They’re still using dots but their display looks a billion times better than anyone else’s...why? ART DIRECTION. CGC is using amazing artists...also I find the wide aspect ratio just “pinball perfect”. When you have to glance up during play, “long rectangle” works better than “square”. With the exception of JJP almost everyone else’s LCD’s look like mid 90’s PC CD-ROM games. This actually makes a game look old, while a good color DMD like CGC’s games make a game look “retro appealing”.

When a game is $7k, critique is fair.

I’ll play it if I see it on location. There, positive? ...but the art guarantees I’d never own one.

It's not about the display. It's about the art direction. So far, excellent pixel art is superior to the poor art, animation, fonts and composition of most of the LCD games so far. P3 is trying to sell itself as the evolution of pinball, but a normal person sees the art and animation and thinks it's some relic from 1995. My fiance saw Star Wars and thought the screen was confusing and horrible and compared it to a 90's CD-ROM (and she's a huge Star Wars fan). She thinks the DE SW dots are cooler and have more charm.

Agreed. Sometimes less is more...and when the artwork is appealing, that's absolutely fine for a pinball display. ACNC is clean and concise...the artwork is good and the motion-comic style totally works.

Cool! Have fun! That's a great show...sorry to miss seeing you this year - gonna be in Portland in December, so sat out October this time.

Why wouldn’t they be for a $7000 game? This isn’t a 99 cent phone app.

AC/DC (Prem/LE) looks a billion times better. Say what you will about the Photoshop Live photos, AC/DC is a cohesive package, the composition is well done, and when you look at it, it fits the theme of AC/DC. It’s not “art” like we’re used to now with Met & Maiden...but it isn’t offensively bad like 24, GOT, Austin Powers or Elvis. It’s competent product art. Not a mess like Oktoberfest’s varying styles and resolutions.

Why bother comparing this to one of the best game’s ever made? This game doesn’t deserve to smell Monster Bash’s shit.

Yeah I’ve never had that problem, but I’ve never had a problem with games where people claim things block their view. I can see and “feel” where the ball is going and if I see it about to pass under something, I know where it’s going to be in a millisecond. When I see the ball going toward the outlane on AC/DC, I can always nudge and generally save it. I get way more drains on the left actually off the TNT targets or a series of
Bounces after a cannon shot!

Houdini is like a lot of Photoshop Sterns in the sense that it’s technically bad art, looks bad in lit promo pics, but under its own GI in person looks much much better. Elvis is an example of that...just horrible playfield art, but in a dark gameroom with its own GI & flasher show, the visual experience is transformed a bit.

Never. Not in thousands of plays. I have an original run Premium.

Complaining about Long games vs. short games with no context is a horrible way to critique a pinball machine.

-Content of a game matters. Hobbit has a billion things to do, so long games are fine as the content makes sense for an adventure of a game.

-Every game can be adjusted to play easier or harder

-Tournament players are in the minority, most people can’t keep a ball alive for over 2 minutes whether a game is deemed “long” or “short” by the experts.

Never listen to an opinion based on “ball time length” without context.

So many lies. It’s beneath you. Play recent code. JJP’s best game, hands down. Modern masterpiece. The last great game any modern mfg has put out. Your loss if you can’t enjoy an incredible cinematic pinball adventure.

The “Pinside tastemakers” are wrong. They like Goatf***ers and every Zizzle-with-flow Stern puts out. The “market” is irrelevant to how I enjoy and review games. I thought Hobbit was garbage at first. So did you. That’s where it’s rep in this forum from the vocal haters comes from. Guess what? Play it now. It’s not the same game it used to be.

I don’t play unfun games. We can agree that WWE is a piece of shit. I’d never own or play a game that bad. I play Hobbit because it’s very fun. I like an adventure style game like TSPP & LOTR every so often, and Hobbit is the only modern game in that style.

-There are a lot of buying options out there and when it comes to Hobbit, most people don’t care about the movies, so that takes it off their “must spend lots of money on this” list. Theme is important.

-Pinside taste makers seem to now like math-depth & and not story/adventure depth.

-Pinside taste makers now hate widebodies, even tho TZ & STTNG were on every collector’s list for decades.

Hobbit pre-orders were $7500. So, where it’s priced in the aftermarket right now is respectable considering all these factors. I’m happy with my Smaug for the price I paid for it. Would I pay the current NIB JJP price for it? No way....but I wouldn’t buy any of their games for that price lol.

Here’s the thing - like AC/DC, Hobbit is smart enough to have that stuff in there for the hardcores, but you don’t even remotely need to know anything about it to enjoy the game. I don’t pay attention to any of that in the Hobbit - like LOTR, I play for the adventure, story, personality, and progression. The recent mathy Stern games lately don’t have any of that classic Pavlovian gameplay....it’s ALL about points strategy.

Classic projection.

Visit Portland. Almost every bar has 2 or 3 pins.

(MB is a license.)

Context is important when discussing licenses. The top games are popular not due to “lack of license”, but because they’ve had decades in arcades and collections to earn their well deserved reputation. They didn’t come from an era of $9k LE pre-ordering. Today’s companies prefer to have front-loaded sales. Something that nostalgic that connects to people who like pinball (like Ghostbusters, Lebowski, Metallica, etc) will have people throwing money at it because they already like “the thing”. Something like Dialed In, Full Throttle or Oktoberfest...people will say “I’ll wait to play it to see if I like it enough to spend that much.” People have to fall in love by playing it first. With a nostalgic license, they convince themselves they already love it without even seeing it.

Nope, two things can simultaneously suck.

(Insert joke here)

They'd have to hire a new artist. They didn't hire someone who has strong character design skills like John Youssi or Kevin O'Connor. They hired a Photoshop cobbler.

Critical opinion isn't negativity. It's part of an honest discussion of things.

Ayce will probably get it...I can't imagine anyone here is buying it for their home, though.

IF ONLY Oktoberfest took its inspiration from Tapper! At the time it stood out for its detailed and appealing character design and funny animation!

Please never do that again lol. Constant mouth noises during podcast = ear hell.