Madison Pinball now has a KISS pro on route
https://pinside.com/pinball/map/where-to-play/schwoegler-s-bowling-entertainment-madison-wi-united-states

I was able to play about 5 games on it yesterday and sometimes it is fun to list out some first impressions.

First off as many know I am not a big fan of most Stern machines, a licensed theme means little to me, and I am not a big Kiss band fan. In other words I may have a slightly more critical eye when stepping up to a new Stern game.

In short, this is a fun shooter and has better than normal code (running 0.92) than the least few release coming right out of the gate. Code still has a LONG way to go but out of the box it has more going on which os a good thing. I assume/hope the code will get some depth and strategy over time. Pretty sure Jack worked on Mustang so hopefully he has some fun strategy and tricks ready for Kiss also.

The great : The art really looks fantastic! The translite pops with the spike LEDs in the backbox. The side art looks better in person then in photos. Teh pf art is so nice and I hope we see more hand drawn art from Stern. I am not a huge fan stylistically of the art but the quility and colors are great

The good: Code out of the gate actually has some stuff to shoot for. A few multiballs and everything at this point is fairly intuitive to shoot for. The use of the color changing LEDs in arrows and in pops is already pretty decent and if coded well could be great. The pops with color changers is a very cool thing and I hope they expand on this. The game feels like an older style B/W to mean in many ways. If you had not realized, the spike system now incoporates 3 lug flipper coils and this is a good thing in my book. The game also has way more random action which I like. The spinner under Gene head does a great job of putting action on the ball and TONS of english. I also liek the exposed pops as they create more random action.

The through pops shot is always fun and I love the full orbit and hitting teh spinner on the back side.

The ramps feel clean and have nice return and moevment. The ramps feel pretty easy to hit the center and a little more difficult to hit the right at first but both are nice and both have protectors at ramp entrances.

The Gene head spitting out balls was pretty fun and did not seem to give any cheap SDTM drains when the game is properly leveled. The VUK Gene mech seems wel built and in general some of the mechs seema little more solid in this game.

The sound system is very nice. Seems like they have done a better job of using the capabilities of SPIKE since WWE. The game has clean sounds and in your face.

Overall I enjoyed shooting this game and even found myself cheering along with some of the cheesy tunes and callouts. Hopefully more comedy will come as more callouts get incorporated. I liek the shot layout and depth of some of the shots. It is still just another fan layout but atleast the shot entrances are at different depths on the playfield so it feels like some variety and a bit different.

The meh: The strachild shot is the more difficult of the entire game and not musg skill involved in hitting the switches. Just dump the ball up there, nudge to keep the slammers hitting and hope it eventually hits the right switchs and lands in the scoop up there. I am not a fan of luck shots but this will liekly be a nice place to dump a ball during multiball and a spot to aim for during mutliball (assuming you can progress starchild hits while in other multiballs?) As of now my first impression is that this is just kind of there.

The game feels like it is just missing something. I am not sure what but the layout is all there and pretty straight forward. Maybe a return to inlane shot would have been cool? The standups on the right and left take up all the side shots and are nto that fun to shot for. I am not sure what it is but this game just feels a little less compelte. Like it needed one more cool feature.

If I had one negative about the art it was that teh cabinent art blacks were not dark enough. They are more grey black than black and it would have looked beter with a really dark black background.

Thanks for adding to the conversation...

side note the game appears like it may have a real skillshot incorporated int he future as there is a switch at the top right orbit which can be hit but not have the ball go around to pops but drop back down to spinner. Mayeb something fun with that?

anyone else been able to play a few games?

what do you think?

likes/dislikes?

my cursory understanding is the older two lug plan of full or half power (pulse or hold) was based on the CPU pulsing the power inroder to hold.

my cursory understanding of 3 lug it that there are 2 internal windings and pulsing one (or both?) give pulse power and then the EOS switch tells the game the flipper is being held up and it switches to just one winding to maintain the hold of the flipper.

To me this is the root of the difference in 'feel' for a Stern mech and B/W mech. It also means no more aweful buzzzzzzz when holding a flipper up.

It is a hobby and not a money maker, but it is a lot of fun. Trying to build more of a local cummunity has been a blast and I have made lots of new friends from it. Side benefit is we all get to play some new games when they first come out. I know I would never personally be able to/want to buy these expensive games for myself.

There is substaintial risk so it is not for the faint of heart. For example, we took out a loan to buy WWE and that did not turn out well. We ended up selling for a loss after seeing the game was not getting played much. Luckily a local was happy to get the game and all were happy.

Initial impressions from the players on route is they are more pumped for Kiss, so hopefully this one will turn out to not be so risky and stick around a little longer

Glad you and Tim were able to get out and play it!

I was able to get love gun but it warded at teh scoop hole in starchild area after enough star switch hits.
That right ramp is tight but very satisfying to hit.

Mike,

How do you light the backstage pass? I was not sure of that.

I will say I hope cliffy makes a scoop protector ASAP as it will get blasted quickly just like the one on TAF at the spot does. Close shot and a nice "Thunk" when you slam it in!

Yeah I noticed that but then also some some odd behavior where it did not always allow you to change the city. It was bizzare.

I get the general idea that not only are you touring and playing different songs with different goals but you are trying to get the crowd all pumped up at each locaiton possibly?

Could be some cool interplay of rules with this and I love the idea of MORE choose your own adventure style of pinball with code. Hopefully Jack is going to dig deep on this one.

I forgot to mention one other con. It is really not related to Kiss but more so to the new Spike system. These games are super light. The tilt is actually very far open and we closed down th outlanes from what they came from the factory.

However, the game it SO VERY light that even a small nudge causes a great movement. I set all our plumb bobs and this one is set further down then all the other sterns. I noticed that this game really will be hard to dial in given its light weight.

My general rule of thumb is that I should not be able to right outlane dead save without tilting but it should be close, and that is what I aim for when setting sensitivity. I also think a player should be able to get away with 1 good harder save but that it is.

pitched around 6.8-6.9 which is about where I like em'

Yes, 1 time from what I have been told. Was also during a multiball.

Good to know. We will have to take a look and see on ours. Let me know what you find.

Is this on the game at Schwoegler's? Sorry as it is unclear since you dont show location.

As far as I know this has happened with similar symptoms on the one we have on route, but so far only one report so I assume very infrequent. On our game, when it reset apparently the credits being actively played reappeared on the game when it rebooted.

spinning disk makes it a tougher lock.

In other words, aim better

wondering when we are going to see the 1.0 update...

Excited to see what the 'production' code looks like

yeah, some crazy spin/english coming out from there. I like the randomw nature. I had a few balls with so much spin that they went back up the pf after coming out. Fun stuff.

That is what they have indicated and it better be, esp since the current bug of getting intermittent resets when doing Demon MB.

I am dreading even the thought of how much of a goat rodeo it would be.

"sweet I am having an awesome game, scoring big points and now I am locking my last ball for demon"
bkjhbffsdkljfbsdfjkb
game locks up...

"ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH"

please call it in to Stern today/asap!

Even if you are not the owner of the game. I think Chas is the guy we have spoken to.

They better drop a code update ASAP/today so we can install it before the launch on Sat. Gonna have a lot of pissed off people during the launch if we are seeing resets, esp during a MB.

I am bringging GeneO and he can take care of all complaints

code bugs can lead to game getting confused and then locking up. Locking up then can have code telling game to reboot.

Based on symptoms everyone seems to be experiencing (multiplayer game and during Demon MB) it sounds to be bug related.

yes, they have been reported a few times now. Also hit up their FB page and still no response.