I'm curious, Aurich. You owned a Stern Star Trek. Do you believe Paramount was overly strict with the license on that?

They not only provided tons of audio lifts, they also approved all of the custom dots (including the racy, fun Match dots). They also approved all of Karl Urban's custom speech, including funny, goofy stuff like "Dammit, I'm a doctor not a pinball Wizard!" I think Paramount was quite generous.

Same goes for Metallica, AC/DC, KISS.

I'm not seeing a lot of compromises from the licenser lately....at least not on Stern titles.

JJP apparently got rebuked on many of their Hobbit animations. I guess you could make an argument for Peter Jackson being too controlling....

Premium only has actors on the translite, and that will be replaced with yours soon.

None of that is Paramount's fault. I don't see this as a problem with licensed themes, or corporations putting the "shackles" on the designers.

I don't think his call-outs are a failure. They sounded odd when I first watched videos of them, but they are completely natural now. Most people that play my game laugh (in the good way) at his call-outs.

I'm just having trouble seeing where a licensed pin is being squashed by corporate policy. Except maybe Peter Jackson and the Hobbit.

Yup. No innovation on SAM or SPIKE systems.