Absolutely. I am blown away by the build quality of MMR. I guess it's hard to see the appeal when you own an original.

I play both an original MM (at Kelly's on Laskin rd.) and my MMr at least 4 to 5 days a week. We go to Kelly's for lunch every day and always play 3 to 4 games, and play mine in the evenings. After playing both regularly for several months, here is my honest review:

MMr is faster than the original. Difference may just be that I keep mine waxed and clean, as opposed to the original that is in good condition, but it's in a bar on route and doesn't get the same maintenance.

MMr shaker is a nice addition, but I guess you can add a shaker to MM.

The sound on my MMr is clearly superior to the original, but I have had a psw10 sub on it from day one. Not sure if there is much difference without one.

Overall play is very much the same. Ramp and Castle shots react the same. The flipper and slings on the MMr are a little more responsive the the original, again probably because of the maintenance.

Build quality of the MMr seems to be comparable to the original.

Overall, although I prefer the original, just because it is, getting a nib for 8k as opposed to paying at least twice that to get a comparable condition restored original, the MMr is a no-brainier. It plays and looks terrific, and regardless of the opposing opinions expressed on here by some ( who's motivation may not lead to an objective opinion ) , I have had a pretty extensive amount of time on both, and the MMr is an excellent "copy" of the original. If I had it to do over, I would still buy the MMr. Anyone that claims any huge difference in quality or play is just wrong and expressing an uninformed opinion that clearly wasn't formed with an objective review of both.

nope. PPS's initial MMR announcement was about 1 year 9 months ago.

the delays are incredibly frustrating and customers are right to be livid. i paid in full over a year ago. but let's not resort to hyperbole or misinformation, lest we cede the highground.

Just so you know a comparable original is no longer 15-16k as you suggest. Nice originals are now changing hands for nearly the same price as NIB MMr's and many nicely restored originals with all the mods are changing hands for under 12k... some well under that.

MMr's were overpriced day one but now with originals coming down to more reasonable levels MMr's are more over priced than ever before.

pssst ... the only reason originals came down is because of MMR. from the buyer's perspective, if they wanted a Medieval Madness pinball game, the remake was a good thing. they are getting a game for $8k that would have previously cost them $15k if the remake had never happened.

pssst... no shit.

Really?

Vids old. He probably had his "good" ear turned towards mmr instead of mm.

You were doing good til you got to this pretty stupid comment at the end.

I played MMr at Expo last year, and can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that my original game played better than those three. The new ones played OK, good enough for most people, but they were slower, flatter and just not as snappy. Haven't played a new one since; maybe they fixed up some things?

If I write that everyone who disagrees is uninformed and wrong, does that make my opinion more valid?? LOL

Just so you know, I'm well aware of what prices are now. At the time I made the decision to buy an MMr, prices were much higher and easily were in the 15k to as high as 20 k range for a good restored example. I'm sure you can remember that. I looked extensively for one prior to making the decision to purchase an MMr.

Folks...let's be good Smokey Bears and keep this from turning into another MM vs MMR dumpster fire. Keep on topic-ish.

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Yes, that's MY opinion, and I stand by it.

If I follow this logic then there would be nothing wrong with downloading pirated TV shows, because I'm watching them on the television hardware that I already own.

No, that would be like downloading pirated TV shows to watch on your MMr's display.

This has been discussed before....the MMr's at Expo had their front legs jacked up. You can't implicate a game for being set up stupidly. If you jacked up the front legs on a MM it would also play slower and flat. Also, you can change the flipper strength in the settings. You can make it shoot like a bullet if you want.

I bought an Ultimate Arcade 2 on Craigslist and since traded it for a pin. But yeah, after doing research I found those software updates on an SD card were crazy expensive . But since it was JAMMA wired, you can just swap in an all-in-one JAMMA board now for $50 instead.

Can't imagine the color DMD feature won't be ridiculously expensive.

i don't think he was making that argument. i think we all understand that in 2015 many of the products we pay for are arrangements of bits, not physical objects.

having said that, if CGC cannot throw me the bone of colored animations for free after having me pay in full more than a year in advance (and by the way i still have no idea when i will get my game ... as far as i know zero black trim games have been made), then not only will i not be purchasing their color DMD product but they will never see another dime from me again. keep in mind i think most would agree i have probably been one of their top advocates here on Pinside. Nobody's been more on their side through all the drama. hopefully CGC can do the math and reach the logical conclusion that retaining future customers and rescuing good will in the wake of unacceptable delays is worth whatever they spend developing their color solution, and far outweighs whatever cashflow the color animation sales would generate, especially if a pissed-off user base decides not to purchase it (or future remakes) in protest.

from what i've seen, the game itself exceeds expectations. customers who have received their games are very happy with the build quality and gameplay. it seems like they've done a great job recreating one of the best pinball machines ever made, and they have built an innovative extensible platform underneath. i'm optimistic about future titles. i'd hate to see that opportunity squandered by shortsighted financial decisions on their part.

In this case, Gecko, I think discussion about MMr vs. MM is more than warranted. You can get a color DMD on an MM. The people who preordered an MMr were under the impression they'd get one as well for all that money. The fact that they may have to pay even more or perhaps not get color is a plus for MM and a minus for MMr. That's a this-versus-that if I ever saw one.

Understood... no longer applies today when making a decision though.

If you own an original, then you could tell that those games were not pitched correctly, even before pressing Start.

That would be like saying that you saw a car on the stage at the Auto Show and it drove **so slow**. Your car at home ** drives so much faster**.

If you crank up the flipper strength on MMr, it will blow your MM into the weeds with snappiness. I've tried it.

And it would probably blow pieces of plastic around also. I hope not too many people try setting the strength to 11. Like the person who can't make a ramp shot so they switch to a stronger coil. Seen that damage before.

Also, those people will go to another MMr or MM and think theirs plays better because they can't make the shots. I love league play against people who set home machines to easy.

yeah i think we've all seen people miss ramp shots and blame it on weak flippers.

Of course.

But you have to try it at least once, just to feel how powerful those bitches can go.

Just best to try it on someone else's

Wow, back to a "vs" argument huh?

I'll chirp in my 2 cents, originally I thought, MMR all the way, but since having to try to repair my friend's twice, if I really wanted one now and had to pick, I would go original no question.

The reason is simply the guts - I can repair a WPC, virtually every issue, and have done so many times. I can't do squat with the new tech (other than some of the through hole tips), I'm likely not learning SMD anytime soon, and I have a feeling this is more a swap the board rather than repair it type system. I don't like that for longevity. PPS/CGC goes belly up in a year or two, how long until you have 1000 MMr paperweights out there - 5 years, 10 years, who knows.

I don't blame them for looking to new, cheaper tech, but in pinball, you have to be able to repair something, as EVERYTHING breaks down frequently. I can for sure deal with WPC issues for a long time down the road. I don't know what I can do with this new tech down the road, that's the deciding factor for me.

You can learn it in a day.

It is very liberating knowing that you can repair current circuit boards, and those from 35 years ago.

Even if they went belly up latter this afternoon, I could still repair any of those boards - and so could 10,000,000 other techs around the world.

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As each pinball company went solid state, all us techs had to learn the ins and outs of their new systems. Bally, Williams, Gotllieb and Atari all had completely different ideas on pinball electronics.

Some oldtimers even said "I'm EM only, I won't work on that that new 'computer' stuff. It's too small and too hard to follow. I'm sticking with Gottlieb games". Three years latter, they were of course, replacing transistors with the rest of us, lol.

If you look on older game circuit boards, often you will see several stickers where a board was exchanged and repaired at an outside repair facility. That's how scared the oldtimers where of learning to repair circuit board rather than relays. They would swap them rather than learn to service them.

Same!

Same here

As I've said for years, the moment we see Stern focusing on remakes over new titles, we know that pinball is on a quick downhill slide. 2015 we see Stern manufacturing as many as 3 remakes (MMr, IMVE, maybe SM VE), for better or for worse.

I will go this statement one further. When folks would try to ask questions about what this game would actually include, or try to get clarification on a technical aspect related to it, you would always be one of the first ones to try to shut down such useful discussions. May I suggest that perhaps, just possibly, folks asking those questions weren't the evil trolls they were made out to be?

For the record I am not anti-remake or anti-Rick. I am anti-false-rhetoric. So many folks *decided* they were entitled to this thing for free that it has been quoted as such for over a year on these forums. Rick was always careful to not directly promise that, and those of us that pointed that out were not the bad guys for noticing.

And also, what is going on right now is classic "Good Cop/Bad Cop" strategy. Rick is very smart but he is not hard to figure out, no matter what you guys threaten you will pay for this upgrade.

But I don't want to. I know WPC, it's available in WPC, maybe PPS makes nothing else ever, now I have to learn a whole new system and technology for a game I didn't have to? Not a chance. I would like a Superman pinball, and had one offered to me not working. I would love it, but do I want to learn Atari with all the other things I have to do with my current machines and never ending list of projects and things to do - nope, pass. Not worth it. With MMr, the decision is easier, I'll just buy the WPC version of Superman, sweet!

Very few people in the hobby that own them I bet will know the system even in the coming years. Some people don't know how to fix a thing, so for them, MMr is likely best option, but for me, my pick is original solely based on the boards.

Every time my buddy has had an issue with his MMr, and it's been three times now, I cringe and don't even want to look at it. I don't even own one and I'm somehow stuck being the tech on it, how's that for horsecrap!

So, what are the issues you've seen?

Wow , two failures was bad enough, but now three 40 min later! What exactly were these "board" failures?

The first one was all the coils being out, which after spending time reviewing all the schematics, I couldn't understrand how it was possible, given no fuses blown, and that different circuit lines were not related to others. Went way farther than I should with trying to understand how the logic works before realizing that it was a loosely screwed down coin door cut out plate that wasn't depressing the coin door closed buttons. Second was all the GI going out, which turned out to be crappy soldering and lugs that were touching. Third was a connector issues of some kind, I can't recall exactly now...

All of which were not attributed to the new system over the old, and I'm sure WPC's had similar issues new yadda yadda yadda, but the reason I mention this is for the first issue, I went through the cpu schematics and logic, and thought, I do not want to have to learn this system, and diagnose it, when inevitably something does go wrong.

Maybe this is grumpy old man (41) syndrome, whatever, this is just my perspective on why I would choose the WPC version over MMR. I have to do a lot of repairing for my machines and friends, and I have no desire to throw another system on top of that. I can repair most WPC issues with my eyes closed.

That's fine, no one is going to force you.

You can stick to your 20-40 year old games, like some oldtimers stick to EMs. No shame in that.

Millions of kids use that Beaglebone Black in their Middle School projects, so there is no lack of people who are familiar with the system.

If you ever get stuck, ask your daughter.

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but you shouldn't have to do that.

No, don't do that. I'm not suggesting anyone leave the flippers set on Destroy.

It's just fun to blast a few balls around and see how crazy powerful the new system can be.

BBBrr will actually need that extra strength. Those Capcom flippers had power that no Williams game could ever dream of.

Carguement!

Unmistakably. Just goes to show the Cargument transcends all generations.

That was the first day. They fixed the levelers the next day and I played the leftmost game a few times and it was pretty good, but still nothing like my original.

Does no one remember these at Expo last year?? They fixed the levelers after multiple complaints, and post-fix is what I'm comparing. Of course I'm not going to judge a game set at 3 degrees pitch. C'mon Vid, I expect better from you!

No, they fixed them and inexplicably, the next day they were back to being raised in the front; only to be fixed again.

The coils are the same as the old game, right?

Put them on 11 and they'll be super strong... til the first good multiball or two... they will soon overheat and become limp noodles. A WMS -29 coil can only dissipate so much heat without active cooling, and anything more than the original drive strength will overheat them pretty quickly. Go ahead and try it, any MMR owner, and let us know how it goes.

The only way you get a stronger flip is to increase the voltage, or increase the 'on' time for the primary winding. I strongly suspect they're implementing the latter approach, which simply won't work past a certain point. If they're actually adjusting the voltage up when that strength is changed, that may work w/o overheating, but that would require an adjustable power supply and logic to change the voltage.

OK replace "2-3 years" with "1 year 9 months". Point of the argument doesn't change. And I'm guessing it will be 2 years before most customers receive their MMr.

CGC know you will want it and pay for it

Same coils but different driving logic.

The drive "pulse" can be adjusted by the CPU for length, voltage, ect......

So you can multiball all you want at crazy flipper strength until all your plastics are shattered, with no overheated or weaken flippers.

This ain't yo granpaw's 30 year old flipper system.

I think Rick's error was in making the statement to begin with. He should have just said that colorizing the LCD display was in the works and they didn't know when it would be available or how much it would cost. Although he intended it to be free, he clearly did not promise it.

I can understand why CGC would want to charge for the upgrade as they sold the MMR as an exact copy of the original with the addition of a shaker motor and gold trim (later morphed to powder coat and black options). I think adding color is above and beyond what they promised and has required more work than they expected.

That being said, I think it would be a wise move on their part to just absorb the costs. Offering it for free will offset some of the customer dissatisfaction due to delays, coin mechs, slingshots and whatever else might arise. Throwing the customers a bone now could pay off big time in the future.

How, exactly, is the CPU changing the coil voltage on the fly? Are the flippers isolated from the rest of the +50v? What is the "etc." .. what are you adjusting besides pulse length? Where is the logic-driven switching power supply that is boosting the flipper voltage in response to the game adjustment setting?

All the new system is doing is varying the length of time the primary winding is engaged (overriding the EOS switch in the process). It would play much like a regular WPC game with the EOS switches disconnected, and those broken games also get limp-flipper syndrome when the coils overheat. The setting is useful for low line voltage levels or other abnormal operating conditions, but it's not going to magically make super strong flippers that are consistently super strong.

And yes, these ARE basically 30yo flipper designs. Same parts, same power, just different drive electronics, but there's only so many ways you can turn something on and off

So you have been blathering on and on for all these posts basing your "facts" only on some poorly set up, obviously early firmware games at Expo a year ago?

C'mon I'd expect better from anybody.