this thread is a great example of how a company should treat customers and potential customers. thanks again for the direct answers.

I've heard that a couple times today. Sounds like distributors are pulling the plug on some deadbeat and duplicate pre-orders. congrats!

hahaha retributive thumbs down. hilarious.

I would suggest not going into credit card debt for a pinball machine.

just buy an original if you want one so bad.

it doesn't sound like that many original assets survived, and the ones that did are on floppy disks that are nigh unreadable (if i recall correctly). but yeah an answer from them on how they're acquiring the sounds would be interesting.

uhhhhhh you know the gold trim is an OPTION right?

uhhhhh

.

I'm not seeing the "risk" in offering an additional trim option as long as the other options are also offered.

I really really really could care less if the machine is 3 weeks late, hell I could care less if it's 6 months late as long as they get it RIGHT. the last thing I want is for them to rush it out the door due to an artificial deadline. we're going to be owning these machines for a long, long time. I'd rather they wait until it's done before letting it out the door. timeliness of delivery is the LAST priority as far as I'm concerned. quality is the top.

that was 1908. Here in 2013, almost every car is offered with a variety of options. even small startups have figured out a way to offer myriad variances without going bankrupt.

you are making a very weird assumption that offering black trim would for some reason cause a huge delay to delivery, let alone delay delivery for people who didn't even order it. I don't think PPS would bother offering it if it meant that kind of impact. (not that they HAVE offered it. but I think it'd be a popular choice if it turned out to be feasible, which imo should be for PPS to judge)

well, we have no way of knowing how many if any of the MMRLEs are unsold even with the cancellations. also, just because there isn't a huge waiting list, that doesn't mean distributors wouldn't be able to move non-LEs after a while. from a cost efficiency perspective, I assume PPS would certainly rather satisfy *all* demand for MMR before retooling for the next pin.

1000 units may seem like a lot, but it's less than 25% of the machine's original run, which was already a small, abbreviated run. how many total Star Trek machines is Stern making? (there were something like 800 LEs if I remember right ... how many "pros" etc?)

they could also drop the non-LE all together if it seems like only a dozen people want one.

"refake"
"one and done"
"IF they get made"
"just wait till the money is due"

man you will say literally anything you can think of to sow worry and negativity about this project, huh? just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

why are fully half the posts in this thread from people who have no interest in this game?

This is so dumb. If Stern and JJP fail, it's won't be because of MMR. It's telling of Stern's lack of innovation that a design from 1997 can still compete with their latest offerings. What makes those companies so entitled to our patronage? Why shouldn't pinball enthusiasts buy the machine they most desire? Your argument makes no sense.

also congratulations on being YET ANOTHER person who has no interest in buying an MMR hopping in to a thread about official MMR updates.

why are you arguing that fewer competitors equals a healthier marketplace? that can't possibly be an honest argument on your part, it's so ludicrous.

there are currently about 4000 MMs, soon there will be 5000. the sky is falling!

Sorry but I think a guy who is not interested in buying the machine making a dozen posts in a thread for official updates on that machine is pretty much the definition of derailing. It'd be annoying even without your penchant for slinging insults.

you signed up?

i hope calling everyone stupid really helps with your own ego issues. also sorry i forgot about your weird plan to buy MMR and flip either it or your original MM, but that doesn't change the fact that your assertion that less competition is better for the hobby makes no sense.

you need to contact a distributor for that question. PPS is the supplier -- it's all sold out from their perspective, but distributors might have some that aren't spoken for, or could at least put your friends on a list for when others drop out.

that's remarkably transparent and forthcoming on your part, rick. i can't imagine most manufacturers being that candid about the process. i feel great about my purchase so far. signs are pointing towards you guys getting it right.

oh I don't know. my dollars will go towards the coolest pin. this iteration, it was MMRLE. maybe Stern will show it can complete code in a timely fashion and their next game will appeal to me more. maybe The Hobbit will blow me away. can't wait to find out. this consumer welcomes another player in the marketplace.

you're a WOZ / Stern distributor? ah, now your posts make sense.

not hearing that myself ... were you hearing the drawbridge going back up?

i guess it's not surprising people are so touchy and drama-prone about this project. some folks have 8 grand on the line, some see the whole thing as a threat to their income, and finally some simply have portions of their ego tied up in its success or failure. honestly that last group tend to be the loudest. folks just gotta remember to keep perspective.

i don't remember him being derisive of open source, just saying it was completely impossible due to their licensing agreements with williams, etc.

this has always been scheduled for Q2. standard is Q4.

why are you still commenting? you got your refund. bug off.

i think it's ridiculous to be like "if it's done right, it's EASY! i'll show em how!" the devil is in the details and everything seems so much easier from miles away. i'm also a software engineer, and if there's one thing i've learned in this trade, it's never trust the guy who says it's easy.

.-- - ..-.

haha

very exciting! thanks very much for the update!

wow you still get The Comedy Channel? Higgins Boys and Gruber, The Sweet Life, Night after Night with Allen Havey ... coool ... (nobody has any idea what i'm talking about., do they...)

not to be a debbie downer, but ehhh, every machine plays a little bit differently no matter how much verification or tweaking you do. just one of the features inherent to pinball's analog nature....

that said, i am excited by the potential! imagine going to the basement after the wife has gone to bed, turning on your machine and seeing "oh hey dave up in Ontario is playing right now too .. hey dave, how about a rematch??"

the compression used on the original game is not a lossless compression like a zip file -- it's a lossy compression like mp3 or jpeg. it reduces the file size by reducing the fidelity / detail / resolution of the original file. going back to the original sources would allow MMR to have higher-quality versions of the various audio clips than the original game had.

donnnnnnt encourage him, margaret!

I am totally down with any and all delays. No hurry. Get it RIGHT. Then release it.

some people want one thing, some people want something else. it's not weird that a community has within it varied and contradictory opinions.

please save everyone the headache of reading your future outraged posts and cancel now. thanks.

why should PPS cater the lighting in their game to your specific oddball preference?

yes it's completely oddball to flip out if the LEDs don't look exactly like incandescents. PPS has to make a machine that will appeal to all its buyers, most of whom consider LEDs an upgrade over incandescents. they've already said they're using warm white LEDs, but apparently that's not enough for this guy -- he needs them to be dim, and fade in and out too. maybe Rick will come in here and post that there will be a wide variety of light settings available to the end user, i don't know. maybe he'll say they are fading each bulb in and out through the software to emulate how incandescents light up. i kinda doubt it -- i don't think i've heard that news before, but who knows. sure it'd be cool to have that option, but this dude is acting like it's the end of the world if the lighting isn't as dim and yellow and delayed as an old incandescent. there are probably at least as many people who would prefer the inserts and GI to look sharper than the original.

as far as i know, every manufacturer currently making games is using LEDs instead of incandescents. why would they be doing this if it weren't what people preferred? i don't think it's a costcutting move - i think the majority of NiB buyers prefer LEDs (didn't say all - said a majority, and i doubt it's close).

I appreciate Herg's points about strobing/ghosting and am a huge fan of LED OCD myself. lighting is important. but posting what that guy said made him sound like a baby. direct quote -- "I'm not kidding either. If the lighting is not mellow, I'll be canceling my order." i reacted to that.

LED OCD is the best mod i ever put in my STTNG -- it eliminates (virtually) all strobing and ghosting in inserts, and allows you to set custom settings for each individual light -- you can control how quickly any arbitrary LED fades in and out or what its max level is. great product. improved the look of my STTNG tremendously.

MMRLE is designed for LEDs....

Any chance we can get a glimpse of the pps logo on the back glass? (I'm excited about that btw)

haha what a weird assumption! sure I played Medieval Madness in the 90s. and I gotta say it wasn't the yellow lighting that made that game great.

As a reminder for those slow on the uptake, Rick stated in his original announcement (I was in the room) that MMR would look and play just like the original.

he also said it would have LEDs.

Pezpunk, FYI, MM was made with incandescent lighting.

thanks for the news flash, Scoop.

Therefore, the natural conclusion is that MMR would have lighting that looks and acts similarly. It is not an "oddball preference." I paid my deposit based on this statement. And I dislike blue-white too-bright strobing/flickering LEDs. A prototype video posted a while back had blue-white lighting that did NOT look like the original game. Thus I posted my concern. And yes, if the lighting is way off, and doesn't look/behave generally like the original incandescents, then I will cancel my pre-order. I suspect others may feel this way, even if they are less vocal than me.

the game has been advertised as having LEDs since day one. why did you place a pre-order at all if you hate LEDs so much? here's a crazy suggestion - maybe unbunch your panties until the game is finalized. jeez.

you are right, i'm dropping it. i apologize if i came off like an a-hole. my frustration with silly drama has merely begotten more silly drama.

I can't make it to any expos so I PM'd rick my address so he can send a prototype directly to my place to try out.

if wanted to say "Williams has no monetary incentive to block this" you could have done so without the insults to Rick and MMR buyers.

I'm interested in seeing this list of posts from mmrle buyers exclaiming they don't care about build quality. I myself posted several times saying "I don't care about delays, just get it right before releasing it'.

well, he provided a bunch of quotes out of context. i'm not going to explain what each person was talking about, but for example the first guy was saying what was shown to Roger Sharpe was good enough for Roger Sharpe. i am not seeing how that implies the poster doesn't care about build quality. at worst, a couple of the posts he pasted imply that they trust Rick. none of them imply that the posters don't care about build quality.

i mean i agree with you that there is a wide range of expectations here. some want the original gameplay and consider any modernizations a bonus, while some others want it to be absolutely identical to the original. viper001's not a MMR buyer and his only input here is snarkiness and negativity. it's not much of a contribution.

each thumbs up we give you is a dollar off the price, right?

eh the maytag thing wasn't being cocky about his game's quality - he was just saying he wasn't getting any (well, many) calls, like in the old maytag commercial.

this isn't a bad idea, but why can't they also pay our mortgages? what are they, greedy?

i could be wrong but i thought they said they already had the Universal licensing to reproduce certain parts anyway.

that's good news!

the biggest bummer is going to be people nitpicking minute differences in gameplay between the 20 year old machine they once played and this brand new one. i mean not even two examples of a machine built at the same time ever play exactly alike ... i hope people remember that ...

Rick can I get mine installed with an alien/UFO theme instead of knights and castles?

if you want white rubbers just install some white rubbers imo. a bunch of customization options (especially ones that are required in the middle of the build process) probably just add more confusion, time, and cost to the process than it could ever possibly be worth.

glass can be switched out at the end of the build process in like 15 seconds though.

fair enough. doesn't hurt to ask.

um I don't think it's going too far out on a limb to say we're not going to see a rollergames remake.

also it's weird to me that people are so convinced that it's cheap to make a pinball machine when almost every company that tries ends up broke or near-broke.

those aren't getting remade either.

i mean ... i don't know everything, but i doubt they are going to do more than one a year at most. those four would take them into 2018. who the heck knows what will be happening in the hobby by then.

I've got clear rubbers on my STTNG, I really like them. they pick up light and sort of almost glow. (sorry no pics yet)

why are you obsessed with the Q2 date? i won't mind a bit if it's late as long as it's good.

ok cool, sorry for being up tight.

when i was really heavily into gaming (late 90s / early 2000s), tons and tons of crappy games would be released and complained about, and then Blizzard would dump an absolute masterpiece like StarCraft or Diablo II ... literally years behind schedule, but they were totally polished, balanced, finished, and fun games that blew away everything else on the market at the time.

i guess i am sensitive to that subject because as a gamer / software engineer, nothing is worse than rushed product. i've been on both sides of it, and believe me the engineers hate it as much as the customer. (code of course can be updated, but hardware and physical design and specs, not so much.)

so excited just to see pictures and reviews. I can't imagine what I'd feel if I could actually make it!

people keep using the term "unlimited" like they are just going to crank out millions of them.... you know every game Stern makes is also unlimited.

in another thread someone said "they could make 10,000 of them". seriously? this is not 1993.

that's really interesting about the inserts being lit by 3 LEDs, and how if one goes out, the other two compensate by getting brighter. do Stern or JJP machines do that?

looks like the pinball news item is mistaken. on another thread people posted images of original ramp versus MMR's and nobody could tell a difference.

it's been impressive how this project has marched methodically towards its goal while maintaining a reasonably open communication with its buyers. by all accounts, the first public showing of the game went about as well as it could have -- another milestone in the books. kudos to Rick and the whole PPS team.

Y'all will be welcome to play mine too

we appreciate the transparency, rick. keep up the great work!

so let's stick to talking about STTNG and MM.

the previous 2 posts were all about the conservative fairy tale of lazy poor people living high on the hog on welfare. Nobody wants political discussion in a pinball thread, as illustrated by your disapproval of MY overtly political comment. I thought my point was pretty obvious.

Sorry o-din, I apologize

wow. now those are some great features! all three are important to me.

i think the black looks pretty good and am leaning towards that. i think it's awesome that rick is increasing the options and features at this stage.

after installing LED OCD in my two Williams games, I am totally spoiled for standard LED behavior. The fact that PPS is incorporating fade (and adjustable to boot!) is really a fantastic surprise. These are going to look better than any original ever did.

I guess I'm in the minority but I'm pretty happy with the options. I wish we'd let Rick get on with building these things

a year ago people woulda been ecstatic with a players-condition MM (stainless steel trim) for that price. now here we are getting a newly manufactured game that has triple-redundant LEDs with software-controlled incandescent emulation, a color LCD in place of the DMD, designed for a software-extensible ruleset, and three options for trim. but we can't stop whining about the black being mottled versus polished. makes me wonder if anything will ever be enough for us

i've already got the best of the things that are important to me, and more. i appreciate your sincere concern, but trust me, you do not need to worry about that on my behalf.

well, that's not really true. a few people did said it looked good in person.

Hmm now I'm confused -- in the video posted a couple days ago on the PPS site (from their presentation at the Texas show), one of the Chicago Coin representatives says it WILL be attached with double-sided tape, but that the decals don't go up that far, so the tape is only attached to wood, not decal.

To my knowledge they haven't mentioned the LED brightness being adjustable, just the level of fade between on/off for incandescent simulation. Seems to me max brightness level would be cake by comparison -- probably just a matter of coding it in.

Cool

whoa

yeah sorry. several interesting bits in there, but the biggest surprise to me was that Stern is assembling them (which to my mind is a good thing because there are far fewer unknowns with an (the?) established current manufacturer doing it). The trim update is cool too, though, and it sucks about PAGG, but at least it shows their priorities are in order.

only because the news got its own thread:

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/ann-mmr-assembly-to-be-done-by-stern-pinball-for-ppschicago-gaming

for a second i was like "there was a Transformers model railroad?? cool!" then i realized what you meant!

i'm glad that you and Joe seem to have worked this out amicably, but pinsiders responding with incredulity or concern were not in the wrong here. the intent was to stick up for you. according to your original post, you had requested a refund and were refused. this would have been blatantly unethical on the part of the distributor, and you can understand people wanting to know who it was that was being shady. since then, that portrayal of the situation has changed, but you can't blame people for reacting how they did given the what you said at first. i don't want you to have a negative impression of the people here when they were merely reacting to what you were saying. it seems to have worked itself out, though, and that's great.

on the subject of you selling your spot, as far as i know, PPS is discouraging / not supporting that kind of swap, at least partially because deposits are still refundable.

I think we'll have to play it to really see how the shaker code .... shakes out ... Or something ...

1. no
2. i'm sure if you want to give distributors an extra $500 there aren't many that will say no.

aww, was hoping you'd pick something different from me so we could compare in person.

haha

I am the world's biggest fan of rich, royal purple. anyone who's seen my plum crazy challenger or my STTNG for that matter can attest to that. but I'm not sure it'd be a popular option for MM.

My strategy is use flippers to stop ball from draining.

Thank you for the clarification, Rick! Still waiting on that advice how to tell the wife ...

The standard will never be more valuable than the LE. Rarity is not the sole decider of value. Otherwise Addams Familys would be $200 each and Popeye would be worth more than Medieval Madness.

Cliffs notes:
- July 10th is the date down payments become non-refundable
- the first batch of production games at Stern are tentatively scheduled to begin in the last few days of July.