I am in the same boat... I am still waiting for 3 Monster Bash LE Remakes as well for my customers that I am going to add more custom work on... Sometimes buying machines (from a good company) can be a waiting game, but in the end it's worth it.

Steve
MI Pinball Refinery

That sucks. I’ve seen a lot of LEs change hands while some guys never even received their initial LE preorder. Makes no sense to me, supposedly they are having issues with the playfields??

At MGC this weekend all of the Monster Bash classics, and SE's had a build date of April 8th or 9th. Looks like those were on the line last week.

Yup, I paid my deposit in October and am still waiting.

Putting deposits down on games and waiting is a very frustrating experience....the good news is CGC is a legit company so the game is coming at some point...unless your Stern they all have problems getting games out the door in a timely manner. I've concluded that I'll never place a deposit on another game, and just wait for the games to hit the market....

What! No Way! that never happens?

Do this. You will be better off.

Imagine Playfield issues from CGC. Please don’t mention again as this has never happened except for MMr and AFMr shhhh. CGC Vacation America playfeilds were flawless I can confirm. Help a fellow pinsider and buy from them as they are trading hands pretty regularly. Hope your game comes or you find one on pinside.

Still waiting, but am happy to wait for quality. I waited long enough to get a NIB MBle.

I put down my deposit October 21 so my wait is about at 6 months. I was told I was #12 in line through my distributor a month ago. I've received no updates either. My distributor said that my place in line didn't matter cause he was a big distributor and got lots of games at a time. Here I am waiting. Bad decision on my part.

For me, I moved from mid teens to next in line in about 2 weeks. Then sat for months due to production issues. I can say based on my experience and what I am seeing on the forums that the factory was up and running and cranked a bunch out in the last few weeks. Hopefully still running strong.

I would like to think everyone is near the end of the wait.

It seems to be not too uncommon (you can find easily similar discussions around MMr, POTC, Hobbit and others)...

As you wrote what is really in need of improvement is the communication.
The whole situation could be fine if there was some level of transparency of what was going on. It could be actually quite some fun to follow it to understand the challenges, details and hiccups in the production process.

Some kick-starter campaigns are really good in this (others are really crappy as well). In my experience some of them were that great that the process of following them on their journey was even better and more entertaining than the product itself. In these cases a delay of a few months or even a year gave me a completely different feeling about it.
For some of these I would have even wished for more delay, so I got some more great podcast episodes and/or blog updates.

You’ve waited 20 years for a NIB monster bash you can wait a little
Longer.

Which is true as well. Always depends on the perspective - as most things (mathematics excluded).

Takes a long time to build 1250 pinball machines........

Have been more than 120 work days since deposits were accepted. Whereby we don't know the impact of the different challenges - especially the playfield quality.

Classics and SEs have been delivered as well, which might change the count a bit.

Nevertheless it seems that productivity could see some improvements.
I guess it is even more annoying for CGC, because it impacts their cash flow and bottom line.

Some insight on how they are distributed for those that may not know.

1250 total LE's made, and when they are made in batches, they are distributed based upon % of the 1250 ordered by a distributor.

So, if a distributor ordered 125 LE's of that 1250, that distributor would get 10% of their order filled every time a batch is made. So let's say CGC gets 50 of them done, that distributor would get 5 of them. And let's say CG does another 30 of them, that distributor would get 3 of them.

Etc and so on.

Mines coming today! Pinball coming, wife going.

with the right judge both will be gone!

I'm waiting as well. Deposit paid in mid-October. I quit calling my distributor because he never seemed to know anything either. I called at the beginning of this month and was told it would be shipping by the end of this month. fingers crossed...

My distro did get one LE already; I'm supposedly the next in line....... I redid the room where the machine will go in November......there's a big, empty space just waiting for it.

I was also getting a little nervous, as many non-number matching machines are going out and some of the serial #s are awfully high!!!

Worth the wait. Never leaving. My only regret is I met MBrLE so late in my life.

I’m sure it’s very hard playing the waiting game, but I can tell you this, I would rather wait and get a great game with little or no issues vs. all kinds of things that I would not be happy about.

Hang in there, the remake is definitely worth the wait in my opinion. But yes it’s very frustrating. Especially in today’s “you can have it right now” society. And I am including myself in that society!!

I've been waiting and waiting and waiting myself, and every month I get the same response, be there in 2 weeks. That passes and no word or updates ever given until I call again. Friends keep asking me to go for something else, and if I wanted something else, I would go ahead and buy it! There is nothing else I really want at the moment. Very frustrated....

I can't understand how others could buy a game, get it so quickly, play it 30 times and move onto something else, while we wait another 4 months for the same game, and don't plan on ever getting rid of it! CRAZY!

welcome to pinball and one of the reasons I left

I am interested in the response you receive from Chicago Gaming, RavenFan1, since they are IMHO being extremely inconsiderate to their customers & distributors with their extended silence on this critical matter. June or July shipping, please! Sounds like some more unfounded, pie in the sky information to further placate frustrated paid customers. I'd say I am in the same boat out here in SoCal, using a SoCal distributor, who has offered a full refund since I was told the game was ready to ship when full payment was requested 4 months ago. Thankfully, I have a few other pins that I thoroughly enjoy, and therefore I can look at a remake of MB as both the holy grail & icing on an already awesome cake that I get to nibble on daily. Looking at it from that perspective, I also realize that I wanted a MB ever since I learned such a pin theme existed, due to a lifelong love and collecting of Universal Monsters & Munsters memorabilia. However the price that sellers were asking for old tired MB's exceeded NIB prices. The fact that 2 new pins have been released in the same time frame that perfectly align with a love since youth, seems part of a divine plan, to me anyway. Melding that unexpected miracle with the knowledge that pinball manufacturing has experienced a recent rebirth in the past decade, leaving the bulk of the new ambitious manufacturers still in their infancy, puts me at ease. However, such an infancy can be matured in several ways, some of those being; vision, organization, transparency and integrity. This perspective, whether myth or fact, alters my usual expectations for timely production goals, resolution of QC issues and delivery to prepaid customers. Of course it is difficult to have empathy or patience for extended periods of time if we are not informed of the reason for the delays, with no reasonable or reliable end in sight. A pinball collector's motivation to own an LE of this game goes without saying at this point, and we are therefore left to speculate that Chicago Gaming must feel secure in the knowledge that demand exceeds supply for this game. If that was not the case, they would probably be upfront, honest, and considerate to their growing & loyal customer base. I challenge Chicago Gaming, to show the integrity they themselves would each expect as a customer, and adopt a PR model that is informative, honest & timely in their communication to the pin community & especially their prepaid customers. Such integrity would be greatly appreciated and benefit all involved, while no doubt also reducing a lot of stress, which is the main reason many of us are involved in this awesome hobby to begin with. Thank you in advance.

Dear god. That is one massive stream of consciousness going on there.

I feel your pain! I've put down a deposit on ACNC over 12 months ago and will be waiting for about another 4.

Should be a clause in the contract to buy these games, each day delayed is a dollar off the price. Bet your ass they wouldn't have 6 month delays

Ordered Oct 23rd MBRLE still waiting Game Exchange Denver, Co.

Bublehead says, keep calm, relax, take a breath, inhale- exhale- inhale- exhale- grab a gun- inhale- grab some bullets- exhale- load the gun- inhale- place it on your right temple- exhale- decide life is worth living- inhale- sneeze and accidently blow your brains out- exhale-

Seriously, the wait was torture and I lost a lot of weight just due to all the nervous axious waiting while I weighed my options on cancelling or if the weight of guilt I would feel would be unbearable if I cancelled and found out someone who had not waited had weighed in with my distributor and bypassed waiting and right now the freight guy was weighing the pallet and creating a waybill before sending it on its way to the customer who had not waited at all.

But I feel the pain since I was living the nightmare just a short time ago. I am so happy now with my MBrLE, that it got here in one piece, looks amazing, plays great, and PISSES ME OFF!!! on a regular basis. Do not be surprised you find yourself tightening up the outlanes, turning on an 8 second ball saver and jacking it up beyond 6.5 degrees of slope just to mitigate the outlanes from super sucking balls worse than Kevin Spacey.

My advice to waitees is call your distributors and Ryan at CGC and put them on speed dial... it didnt speed up delivery of my machine but at least I got more info out of them for me and others that way...

Good luck to everyone still waiting.

I like that idea, but that would probably put outfits like Chicago Gaming out of business. Can we add delay of code updates to fix bugs in that clause?

Trying to purchase NIB pins is a totally new business model for me, as is the lack of communication on delays. It's Sad and just Wrong, but unfortunately it seems to be the accepted culture. Just glad GM did not take pre-order deposits or full payments on the mid engine Corvette back in the 60's when all the prototypes & rumors were emerging. I guess the attitude of "Things could always be worse," is what keeps me from going insane or asking for a refund. Wasn't this the case, but only worse when this fledgling company started taking deposits for their first game, MMr, while using Stern's factory for assembly? Leaves a bad taste in one's mouth, but at least they haven't filed for bankruptcy yet. Heaven forbid such karma. Come on Chicago Gaming, how do you sleep at night? Quit hiding behind this despicable silence and let us know what the heck is going on here.

That’s one way to lose weight!

Do not give up, and more importantly do not make the mistake of buying a Munsters no code Stern game instead. You would regret it after two years of ownership and waiting for code.

Different strokes for different folks, but I received my Munsters LE one month after I paid my deposit and 10 days after paying in full. Plus it has had 3 code updates since I owned it that fixed all the bugs I emailed to their bug report email address. It also has been a source of hours of fun for me and my family. I think Chicago Gaming has a thing or two to learn from Stern, because I will never put down a deposit or prepay on another Chicago game, unless they make some serious changes to the way they treat their prepaid customers and meet QC and production goals. But I will probably hang in there on this one to avoid the inevitable non-buyers regret of a remake of an epic Bally/Williams game.

Same here.
I put a deposit down the first day the distributor announced they were taking deposits.
Not really all that worried about it.
It's going to show up at some point and the machine is friggin bitchin.
Played one at TPF as well as Cidercade.
For me its worth the wait.

It's not like its a kickstarter where you dropped money on funding a project and may or may not get it (its coming).

Ive got pins to play and enjoy while I wait, so I'm good.

I would say there is a little bit of “if you build it, they will come” arrogance to CGC’s cavalier attitude towards customers and delays. Like Monster Bash is their gift/offering/sacrafice to the pinball gods and if you want a piece of the sacred relic, you will wait until THEY want you to have it, and not a moment sooner.

On CGC’s delivery mechanism to it’s distributors, this is the way it was explained to me... as was said earlier, distributors got machines based on total order percentage out of 1250. My distributor had 55 LE slots in his allotment. So he got a 55 out of 1250 percent take of all games as they come down the line. They build 30 machines this week, my distributor got 55/1250th of that shipment, and PPS got the biggest cut every batch because, well, they own the license and got the lionshare of the order. This would have worked if the number of machines was more than a trickle each week. This meant more machines went to the top distributors because the batch size was so small, this left no machines out of the batch for smaller distributors, which means customers with PPS have WAY more machines delivered to them because there is no fractionional division lower than 1 machine..

Lets take a hypothetical look at this delivery model... using 1000 limited edition machines to be produced

We are going to use some hypothetical numbers for clarity, first lets say we have 10 distributors A through J and within this distribution of allotments A has 50%, B has 15%, C has 10%, D has 5%, E through J have 3.33% share of the allotments. When part of an alotment is less than 1 machine we round up for .51 to 1 and .49 down to 0.

First scenario, 60 machines a week production rate... so batch size is 60 machines a week, so first week a distribution of:

A = 30
B = 9
C = 6
D = 3
E-J = 2 each

Every distributor is getting at least 2 machines a week.

Second scenario, 16 machines a week production rate...

A = 8
B = 2.4 = 2
C = 1.6 = 2
D = 0.8 = 1
E-J = 0.53 = 1

So 16-8-2-2-1 = 3 and this leaves us with only 3 machines to divy up between E - J leaving 3 distributors out in the cold getting no machines at all... and the next week, the same thing happens, top distributors get the machines, bottom feeders get nothing, and this continues and continues until A has all of their machines, B has all of theirs, C gets a trickle, D sees one a week if he’s lucky, and E through J sit in the trenches getting nothing but a bone once in a while.

Sound familiar? Sound fair? As long as production is up, not bad, but when production rates fall to a trickle, this system implodes.

I am going to buy CGC #4 on the customer appreciation and number matching program and use PPS as my distributor to buy the next remake. Screw the six month wait and lets hope to God its not Cactus Canyon, because you can’t polish that turd long enough to make me want to buy it, yet it sits between me and the next great remake of BBB, TOM, TOTAN, TAF

I paid my non refundable deposit for an LE day one. Given I’m in Oz, we’re at the back of the queue. Including the extra 5 weeks of shipping, I have no doubt all remaining US LE’s will be in their owners hot little hands long before we get sight of ours.

That said, I’m content in knowing CGC are doing their best to produce the best possible product for me and will happily wait the time needed.

No one can honestly say they believe CGC are sitting on their hands and purposely delaying the process. They want to finish them off to avoid further delays on their next release.

No doubt more transparency would keep the hoardes happier, but it won’t get my pin to me any quicker.

My friend received his Monster Bash LE about three months ago. Looks and plays great. I am sure once everyone gets the game it will be well worth it.

Blog Post :
https://pinballsupernova.wordpress.com/2018/12/30/unboxing-chicago-gaming-monster-bash-le-unboxing-artwork-review-and-gameplay-video/

YouTube Video :

5 (resized).jpgUnboxing-MBR-Remake-Title (resized).jpg

I played an Attack from Mars LE last weekend and decided to buy one while I was waiting for my MBrLE. I hope it will keep me occupied until the MB shows up..

It will and you definitely won't be disappointed.