My MET and TWD feel like nice solid games. My IMDN.....not at all. It's the only game I don't mind moving since it's so light. Don't even get me started with the flippers. Even with the glass on, they are so loud and obnoxious, they actually hurt my ears.

I did not get any plastic or keychain with my LE. Anyone else have issue?

It's not the same product, but a limited edition pinball table sold through distributors and a supply-limited toy sold through retailers give us the same effect: shopping around for a merchant to find the item.

Whether calling distributors for MBrLE's or driving to every Walmart in town for a TME doll, you're at the mercy of whoever sells the item. It's not the manufacturer's fault, unless you consider under-producing a fault.

Perhaps. Middle men are often unpopular. Why doe my cars have to go through a dealer? Why do my votes have to go through an electoral college?

Clearly CGC (and Stern, and JJP, and Spooky) like the distributor model. Farming out part of their business makes life easier for them, just like farming out IT or HR or accounting may.

There's opportunity for the distributor to make life easier for you too. Lots of people like their distributors. That's not your experience, and I certainly can't blame you for your distaste. I'm just saying your distaste shouldn't be directed to CGC, any more than you should hate Walmart for the TME frenzy, or your local car dealer for being unable to find a blue Jeep for you.

I hope you get your table soon. I really do. It stinks to wait that long for anything, especially when you have a sizable deposit. Especially when you can see them floating out into the wild.

If you do this again, I would ask:

1) What's your initial allocation of LE tables?
2) How deep am I in line?
3) If my table is damaged in delivery, what is my recourse?

Of course, you could always join me and do an SE instead! Lots cheaper and the only big loss is the topper. Heck, buy one today and join me at MGC this weekend! You might still have time to get the show deal. ($500 off)

Thinking about a MBr Classic. It's kind of hard to tell what's on the CE because there are not a lot of pictures or videos on the CE. Can someone point me to a video on the CE? Does the creature lagoon light up like the SE? The feature matrix in not quite that specific. Anyone own a CE with the color upgrade?

Thanks!

The consensus is the CE is copy of the original MB, the only difference is the LCD display, and the color upgrade chip gives you basically a ColorDMD MB exprience. The GI lighting is all warm white LED’s, the playfield figures are not as detailed, you get SS lockdown and side rails. If you want a MB NIB that is the same as OG MB, CE is your machine. SE gets bigger screen, RGB LED GI, and a year warranty, LE gets plasma disk, blue metalic armor, laser etched monster characters on Lockdown bar, the topper, 2 year warranty, shaker motor, and mirrored side blades.

Bublehead pretty much said it all. The creature lagoon does light up on the CE. I also bought the color chip upgrade and think it's great. The upgrade is expensive though and might not be for everyone. To me the color upgrade was well worth it.

You are supposed to get one??? News to me as I sure did not.

Promo plastics, including key fobs, speaker panel knockouts, coasters, POS displays and even extra slingshot plastics are usually added by the art department to fill up the entire petg sheet because each sheet is screen printed, and the added cost of ink and hot knife setup was insignificant to their worth as promotional items. Somewhere sombody on the line added the leftovers of the plastics set to a goody bag and now people expect them with each NIB purchase, but it is usually hit or miss you get anything. I don’t expect them as standard, and just put them on the key chain if they show up.

You used to have better luck getting them from distributors or marketing departments.

they were in some of the games in the goodie bag. I'm a bit surprised CGC doesn't include them in all the games, though. My OG MB still has the key fob stapled to the goodie bag in the cabinet. Truth be told, it's a little lame - just a small circle, but it's cool to get them nonetheless!

.

I completely agree. From now on I'm not buying NIB unless this changes. I'm happy to buy second hand, which eliminates a lot of the concerns over the state your game will arrive in anyways, but my experiences with distributors have not been positive, even when it's not really their fault. The next NIB game I buy will be factory direct or not at all.

What did you find out? did it ship? Good Luck

What model should they use? The manufacturer > distributor > customer model I'd argue is still the primary method used for most retail still. And for good reason... most manufacturers don't want to have to deal with the headaches and overhead of a 100% direct to customer sales method.

Got my tracking info. Estimated for next Friday. Two weeks? Really? On the bright side, at least that will give this week's blizzard time to melt.

Here are a ton of pictures I took of our CE when I picked it up...
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/monster-bash-remake-mbr-owners-club/page/15#post-4709708

And here are a couple videos showing gameplay and a plasma disc I added...
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/monster-bash-remake-mbr-owners-club/page/25#post-4736938

The color upgrade is totally worth the $400 IMO. It's way better than the ColorDMD upgrade on the original since the dots are completely redrawn and at a higher resolution.

This kinda tells the story...

They end up doing it anyways. Whenever I've had an issue with a NIB game I was always directed to the manufacturer.

I have tried 4 times to comment on this distributor issue but right now I am so “too near my start button” on the issue of distributors and their worth to the customer to make any post that doesnt just devolve into a non-flame retardant incindiary sorte of unbriddled rage, and that is not who I am or who I want to be right now, especially since my anticipation meter is stuck on 11 while I wait for R&L Carrier to call me to arrange pickup later this week. No need saying anything else except I am having nothing but good thoughts about it getting here, unscathed, and hope it plays perfect right out of the box.

I just did it, but something tells me I need to put even a second in there. Performance is much improved, but coil doesn't seem locked down fully against the bracket and once in a blue moon still seems to go STDM or stray.

Thanks everyone for the CE info and pictures!

Where did you get the plasma thingy. I've found the plasma mod but it has a "ring" around it that says "It's alive." I like yours better without the ring. How did you mount it and hook up?

Not the distributors I've used. They help me directly and if something is needed from the manufacturer they contact them on my behalf. When I had a problem with my last NIB stern game, Zach from Flip N Out contacted stern for me and I had a new part just 2 days later.

We can provide the disc without the ring if someone wants it. For the CE we would need to add a small component to reduce the voltage to 3v.

Thanks but... I dislike that one and it's $70 more expensive that the ones you can buy off Amazon. Hoping JeffF can shed some light on his mod.

You can buy the disc and wire it up yourself. You just need to reduce the power down to 3v. On the SE, the same plug the LE uses is active with 3v. On the CE, that plug is disabled so you have to run it off the 6v header and reduce to 3v. There is a high failure rate if not hooked up correctly as 6v will kill it faster.

I'm happy to answer questions people have about it, but ours costs what it does because we've done all the legwork, invested in the game, etc. I actually thought the ring was a nice touch rather than just having a bare disk.

No offensive was intended Lermods! I love your stuff - I just liked the plain disk better. Can you remove the outer disk from yours and does it work with the CE? Thanks for your help.

No offense taken whatsoever, everyone has different tastes. We just modified our Disco ball for a customer as he didn't like our original design. All good.

For plasma disc, unlike the SE and LE, it will be on all the time in the CE, it is not interactive, there is no way around it unfortunately. We recently made one for the original game, it just requires a tiny board to reduce the voltage from 6v to 3v.

Look on ebay or Amazon for a 6v to 3v converter. You run the wires off the battery terminals in the disc, then to the converter, then to the 6v header. We have instructions on our website for the connection...all transparent.

Please ask questions, we don't want you to hurt your game or blow up the mod. PM is fine too.

Yeah, I bought two washers just in case but installing one made mine pretty tight. It definitely helped the SDTM issue. My machine was unplayable with 1/3 shots from the scoop SDTM.

Well of course my MBrLE could not get here without some kind of controversy...

Seems they got the electronic BOL with just “R+L Terminal” in the customer block so they have no clue who I am and that the machine sitting on their dock is mine, even though, according to Joe, that info is actually on the physical paper BOL taped to the machine. Also, this has thrown some kind of monkey wrench in the billing of the shipping and so now I am having to get CGC, my distibutor, and his shipping coordinator involved to figure it out while my machine sits at the Phoenix terminal dodging drunk lift drivers wielding razor sharp forklifts. The saga continues...

R & L lunch room is going to be fun today. Just joking. They should be able to fix that easy. Had near the same problem with MMR, they also wanted to charge me $$ for the freight cost that was already included. All fixed in less than an hour and was setting up delivery appt for next day. Hope it makes this small leg to you still unharmed.

I don’t think cosmically I was ever meant to own a MB... right now, my stomach is in tatters, I have lost 75 pounds from all the energy I have expended with all my nervous tics, leg twitching, and sitting silently in a room, arms wrapped around my knees as I sit and slowly rock back and forth whispering endlessly “...monster bash... ” over and over to myself.

Has anyone receive their non special numbered LE yet from Cointaker?

Quick Update... not going to be getting my MBrLE today unless by some pinball god granted miracle. And it is sitting in Phoenix terminal even as I type this. At least it’s not lonely, it has a twin brother sitting with it, my friend Mark’s MBrLE machine was shipped at the same time so the forklift drivers only have a 50/50 chance of nailing mine.

Hey Guys,
Can we get this post back on track ABOUT THE ACTUAL GAME and not lamenting about when we are going to get it delivered as this whole forum has come down to lately. I know it sucks that there is a wait for a lot of people but just be happy we are in a place that we can afford to spend 8K on the latest toy.

903 made it ... non-matching.

IMG_1789 (resized).jpg

Honest question here, are you having a problem with your game? Or can I help you with a rule you need explained, or an adjustement, or is there a manufacturing issue that has not been covered yet? You tell me what you want to talk about and I will talk, except most on here, yourself included I think, would like to just see me stop talking. Right now there are a whole bunch of us waiting on shipments still and there is not much else to talk about in here that hasn’t been covered by some 5000 posts already on a game that is 20 years old so I’m not sure how far back on track we can get. What did you have in mind?

Mine should ship out in the next few days!

Mine is all set and scheduled for residential delivery on Friday in El Paso, TX.
They wanted to deliver tomorrow, but I couldn't get off work till Friday!

Let’s hear some scoring strategies that ARENT just “get MB multiball as fast as possible”

Also, I can’t get the Lymans lament chest to work on 1.06 code. What gives?

Are you doing the code with game started and ball one in the shooter lane?

Scheduled for next Wednesday, white glove. Not sure they will know how to install topper.. that I may do myself.. can't be that hard?

Is a little heavy, two people is best.

Poke a few wires/connectors through the hole in the top, 4 screws hold it on. Plug connectors onto driver board. Done.

LTG : )

Good luck. It’ll be 2 guys who have never setup a pinball machine, who don’t know or care what it’s worth and don’t give a shit. White glove is a joke.

Edit: if it’s being delivered by your distributors employees then you might be fine.

Ok, get MOR as fast as possible without scoring MB to get the 50M “Rock Before Bash” bonus, and make sure to get double and triple instruments before rocking. Then use Frank MB’s and Mosh Pits MB’s to complete instruments again, Then MOR again, then Bash, a couple more Frankie MB... Do I need to go on?

Yep! And I know I have to shoot the scoop

LOL...

I've got a rule question. Mosh Pit multiball is lit by 6 shots through the spinner, correct? What causes this count to reset? It carries over from ball to ball, but I'll build it up and then something will happen and it will return to zero.