Quoted from TreyBo69:Is Lyman that amazing, or does he just work that much harder than everyone else in Stern's coding department?
Don't get me wrong, Lyman has lots of great ideas and understands the game from a competitive standpoint better than most. But compared to Dwight it mostly seems like Lyman's code is better because he puts that much more time into it even if he isn't being paid for it. Stern finally seems to be hiring a lot more coders, and the Iron Maiden team did an excellent job for first efforts. Maybe it's as simple as an issue of resource allocation at Stern and Dwight was overloaded.
That said, someone else should hire Lyman because he is a workhorse of a coder. It's gotten to the point where his name sells a game as much as the playfield designers name (for pinheads at least, the general consumer doesn't care). Although a few games with Lyman's name attached are stinkers...
Lyman is the pinball coding man. I've recently come to the conclusion that two things make a Stern game safely buyable for me. First is a theme that I like and the second is Lyman on the code. There's a reason that 4 of the last 5 games I've bought were coded by Lyman. I loved the themes of TWD and BM66, but was disappointed in the games' playfield geometry until Lyman did his magic, and I consider these two games to be his best. Of course, him being on the game and my interest in the themes are why I bought the games to begin with. I like the themes of GoTG, GB, Star Trek, Star Wars and others, but lately no Lyman equals no purchase, in my humble opinion. I'm sure there are exceptions such as Iron Maiden, but I'm anxiously awaiting his next game, not Stern, not JJP, not Spooky, but Lyman's next game, whoever it might be assembled by.
Asheville, NC
