North Salt Lake, UT
I was lucky enough to play Wizard of Oz last week with Jersey Jack and Keith Johnson standing alongside me. The game was at E3 2012, the first public showing of the game. Well, semi-public, as E3 is a trade show. Anyway, the game was there with a very basic set of code, no GI lighting, low power running to the coils, and very limited LCD display usage. Even so, it played great! Here's my breakdown.
The Art
The game looked beautiful. The art was very nicely done, and the colors were chosen with great care. The machine looks gorgeous from a distance and up close. I was skeptical of how an LCD would look, but due to its high resolution it blends nicely with the rest of the backbox and I can really see it providing some neat effects. The siderails and lock bar were awesome with the emerald paint. The sides and front had a high quality print job and the collage was well put together. I don't know if the topper is final, but it looked great too. It's one of the prettier machines released over the past 15 years.
The toys looked nice, and I think they have a bit of a hand-modeled look to them that has been missing from pinball for quite some time. I understand why Stern uses off the shelf toys for their toys, but these definitely look better. Dorothy's house, the trees, the balloon, the witch, and everything else look distinctly like Wizard of Oz, but they're also unique.
The backglass looks perfect. It's nice that it's not just a crazy mash up of clippings from other art. It remains to be seen how the LCD animations turn out, but the simplistic use of the logo above the screen is nice and clean.
The Flow
For a game that is so heavy laden with toys and targets, the flow of the game was actually really nice. It has a similar pair of shots up the middle with the two ramps to what Twilight Zone provides, but the machine is more open and the ball is more active. Twilight Zone is my favorite pin of all time, but I have no problem saying that WoZ flows better while still providing a similar amount of interactive toys.
In designing the game, they took great care to make sure that you were always hitting something. There really aren't any dead spots on the game and you are always hitting something that registers a score of some sort. It's nice to not walk up and feel like half of your shots are hitting posts.
Misc.
The game felt solid. The construction is very nice, and you can tell that they're working with higher quality parts than what has become standard. I love the placement of the speakers above the backglass, making it more convenient to work on the boards and for removing the backglass without worrying about the speaker panel.
I don't have a WoZ on preorder, but man, I wish I did. The game is beautiful and it felt like a real treat to play. It can best be summed up as the type of game you would have got during the early '90s with an unlimited budget. For those that have one coming, get excited!
London
