Did you buy a Powerball ticket or a Mega Millions ticket? The Mega is the one now at $550 million. The Powerball is "just" $40 million. Almost enough to buy new-in-box.

I'm surprised that Amazon deals don't happen more often. If I have 10 Avengers that have been sitting in my warehouse for the past 2+ years, at some point I'm going to want to clear them out and get something that can move. Space is precious.

What had TNT so upset, anyways?

EDIT-Oh, and here's the BoP 2.0 Color DMD Nate was talking about. It looks...awesome. This is basically where I expected pinball to be display-wise.

I'm one of those people that likes the Forum Frenzy, especially since it led to a mini-Going Up, Going Down at the end. I do miss the variety of planned segments, but with all of the news about new pins and shows, it's understandable.

I don't understand the belief that Stern can't do a rerun after they did LotR LE six years after the first one.

You know, Nate, you have been very dismissive recently whenever people say that they want original themes. Well, given what we know now about the restrictions placed on Jersey Jack for the Smaug toy, I can't help but think that my desire for an unlicensed machine are well founded. I want the only limitations for designers to be their own imaginations and physics. Not style guides, fussy celebrities or demanding rights holders. That's something you can only get when you own it all.

...or half an episode of BrokenToken.

There's a lot of Stern's Indiana Jones in this game, at least on the left side. The left-side targets aren't as far down (I don't think you can hit the bottom two from the right flipper), so there's no room for another scoop.

indianajonespinballmachines-playfield.gif
sternkiss.jpg

I like KISS's playfield better because the Starchild and Demon lock areas aren't as wide as the Map Room and the Ark, so there's enough space for another ramp, which keeps it from feeling as flat as IJ4 does.

In general, everything looks nice, I just wish I could get excited for a new pinball theme. I'm under 30, but I'm not really deep into all the nerdcore stuff, so this run of dad bands, comic heroes and epic sci-fi/fantasy franchises isn't really doing it for me. How well is this machine going to do in a Chicago barcade full of millenials? What happened to having themes based on sports, the outdoors, conventional action movies, amusement parks and other things that a broader swath of people like? Why are themes geared so hard towards the older collectors if expanding the base and location play are so important?

Safe spaces. Breasts are evil. #BlackLivesMatter. Helping with tires is now sexist, rather than kind. Huh. Welp, might as well enjoy pinball before everything is declared "problematic".

I thought it was completely intentional and hilarious.

From reading what few negative comments I've seen about this year and last year's shows, it seems as though the ones who are the least satisfied are the ones who are interested primarily in playing games. The show, as it stands, is so obviously geared towards funneling people into the seminars during the day when most people are active that I can see people who aren't interested in them or playing in tournaments wondering if it's worth the price. The game room closed at 6 AM early Friday morning. Then there's a 7-hour period where there's nothing there for them. If you want to wait in (I'm guessing, very long) lines at the vendor and exhibitor booths for whatever new games they have, you have to wait until 6 PM. Even then, there's a pretty short window until it closes again. Things look to be better on the weekend, but if you buy a five-day pass, it's more than half over by that point.

Maybe a TV show...if one ever happens.

I have to say that I don't understand Nate's problem with "driving the bus" in tournaments. Allowing some measure of control for high qualifiers doesn't seem unfair to me. The nature of pinball is so inherently random, I don't see why introducing more randomness is preferable. If being "dialed in" is such a big problem (and I'm not convinced it is), why not just have six games at the ready for finals that haven't been available before and tell the bus driver "EM A or B? Solid state/Alphanumeric A or B? DMD A or B?"

What if bingo
games were played for tickets at Dave and Buster's or other arcades? If one card swipe were worth, say, ten credits, and completing 3, 4 or 5 in a row won tickets or maybe some prize with a fixed value of $20 or less, could we see a comeback for bingos like what we're seeing for flipper pinball?

I'm surprised that Josh wasn't more down on Game of Thrones. He's been on record as saying that games that are just shot-post-shot, which describes GoT to a tee, aren't the best for introducing people to pinball. I saw one at MI Pinball Wars, and ball times were...really short. My strategy is to stick with Baratheon, that way when I miss the shots I still get points. I do the same thing with Thunderstruck in AC/DC.

I did read that thread over again. It was telling that so many of the comments of "I don't see the appeal in this." or "I would never buy this." were from the serious collectors and tourney players. In their heads, they're seeing it as taking up the space that the next Ritchie/Lyman masterpiece would be, so they nix it in their minds. Really, it's more of a question of how "deep" does a game have to be in order to be fun? Whether it's in a home environment or on location, does it take a complicated ruleset to foster that "one more time" mindset that many of the greats have?

In that thread, you mentioned that Catacomb would be a good location game because even a novice player will get to see most of what the machine has to offer through sheer randomness combined with some skillful play. Modern pinball design seems much more geared towards accuracy and control, and punishing mediocre play. When you shoot a ramp in a recent Stern, you know that it will lead to an inlane for another shot. It's very interesting how games have evolved from being more open and focused on hitting targets with the only real shots being high-scoring spinner lanes to being more about making relatively narrow shots, with targets either being more of a necessary evil between shots (IM drones, ST black holes) or shoved off to the side. In a way, the bash target (usually with a magnet) has kind of replaced the target bank as the thing you hit to provide some randomness. The other source, pop bumpers, have gone from wreaking havoc in the middle of the field, near the outlanes or even between the flippers to being cordoned off behind ramps, scoops and targets.

I think that's why I have a soft spot for Mustang...precisely because it has that five-bank right in the middle of the table, with the multiball rules centered on it. There really isn't much getting around them. I also like that the rightmost bumper on KISS is a little more exposed than usual. It gets some extra side-to-side action going. What will really show how far from the mainstream you can go is Spooky's Rob Zombie game. When it was Pinball Zombies from Beyond the Grave, people here seemed really mixed about the "lack of shots" and unusual bumper placement.

What I found most interesting was you saying that in terms of return on investment for operators, it's more about revenues than costs.
It's mind-boggling to think that those super-expensive arcade cabinets can make all of their money back so quickly. Just putting a pinball machine into an arcade must be a labor of love. It makes me worry about the future of location pinball if it means a WoZ Pindemption at Dave and Busters is $1.50-$1.75 for a game that is limited to 3 to 5 minutes. Maybe you can get some casuals to give it a try, and I'd certainly put most of my money into it, but I can see the old hands turning up their noses at such a value proposition when there are still some places charging 75 cents/3 for $2.

Everything being made today is far too complicated and shot dependent for a newbie to not be intimidated and feel completely overwhelmed when they play (GOT included, Hobbit included, etc) IMO.

There was a short scene from the documentary "Special When Lit" where Steve Epstein and Gene Cunningham complained that pinball machines had gotten too complicated. Cut to Dwight Sullivan explaining how to stack Tortuga time locks with Kraken Multiball on PotC...and saying that it's a "low-level goal." I think that Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Sheats (and Mr. Johnson at JJP) do a great job at making games, but I can't help but wonder whether having "serious players" designing games and writing code is part of the reason that casuals get left in the dust.

I disagree with a lot of what Nate has to say. I think he's too harsh on people who question the value proposition being put forth by Stern.
What Nate's missing is two things: First, I think he's downplaying the mixed reaction the art has received. While comic book themes are popular, I would wager that the target audience, being closer to middle age, has little to no connection with the Ultimate style of art. People on the thread are saying he looks anorexic or that his features are exaggerated. Also, the fact that the hand drawn art so closely mimics the original movie-style art kind of puts paid to any idea of more creativity being fostered. Second, his comparison to Iron Man was way too dismissive. Yeah, Iron Man was a bit bare bones, but I struggle to think that Spider-Man VE at $7595 is a good price next to Iron Man VE at $5495. Do I think SMVE is better equipped? Yes. $2100 better? No. Even with distributor discounting, that difference won't change much.

On the other hand, the people upset about the price are missing a couple things themselves. Though the playfield and ramps were set, it still required a brand new art package, as well as new dots and toys. Someone had to design them, so the value for that is not zero, as someone alluded to earlier. That's unrealistic and insulting. That goes back to a previous episode where Nate said that people somehow don't think that artistic jobs are worth nothing if you aren't Picasso or Taylor Swift. The other part was an assumption being made by Pinside that all VEs would be at or slightly above IMVE's level. At no point in time did Stern say that was going to be the case. In fact, I think that would have been a mistake. Like Nate, I'm expecting the mix for VEs to be geared more toward homeowners who haven't owned it before. If they run it once or twice for around 700-800 units, I think that would be the sweet spot. The main point of his I agree with is that if this price proves to be too high, SMVE will sit. We've seen this happen with Transformers. We've seen this happen with Avengers. I just don't think people like rooting against pinball, even if it's Stern, because people understand that the next time pinball goes down, it might not get back up again. What I think is burbling underneath this is the realization that if we were to get Tron, Lord of the Rings or some other vaunted title as a Vault Edition, it would be a similar price or higher. There's no way Simpsons' Pinball Party comes back for less than $7000. Not if Spider-Man's $7500.

I'm not really surprised by the reaction, though. Between his new sponsorship and his general industry cheerleading, Nate opens himself up to criticism that he's a Pollyanna or a shill. I have been listening since the single-digit episodes, and I don't believe either to be the case. I think he's been a lot more measured, even going as far back as the Pinball Gremlins fiasco a year and a half ago with the old format. The only real dislike I have of the show is that at times, he comes across less as a fan, and more as an industry mouthpiece. I understand that he's a salesman, and he works with numbers. He's trying to be a dispassionate voice of reason, but when he does one of his "explainer" speeches or Math with Nate, he often comes across as very condescending. This latest one, especially so.

You know, the show has changed a lot, but it's still one man's opinion. (occasionally his wife's opinion, too) We can disagree without being quite so disagreeable.

HEY! I play out in the wild. $500 is 20 plays once a week for 25 weeks. That's half a year! Don't forget about us location players!

That's what the real issue is, isn't it? There is "competition," but not so much that it could make supply meet demand and actually force prices down. Stern and Spooky are both at $6000 to start, and from what Charlie has said, he can't go any lower. So what's supposed to keep Stern honest on the low end? JJP's prices are higher. Heighway's are higher. Dutch's are higher. Planetary's are higher AND they use Stern's facility. What's more, even if they were priced competitively, none of these companies make enough volume to disrupt Stern's business model. JJP's on their second game going on five years, and they've made, what, 2000 games? Spooky, arguably the most consistent competitor, will have a grand total of 450 units out about 18 months from now. Everyone else is either just getting off the ground after multiple years or still grounded. I don't blame Stern for not being afraid.