At the moment, the video is saying 'not playable' on my iPad. Obviously working on other people's PCs though. I'll check it out in the morning when I have the old lappy set up, but for now I'm avoiding all spoilers until I get to see it.

Very gratified to see the Full Throttle shoutout. Epotech gets the credit for the crossover ramp idea and first draft though.

Oh, that's a fairly standard Dennis Nordman device, it was there on his initial Alien layout draft. Lots of his games have those.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh.

I'm just not going to dig this game ever, am I? It looks like a fine shooter but as an actual game, it's too abstract. What am I supposed to be there for? What does making the shots actually accomplish? If you took the band trappings off the game, what would you have left? 'You're just not into the music' isn't an excuse, not when AC/DC had the band imagery and the songs BE the game, and you could know and like what it was doing even if the music wasn't to your taste.

Led Zeppelin is leaving me 'will this do' cold just like Stranger Things did, and for the same reasons - granted I don't know the show, but the game didn't CARE that I don't know the show and couldn't be arsed to tell me anything about it. This is not how you integrate a theme.

Stairway To Heaven is also eight minutes long. Longer than most full games of pinball last. And if you've got it, then MY GOD you're going to have to justify using ALL of it.

It's going to be ultra-wizard mode material carried over for the rest of the game afterwards, or else it's nothing.

That was my thought as well. The wizard mode is only over when you *say* it's over. it doesn't have to automatically stop just because you're down to one ball on the playfield.

The problem we're having is that it looks like you could strip it down to the playfield and code and then swap in any other band on top. Steve Ritchie has done his job perfectly well, but five years from now we'll probably see enthusiasts doing exactly this with old LZs to create their own 'custom' band game.

Or six months in the case of digital pincab versions.

I wouldn't blame Steve. I don't think you can - just like Star Wars he's managed the very best with what they would allow him. Four legitimate ramp shots on one game is nothing to sniff at from a design perspective. But with no disrespect to Keith Elwin, if he's the new golden boy who's going to get the lion's share of the fatted calf from now on, you're going to end up with more forgettable B-tier pins like this one that even the rest of the designers can't get enthused about (trust me, I know that feeling).

And why would you want that as your business strategy anyway? There's only so many purchasing dollars to go round, and sooner or later the market's going to decide that there's only one game per calendar year or designer cycle that's automatically worth saving for on its own merit, and other than name-recognition sales the distributors are going to get very unhappy with being lumbered with so much unshiftable stock.