Quoted from Hazoff:New, Love the old stuff but if I own it now its just for the sake of having it in the collection. I don't do EMs but the 80's stuff especially system 11's are near and dear cause that's what i grew up with. Then 90's, very fun but easy. In the last decade they have gotten fantastic with the rule sets and there's slightly better themes. Not to mention vastly superior sound and lighting and display. Here's the thing, with few exceptions the 50/60 plus crowd around here stick to their guns and its all about Bally/Williams with a tendency to prefer JJP games cause they are in that same realm of "build quality" and "presentation" horseshit. For me as long as its not falling apart I don't care about build quality, never had an issue with a Stern yet, not saying it isn't prevalent just my experience.
I do have a strong preference for B/W games but it’s not due to presentation or build quality, yes that is a big part of the experience which makes them enjoyable but the honest truth of the whole things is that in terms of “makes sense” maintenance wise for me, they are the easiest to understand. Look at the underside of a Gottlieb for example. Multicolored striped white wire throughout the whole thing with many of the wires looking nearly the same and every wire is bundled together regardless of function. Sterns aren’t bad either but they do seem to use more plastic in their more recent games on parts that used to be metal. Plenty of fun games though. Opening up a B/W from 86 on has a similar enough layout between games that tracking something down is fairly easy. Their wires are separated by function and have distinct colors that are easy to trace. I can go on any B/W game from system 11 on and I know that the green wires are switch matrix wires. It makes troubleshooting a game I’ve never even seen 10x easier. So not only do I personally enjoy a lot of the gameplay from them, they make it quite easy to diagnose things in most cases.
York, NE
