Didn’t they sell like 9,000 of them? I’d say that the original JP was extremely popular.

Don’t sell him short (edited).

Somebody spilled the bag of dicks, that’s for sure.

I have nothing new to add, but the game looks great, stream was a lot of fun to watch, and I can't wait to play this one on location. Crossing my fingers that some local operators go for the Premium over (or in addition to) the Pro, as I'd like to see the ball-flinging T-Rex in person.

Love this idea, since the skill shots add to the ballsave timer maybe you could decrease the other players' timers?

Where are you getting this from? I know very little about board repair but have followed this topic on Pinside. I believe I've seen posts from Pinsiders that work with modern surface mount boards in their day jobs suggesting that Stern's node boards are absolutely repairable "by hand." The issue as I understand it is that pin owners who are accustomed to doing their own repairs on B/W, Whitestar, and SAM boards lack the equipment (hot air rework station) and experience to do it. Assuming what I've read is correct, we should see people with the necessary skills and equipment start to offer repair services on node boards once they begin to fail in sufficient numbers and are no longer being replaced by Stern under their seemingly pretty generous unwritten warranty.

This seems like the more pressing issue.

There was a guy that bought a node board a year or two back for a KISS but my impression was he took Stern's skimpy written warranty at face value and didn't push to get it covered. I don't remember reading about others but there may have been.

More discussion on node board repairability here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/node-board-failure-how-common

My impression is Stern allows distributors to offer free shipping (so no one should ever be paying shipping on a NIB Stern) but won't allow them to sell below a set floor price, even on a pickup order where they don't have to pay for shipping. So you picking your game up saves CT a couple of hundred but Stern won't let them pass the savings on to you.

[EDIT: guy below me has the more logical take, Stern drop-ships either way so probably no savings to the distributor if you buy from them vs shipping]

There's been a lot of hyperbole on the topic of node boards. If you'd said "the jury is still out on node boards" in your first post I'd be fine with that. But there's a difference between "me and a cranky Aussie distributor that got cut out by Stern can't fix these boards ourselves" and "they cannot be repaired by human hand." Multiple people who are familiar with surface mount technology say these boards can in fact be worked on, and I haven't seen that refuted anywhere.

I agree propriety chips are a potential concern -- if you have one of those chips go bad you're probably hosed unless Stern starts selling them individually or releases the data needed to recreate them. But I don't see how that would impact other types of board repair like replacing transistors, reflowing solder, etc.

So yes, the jury is out, but there's no benefit to anyone in spreading the (seemingly incorrect) story that node boards cannot be worked on.

How old is the game? Did you try to get Stern to replace for free?

Do you get good distributor support when buying through eBay (I'm assuming it's just the usual Stern dealers selling there as well)? Seems like distributors can be very helpful if you run into any tech or warranty issues down the line.

I'm with this guy. Just knowing that Keith designed the table you had to know Stern JP was going to shoot better, and the video bears that out. And I view the "borrowed" elements, like tri-ball and the smart missile, as a nice little tribute and not a rip-off. But DE JP still has an excellent sound package and DMD animations, and really captures the feel of the first film nicely. Plus the original T-Rex remains one of the coolest mechs in pinball. So it's all good, there's room for both games in the world even though Stern JP will inarguably play better.

Have they revealed the topper yet? Still time ...