Stern Pirates of the Carribean ranked at #19 is eye raising.

How is it rated higher than Whirlwind, Johnny Mnemonic, The Getaway, or the butt-kickin Guns n Roses? POTC is a solid game, but you can't have me believe it is a better game than any of those games on its best day.

My theory: A bunch of female tweens jumped on pinside, and inflated POTC ratings because of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom photoshopped up on the translite.

Creature From The Black Lagoon....This machine is beautiful everywhere EXCEPT gameplay,so narrow and cluttered in the middle playfield leads to lots of nothing shots or drains SDTM.

Also dislike the awkward multi-ball scenario.

With all the pinball parties i have attended and featuring this game in their line up it seems to attract the least interest.

I'd have to say 1980 Rolling $tones by Bally

stones101.jpg

I was just about to add Creature to the thread dangermouse007.

Nothing against Creature. Its a great game. I just don't think it should be in the top 20. CFTBL in the Top 30 sounds about right though.

Xenon in top 30 !?!

What a nice machine for eyes but nothing to do under fingers ! ! !

I'll ignore your comments about CFTBL.

Pirates... should be at least below #60. Cactus Canyon I can't justify being in the Top 40 either, and it sits at #22 ?! For anyone who's ever played this pin, it's only so-so gameplay with moderate graphics and a couple of interesting gimmicks. I think rarity or newness artificially affects the rating somewhat.

Man I love Family Guy, next on my list

I can see why some don't like Creature, it does have this narrow feel in both layout and ruleset. However, I do enjoy mine. Multi-ball is a nice deep mode with challenging JPs, playfield multipliers, monster madness and move madness. Super Scoring is fun to go for too so I don't agree that multiball is the only thing (along with a bunch of other modes).

Anyway...I bet I'm mostly alone here, but I just can't get into TZ as much as I try. No doubt its a good deep game I'm sure...just bothers me for some reason.

oh, but I do agree Pitates has no business in top 20

Cactus Canyon for me. It was a huge disappointment when I played it! not even in the top 50 league.

Id have Creature slotted somewhere between 40-50 on the ladder,there is just such great,fun games currently posted below it that i find are far superior..Fish tales,Getaway,Dracula,T2,Shadow and Dr Who around 70th!!

But this is the beauty with peoples own choices,makes it interesting

Fish Tales and Roadshow. I don't think either are that fun.

Simpsons Pinball Party for sure. I know it's the deepest pin, but I never have fun playing it. It just has no flow IMO. Not to mention that I know of 6 in my area. Pirates is definatly over rated also. I'm not a Stern basher, I love SM & LOTR.
I have never played family guy, but it doesn't look that fun. Strange that I am a huge fan of both shows.

Originally posted by ianwho:

"Simpsons Pinball Party for sure. I know it's the deepest pin, but I never have fun playing it ... I love SM & LOTR."

It just goes to show that every person has there own criteria by which they judge a game. I realize it may be blasphemous to say this around here, but I've never been a huge fan of LOTR. I just can't get into it. TSPP, on the other hand, is among my favorites.

Nah. Nothing wrong with that gweempose. Beautiful thing about pinball...every game is different & every game has an audience.

Ohhhh all the hate for POTC is just wrong. It's underrated if anything.

I do agree on TSPP, I think that is the most overrated game ever. I had it for a couple months, and couldn't get rid of it fast enough. And I say that as a HYOOOGE fan of the show.

RD

Originally posted by drbond:

"Beautiful thing about pinball...every game is different & every game has an audience."

Unless, of course, that game happens to be Vacation America.

Pirates of the Caribbean shouldn't be in the top 50, and probably not the top 100. There's NOTHING interesting on that game and ball times are longer than it takes to see nearly every shot. After the first ball you've typically sunk the ship 2-3 times, seen the chest open enough to make it lose its novelty, and racked up a replay. I also hate the tiny and cheap looking inserts that plague that game's playfield. Aside from theme, I'd put it on the bottom half of Stern's offerings.

I was scared to say it but I also think Simpsons Pinball Party is hugely overrated. I've played it a bunch of times on gorgeous fully working machines and just can't get into it. Maybe it would be better as a home game, but that's my pick...

It's much, much better as a home game. I always liked it on location for the theme, but didn't really truly love it until I owned one. It was a pretty big roll of the dice buying it, as I was only mildly impressed.

Also, while I think it's fun, Scared Stiff is pretty overrated. I played it last night (there's one on location near me) and while still on my first ball I had already maxed out the Stiff-O-Meter, seen every mode, and nearly completed the spider wheel. It's a nice looking game with tons of charm, but the gameplay is very repetitive and simple.

Ya I know TSPP has a huge ruleset (if not the hugest), so I think once you learn the rules it would be a much better game...on location I haven't had enough time to figure it all out

medievel madness for me, played it a bit and just cant get into it. was at an arcade and wasnt leveled properly so the play was really fast.

Shhhhh. That's blasphemy around these parts!

From the games I've played on that list, overrated games for me would be:

1) TOTAN, prettiest game ever but man the rules and shots are kind of sucky after about 20 plays. Should be close to #100, not #7.
2) POTC, it's the worst Stern by far that I've owned. Ruleset is very repetitive, zero flow, bad voiceovers and poor sound effects.
3) Theater of Magic, fun game but honestly not that great overall, maybe a top 50 game but definitely not top 10
4) GnR, oozes coolness and is pretty fun, but very easy as well. Also has some unbalanced scoring. Top 50 game, but not much higher than that.
5) Batman Forever, that game shouldn't be in the top 100
6) TZ, but only because TSPP is #14. TSPP (to me) is better in almost every way except for 'toys', hard to put TZ at #2 because of that.

Underrated for me would be:

1) Stargate. #66? Obviously it's a Gottlieb and nobody cares about Gottlieb's, but if they did they'd find that it has one of the best rulesets of the 90's dmd games.
2) Tommy. #31, should be in the top 20 for sure. Excellent ruleset, excellent shots, very hard, good music, just aren't very many negatives on this one.
3) St:tng, #13 I think that this is the best game Williams ever made. Should be top 5. It's ridiculous that a game like TOTAN is above it.

+1

Amazingly I don't find much to moan about in the top 100 but or me the following are rated too highly:MM/1, CV/12, G&R/18, Whirlwind/23, CP/28, Cyclone/56, Banzai run/75, Simpsons/98.

I also think there is a bunch of games that should have been in the top 100 and aren't: CSI, Strikes and Spares, Jackbot, Godzilla, Big Burt, Class if 1812, Atlantis and Baywatch.

MM should be lower and I think Banzai Run should be at least in the top 30.

AFM should be number 1. MM lower for sure.

Tron

The hell you say!

How many games have you played on her?
One? Two?
The disc ALONE, is enough to keep it in the top 30.
I will let it slide- just because you were probably playing the pro model...
No harm, no foul.

Ratings are a funny thing sometimes..ie, I felt afm was overrated, now I feel its underrated. Not that it has much room to move up

I agree with CFTBL and FG, don't like those games very much. TZ and IJ are disappointments for me, although I have respect for both of these, just not play preference. I understand why they are so popular. Also MM and MB are top five pins all around in every category for me except for longterm playability which I find lacking a little on both. But still really hard to call them overrated because everything else on these two are damned perfection.

By far the most Over-rated & Over Priced pin out there. How this is rated above the other 2 JPop pins CV & ToM is amazing. Its pretty much eye candy but is not at all interesting after you've played it more then a few times.

Others I find over-rated in top 20:

MB @ #4
LOTR @ #6
BDK @ #19
CC @ #20

I guess most people when deciding if a pin is over rated are talking mostly about gameplay whereas in reality the rating consists of gameplay and how it looks, sounds etc etc.

Games like TOM, TOTAN, CFTBL, MM, & MB all look and sound fantastic but for many the gameplay lacks a challenge.

I think all these games could be described as over rated if only talking about game play/rules etc but when you consider the whole package, this is why they are all top 10 except Creature which is to 20.

Looking at the ipdb ratings how is AFM not even top 10???

So the real question would be... Does theme ultimately trump gameplay?

LOTR should not be above SM

Agreed, for example I love the art and sounds of BOP so it comes out really high in my own ratings even though I feel it shouldn't be that high in terms of "which I enjoy the most" and therefore which I see as the best.

No system is perfect!

There is more to it than that. It is also the way "the game is". For example the Terminators or Pinbot series.

No Good Gofers should not be as high as #29.

Ok then, can we have a top 100 just on the gameplay? Would be really interesting to see what the top 100 would look like on just 'how the game plays'?

<---------still volunteering time to compile data if needed (and given)

Just thinking; how many overrated pins were not working 100% when played and would that have made a difference? Some of the overrated pins are my favorites.

CFTBL by far (as I'm sure some of you have read in the other thread I was getting flamed on for my comments).

Until I owned this, the thought of TSPP never appealed to me. Having now owned it for only a few weeks, and finally have had a somewhat deep game of it (186M), I can truly say it is one of the best machines ever made. Deep doesn't scratch the surface - deep with hard and complicated. TZ is not complicated as most confuse, it has a lot to do, but just to get the modes started in TSPP is more than the actual mode play in other games.

This is not a beginner game, and cannot be judged truly without really having many hours in it. I’m glad they stuck to the early years of Simpsons as well, as the theme turned me off, since that last 15 or so have been shit.

The humour factor is great, the shot variety, the actual modes are all interesting and have completely different combinations, stacking MB is ungodly, the AI MB is simply awesome.... I can’t say enough good things about TSPP, and it should be a top 5 for game play alone.

In the end, the theme kills this game as a whole for most. Even if you like the Simpsons, the theme I believe tends to present a less than serious machine, given rules and play this game has to offer.

LOTR and Tron. Both should be below I500 and DW. DW needs to be in the top 30.

Eh batman forever is rated 54. If anything it is underrated. Any collector that stops by my house drools over my reimport.

Overated though?

CP - It has great art, great theme, great sound, shallow repetitive gamplay. I played a CQ one at a collector's house this weekend and was bored before my game ended. Neat toys, but just shallow.

IJ - First time playing this one. I have been dying to try it for ages and walked away dissapointed. The game felt slow and the damn mode start hole isn't even satisifying when you hit it. Honestly speaking I would rather play STTNG or BF (although STNNG > BF).

I base 95% of my opinion on gameplay, so...

tom, tron, fg, lotr, fh, ft

I have to agree with POTC, no way it should be in the top 30.

Hmmm.... Not much POTC love. I own both SM and LOTR, but I end up playing POTC more than the other two combined. Can't put my finger on it but it has a higher fun factor for me vs the other two.

Wow