Suffering from it? They relish in it. Unless you really like watching dwarves wash dishes... Ouch.

Yeah, I do agree here. I do love the pf artwork. I just don't understand how some folks can claim they love the artwork on the recent Stern ST and then turn around and complain about something as petty as the wood boards around the pop-ups are not each unique. Huh?? Crazy. Great job on the pf artwork IMO.

What has always had me most worried about Hobbit is Smaug. What will Smaug look like?? Because, when I look at the wicked witch in WOZ I'm still shocked how boring, plain, and unimpressive she is. The detail in Smaug will be big for me.

Don't confuse theme with style and/or technique.

all I see, that if i'm still doing playfield restorations 10 years from now. These new fields from JJP and Stern are going to be a PITA to touch up.

No they won't. you'll have ten more years of experience then. Cranking out great restorations.

LTG : )™

Have you ever touched up a dot printed picture before? It sucks balls.

Have not tried either so I will take your word on both experiences being similar : )

No, I leave that for the greats. Like you.

LTG : )™

Practice your Seurat.

The PF has a nice thick, glossy coat of clear. It will be a LONG time before one of these needs to be touched up. Plus, I'm sure they'll come out with the acrylic PF cover. That will protect it forever.

You may just be out of a job soon! LOL J/K

I wouldn't mind a recleared woz pf

yea, thick or not, they wear out. B/W did, DE did. everyone does. inserts shift, drop points, flipper wear. You will have wear eventually. If you think your immune, you are not.

There will probably be plenty of WOZ playfields floating around, since ones with minor flaws (such as minor splintering around wire guide holes) are being sold off after being pulled from the assembly line. There were probably about 8 of them at the open house this weekend. I saw a few more at Allentown a few months before that, and read that there were still others at the first JJP open house. I happened to see a distributor with playfields in similar condition for sale on their website (What they call "pre-production"--the playfields with minor flaws that didn't make it into production machines).

http://www.pinballsales.com/shop/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=151&idcategory=4

there's where all NOS ones of old machines come from too. That's why you can still find NOS from time to time. but if people want a fortune for these factory reject leftovers, then people will go the restoration route.

They sold a very nice "Pre-Production" WOZ PF Saturday for $250.

Yep, I ended up picking one up. Couldn't resist at that price. I lucked out and the only flaw on the playfield I picked out seemed to be just some minor wood splintering on the back near where they started t-nutting the playfield. The art and clearcoat looks fine.

Course, now I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Maybe I'll put it in a light box at some point and put together some sort of arduino LED controller project to light up the inserts with some sort of attract mode facsimile. I dunno. Another project for another day perhaps.

I still think this is the pin that will pull me back in the financial crisis. If you like pinball, you got to have this one. I really think that.

You would say, it can only dissapoint when you think like that.

The problem is, it won't.

At first glance, WOZ is pure eye candy. The ruleset is fantastic (thanks Keefer!) It's certainly built like a tank. My biggest disappointment in WOZ are the toys. Simply put ... they suck!! Yes, there is more than one (that's cool.) Yes, there is a very unique crystal ball (sweet) ... but that's where it falls apart. The crystal ball was terribly wasted (boo). Just a handful of videos appear, they do not interact with the game (or player), and if you leave your game on for more than a few games the crystal ball will inevitably "break" and show some crazy debug code until you reboot. Then you have a tin house with decals simply spinning on an axis with the witch's feet that I can never get to come out (fully deployed) correctly. At least they try and pop out in 4.0 I guess You have the wicked witch which is nothing less than pathetic. Small, NO detail, enclosed in a phone booth, and only moving up and down awkwardly. I guess the "coolest" toy is a flat plastic of the winged monkey that slides back and forth when it picks up your ball early in the game. Yay. For all the BS talk from Jack poking fun at Stern for having "plastic" toys ... I don't think they've improved on Stern one iota.

Make or break on Hobbit for me is Smaug. It's the chance to introduce the "WOW" centerpiece toy of a game. However, I have my doubts based on who is making it. I really hope I'm wrong and the detail and interaction is amazing. I really do.

For the witch's legs, you need to set the spinning house delay correctly. The coil strength should be fine at around 14-16. Spin, then activate legs. Change delay setting by 1 if they don't come all the way down, then test again. You can usually tell whether you need to go higher or lower after the second test.

I disagree with your comment that they have not improved on Stern. Stern has been using lots of generic off-the-shelf toys or really cheap-looking ones (like the "cannon" and TNT box in ACDC). And few of them are interactive. For example, the only 'toy' in ST is a vibrating spaceship with a single drop/magnet/kicker under it. OTOH, WOZ has a highly-detailed metal house with witch legs (that work fine when adjusted!), castle doors that can be bashed to open, a not-so-fancy-but rising witch, cool custom evil-tree pop bumpers and castle walls, the flying monkey ball lock that nicely ties in to the theme, the perhaps-underused-but-extremely-cool crystal ball, etc. Seriously, look at a WOZ and a ST side-by-side. One is a very bright bunch of printed plastics, and the other is a sculptured little world under glass.

Well, realistically there's a limit to the amount and type of toys you can slap into a pin anyway. I used to think they were a big deal, but the more I play the more I realize they just interfere with flow. My favorite pin for toys is probably CV. The ringmaster, boom bumper, the ball all added to game play without being an annoyance. I never found the WOZ toys to be all that compelling.

The quality of the toys themselves is better, but isn't how they integrate into gameplay more relevant? ST has the one ship but when it fires back at you it feels like you're fighting it. I don't get that type of vibe from the WOZ toys.

_{Post edited by swf127: Made what I typed make sense.}

I'd take Metallica's toys over WOZ's any day of the week. JJP doesn't have some special monopoly on custom toys, though Stern admittedly does use off the shelf stuff all the time with mixed quality. No argument there.

Nothing generic about Metallica's toys, all custom sculpted and interactive. So they're perfectly capable. And Sparky is one of the coolest looking and nicest sculpted toys I can think of, I love my custom painted one to death. Interactive snake is a great gameplay feature, the moving cross is much cooler now that it's synched to the DMD properly, and the hammer is one of the cooler ball locks around. I don't know if Stern outsourced that stuff, or if it was done in house, but all looks great.

I'm not a fan of the tree sculpt on WOZ, I hope the barrels on Hobbit look better. And I really, really hope Smaug gets just nailed. Because frankly if he looks anything like the pop trees on WOZ it's going to seriously kill my buzz for the game. And he'd really better not be behind some giant plastic sneeze guard or box like the Witch.

Yep, I've tweaked the coil strength on the witch's legs many times but it's never consistent. Pop out fine one time and barely at all the next. From everything I read on the WOZ Google group it sounded like most everyone experiences the same thing (I thought.)

As to your second point, I hear ya. I've often heard people refer to Stern using off-the-shelf toys (which I haven't seen them do on more recent games like AVLE, STLE, etc.) But as swf127 noted ... you feel like you interact with the toys in a Stern game more. They're better integrated. I look at Hulk in AVLE ... you hit him and he taunts you. He has moving arms and smashes the ball around. The toys in WOZ are just "there" to look at ... with the possible exception of the winged monkey which "picks up" your ball.

In the end ... WOZ is ranked what, 21 right now? Recent prices on the ECLEWOZ have been as low as 6700? It's not because the game is jaw-dropping.

I have to disagree with some of points above. While Metallica has some cool toys so does WOZ. While the moving cross is neat I'll take the spinning house toy over it, not to mention there's also a mini playfield there. The hammer now is a very cool toy no doubt. The entire upper left mini playfield on WOZ is pretty sweet too considering it has individual targets, a loop shot, shot to the door, shot behind the door and to top it off the magnetic monkey toy. The crystal ball on WOZ is also another cool toy and something that hasn't been done before in a pin. Can't forget the two mini outlane games either.

As for the trees on WOZ I think they look great. I don't recall many pins, if any, that used molded figures instead of traditional bumper caps. Props to JJP for trying something different. Also the trees fit the theme of the original Wizard of Oz film well. The trees are not supposed to look super pristine as they are not that way in the film.

Ugh .. the trees. Yes, I agree, at least they're 3D molded figures. But given that Jack described them for a couple years as having "swaying arms" and the fact that we were shown (and we screamed for!) lit eyes .. they ended up being a bit of a let down. Throw in the fact that they really look very little like the trees in the movie (no leaves at all and fatter??) and I don't think there is that much there to be proud of.

I know what you mean about the ship in ST. It's a cool toy. However, that's it for Star Trek in the toys department unless the kick back counts. WOZ has two mini playfields each with unique shots and modes, magnets in front of the witch that interact with the ball, two mini outlane games, the crystal ball toy and the witch. For the pro price point I think the toy in ST is fine but at the LE price point a game should offer more toys like WOZ has in my opinion.

Love the idea, dislike the execution. I simply do not like the way those particular sculpts look. Don't mean to badmouth Matt, he seems like a cool dude, but I don't really dig what he did. They're lumpy, ugly, and just poorly sculpted to my eyes. If they had joints to wave around with the pops it might be something.

At the end of the day though they're no more interactive than any other game, it's still just some pops. It's really stretching it to call them interactive toys, they don't behave differently than any other pops. Props to JJP for trying, it's a good idea. It's a better idea than the barrels IMHO, but I'll wait to see how those look.

I think the castle upper playfield on WOZ is well done. Multiple things to shoot at, some strategy, the doors, it's well executed. The other one, eh. Sure, spinning house, yay, but actually shooting that loop doesn't really interest me, it's not fun to do. It *looks* cool, I don't deny that, I just don't particularly get excited to interact with it.

The Witch being incased in a giant test tube is lame. Sorry, it just is. It looks like a museum exhibit, not a toy. Anyone remember the original prototype witch? She was way cooler, it's a pity they changed it:

Agreed!! This is why I'm very concerned about Smaug in Hobbit. A centerpiece of the game like this needs some serious detail from a fantastic artist. Matt's knowledge in materials and custom part making seems very deep and impressive!! He has great ideas too! But from a purely artistic perspective .. I'm nervous.

Smaug WILL BE the game. If the toy doesn't just WOW players, the game is probably doomed to be an also ran to anyone but the hard core players (who will probably care more about whatever Keith is going to show us as a real mode game).

not necessarily true look at the main, and i guess only toy, in ST and its still popular because of FF flow and fun

"Wow" only last so long. Rules and flow will make this game, not some toy that could end up being a PITA if WOZ's toys are any indicator. I love my game, but the toys are a bit disappointing.

All I'm saying is Smaug better look bad ass.

Weta6.jpgWETA-Smaug-the-Terrible-Statue-1-1024x768.jpgSmaugSDCC201432_zpsf1c1991e.jpgSmaugSDCC201431_zps6dab0ce0.jpgSmaugSDCC201430_zps22e1cc4c.jpg

I just hope it doesn't slow down the game.

Uncertain if this has been scrutinized in this thread or elsewhere. The printing technique they use is pretty high-def IMHO!

(c) John Kosmal

Do you have this quality for the whole playfield too ? If so please post it here

The sad thing is it isn't all that special. It's easy to get quality that good. Meaning there's really no excuse for Stern's print quality to be so crummy.

Compare that to LOTR for instance!

what does it mean then if its that easy to get quality this good yet they dont?

It is baffling really.

Those pics are awesome, don't think anyone would be disappointed if that was exactly what he looked like in the game. Problem is, something that detailed would have to be protected from ball damage, those spines wouldn't last a second if hit.

It's pretty unrealistic to think Smaug is gonna look like that. Matt is not WETA and their toy is not cheap to producde. I'll be happy as long as he does not look really bad. People have to high expectations about the smaug toy.

Yes, it will attract new players if he is stunning but this is a game and other factors, such as rules and flow are much more important.

I am hoping for some glowing eyes, maybe a moving head, jaw or body and a decent overall look. The WETA one can be a topper instead

I agree. I want Smaug to be interactive and see the toy move, capture balls, shoot at it, etc. I'm not paying nearly $8k for The Hobbit to have a statue of Smaug in it that doesn't move. The statute is cool but this is a pinball machine! If the Smaug toy is just a ball lock, that doesn't move at all and ejects balls back to the player through a VUK that will be a bummer. If I wanted the Weta the statue I would buy one and make it a sweet topper like you said.

Look at it this way. The T-Rex toy in Jurrasic Park is interactive but doesn't look 100% realistic by any means. However everyone knows what it represents. Would people playing a pinball machine rather have the T-Rex toy as it is or have a more detailed model that doesn't interact with the ball at all? I'll take how it is today.

The statue is just an example of how Smaug SHOULD look like. If it's close to that, it will be drop dead awesome. Anyway... Jack has mentioned (several times) Smaug "will interact with the ball in several ways...".

- Yes, please hope all our (raised) expectations of Smaug will be met!!

I hear ya. I hope the color on Smaug cloesy resembles the look of the statue and on film Smaug.

I have always felt the molded parts on WOZ looked out of place. The only one that looks pretty good is the baloon, but even that one looks slightly off with the rough look and color choices.

Seeing how the Smaug toy turns out is a make or break issue for me.

This could be a pretty cool mod to add somewhere to the game. Actually having that key as a way to start the game at home (replace start button) would be awesome!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00FXXAQXU

I think a lot of us would reconsider TH if Smaug does not met expectations at all... Therefore next Chicago Expo will be a something to look out for. Since it will be close to unthinkable that JJP won't show a fully working prototype by then. Maybe the machine is not 100% complete (some "Battle of the Five Armies" footage will be missing for example) but all toys and artwork are known (by JJP) and should by worked out up to production stage.

- Two months and we all know what were up to...

I agree the Smaug toy should be fantastic. It has to interact with the ball, in more ways.

But if it does that, but it does not look good, that will be a job for the modders. Cant see that looks of smaug can be a dealbreaker.

If gameplay is great, a modder can and will up the looks.

Yeah, sure, and the scale is off, it was just an example. That's a collectible, probably expensive, I don't honestly expect a pinball toy to look quite like that. But if it looks anything like the WOZ pop bumper trees or the Jurassic Park T-Rex then it's going to be a major buzz kill.

And I don't consider that a job for modders to fix, it's a deal breaker for me.

my god then there are probably a ton of great games out there Aurich that you have passed on because of "toys" BSD and the list goes on. If a game is good toys wont break it for me. ie those tree pop bumpers on woz, I cant for the life of me see why anyone can complain. They replaced cheap plastic caps. To each his own.

I never understood the "plastic" argument personally ... who cares what the material is as long as they look cool? That sounds like the same Kool-aid Jack spews.

The trees though ...
- Are ugly
- Do not look like the trees in the movie at all (okay, maybe mildly)
- Do not "sway" like Jack suggested they would
- Do not light up (eyes or otherwise)
- The screws holding them on come loose on almost every game requiring the customer to loctite them on fix it themself
- The lower tree saucer scrapes against the rail there (again, on every game I've seen) leaving metal shavings to wreak havoc on your playfield

Let me put it this way: I'm not paying $8000 for something with a blobby lump for a dragon. BSD is a budget title, you put up with the Ron Jeremy in the coffin because you bought it for $2300. Same with Jurassic Park. When you raise your prices like that my expectations go up with them.