Quoted from John_I:

I love the *concept* of the SPIKE system and node boards. There have been some growing pains for sure but the concept is a natural progression for pinball control just like going from EM to solid state. It will in the end make pins way less labor to build, way less wiring, more reliable and easier to maintain by using a design concept that has been more than validated by the auto industry. If you look closely, the parts on the node boards like transistors that are expected to fail are not surface mount (just like SAM) and can be easily fixed by the user. Unfortunately the problems with a lot of early node boards were poor design in parts that weren't supposed to fail. These problems are becoming very few and far between at this point and the node concept will carry on for the foreseeable future if not forever. The same node concept is used in AP and the remake CGS games. I assume that Deeproot will use it as well and some day if JJP wants to stay in business, they will most likely go to a similar system and get rid of the dinosaur computer system they use.

Quoted from John_I:

How about the design of those light boards in WoZ that constantly failed for years because of terrible design? And by the way, those are technically node boards whose design is to save money. Growing pains happen in lots of systems including JJP, SAM and SPIKE. Remember the first SAM game was WPT? Every single game shipped with defective CPUs that had to be replaced months later when the new revision came out. When SAM came out some closed minded people actually complained about the programming with USB instead of having to burn and swap out ROM chips! Kind of reminds me of the griping about node boards. Hate the problems with early SPIKE games, but don't hate the concept because it is a really good thing and here to stay across the industry. Also, my poor back isn't getting any younger, those extra 50 pounds of needless transformer and wiring are not missed by me at all. In the context of this thread, I hate pinball machines that are unnecessarily heavy.

You realize that animations are by definition generated ahead of time and simply played back? Sure there are some graphics on pinball machines that are generated in real time, but real Xbox One video processing power is not needed in a pinball machine. Even with a 1080p screen, simple onboard graphics chips are fine or there would be a graphics card in the JJP games to boost performance. Not sure how graphics power became a subject since it was node boards that were the center of the hate. Node boards or lack there of has nothing to do with the main CPU in a system and its graphics capabilities. If you like the graphics better on one pinball machine than another its because of better programming and not better hardware. You JJP fanboys also seem to prefer the larger screen. I much prefer the screens on SPIKE, AP, Spooky and CGS as more suitable size for pinball.