Spoke with Lisa at Cointaker, said she sent emails out last week about Queen pinball machine. Did anyone get email and what did they say?

I felt it was the sleeper title of the show. Enjoyed it way more than I expected to, and would like to put more time on it in a quiet environment. The backglass art was not as awful in person, although Freddy looked it a little off. Also enjoyed it being the live performance of the songs.

I got one on 3-23...... it said "Good afternoon, The Queen Rhapsody games are being shipped, we will be reaching out again with more information on your game within the next 15-30 days. Please let me know if you have any other questions. Thank you, Lisa"

Thanks for reply. I must have accidentally deleted my email. But she did say she would be reaching out in a couple of weeks.

It came from a weird email address. It wasn't cointaker's so it may be in your spam. Mine came from Rt 61 Events.

I received the same email form the same weird email address.

I rec'd

"Good afternoon,

The Queen Rhapsody games are being shipped, we will be reaching out again with more information on your game within the next 15-30 days. Please let me know if you have any other questions."

sent by [email protected]

Few observations after 10 games here at my house.
Observations:
Shooter was lose out of the box so you will need to look over and snug up some stuff. Like my Alien prior the computer under the PF was not secured fully to the support frame and the two rails under the playfield needed to be tightened up. Spinner would not spin but after a few tweaks it works well.

For those that have played it. If you shoot the left orbit and hold the right flipper up - the ball knocks down the bat. Is this a common occurrence?
The upper playfield lock would not release the balls yet the ball stop releases, thinking this is a ball guide is not bent propperly.

Does it seem that while there is a song being presented other songs are triggered by switch hits?
Wondered if anyone else noted while playing at Texas.

Wish for the money the back glass was a true piece of glass.

PB if your reading this add another screw along your side rails for a more snug fit.
Shield your upper left ramp under the Stadium area exit so that the ball doesn't jump off the ramp. The ball tends to jump the divertor due to speed or height of the divertor arm. Lastly build quality is getting better keep up the good work.

I noticed while watching the stream they did from the Dutch Pinball Museum that hitting the piano targets would trigger a several note piano riff from the intro to Seven Seas of Rhye, regardless of which song was playing. Is that what you mean? Found it a bit distracting personally, thought a single note would've been more subtle.

Yes that is what I have been experiencing. Another unique air ball trap picture below. Lots of air balls ill have to check my pitch. A rail would be helpful.

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Same thing can happen with Alien. Been a while since I was in the settings menu but I think it’s the flipper hold setting. Increase it?

Hell I’m just glad to see games in homes in the US. Progress.

It's a translight?

Hmm, what is it about the design that you find clunky?

just about every single shot.

That doesn't really tell me very much that I can nail down, unless you mean the sum of all the parts.

Was it that you didn't like the flipper feel and it was affecting the shots? Others have reported they felt the flippers were a bit weak at the show.

Of course we do!

We’re constantly working on getting everything about our games better.
Thank’s a lot for your input man!

/Peter
Pinball Brothers

Ok we are at 25 games in. Very little clunk, no more than other modern pin.
I adjusted the upper diverter to the ball lock slightly and he upper ball guide and I have less air balls off that ramp shot.

Funny, my wife played it and asked why it was playing multiple songs. Thing there is room for improvement on the switch reaction sounds for sure.

The back box art is direct printed on to the back box plexi not a translite.

I'm still following this pin - due to my utter infatuation with Alien, which is quite brilliant.

So quite keen to hear more impressions of this game - are there any decent streams around showing the gameplay? My other half loves Queen as well so could be the pin to get her involved in the hobby.

Just wondering who ordered from Cointaker and has received their game or has been notified that it has shipped to them. I put deposit down on July 23 of 2022 and have not heard anything. They will not answer emails.

Same order/paid in full late July of 2022. I have been told repeatedly they're shipping any day now. Not sure if that means from the factory or what exactly. I did receive an email from I believe LISA at Cointaker 7-10 days ago saying games were shipping in 2-4 weeks but again not sure if that's from manufacturer or what.

Probably be the last time I ordered a NIB from CT and or PB. Communication is garbage and while PB tries to ease frustrations they place the blame on world events and saying it's not their policy. K rant over can't wait to get my game one day hopefully.

Plus who got the game/floor modes at TPF has is that right to everyone who paid in full? K promise I'll STFU now.

Since the speakers are behind the “glass” and require all those holes to be cut it would be pretty impractical to use real glass I suspect.

This. I'll remain quiet because I have posted my thoughts here and on the fb page multiple times.

Yeah think about CoinTaker, they're distro for Pinball Brothers and Dutch Pinball....they probably have one person that does nothing more than answer questions all day about status for these two manufacturers.

If only there was some way to handle updating customers without requiring them to email or call...

Customer engagement/communication isn't hard these days with the magic of the interwebz, they are just choosing to not make it a priority.

CT can only provide status when they have it from the manufacturer. And lets face it, these manufacturers (except Spooky and maybe Stern) have never met a date!

Doesn't matter. Communicating "no update from manufacturer" is actual communication. Have link on the front page of the cointaker website for "Dutch Pinball Updates" and "Queen Updates", post what information you have, the date it was updated, and update every week, even if there is no change.

Have an automated email response if someone emails with the key words "Queen" or "Lebowski" that returns an email that gives a link to that page.

Have a message play when people call before the call is answered saying if you are looking for "Queen" or "Lebowski" updates, go to their website.

There are tons of better ways to deal with this situation than not answering emails or the phone. The best ones involve the customers never having to email you or call you for basic information. Keeps customers happy, keeps employees from answering the same things 1000 times.

Absolutely a redesign would be welcomed.
Alien it works but with Queen its just an odd placement of holes.

I’ve been reading these threads (Lebowski pre order club, Alien club, now Queen) for a few years now and the one thing that stands out amongst all those threads is Cointaker’s horrible communication. It’s not Dutch or Pinball Brothers fault. They both respond to emails and issues damn near immediately. This is how CT operates. I wasn’t an anomaly. Nor is anyone else here. The only reason I would order anything from CT in the future and the only reason I did in the past, is because I had to.

Both manufactures would be better served by finding someone else stateside to distribute their machines. They are taking a a lot of the blame for things they have no control of. There is no excuse for how CT treats their customers, but there are always buyers that will try to make one. I just don’t get it.

I just got an email that my game shipped to me today. I suspect others will be as well now.

40 ish games in and just cracked a half billion and have not read the rules yet.
A little bit of random rambling to kill the time for you all waiting.

I would suggest exploring this one some fun little surprises await.

Having an upper lock release issue but beyond that and air balls game play is pretty consistent without issues.
Unsure what the piano targets really do once you knock down the drops.
The Queen frenzy is a fun little side game. Attempted to stack it and Wembley 3 ball but keep just missing it.

Game flows well with the three main long shots (left and right orbits and center shot).
Just never know what your going to get when you buy without playing it first.

Few bugs on the screen I have noticed. The boot screen with code and firmware have popped up twice that I have noticed while playing.
Upper PF ball lock is not releasing still, put in a help request. I hope they correct this by holding the release pin down for 3 to five seconds rather than pulsing it. The pulse is just enough to start the first ball rolling out then the pin comes up and knocks all of the balls backward.

Biggest pet peeve is the fart sound when the upper playfield stand ups are completed and you re activate finished switches attempting to hit the lock shot.

At first I was not happy with the live song versions but now they are growing on me.

Currently running .86 was advised .91 is on its way soon.

To qualify to collect the Piano, you need to light all 7 of its keys/targets. Knocking down the drop targets (white keys) keeps them down for several seconds, during which time you can hit the standups (black keys). When you've lit them all, the Piano will be ready to collect on the Collect Instruments shot (just right of center playfield). (If you don't complete the black keys before the drop targets reset, you'll have to knock down the drops again before you can shoot the black keys again, but it does remember which black keys you had shot previously.)

OK, cool... so why do you care about collecting instruments? Because...

- When you complete an instrument's targets, it lights a hurry-up jackpot shot on the band member's shot associated with the instrument. (Piano = Freddie Mercury = center ramp)

- Collecting instruments awards points -- progressively more when you collect multiple instruments at once.

- Collecting instruments increases the shot value for the associated band member's shot.

- Collected instruments give multipliable end-of-ball bonus.

- Collecting all instruments lights Stage Set Multiball.

There is a crazy amount of stuff to do in this game.

Removed found pictures of upper pf being taken off few pages back.

To remove upper playfield the upper flipper needs to be removed and three posts.
Pretty simple but the ball lock release was a chore.
Basically had to modify the habit trail a bit to allow the balls to releaes.
The other ball traps I am still dealing with.

Did they fix the software before shipping? I played the Queen game at the Expo last year and at TPF many times. The software rebooted on me, lost track of the ball count and had too much pausing during game play. It was like I was playing on a very early prototype software revision.

I had the same experience twice with both machines that I bought from CT. They can't handle selling games. They need to just do back to selling just LED bulbs. They were good at that.

This is why people should play a game before buying it.

The only opinion that matters is your own.

Typically, after a game fully develops and it gets out in the wild the crème rises to the top. Queen will get there.

Not a whole lot of people have even played this game and if they did, probably a few games or couldn’t hear it at TPF.

I did not care if I heard the game at TPF but all 3 of the Queen games I played at TPF had massive software issues. Maybe they all had code from 2 years ago, I don't know.

I recently played this game at cointaker’s and it pleasantly surprised me; the upper playfield on it is a blast and game is just pure fun; my opinion it is their best game yet

That’s a shame. Doesn’t sound like Hooked is having those issues

.86c is what was on my game and it has a build date of Feb 2023. Code I believe is from Feb 20th.
I believe that the game I received was in the same batch that went to Texas.

Few updates after a few hours of work on it today. BTW a manual would be nice.
I had three ball traps to address today.
The gate at the magic shot, the upper divertor at the magnet that is fed from the right side habit trail and the upper PF lock.
Due to the time it took I'm down to the upper divertor at the magnet.

Upper PF Ball lock issue: Once the upper playfield was removed I found zero issues I had hoped to find at the ball lock release. Game is set up at 6.5 pitch and level. The release pin had full travel so all looked well but it would not release balls. Odd thing was a single ball would release but not three.
This is with the playfield removed so nothing was over the ball lock are that could cause a trap from above the ball.
So after many tweaks to the left side rail I gave up and relocated the rail from the factory mounting positions. Now it works almost too fast.
When releasing the ball lock the machine attempts to to let locked balls out one by one. First one rolls out- pin goes up and then then pin comes down and two balls roll out at once. Little fast but its much better than nothing moving like it was. Just as a reference the upper playfield had never worked since I set it up so I was avoiding it when possible.

On to the next, the magic shot . There is a one way gate to the scoop and the attaching post is to the right. When shooting the magic shot the ball would get trapped there maybe 1 in 20 shots. I tweaked the gate arm so that the wire form sits as far back as it can without getting in the way with the travel of the scoop kick out. The game comes stock silicone or urethane bands that have very little bounce. I installed a rubber post ring under the factory band so that the ball might bounce out of the trap area a little easier. Will post a picture later.

Lastly the divertor trap was not fixed today due to the ball lock taking so long.

Still hoping for the update this week PBB mentioned on the last contact.
Hoping the sound gets better with switch interaction and that the random boot up screen popping up during game play.

I put my deposit down 7/22/22 and haven’t heard anything either. Par for the course though. You won’t hear anything until they want more money from you.

My game arrived this morning. Unboxed and got it inside. Will finish tonight after work. It really is a pretty game on the outside. Curious to see the inside soon.

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Very anxious to hear your thoughts that upper playfield on it is very cool and fun