Maybe yes...maybe no....

This is really an impossible question... we find out in 2034 / 2035 depending on when they ship.

Not sure what MMRLE's Audits were... but these are real stats during the recent expo...

Star Trek LE 780
Car Hop ----
Mustang LE 896
Centaur 560
Mystic 523-was in Xpin booth for a day or so
Frontier 842
Viking 775
Pinbot 572
Galaxy 591
Evel Knievel 596
Skateball 584-used in classics tourney for part of the show
Meteor 697
Star Gazer 463
KISS 785

soo not every one but that's probably well more than you would play a game over the course of the year... I think the fact that it's double clear coated should help significantly with playfield issues. Along with the LED's not burning the inserts... Time will tell. I think certain aspects of it are superior to the original build.

No one can answer your question as of yet. But less electronics maybe yes. CHEAP electronics, no.

Boards and setup under pf? Maybe, maybe not.

Time will tell on this one. Location MMR in 5 years will tell us all we need to know.

Impossible to answer. Come back in a few years and let's see.

They just can't simulate the abuse and environments these machines live in.
On one hand you can simulate individual component life, but you can't assess the entire package.
What if a machine is in a very nice upscale environment, turned on for 2 or 3 hours a day, gets a handful of plays. Wiped down weekly, taken care of.
Or if that same machine winds up in a smoke-filled, un-airconditioned bar and never sees a rubber or ball replaced...

I would say no. I get it's not out, but every single PF board I have ever seen has always been prone to vibration and more cracked solder joints.

Given that, and the fact that all the drivers are down in that area, unless they have a system for completely isolating the electronics from ANY vibration whatsoever, you will get less reliability is my guess.

Exactly.

Still, it's a guess with merit. All PF boards are much more prone to vibration issues, and as such, that makes them more prone to having problems. So in answering the ops question, based on historical issues with PF side boards, and that the new MMr has these, and the old one did not, that is a sound assumption at this time, is it not?

The problem is your guessing. We need to see how long it takes for those issues if they exist in this scenario.
How old were the games in your other scenarios? Who made the boards etc? Will the boards out last other issues that used to occur more frequently possibly proving the game over all to more reliable? Or will it all blow up?
All guessing as we dont have a concrete basis to go off of yet.

Hold that thoughtBack to the Future Delorean Time Machine slice.jpg...

Authentic Coin-Op Pinball
Vacation America is an arcade caliber pinball machine designed for the home. In every aspect including size, playability and overall appearance, this machine is on par with coin- operated pinball machines

I guess MMr is more for the home market, same board designs as VA & not coming with coin mechs.

How did Vacation America hold up on site? anyone know?

Cancel that.... VA was home use only. lol

Keep guessing, you'll get it right sooner or later...

Absolutely

Played the black trimmed one at Expo when it was over on the right (Saturday early afternoon). The Merlin's VUK wouldn't kick out the ball. Heard the sound...nothing...had to wait for a ball search. One of the trolls wouldn't come up either. Didn't even get to play a whole game as I walked away it was having issues. Played it later in the day when it was on the left and it seemed to play ok then. My concern is with all the solenoid driver stuff under the playfield. Only time will tell...

lol... you might be surprised how close my guesses are

This is by far the longest record MMr thread without Teekee showing up.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of his posts make me laugh. I don't go to the Church of Teekee, except for Christmas and Easter that is.

Let's dance

So, your "guess" is that MM is a home game because "Vacation America?" I'm going to guess you haven't played the games at expo.

Same design under the playfield as VA, I would have liked to play MMr at expo... but look a couple of posts up... seems the were starting to break down, there is/was a reason the front legs were jacked up.
Are you putting your MMr on site?

That may be the case but PPS did do a stress test with the shaker motor strapped to it for a ridiculous amount of time; I can't remember exactly how long but it way long. I know Rick said they burnt up several shakers doing it. I think they did there due diligence in trying to make sure the main board under the playfield will hold up over the long haul.

I didn't know that, what was the name of the guy who designed the hardware? Did he tell you it was the same? I guess that I assumed even if it was the same guy, he's learned and grew somewhat as a professional in the last 12 years.

I don't need to look a couple posts up, the games had minor issues and were fixed. It was the first games they ever built, they are test games. Minor issues in test games are okay.

Or course I'm guessing. Rick is guessing too, no matter what tests he's done. Once it's put in play, on a serious routed location like the PHOF that exposes stern cc'ing with a vengeance, then we'll see, but that was the op's question, all answers are guessing, at least mine has a basis for the philosophy behind it.

I had a girlfriend when I was younger and we liked to bang at her place a lot. Her mother caught us once, and she wasn't happy. Even then I realized that things that bang and things that don't like the banging do not work well together.

That's right, it did that to us as well. Made 6-8 attempts, complete w sound and light, but ball never budged. When it ballsearched, it kicked out OK and was good for the rest of the game. But, it happened again on a later game, same issue... took a ballsearch to eject it.

90% sure that sounds like a switch needs to be adjusted.

Merlin VUK?

JUST LEAVING MYSELF A PLACEHOLDER FOR 7300 DAYS FROM NOW (if I am still alive):

Note: This is an old thread. The last post was made to it 7300 days ago. Resurrecting old threads is not necessarily a bad thing, if you think the topic is still relevant and/or your post is beneficial to it (e.g. following up on something). In other cases, it might be better to create a new topic.

Yeah, Merlin's Magic. There is a VUK to get the ball back to the playfield. More of a saucer but same thing.

I've never seen the underside of Vacation America. Is it an enormous board like MMr?

_{Post edited by Erik: nm, pinside has gallery pics. Three large boards if anyone is curious}

I thought WoZ was the best built, highest quality pin ever. When I questioned those statements I was scoffed, laughed at (for knowing nothing about pins and reliability) and even banned from a thread.

Pretty much
http://www.pinballnews.com/news/vacation.html

too busy

send all questions and concerns to my secretary… I'll get back to ya…

If I had a choice of an NIB MMr or a decent $8000 routed MM, I would take the MMr in a heartbeat. The main reasons for that choice are reliability and that new pin smell. I won't be routing it by the way so the pizza parlor scenarios mean nothing to me. All I know is that I have had major problems to repair on every 90s Williams game I have ever owned. Fortunately I can also fix anything that goes wrong but that doesn't make it any less of a pain.

Disconnect the shaker. Jack up the tilt sensitivity. Open up the outlanes. It will be fine. Buy 3.

I didn't say the question was invalid, I'm saying that it will take 20 years to really answer how well the MMr games handle 20 years of abuse... Oh, and a coin mech

And seeing you're asking, seriously, how well did MM stand up? If you go out and buy an MM right now it has already been through the crucible. But how many were lemons that no longer exist? How many simply were worn out and then were chucked in a dumpster? I know that is a lot more rare for a game like MM, but it still happened. They broke on location, and they made money on location, just like the new ones will.

Magic 8 Ball says:

imagesI506Y1GY.jpg

I'm the opposite. I'd take an original over a remake no question, flaws and all. My hope is the remakes shake loose originals and lower prices. I have an MM, AFM and MB so I'm waiting for CC to hopefully get an original someone dumped.

The electronics, all anyone can do is guess. It's pretty certain the lamps will be more reliable (LEDs generally don't burn out, plus each insert has triple redundancy). The playfield should be more resistant to wear than the original, too -- I think that's pretty certain as well.

90% sure you don't know how a pinball works? Did you read this part that I wrote?

If the switch was broken or misadjusted, the game would never try to eject the ball, and it wouldn't play the sound and flash the lights.

I'm not going to speculate whether or not the playfield is better, but what I saw on the games at Expo, I have my doubts.

man, i was blown away by MMR at TPF 2014 this year. And that was 6 months ago.

Way too soon to tell. Other than the under PF boards, I would hope the new electronics are more reliable. Probably should revisit this topic in 6-12 months.

I could happily live the rest of my life without hearing about mmr being shipped without coin mechs over and over again....

i bet if you had a quarter for every time...

... He could pay to put coin mechs in every MMR.

The thing that everyone forgets or few people know is that machines when you put them on route 20 years ago were prone to immediate breakage, and believe it or not, Stern's quality control is LIGHT YEARS above what Williams was back then.

The reason so many people think that Williams games work so well is that they had a ton of repairs performed on them in the field... until the problems were erased.

I would expect that MMR comes out of the box in a better condition to be routed than MM did 20 years ago. How MMR would hold up in route in 5 years is open to debate. I'm not personally sold on the huge under playfield board, but I also don't see any logical reason that it wouldn't work. Time will tell.

So the pindolly could fit underneath the machines. People are lazy, nothing new.

I don't pretend to know why it was done. I did however, witness them being fully extended, then retraced by someone acknowledging there was complaining only to see them back to fully extended again later in the evening. Again, I have no idea why and I'm definitely not prescribing to any conspiracy theories. I'm just reporting on what I witnessed first hand.

I don't believe this. There are shit loads of issues with sterns that never would have made it out the door with b/w. Popeye was one game that suffered from poor qc, and it shows, but there are countless issues with sterns, something as common as orbits that never seem to be consistent at making it back to the flipper properly.

fair enough. i was just going by PPS's claims of doing multiple layers of clearcoat.

I thought the orbit issue was a design philosophy?

Make every game play different... and challenging.

And its cheaper to do to boot.