It would be freaking awesome to see the final code update and for new breath be delivered to the apron mod.

The mod could’ve added new modes and mini games like what Stern did with Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park. All wishful thinking of course.

Just wanted to show a few pictures of my mini topper as I still am not a fan of the official topper.
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The one topper that was made for it was indeed terrible.

Has anyone made any really good custom apron cards for Rob Zombie? Something on par with pinballcards.com stuff. Those are great and I've enjoyed the High Speed and Whirlwind cards for sure!

Hey Folks,

shoot me a PM when anybody want to get rid off his apron mod. I am a RZ owner from day 1 but missed the boat on this mod. I have read that nobody really seems to enjoy it so maybe there is a chance to get one used.

Kindest Regards

Lars

I don’t have one but I wouldn’t waste any money on it. It really doesn’t add anything to the game. It was promised to contain many more features but was never completed.

Luckily I waited to see what the mod turned into. I’m glad I hung on to my money because it just isn’t worth it and I’m sure many whom did buy it will agree.

Has Fawzma officially given up on the mod? Are any more updates for the game itself coming?

The apron mod has really fallen short of its promise. I do like that I can get a quick corpse count in House of 1k Corpses without having to look up.

"Officially" would suggest some (any) communication. It's been radio silence re: the apron mod for years. Pretty shitty way to treat people who threw down $300 on a promise if you ask me. Charlie has made sporadic comments about polishing the game code, but those have been sparse and rather ambiguous. I'm essentially treating both of those as dead issues and will deal with being pleasantly surprised / shocked if they ever happen.

Any chance Dave could publicly release his development work on it so far and let the community finish it up? That corpse counter sounds pretty cool...

Agreed....I own three Spooky games, so I'm a fan of the company, but it has been pretty shitty the way Charlie and Fawzma have distanced themselves from this game. I think they want to forget it exists, which is sad, because we helped support the fledgling company at the time with early deposits on empty promises.

C'mon, spooky....step up and give us a real update on the game code and apron. If they are both dead, man up and tell us so. We dont need anymore vague promises. A real timeline with real dates would be great.

That's about the only thing I use it for these days. I don't feel bad spending the money on it as it looks cool and works. I hope you can find one @lamihh.

Thx

Do you consider the game incomplete or obvious areas that need help? I have this pin on my radar, but dont want a partial game.

There’s a lot of discussion on this point in the - Is Rob Zombie REALLY that he’s thread. Check it out. It’s a very polarizing pin.

Thanks and yea it appears to be a love or hate. Looks like i would definently have to play first. Who is AZ has one to play!!

I’m up in Cave Creek.
You’re welcome to come play mine.

Seriously? Well if you have a tourney or feel like having a not psycho stranger in your house, let me know.

Spooky's using a separate mini-power supply for the CPU Board, LCD Display and mods (because the mini power supply will output both 5v and 12v, it's easy).

So if you were close to the limit on that smaller power supply, you could just upgrade that RD-65A Meanwell to one of the next up the line dual-output 5v/12v units like the RD-125A that has almost double the power budget for mods and extras for like $30 or less. Still 5v/12v but is 5v/7.7A and 12v/7.7A instead of 5v/6A and 12v/3A on the RD-65A. Should be plenty of overhead for reasonable mod additions.

Hit me up with a PM.

Finally got all my mods installed. Drastic improvement to upper playfield area.

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Awesome! However, it appears the gas station lighting is red, which is unintentional, and would mean the green ground lost connection when I installed the LED strip (likely was only tested beforehand). If you dig the more horroresque lighting that creates, then great, but if not, I could pay for return shipping and have it shipped back within a day of receiving it. Normally a more yellow/green light as it appears in the film.

I appreciate the offer. I think it looks great the way it is! Your mods really fill out the top of this amazing game.

Thanks for everything

I will thanks!!

The Ball Stop Mod is now free to download on Thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4460228

You’re a good man.

Decided to add a shaker to my game which i finally got around to installing tonight.

First impression - i like it! Adds that little something something lol. Very straightforward and easy install as well.

I don't know why, but I never even considered or thought about this. I totally want to add one. Thats my next upgrade.

Any modern game needs a shaker

Has anyone swapped out the standard muddled DMD that everyone seems to complain about with an after market DMD? If so, what after market DMD did you use?

The monitor would be fully capable of handling better graphics. The board set isn’t capable of handling high def.

I see. Thanks for the info and response. I appreciate it.

The display is LCD, but is designed to emulate the dot matrix displays of the period. I might point out that Spooky was shipping color on RZ while Stern was still exclusively monochrome DMD.

I just played a RZ for the first time the other day. I loved the pin and may end up buying it from the owner. I know it’s not perfect, but I can’t figure out why some people despise it the way they do. Anyway, I didn’t even realize it was an LCD. Thanks for pointing that out.

I bought one NIB. It’s unique. The modes are just meh. The theme is super cool.

Probably same type of people that liked picking on fat kids in school.
Some people just can’t let stuff go and its like a running joke for them.

I’ve had mine since new in box and quite happy with it.
People just like to dog on it and I doubt many of them have spent a lot of time playing it, understand the rules or have even progressed very far in the game.

It’s Pinside politics, mostly. There are only 300 examples. Many vocal critics have very little time on the game. The art, theme integration, and call outs are best in class. The game play is quirky, and intentionally reminiscent of older SS games. The modes are fine, but changed a good bit through the development process, probably influencing show player’s first impression.

Well, the ART is not best in class - especially on the DMD. Unless maybe you're artificially limiting the class to some criteria that limits it to RZ and something like Oktoberfest. The graphics are crappy and blurry because of the pixel pipeline to the screen, not because they're emulating DMDs. Short of completely redoing the way it works, there's no way to fix it. The LCD in there is capable of much higher resolution and color depth than what you see.

It's a shame, because it's about 3/5ths of a great game, and aside from the software, the two things that need fixing most (the DMD graphics and the terrible sparse playfield art) will never be addressed. Alice Cooper definitely got the benefit of more experience making pinballs.

I guess I’d consider myself to be an above average player, but I didn’t think most of the shots were as tough to make as people make them out to be. I felt like that is one of the biggest criticisms. I didn’t have any problems hitting the left orbit consistently to start modes. I had a harder time hitting the right orbit, but that shot always gives me the most difficulty. I like unique games and Rob Zombie, so for the price you can get one at these days I think it’s a bit of a steal.

I hear rumblings about a code update. If there is a code update, what would the update cover? Just clean-up or an overhaul?

From what Chuck has said it will just address a couple known bugs. Won’t be an overhaul by any means.

If you are at all a fan of RZ music, early solid state games (like classic Bally), or Capt. Spaulding, this game is GOLD. I happen to love all 3. I bought my game NIB, and my only regret is that I didn't wait and buy a used one for FAR cheaper. I'm a pretty good player, and my wife is strictly casual, yet in our decent size collection, this is one of our favs. None of the modes are revolutionary, and in fact are pretty easy in and of themselves. But it's near impossible to actually make it to the wizard mode. It's meant to be a simple but hard game. And some of the callouts are classic no matter how many times I hear them. This game is oozing with RobZombieness.

He had to be referring to the cabinet art, which is pretty sweet. The playfield art is kind of a muddled mess, although it doesn't really bother me. The "DMD" sucks, but this is a factor of using the Heck boards. Oh how I wish THIS had been their first PROC game.

They've been promising some kind of update for forever. Fix a few things, add a few things. Supposedly there are even more callouts that could be added, and many of us have asked for the adult mode to include all adult and non-adult clips for added variety. That said, it was "promised" so long ago that I wouldn't buy RZ with any expectations that it will ever get touched again. If it does...bonus.

If you like the game for what it is now, go for it. Out of our ~30 games, this would literally be one of the last ones to leave. I think if people could get Men-in-Black-style memory wiped and came into this game now, with no expectations and without the vocal minority bashing it, far more people would feel the way you do. This will never be a game for the masses. Too many quirks/flaws for complete mass appeal. But if it strikes the right chords with you, it's a real gem.

Yeah. I love early solid state games. I have a Seawitch. I also love TNA, which also has the classic feel. I will probably go for it. The one that I played and is available has the Medisinyl Mods, which help the look of the pin a lot.

I will say the plafield leaves much to be desired, but both the backglasses and cabinet art is nothing short of amazing art. Unfortunately the art for the cabinet was taken from an oil/acrylic painting that is very small and had to be enlarged greatly... Hence the blurred look. But the original is absolutely amazing. The details in the backglass art is also a masterwork. I have all three originals and they make ALL of the stern art look like color by number (don't get me wrong, I love all the artists working with Stern), But Alex Horley is no joke. His art is top notch painting. The art for this pin was not done on a computer.

I love my RZ . If I had to sell my collection it would be the last to leave.

Same boat here...love this game so much. Speaking of that I need to fix the mode start switch. Sounds like a good weekend project.

Joining your club with a HUO standard shortly when it arrives.

Yea, RZ never had the power to drive significant graphics, but if you think about it, in no game made prior to the past few years did anyone actually considered the DMD as part of the "art package" because you either had none (EM/SS), or used a DMD with resolution significantly less than a single icon on a smart phone. The graphics on RZ are better than the likes of IM, SM, Avatar with their blurry greyscale video clips... but that fact never took away from the aura of those games because the DMD was not intended have "artwork"... it was, and still is in all 2020 games, just a scoreboard with simple graphics to indicate your mode. If I turned off the LCD on Munsters I would enjoy the game just as much.

My collection consists of games that are unique playing experiences, and RZ fits the bill... it's just a blast to play, and all the quirks just add to the aura of it.

Well said. It IS a blast to play. Unique, quirky and fun. Not to mention it totally rocks. I’m planning to pick one up after Labor Day after I move some pins around to create space.

Problem is, by the time Rob Zombie came out, ColorDMD upgrades were well established (even for 2 of the 3 you cited and MANY others by then) and were the color display benchmark, so RZ graphics just looked blurry and bad compared to a pretty wide range of actual color DMD displays that were out at the time and available to buy. It was a feature too late to be impressive because it had been done better for like 3-4 years already.

Congratulations.
How many of these are actually in Australia?
Can’t be too many down there I would think.