It's not perfect, Rarehero summed up a lot of my thoughts, but it's cool. I appreciate the effort, the comic stuff is better than the movie. Though a direct tracing is kinda meh, especially on the slingshots. The originals are some of the worst slings in pinball, not sure they needed to be copied, especially with young emo Peter.

Translite is a strange choice to me. AGGH MY EYES? WTF? Not really sure if there's some story line I don't know the reference from, but the main focus being a falling back villain with random speech bubbles is just a little odd.

But still, it's pretty cool, whole game looks better than the original to me, issues aside. It's bright and comic-y.

Problem is the price. Old game + new price = no sale. I don't really care why it's so much, not my business to run, I just know that I'm not opening my wallet for that. Too bad, I've never owned a Spidey, the code is done so I can actually buy with confidence, I was ready to be a buyer.

But not for that much money.

Dude, no offense, but you're not exactly price sensitive at this level of purchasing. You can afford this.

I feel like you're losing track of people who are feeling price sensitive about pinball. You got upset with me when I said that I didn't feel like Stern games were enough value at $8000. That's a lot of money!

Here you have people expressing disappointment that the game is going to be around $6500 shipped. Not MSRP, real shipped price.

It's a lot of money too. Is what it is, Stern might have overreached, or maybe that's just the realistic cost in 2016 for this game. No idea. But the money is what it is too, doesn't really matter why.

Maybe they'll sell a ton, I dunno. I don't wish them ill or anything. But anyone who thinks people shouldn't be upset that it's come to a remake selling for this much just doesn't have the same financial concerns that some other people do.

This hobby is enough of a rich guy's playground already. Many buy Pros because it's what they can justify. The way the price trends are going you have to wonder if there will be a base around to keep buying everything. I sure hope so.

I know that for me this kind of cash is gonna require something more in exchange. A repackage of an old game with old DMD dots, no color changers, or anything else that's actually "new" isn't enough. Doesn't mean it's a bad game! Or a bad package. Just that it doesn't really provide enough value for someone like me.

True. But this is a bit different.

MM was selling for crazy money. $20k sometimes! So someone remade it for $8k and it seemed like a reasonable deal.

Iron Man got popular. Selling for $6k and over. Stern saw that, vault released it for cheaper, and boom, everyone won, except people who just overpaid for an Iron Man.

You can get a HUO Spider-Man for $5000. So releasing a $6600 version doesn't feel like a deal in the way the above versions did. The economics cut both ways.

If they could have maybe said, you know let's skip the laser cut rails and the shaker (and sold them as upgrades still, which is their model now right?) and try and hit a price point between a Pro and Premium, a new price that reflects the middle ground this game stands on, then I suspect the tune would be different.

I probably would have bought myself.

This centerflank vault edition avatar sucks!

I just wish while they were doing new art they did something cooler than Peter Parker and Mary Jane faces.

Not yet, but I'm working on something that will require new plastics. Already have a printer lined up to try, but have to see how it goes. If it works out I'm definitely going to try some new slingshots as part of the mod for this particular game I'm working on (not SM), be a good test.

I'm not doing anything that would infringe upon Stern or Disney's copyrights though.

Not at the moment, I clarified my post, this is a mod for another game. But it's a test run for doing new plastics, so if it works out I'm definitely interested in exploring it more. Seems like a fun way to switch up the art on a game. Spider-Man feels like a really obvious choice, because the stock slingshots are bad. That's not what people want to see.

There are lots and lots of ways to do new Spider-Man slingshot plastics with original art that doesn't infringe upon anyone's trademarks or copyrights. I can't draw Spider-Man, but I can for instance draw webs and spiders. They own the characters, not the general motifs. Definitely solutions that fit the theme but are "safe" when it comes to the license.

I just thought up a couple right now while thinking about it for a moment. Stopped writing to sketch them out in a notebook to look at more later.

So yeah, it's a good thought, and I'll keep it in mind after I test this next mod out.

Oh I am! Just creating mods that are wholly original, and don't depend on anyone else's license.

So nothing with a Spider-Man logo, or drawing of Spider-Man. I won't be making an alt translite for instance. And I can't draw Spider-Man for shit anyways, never tried to, and some really good dudes have already done it better than I ever could.

But that doesn't mean no mods for Stern. I'm working on the most complicated mod I've done yet for Metallica right now. And I have a concept I'd like to explore for ACDC Premium too. I think people will dig them both, and I love Stern's games, and will continue to work on ideas for them.

But Stern and I agree that it needs to be done without using their licensed properties as a basis. I'm too high profile now. I don't do any of this anywhere but Pinside, but let's be honest, everyone here knows I do this stuff.

I can't ask them to look away, so fair enough. It was always just for the community, but we're a big community now. And you never know, it doesn't mean Helen is retired as a character.

If not a style guide then it's still Marvel "stock art" from their library, none of that was actually drawn for the pin. That's more likely, a style guide will be more limited, it's unlikely to have that shot of Doc Ock's back for instance, that's not a hero pose for that character. Won't see it on a package or plate. More likely there's a big library of images they keep for this very purpose. Probably every page of everything they do is digitally accessible. I bet without word bubbles too, so keeping it there was probably on purpose.

That's maybe why it feels so traced, was easiest to just replace things 1 as best they could, since without new drawings specific to the shape of the pin it was about fitting what you could.

Nothing wrong with that! It's a collage of pre-existing art, but that's just a medium, doesn't make it bad. Either Stern got to pick through their library, or, more likely, the artist or someone at Marvel picked out a bunch for them to use. That's the common way, studio hands you a folder of approved assets, and you go through them and collage up parts from it along with your own art. It's how I'm doing Alien, not putting it down.

Just saying that's how this was done, it's pretty obvious. (It will be obvious to anyone who knows this stuff on Alien too, again, not casting stones. Just explaining how these things are usually done.)

So given that I doubt Stern had any choice to but to use Ultimate Spider-Man art. Wish they'd been allowed to dig deeper back into that library man. The old character art, especially for the villains, was way better.

Disclaimer: I'm speaking for myself, and not Heighway Pinball, who is not my employer. Just to be clear since I brought up Alien. And I'm not critical of Stern's method, just trying to explain from experience how this stuff works to everyone.

Totally agree, still a lot of work. But by a much smaller team, with an entire framework of problem solving laid out in easy to see solutions.

It's massively easier and faster to retheme something like this than it is to create it from scratch. Such a streamlined process comparatively, everything was already figured out the hard way.

So whatever the BOM is, the development is less because it was faster, and because it was a smaller team, with less work than a from scratch build. They want to keep their Premium profit margin. Fair enough, they're a business after all, not a charity. But they didn't put all of those savings into actual Premium features when it came to the gameplay.

Rails are cool. Shaker is cool. The protectors are a really nice idea, they should make that standard for all their games for the price they charge.

What if the RGB lighting had been done instead of the dimming? Maybe a daughterboard and a handful of LEDs on the hardware side, and I suspect fairly simple code upgrades would do it. That alone would give people something they couldn't get before.

It's not that no one can afford a Premium pin. Lots of people here will spend that for a NIB Premium. I have and will again for the right game myself.

The complaint is that we're getting charged for a Premium, and granted the fancy rails and the shaker, but the game itself is a repackage. Iron Man got some new art on the speaker panel, new casts of the toys, new decal process, code updates to do the switch to all LED lighting, and it was a Pro. What I'm looking for here is the value in what Spider-Man is offering over Iron Man VE, and comparing that to the price delta.

That's where the value equation comes into it for me. And I feel the same way about say, The Hobbit. I think it looks amazing, they're pouring detail into that LCD screen. The value is there. It's just too expensive for me. But with the current market I think if you don't mind the price it's worth it.

Every game, to me, has to compare against a grand world of pins I haven't owned yet. There are so many great games I could get for less than $6600. So you gotta make the value equation tip more. I want the new features. I want the LCD screen, I'm tired of red dots. I want RGB LEDs.

I knew it would be more than Iron Man VE. I was hoping for a middle ground remake price. $6k shipped instead of $6600 shipped for instance.

It's okay, after hearing the new voicework I'm kinda over it all anyways. Whole thing looks and feels like Ultimate Spider-Man alright, as in the kids cartoon. Not what I'm looking for, I don't buy pinballs for my kids. They think Scared Stiff and The Shadow are the coolest games anyways, they have better taste than that.

Something with better Spidey art and a sound package that wasn't so cutesy (less sandcastle jokes) would have been more compelling.

From Facebook:

Stern Pinball: This was not mentioned in the press release but SMVE also comes factory equipped with a shaker motor.
Stern Pinball: This was not mentioned in the press release but the game also comes with a metal apron and service rails.

Still three. Most have new names, but otherwise it looks almost the same.

Almost nothing else to say after that, perfectly summed up.

The more I look at that cabinet side art the weirder it looks to me. What is going on with his leg? He has this weird bony ass protrusion, his calf is apparently suffering from the same bone spurs, and even worse, it's spread to his heel. I wonder how he buys shoes with a heel that sticks out like that? Out of all the great Spider-Man art in the world why that one?

Yeah, remember when Stern announced that they'd hired two 3D artists a little while back? They've been working towards this transition, those hires weren't to work on DMD games for the next decade.

Heh, he really does. Green skin, no shirt, giant muscles, purple pants ... Hmm that's familiar sounding!

Look at this: http://marveltoynews.com/sideshow-green-goblin-premium-format-statue-order-info/

$500 collectible. Huge and you couldn't put it in a pin. But, here's the point: obviously the classic Green Goblin is still available for licensing. I just wonder if the classic look was an option Stern rejected or not.

We're hard to please, they chose the wrong comic book.

I'm looking forward to hearing the callout better. I wasn't honestly into what I heard in the first video. All I can remember now though is that I'll never look at a sandcastle again the same way line.

I think we'll get a clear one post CES. Don't want to judge based on the short video from the noisy show floor.

When I was out at Banning today I saw an old issue of Game Room magazine that was the Spider-Man launch issue, and the ad from Stern on the back was for Spidey, and also Family Guy and POTC.

And that's all there is to my story.

Molly found a LOTR in a dumpster. Shit happens. Doesn't mean Spidey was a $3300 game or LOTR should be free, just fun anecdotes. Like seeing an ad from 2007 for some games.

Is your goal to make money? Sell the playfield and the game separately. You're not going to recoup your time and costs on that is my guess. Very few people will pay a lot for that when they can get a totally NIB game now. Unless they're really fans of the older game. There's just a ceiling on reasonable prices when you can get a new one dropped off at your house.

Nope, but I didn't read your comment before I wrote mine if you're wondering why I repeated your sentiment.

There are very few people on my ignore list, you have to really repeatedly be stupid for me to go that far, for the record.

The biggest trick of all of this is we're listing spinners like they're big expensive premium features.

Looking at that makes me think that a color LCD with "motion comic" style art would be cool for a comic themed game. A lot of those animations are just still characters that shift around, you could do that in high rez.

Would totally fit the comic theme, and would be way cheaper than trying to actually animate everything like a cartoon. Use parallax scrolling to bring a little depth to things.

Obviously a tribute to you ooze you loose.