New proprietary system, old system, PROC...whatever. How does the game play, look, and sound?

Green jacket, gold jacket, who gives a shit

I’m super excited to see this game as well. I wish they would just release the whole game now with some pictures and gameplay video instead of doing a reveal at TPF.

How much longer is your wait for your TNA?

I can't afford any NIB games, but I'm still excited for their release though.

bummer, I thought you had one on order.

No. In a perfect world TNA would replace Hardbody in my collection. Having said that, Hardbody is still one of my top "bang for your buck" titles. I know people have mixed feelings about rethemes, but someday I'd like to turn it into a Pandemic (board game). I am still considered selling two machines to fund an Alice Cooper, but it's so hard to choose. I'd likely give up Gold Strike, but I do have fiends that really love playing an EM. Plus, I'd also have sell another game (and still likely add cash). I do have a neighbor that's looking to pickup a few machines, so I'd consider selling a few to him, knowing I'd still have access to them, or perhaps he'll want the Alice Cooper or TNA.

Exactly. The low guys (seems like 20-30% of pin heads) cant afford these games. Id have to sell them all to fund 1 NIB. Just doesnt line up.

I'd love to support Spooky by buying a NIB. Perhaps, I wouldn't feel so guilty, if my wife or kids were really into pinball, but in reality this is my hobby. They are supportive, so I try to be appreciative and respectful of that without pushing the boundaries too much. I'm thankful for the collection I've been able to acquire over these past six years. It's far beyond what I thought it would become, which give me hope that perhaps someday I'll become a Spooky customer. Until then, I'll enjoy them with friends or on route.

Can you put one out on route (along with a few of your other games)?

The family may be a bit more into it if the hobby slowly paid for the games. Also feels great to be able to share these great games with the public!
I love going in to see new and old faces enjoying the games.

I've considered it, but most I've spoken with have said it's not worth it for the money. I have a decent relationship with the owner of the local movie theater, so I might be able to take over that route. I have also inquired about machines at a local gaming shop.

Find the best location you can, offer to bring in 4 games and host a 1x per month meetup. Explain that you will maintain the games very well and it will bring in new people.

Ask for 100% of the coin drop and tell them you are willing to do it on a 6 month probationary period so they feel comfortable with knowing if after 6 months they dont like it then the game leave and no hassle.

You wont get rich by any means and it does not bring in much money, but assuming you already own your current collection, then with the right location you could pay off a new TNA over an 18-24 month period (with the help of your other games coin drop).

The positive is that you can then earn new games and have fun meeting some new pinheads (they will come out of the cracks once you start hosting a monthly event and offer a free beer to the winner)

Spooky can do no wrong.

Awesome! Not that I really "played" it though since there was very little code. But the game looks absolutely fantastic, shoots well, and has some really cool features.

IMHO, this will be an amazing game for Spooky.

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
borygard at gmail dot com

Lighten up, why do people have to make things so personal? It's like 0-60 on the attack dog front when no one was even mentioning you. I was just complaining to Kanye West about this last night.

I'm looking forward to seeing ACNC- i got on the list the day it was announced. I have faith its gonna look great squeezed in between my Metallica and MB.

In a couple weeks, Spooky Pinball will have three wise men visiting from the northwest. We can take pics when Charlie's not looking.

LOL!! The "northwest'"...

'Sota speak for the four hour drive from Minneapolis to Benton!! You crack me up BK!

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
borygard at gmail dot com

This seems like a mainstream media issue.

So who gives a F.

Drifting off topic, but, um, Spike 1 was already -intended- to drive LCD displays. But it failed to meet Stern's own requirements so they had to do a take two with Spike 2.

And then the node boards failed to meet Stern's requirements, so they spun that 2-3 more times so none of those are backwards compatible either. $300 for a node board that can be used on 2 games.

One would think, but they created the boards, so they would have known their own requirements.

SPIKE 1 wasn't a failure, it was just a stop gap.

For the love of this thread...it is about Spooky pinball, not Stern. PLENTY of other threads to talk about that there. Now, back to the Spooky channel.

Yes, they did know the requirements, but you obviously don't. You've lost credibility claiming something that is known to be the opposite. Here's a quote from Stern's press release on the original Spike.

The system is designed to facilitate integration of various display technologies such as varying size LCD displays both on the playfield and in the backbox.

Technically, it did drive an LCD display, on WWE LE. So you've lost credibility.

Now zip it! This is an Alice Cooper forum.

Everyone, please get back on topic. No need to discuss Stern in this thread. Feel free to pm each other on the matter.

So..... an Alice Cooper pinball machine you say......

Do we know that the game will be at TPF for sure? How many? The lines were pretty rough for the new games last year hopefully there is enough!

Yes, because it has been documented on the latest teaser.

2 machines are supposed to be at TPF?

The game looks great from the teaser video!

They should bring 4 and sell them all!

FB_IMG_1505182839489 (resized).jpg

I am probably in the minority on the, but the Spooky games aren’t that “exciting to me”. Very basic playfields. Reminds me of the mid 1980’s machines like Motordome. Their themes are very cool.

I feel the same.

What are you saying about my game!

FB_IMG_1482770149428 (resized).jpg

Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle will change your view.

--
Rob Anthony
Pinball Classics
http://LockWhenLit.com
Quality Board Work - In Home Service
borygard at gmail dot com

I hope they bring more than 2 machines!
Less lines = more play = more orders! (easier said than done i know)

Nevermind.

Since we’re not going get much more in that dept. until the big unveil at TPF, it’s fun to talk technical stuff in the meantime.

So, what about flipper latency? Will the flipper response drop everytime the screen has start a new animation sequence? . Why not? How do you test flipper latency?

Will the HD animations run at like 15 frames/sec like spike 2 seems to a lot of the time?

Will AC use the same speaker setup as TNA?

1. The system has a different processor that handles the in-game elements like hardware, game rules, etc. The AV is handled by a separate processor so that calling animations won't affect other processes. The flipper control is based on an interrupt so the timing is fairly exact provided that the software engineer doesn't consume most of the IRQ space.

TNA's flipper response timing matches those of WPC games since all of the slings, the pop bumper and flipper switches are handled by the FPGA on the P3-ROC board and not the host running all of the game code.

2. You test flipper latency at first by "feel", and by setting the IRQ timing correctly. If you wanted to, you could hook a scope to it and measure events from button press to coil throw. There is a theoretical latency to everything, obviously.

3. HD animations on pinheck yield about 30fps using graphics acceleration. We got way more than that on TNA since the TNA hardware and operating system were capable of putting out video at 1080p, so no need to worry.

4. AC has a different DAC setup at the moment, so thats TBD regarding the amp that the game will use. Either way, sound will be equally a large focus of the game for obvious reasons.

You beat me to it. I was going to say the same thing.

No AC pics but Charlie sent me this one this morning from his hotel. He so wishes he had invented this instead of starting a pinball company.

image (resized).jpeg

looks like some kind of Multi mode happening

Someone on Pancake-side would complain about operators eating first.

cool pic

Or that there are too many dimples in on the pancake field...

Looks like the pancake machine has a ramp in it.

I think you have that backwards.

While Pinside discussions (and the majority of pinball podcasts) seem to focus on the “shiny new toys”, rest assured that the majority of the people in this hobby are buying used games, not NIB ones.

I would flip your equation around and say 20% of pinballers are NIB buyers and 80% are not. Think of the 100s of used pins sold every day on Craigslist etc vs the relatively few that are manufactured every day.

Now, back to Alice! Just a shame I can’t make TPF this year to check it out.

rd