It almost looks like a modded No Fear.

I don't know, I've never been able to get into GOT. It just doesn't feel like a "game". These Stern pins always feel like I'm crunching numbers - pile up a bunch of stuff, hope I see a big number.

That's part of why I was disappointed by GOT, because it really doesn't feel like an adventure in the GOT world, which it very easily could have done.

Someone should start a "positivity only" safe space Stern thread so everyone else can crab in peace.

I felt the same going from DI to BM66, which really underlined how flimsy Sterns feel. Mostly it's just disappointing, which is a potent and frustrating emotion. I want pinball to progress as an art form and game style, and if anything Stern is just treading water, if not actually regressing.

Well, yeah, I think that's generally understood.

Haha I was gonna say, an 8k pin is like five months of paychecks for me.

I mean, ST, GOT, and ACDC are all pretty notably fugly so he's not having a great run, artwise.

It's funny, but I've never really been able to get into any of them, though I'm not a big Steve Ritchie fan. I just don't find his pins very, idk, involving? They feel like the "game" is secondary to the ruleset.

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The whole point of the internet is you can be a gigantic dickbag with almost no consequences, stop trying to squash my fun!!

Oh wow, I totally forgot they gave him a job. It'll be nice to see a hot guy in the publicity photos for once.

$2000 dollars? Jesus.

We'll see how the flow and code is but until then,

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Hans Olo is my favorite character.

A twink? Thanks!

If Ghostbusters had Hobbit's build quality and mode style, or if Hobbit had had Ghostbusters's engaging, oddball layout, I would like either way more.

I honestly can't say that I've played any Stern pin that feels as sturdy and smooth as Dialed In.

It would be interesting if it held the ball and then gave you another ball, and you had to knock it out like a captive ball to start a two-ball multiball.

Isn't that an opto under the ramp? All the game would need to know is that the gate is triggered followed by an optical interruption.

edit: I'm assuming it's just for the video mode, but it'd be a neat trick.

Which is why I prefaced my theory with "it would be interesting if", haha

The whole forum, really.

Aye haha, might as well put this sucker to use.

GOT and ACDC both make me feel like I'm playing one of those slap-the-buttons arcade games.

My biggest issue with these pins is that there's not enough behind all the Shoot The Arrow. Not enough story, not enough callouts, not enough character or humor. GOT is astonishingly dry, even when I watch someone totally own it like a boss it's like they're playing sudoku via pinball. Where's the story? Where's the world under the glass? It's all about multipliers and numbers and that's soul-crushing.

It's definitely hand-drawn, it's just (almost certainly) taken directly from stills, which means there's not much embellishment, abstraction, or general liveliness you get in a drawing constructed from references, as opposed to what was probably traced.

I'm a big fan of the show, I've seen all the seasons and am eagerly anticipating the next, I just don't care for how Stern integrates themes in general, which is why I'm hesitant about a Stern Star Wars pin.

To be fair, Stern's marketing kinda bites and if it wasn't such a tiny industry they'd be laughed out.

My memory is intact so my first reaction was "oh god what's going on now"

They should go in the opposite direction - nothing but pops.

It's only relevant in that they're competitors - if there were two hamburger shops in town and one kept giving people e. coli, it would probably be compared disfavorably to the other one that doesn't make people vomit their guts out every few months.

If you get the lowest score of the day Bea Arthur calls you a nerfherder.

Another Steve Ritchie pitch-n-bat with terrible art, bouncing tie fighter looks ditzy, LCD animations are a step up.

edit: lmao those downvotes

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I like balls flying in my face as much as the next man but I prefer my pinball to be a little more methodical.

Well where do you do it?

Beards are hot, I can't stand the look of a bare face on most guys.

I'm a big fan of the show as well and I disagree with all of this. Playing GOT feels like someone took a bunch of random stuff from the show and put it in a blender and all the bits and bobs are being regurgitated as I play. I don't find it immersive at all - if I were being generous I'd call it "minimalist", a game stripped down almost entirely to scoring with some Game of Thrones-themed party decorations strewn about.

I like a slower, more methodical form of gameplay. The only Steve Ritchie game I really love is Flash Gordon (edit: oops! ST:TNG, then), the new ones feel like hyperactive video games, or like those Japanese rhythm arcade games, just things flying at you while lights flash. Jpop's pins are shallow (and the guy himself is a turd), but they balance theatricality and flow way better than Ritchie's pins. Modern Stern pins in general have never felt thematically cohesive to me. I like the focus on points in EMs and SS pins - Stars, for example - because they're difficult and simple, but I crave the actual wholesale packaging of pins like TZ and WH20, which aren't "deep" like GOT but have a presentation that feels lovingly crafted and generally together.

I've said it a few times but playing GOT feels like I'm playing with a fancy calculator while someone's watching a TV show. There's no soul. Obviously, that's a really specific thing to "feel" in a pin, but as a total package, GOT feels flimsy and obsessively mathematical. The game as a concept doesn't come together, so it's harder to lose myself in it. What happens in GOT? What's going on when Arya Stark is marking names off her list? Nothing! It's terrible, uninvolving gameplay and the only point is to get points. That's terrible. That's a terrible way to design a game. I need something to play for besides numbers. Pinball machines have a great capacity to be wholly theatrical experiences and it's frustrating to see it being wasted repeatedly.

What I love about Pat Lawlor, besides the methodical gameplay (stop-and-go, the antithesis to "flow" pins) and unique playfield geometry, is the sense of emotion that ties the pin together. There's the inevitable coup de theatre that defines the game, like Rudy's head or the cracking state line on Earthshaker, but there's also the sense of irony, whimsy, and menace. The pin isn't just a thing that adds up numbers based on when you push a button, there's an intent behind the gameplay that becomes apparent as you play. Rudy turning on you is one of the most astonishing moments in pinball, because it demonstrates that the game itself has an opinion about the player, and that's a key element that's not present in a lot of Stern's modern pins.

This is part of why I like Wheel of Fortune - even if it is silly and nonsensical, it feels like it's interactive. You could call it "character". Road Show is packed with character, where every mode leads up to a gag. Candy 2000 in Safecracker is in all parts of the game and she gives it a palpable sense of menace. Even the overlap of themes in Earthshaker - studly 50s cruiser meets cataclysmic faultline failure - generates a sense of ironic tension and fun. It's that extra step that creates a hook for the player that takes the game beyond being a series of switches, buttons, and points and becomes an experience. That's what's missing, and it's that absence that I hate.

How about that! Then I guess I'd have to pick ST:TNG.

edit: I just have a lot of opinions about the potential for pinball, and I find Steve Ritchie's designs to be particularly frustrating, and there's nothing more enlightening than analyzing something you don't like.

It's funny, because I love EMs and spent hours at the NWPAS playing the amazing EM lineup (getting all the 2001 drops down on ball one was an amazing experience, and I had a hard time tearing myself away from the flipperless pool pin). I think it's just annoying when there's the potential for that deep theatrical experience, but then it's absent in favor of a lightspeed pointsfest with some shabby thematic trimming. It's not even that one has to exist in place of the other, either, but in the current market I guess that doesn't matter - the average street player just likes seeing a lot of balls flying around, and the home-buyer has been playing for decades and wants the rarefied ultrachallenge.

GB has great playfield geometry, but it's hamstrung by its flimsiness.

Unless you have a gut like I do

Ahaha. I can't speak to the arse but I've definitely got more of a keg than that dude. So long as I can reach the flippers, right?

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who saw a coin return and said...

Anxiously checking the pinball map in case this shows up in Seattle (ship faster!!).

As funny as it was that people thought I was a woman it was time for a change. "Fried stuff with cheese!"

I was watching the Deadflip stream again and I noticed (at about 1:11:45) that you do, in fact, lock a ball in the horseshoe and then knock it out like a captive ball to start multiball, which is extremely cool.

That's really neat. In the stream he knocks it out and then the game autofired a third ball from the trough. "Locked ball becomes captive ball" is a toy I've always wanted to see more of but I can't think of it appearing on anything besides this, Breakshot, and World Poker Tour (I think?).

I feel like I'd enjoy GOT and the mathier pins more in a home setting, trying to learn them at a barcade where I can't hear the callouts and every game costs me fifty cents/a dollar is really off-putting.

Oh my god the cutout of the ship that flies by at 16:03 is hilarious. All the ship cutouts look like they're being dragged around in photoshop. Those wiggling tie fighters...

Got to play this on location here in Seattle and...oh my god, I liked it? It wasn't set up to be a speed demon, which I think works to its advantage, if it were much quicker I probably would've just felt frustrated, but there was a nice amount of floaty back and forth, which I really enjoy. The rubbers near the outlanes get a lot of exercise, and that's actually a lot of fun. It's not a very difficult game, which I appreciate, none of the shots are impossible and some are pretty easy. Death Star shot has a nice flow to it, and once you've got it mentally mapped it's a very do-able shot - the difficult part is just getting the ball to the flipper to snatch the hurryup.

Biggest problem is what you might call "I'm-in-a-mode?-itis", the game does a terrible job of making the modes feel like they're, you know, happening, especially when you stack them and then you just have a mishmash of quotes flying nonsensically at you while all the lights switch colors. The placement (or even existence) of the pops is a gigantic, embarrassing mistake. I might even go so far as to call it a downright stupid decision, and it's space that absolutely, 100% could've been utilized better.

Most of the weak elements you don't really notice, like the bouncy tie fighter or the clumsy animations, though I did find the "punch the button" tie fighter mode to be extremely lame, mostly because the actual destruction of the fighters didn't seem to really match how quickly I punched the button. I did like how I managed to activate tie fighter multiball by activating the attack mode after the ball drained and slapping the button enough times before the ball got to the bottom of the trough.

The art is bland. It's less hideous in person because it's all lit up but it definitely has a lunchbox vibe. Props to the lightshow department, because they're doing most of the heavy lifting on this game.

I don't know if I would enjoy this pin in a home environment, but I had a good time pumping quarters into it. It's ironic that "fast and flowy" is the big thing right now, because these pins are basically becoming flashy arcade games. Star Wars scoots around that by a lot of nice lateral motion, which brings an old-fashioned anticipatory physical vibe, and avoids the feeling that I'm playing a video game with flippers. The lack of toys is still a bummer, and I'll be curious to know if more music is coming. If not, they've got themselves stuck with an incredibly limited soundtrack.

So yeah, I had a fairly good time playing this. Shame about those pop bumpers!

lmao! It just seems like such an obvious theme to have fun toys on. You really get a sense of it being nothing but unmoving plastics and rubber after a bit, which is kind of a shame.