Agreed, once VC money enters the mix then the dynamic changes. Unlike a nice family owned business Stern still try's to fake, they are run by investors that only care about sucking every last dime out and then moving onto the next investment. Want to support a real family owned pinball business, buy SPOOKY! Keep in mind JJP is investor controlled too.

Oh there's no doubt aboot that.
But a lot of the people bitching aboot the low quality now are people that happily bought LEs for years, basically spend more monies for basically nothing...some diff'rent art yippee! Their the ones throwing cash at Stern as the prices went up and up but hey "I gotta get me that LE cause I have all the ones before it." They kept spending more,and Stern finally thought they had them by the balls with super fan boy SW and turned the screws on them; looks like it's backfiring big time.
I would usually say Stern knows how to deal with them and Borg will make a "Met Inspired" Iron Maiden packed with features and everyone will forget; but the ghosting being back is gonna be a big one.

not with pinball machines. or else they'd be going back left right and center to the distros for full refunds....

I really don't think Stern can recover from this. When you are talking thousands of dollars for a luxury item, nobody is putting up with shit quality, and that is not so easy to turn around and fix when Stern has already gone this far down the rabbit hole. If they started right now, it would take them years to get back to TSPP quality, and I'm not sure Stern investors even care to do it.

Step one, don't buy Stern NIB,
Step two, if forced, only buy on credit card so at least you have some protection.

Before, the different art/trim (sometimes backglass and shaker) were an $800 difference. It seemed relatively worth it for some custom stuff, especially if the game followed the Tron/AC/DC trend of holding/rising in value. When I bought Met LE, it was $6600. The Prem was $5800. Now the LE is what, like $1500 more than the Prem? No shaker. No real backglass. No value hold/rise. It's a different scene today.

You are literally paying $1500 for different (not necessarily better) art, some slightly fancier rails, and two extra translights that will be left in the box! Not even an $80 shaker or Stern's invisiglass/PDI thrown in!! It's kinda comical really.

Maybe the license cost is extremely high. If so, Guardians is not going to have much either.

I'm toying with just buying spooky, pps, and JJP. Much less Drama. FYI I've bought every Stern NIB since Tron.

They"ll recover if they want to but the cash cow they imagined with star wars was a failure of their own making.

<begin sarcasm>
I heard that with GotG, they are going to try a further cost reduction with 2 pop bumpers and only 1 flipper for the pro. if you want the full pinball experience, you'll need to pony up for the SDLE model (super duper), which will be limited to just 40 units [initially] at $18,500 ea

(the sad part is there are probably still a number of people that would buy into the above

Just a wild ass guess based on games over the past few years, but I think in pinball there are about 50 people that have enough money to buy every game that comes out, sight unseen and don't care about anything related to gameplay or quality. Seems like most every new game can sell 50, but sales after that take effort.

I may just go with AFMr and not gamble on getting a GB pro from Stern. I work so hard for my money.

Er.....everybody is.....

It looks like I am going with AFMr this fall. Why gamble? My money doesn't grow on trees. It's printed by the federal reserve and I have to slave for it. Get it together Stern, jeesh. I love my AS pro, no issues, playfield actually looks like they stepped up quality, this type of crap will hurt them, people talk, youtubes, forums, this and Star Wars will be a blow to the gut for them.

Ugh . If they screw up again and again, there's plenty of room for JJP, CgC, etc

Am I the only one who remembers the light ink on MMr play fields? The sling shots chewing into the playfield? Or the side rails that shredded the flesh from my thumbs?

I'm not saying there are any issues with AFMr by the way, but no manufacturer is immune to issues. None.

True indeed, at least they didn't proclaim those defects to be "normal" by printing it on the cover of the manual. They fixed it and then kicked things up a notch with AFMr, exactly how a good business should do things by getting better over time.

This is true but Stern seems to be the only one claiming it is normal.

I agree

I think CGC is getting a lot of praise these days due to their communication. Getting rid of Rick as their spokesperson and having Doug communicate directly with the community was a great move. We'll see how they handle defect issues going forward with AFMr.

And you could get a cup of coffee for less than a dollar!

That was the early 90s. Twenty-five years ago. A quarter century!

I think I'll go play my W/B machines and be glad as fuck that I don't own a Stern that falls apart I'm front of your eyes. Oh and they don't have shooter lane ware.

It sounds like things improved for sure. How did they rectify the MMr issues? Did they ship out populated play fields to people with light ink or chewed into sling area's? Or massive clear separation?

People have a sliver of ghosting on an insert and expect Stern to send a whole new play field. CGC basically said "Go F yourself" and people are spouting their praises.

I had customers CUTTING themselves on my MMr and they sent some tape and a sanding block.

Hopefully if people experience ANY clear separation, early wear in a ball trough or scoop, a slight blemish on a play field, CGC will do the right thing and send out a fully populated play field over night to the customer. It's the right thing to do, right?

To be fair: MMr was their first game ever. Stern has been making these things like forever. I hear nothing but good things about AFMr. I played it extensively on TPF and it played very good. For me it is mindboggling that the new guys all try to make their product better while Stern only makes it cheaper (for them).

Decided not to buy Stern anymore, instead I will probably buy an AFMr LE. I do feel bad for my Stern distributor as he is a good guy and always treated me very good but he does not sell JJP or CGC.

Plus, you get that cute little board in the head, and giant light boards under the playfield

It amazes me that people still try to defend Stern. They have cut costs and increased prices to the point that a 9 thousand dollar game disintegrates in a few hundred games and people still make excuses for them and poney up the cash. All you gotta do is let Gary eat a couple of his shit pins and he will get his shit together.

Stern SAM games started in 2006. Full featured games like Pirates, Spider-Man, Family Guy, etc were selling for ~$3500-$3700 NIB through around 2009. Not that long ago.

what's ironic, is that AFM is the stripped down version of the B/W games. It's basically the IM/GOT/RS of theirs. No other B/W dmd has less on it and more cheap looking.

weird how my 2 posts were removed /? Big wtf / I am growing to really not like this place post 540 and 541 / where they go. not even a Mod notice to the effect that my post has been removed because of______? it was a link / Links are no good to ebay though the ad was in Pinside marketplace as well? F 2 the umpteenth power

Yet it has all the ingredients that make it appealing - theme, art, humor, fast smooth gameplay, satisfying shots and outcomes, and rules that compliment the design.

Lol! I think AMF and IM are the best games from B/W and Stern. Stripped down pinball machines are like sport cars. Lighter and faster equal better.

Based on those SW gameplayed videos in YouTube, balls went so fast in the machine, I am not sure it is a good thing. Hopefully one day I can play it at my friend's place or in local arcade but before that I think DESW is still the best SW pinball machine. At least the dead star in DESW looks better than the pro version.

not me. I don't like AFM at all because I think it looks like an empty piece of crap and the rules are written for a 3 year old. I like clutter on my fields. Give me TZ any day over stripped down econogames.

In my opinion, Stern couldn't make TSPP in any category today.

If they did, they would likely remove the upper playfield, the third flipper, and the garage door. They would put Homers head on a bobble spring as the main toy along with Bart on the skate board. Other main features would be the Itchy and Scratchy drops with the saucer behind and the spinner in the right orbit. Instead of actual voice work from characters in the show, it would be a generic hillbilly or some such.

Added would be RGB leds with some cool light shows and LCD with clips from the show.

Now that I list the features, the above game would probably fall into the Premium category by today's Stern standards.

More like SLE

I thought that too when if first came out. Then I played it and was hooked.

I think AFM is bad for pinball because it's become the poster child for the "a game can have a barren playfield and still be the best of all time" camp. It just encourages Stern to go for less. This is sort of joking but not entirely.

As bare as it is, it still has 5x the amount of spring mounted bobble toys as SW. It also has the strobe, dropping target bank, gate controlled orbits and lock/ramp diverter. It's the entire package of theme, art, sound, humor and rules that elevates the simple playfield.

I don't remember it much with anyone I knew actually; but we weren't buying then.
All around the same time was AFM, NF, & JM...so we were kind of already hip to the fact that more shit piled on a PF didn't make the game better.

What did it say?

I had not heard this before and I'm wondering if anyone has a ghosting playfield with this type of sticker. I know my old Metallica had this sticker, but I'm pretty sure the playfield was a Mirco. My TWD Premium has this 'Dinner Time' sticker too. Is this evidence it's made by Churchill? Is Churchill even still making playfields for Stern?

Mirco doing Stern playfields? That's news to me. AFAIK Mirco has never done anything for Stern.

Any pics to prove this statement please.

If it is from Mirco, the Mirco logo should be on the bottom left of the playfield under the apron. As far as is known Stern never used Mirco playfields.

Just because they do that on their own branded products does not necessarily mean they'd do that for all OEM supplier arrangements.

True but they do for JJP pins for what it's worth.

More convincing would be... wouldn't if a manufacturer is going to be allowed to place their logo on a product they produce that agreement comes with some sort of small discount... can anyone imagine Stern passing up a discount?

I have news for you. Mirco PFs ghost as well. I had one of the first TZ PFs he put out and about a year later every insert on it was white. There is two types of ghosting. One is where the clear pulls off the inserts and another is where the clear over the inserts turns a milky white like on W/B game making the inserts look cloudy.

Oh, fair enough.

Sorry. You mentioned Data East and Sega, so I assumed you were talking about the olden days.

There is only one type of ghosting.
What you are talking about for old B/W PFs is not ghosting at all and comes from the primer they used. If anything that's a "seal of quality" as it shows the PF WAS primed at all.

Correct, but a lot of people call it ghosting. You have heard people here say that some of the old W/B PF ghosted like the sterns are doing now but it isn't the same thing. Aside from a few games with large inserts like IJ I have never seen any older game do what Sterns are doing.

B/W games I call it fogging. And it wasn't the primer that caused it, it was the clear itself. Until the past 15 years or so. clear wasn't clear. It had a faint foggyness to it. Just the way the clear was. Todays technology clear is crystal clear. Trying to duplicate that foggyness is very difficult when you need to match chipped out clear on old b/w games.