No, that area seems to be to the left of the left orbit entrance, which is to the left of the left ramp. It's below the ramp return.

Mechanically/toys-wise, this is pretty basic for a Premium/LE. Wonder how stripped the Pro will be...

It's there, but only in the corners of a couple quick shots. You can clearly see it on the far left of this shot. I pointed down to it with an arrow, and have up arrows showing all the up playfield shots. The left orbit is clearly still there, even with the saucer showing.

I didn't realize until I looked at this pic that there seems to be a passage on either side of the central target bank.
stranger-things (resized).jpg

Looks like 8 if you count the flashing green arrows near the end.

lit_shots (resized).jpg

All of it would probably look a LOT better with a higher intensity (more expensive) better resolution projector light. I wonder what resolution they're feeding the projector, and would a better projector make it less washed out and blurry?

There's no glass on this machine. You can tell at the beginning where it moves in on the guy playing.

The screen's *okay*, but I REALLY like the idea of animated projections on the drop targets, spinners, and stand up targets (with numbers for maybe hurryups or multiplier numbers?). Also, the sign above the left ramp that can change depending on what you're doing.

That said, better projector will be necessary to make it not be blurry, washed out, and annoying.

Pretty sure it's the Premium/LE because of the lit apron inserts and magnetic wall ball lock that are exclusive to the Prem/LE. But it makes me wonder how stripped down the Pro's gonna be, because there's not a whole lot of toys on the Prem/LE, at least in that video. A projector or projectors, magnetic ball wall lock, and a demigorgon bash toy. But if that's the case, the Premium once again gets what's likely to be the crappiest art package. Interested to see what the Pro and LE art package looks like.

Someone else probably caught this, but that's likely TeleKinesis, the balls-to-the-wall multiball for Eleven.

NST makes the most sense to me since "Netflix Stranger Things" is right on the backglass.

Because Stern. That and the mini LED projector is like $75. You can't be gifted something like that for only $5,700.

Yeah, I was guessing it was one of the 1280x720 800-1000 lumen cheapies China cranks out because it's a very short distance from the apron to the screen and the images are still very dim and somewhat blurry. Be interesting to see what they actually went with when these hit the streets.

You're probably not getting anywhere near that life in the world outside the spec pages. But even if you are, you're likely not getting that at full brightness for its whole life.

I think upgrading it to one with better light output (and resolution, depending on what it's being fed), is the more likely scenario.

We have all Premium and LE out on the route I help with. VERY rarely we'll run a pro, usually while waiting for the Premium to come out. There are plenty of operators that do the same, plus it will have to be running in attract mode all the time or there will just be a bunch of white panels all over the playfield.

And the time between FAILURE isn't as important as how long the light runs before it starts losing output lumens (dimming), especially since the cheap projector in this is pretty washed out at the beginning already.

$100.

Plus laser projectors are expensive. If Stern has more than $100 into this projector setup, I will be shocked. The washed out video says it's LED.

You mean the Stern that simply disabled the feature in the software and called it literally "as designed" after the fact rather than fix the design issue they initially called "good enough" and shipped that completely broke the Martell mode of GoT? That Stern? I think you give them too much credit. Profit is top of the list, always. This could go either way given how washed out the video-mapped stuff is in that promo...

Yeah, that was my favorite application of the tech. Very cool.

So the video is edited VERY carefully not to show balls rolling in front of the projections EXCEPT a very quick shot at the end where the ball is blocking the projection for the two standups on the right ramp as it rolls by. I wonder how distracting it will be to have a moving light block rolling around the playfield, blocking the graphics on the standups and targets at the very least when it's in the path of the projection.

NST_ball_roll.gif

$100 more on the Pro. Not sure if the hike is the same across the board.

He has a history of not polishing often half-baked games, and the ones he did that turned out okay only were that way once someone else came in to help him.

Yeah, the LEs get exclusive art blades. The Deadpool LE art blades are better than the ones you can buy from Stern.

Not Chuck, but it does not from what I've heard. Makes sense. Probably virtual.

I'm sure there's a mapping utility of some kind on the menu that projects a grid or numbers or something to help you align it, and keep it in alignment.

Or they'll just add a default setting in the software to disable the wall coming down and announce it is "as designed" like they did instead of fixing the Martell mode orbits in Game of Thrones.

Pretty sure that's a porno Lonnie has nothing to do with.

DISASTER BLASTER

Well, Trudeau IS out of prison now...

All 80 WWE LE owners that have been trying to find someone...anyone...to take it off their hands at anywhere close to what they paid will be even happier...

Beatles is the laziest money-grab Stern has done recently. I was SHOCKED at all the panning B/W STILLS used for their concert crowds on-screen when much more compelling actual live-action footage is available. Using crappy stills just came across as cheap, which NO version of Beatles pinball pricing was. They were all massively over priced and should have had a deluxe presentation to match the price. Indefensible. A huge "meh" - and the still-falling prices on the secondary market reflect that.

The DA didn't try the sexual assault case against his relatives since it happened almost 30 years ago and it would be too hard to prove. So, they (I think it was two DAs since it was in separate counties, not sure) put a plea deal together for both cases (the child porn possession and the sexual assault) and he got a tremendously short sentence, less time served, plus probation and registration as a sex offender. I, too, was really shocked at the SUPER light sentence, given the offenses.

Pretty sure it was just so they could make the cornerstone release count they advertised.

If Stern went back and finished WoF just to shut people up and take away an easy point to score in the code wars, I would have to hand it to them. It would be an epic troll.

How else do you explain slowly panning black and white still photos of events where there exist actual video footage that would be much more dynamic? It was cheap and lazy, take your pick which. I could not believe that was the direction they went with Beatles when they have a TON of material to choose from. By any definition, it's far less than it should have been, at the very least, or a lazy money grab at worst. The resale value is the final arbiter and prices are still falling, which says it all.

I do not see that happening, at least not as a marquee name. Some kind of advisory capacity behind the scenes for some pin company? Maybe. But his topline career is done. NO ONE is going to admit Trudeau's helping them.

Heard that a lot about TWD for a long time before Lyman did a huge update and completely changed the way the game plays, making it one of the best pins Stern has in the modern era. I hate the horror/zombie genre, and I still love TWD pin.

Will that happen with Lonnie's work here? Maybe, maybe not. It basically reinforces the "wait 12-18 months and check back" purchase advice.

3 HOURS with no index? Nope. Not worth it.

EDIT: Their website entry for that has an index, at least (without times):
http://www.head2headpinball.com/2019/01/14/episode-76-dwight-sullivan/

Fortunately, he talks about the Gomez trap starting right upfront at 02:45.

Stern kind of missed a visual feature by not making the speakers on the LE Demigorgon heads coming through the backpanel grills. A little plastic, some printed mesh screen, it could have looked pretty cool.

Yeah, while I would like to have some of the later GoT season content added in, they can leave out the crap from the last couple seasons and we'll just pretend it ended in Season 5 and Winter never came.

The network functionality is clearly the beginning of that. It's not just for high scores and operator convenience - that doesn't make Stern any money. I'm sure there's an eye toward adding paid upgrade features over the network (if not an outright plan already in place).

Loved? Are you serious? EA has gotten so greedy that lootcrategate almost got national legislation to prevent it as gambling, which it essentially is. It's a very close relative of DLC and very manipulative of the customer. Nope. Can't get on board with it.

True, but you're not figuring in the HUGE savings on the manufacturer side when media cost for games went from $18 roms to $1 CDs to $0 downloads. The media costs, which were a huge part of SNES/Genesis fell precipitously. Of course, the console manufacturers sucked up some of that savings in more in royalties, but the overall costs to the publishers went down, and the order requirements fell, too, reducing upfront costs and risk.

Well, they KIND OF DID have to do it for Ghostbusters, since a FEATURE advertised on the FACTORY rule card was simply NOT IN THE GAME. Took them 3.5 years to deliver the base features on the rule card.

But, generally speaking, carry on.

Not significant? Just rom cost to publishers in the SNES/Genesis days were around 50% of the wholesale cost publishers charged retailers AND there were huge upfront order requirements to even get to market. You couldn't just make what you wanted since the lead time was like 3-4 months to get more. You could pave the Golden Gate bridge with the unsold Bill Laimbeer Combat Basketball carts due to those giant initial order requirements and no demand at launch. Those costs dropped to less than 20% of wholesale price in the CD era. That's significant and gave publishers lots of running room until the 2000s when production costs became the big threat to profitability/viability.

As a publisher, you weren't paying COST. You were paying a package price that included royalties to the console manufacturer (well, unless you were Accolade...). It was very expensive with a long lead time. With CD the media cost to the console manufacturer dropped so low that the price to publishers became almost purely a royalty.

Do you have an airball issue or something? The AfMLE here looks nothing like that after being on location most of its life.

It's just pressure fit. This is a Bad DesignTM. The length of the post acts as a lever, and using a pressure fit one instead of one with a side screw or push-through post means with the ball always tapping it, it will keep working itself out from the lever action.

Heh! On the off chance you ever cross paths with Naoyuki Tsuji from Hudson, never ever EVER even mention the game to him. He was responsible for the license and the glut of expensive carts Hudson had to eat and he's STILL sore about it.

I didn't even know they MADE a version without a pressure spring thing through them until Houdini arrived as a pressure fit up-post only.

Yeah, that's how these pressure fit ones are. The length of the post on this one making a lever essentially will pretty much guarantee that no dimple will be enough to hold it over time, though.

Installing ANY mod technically voids your warranty.

The Pinball Life shaker is rock solid and feels smoother than the Sterns for $20 less. Stern is not going to ask you if you have a 3rd party shaker motor when your playfield starts chipping and you need warranty support. The only reason there was a service bulletin warning about 3rd party shakers is when spike first came out it caused problems with the node board. But it was fixed in a matter of days, that was years ago, and there hasn't been a problem with the PBL shaker since that I've heard. We use them on all the route games and they're trouble free.

https://www.pinballlife.com/shaker-motor-kit-rev-c-for-stern-spike-spike-2-system-games.html

You're not truly a pinsider until you've been hammered unexpectedly.

RE-gluing? If only. They're not epoxied or anything from the factory. Nothing holding it into the base but pressure and a dimple. And I'm not even sure epoxy would hold long-term. It's just a bad parts choice and should have been the kind with the spring-loaded piece that goes through at the base to hold the plastic part on, but this part was probably .0137 cents cheaper per unit.

Recycles and mirrors his designs a LOT in the last 10 years.

Thank you. I could see it, I just couldn't connect the word to it!

CES is well-lit, but that cheap pico projector (or projectors) they're using is just failing hard in that lighting. Stern needs to throw a black tent over that area to help or people are not going to be having good impressions...
screen-closeup (resized).jpg

Is SOMETHING there? Yeah. Is it what most would call visible and working? No. Especially on the ramps, ramp standup and drop targets.

I'm very surprised Stern didn't put a tent over this to control the lighting A LITTLE. Very. Surprised. If I was Brian Eddy, I'd be pissed and heading over to Home Depot or Lowes to buy a 10x10 black canopy and slip the union guys some dough to set it up ASAP to give this showing at least a CHANCE of a positive impression.
screen-only (resized).jpg

The Stern PF problems started in 2008. Two years late with that test.

Compare to LotR's playfield. Hardness testing confirms that's about as hard as classic B/W and much harder than the almost all (all?) playfields Stern is pushing out now. But you can tell that by just looking at it. Dunno about the LE, though, as that came much later...

OMG. It would be hilarious if JJP was handing these out to players just outside the Stern booth.

You missed a key word. It's a CHEAP projector. Not looking great, but hopefully there's a way to swap it out for a decent projector if you have this pin.

The comment about the standups and drops getting dirty from the ball and making the weak projection even worse was on point and something I didn't even consider when it was announced.

Pretty sure the lack of stainless protector at the entrance of the ramps means it's behind the plastic, but that just made me realize that those unprotected ramps are going to be DESTROYED from ball impacts at the ramp entrance in short order.

Yeah, hard to tell. But if it's a thin metal protector and the white sticker goes over it, that's still bad (ball wear through the sticker) but a lot better and cheaper to replace than a destroyed ramp.

Doubtful. The only pain with convention centers is not being able to lift a finger to set stuff up. It's been a while since I've done CES, but at the LACC you have to have the union guys do EVERYTHING, and they get really pissed if they catch you doing stuff yourself that "takes" that job from a union guy. It's a huge pain.

I didn't say that. They work hard and we were happy to pay them. But when you have to wait 4 hours to put a door on a booth or countless other simple tasks that can be done in 5 minutes or less yourself or with the staff you brought for the show, there's a problem with the system. They had plenty of work and received plenty of handsome remuneration for that work. Being hardasses about the small stuff they didn't have time to do in a timely manner ANYWAY did not win them any fans. That was the problem.

"Sorry. Unless you’ve got a time machine, that content is unavailable."

How about this link:
https://www.twitch.tv/flipnoutpinball

Anyone with firsthand experience with this knows this is truth. The whole "if it requires a tool (ANY tool) to install you can't do it and have to wait for a union guy to show up" is total nonsense. No one is trying to put them out of a job, just trying to apply a little real-world common sense. It's especially critical at move in and teardown.

It got better for us at LACC once we figured out which union guy was the tattletale and treated him like royalty. But it took us a few shows to figure out how to work the system so the dumb parts were not enforced as much.

I feel like you're answering a post that didn't happen here and are just overly sensitive to any union criticism, valid or not.

Mirco has a ceramic option, but that's more $$$.

The standups can likely be 90% fixed with the swinks target bracket that angles the target down a few degrees. Almost completely solved the massive problem on Ghostbusters with the 2x/3x standups.

I don't know why Stern doesn't adopt the revised standup profile because it's so effective at keeping the ball on the playfield, though. Makes no sense. Simple manufacturing change and then fixes most of the problem across all their pins.

Maybe they should have gone the Viper route and had ceramic glo pinballs and blacklight so you get dark and can see the ball as well. Probably too many eye damage liability issues if it's constantly on, though...

The only possible saving grace is if the cheap, crappy, bottom-of-the-barrel, likely $50 pico projector can be replaced by something in the $200-$300 range to improve contrast and lighting. That might make the mapping visible at the minimum level you would expect. A lot will depend on the space available for the mount in the apron, too. Looks like it's very close to the ball drain.

Exactly, but the main problem will be the space available to mount it. It looks to be right above and to the side of where the ball drains. There's not a lot of clearance at all. It will be the main problem in fixing this to make it acceptable to most people that don't want to watch blurry, washed out video mapping.

Let's be honest. It's still in the neighborhood of garbage in the very dark room promo video with the glass off - the most ideal conditions. It's still blurry, washed out, indistinct under those ideal conditions. The crap pico projector Stern bottom-of-the-barreled in there will have to be replaced for this video mapping to have a chance at whatever coolness Brian Eddy clearly aspired to.

I almost want to buy a Premium just so I can fix it and publish some recommended replacements I've got working in it to get this machine to the level Brian Eddy deserves. Almost.

That's only 640x360, and it's brand-name. Stern is very likely using a 1280x720 Chinese knockoff pico projector. MAAAAYBE 1920x1080, but I doubt it. Stern doesn't pay for brand name electronics as a rule, and certainly not in this case. IF they wanted this projector, they'd just go direct to the chinese company that made the optical part of that TI system, Young Optics Incorporated.

Hilarious that he estimates the pins cost $3000-$5000 depending on which model.

And he calls Gary Stern Rick Flair.

EDIT: Great minds think alike.

Technically LCD/LED/OLED displays are still Dot Matrix Displays. They're a matrix of colored pixels, so he wasn't really wrong. Just kind of out of date. Like calling a CD an album. Not totally wrong, but...

Meanwhile, Harley stock price down 50% since 2006 while DJIA is up 100% in the same period. Keep emulating Harley, Gary. It'll catch up with you eventually.

Could have done an aperature lock on the projector screen area, too, which would darken everything else before taking the shot. Didn't have to be done in an app, but likely an inaccurate representation.

When the gravy train's on two wheels throwing sparks and there's a curve ahead, you try to save the gravy.

Well, better projectors on the LE, at least. Naaah...that ain't happening.

I can attest that these work great. Cut out 2x/3x standup airballs on Ghostbusters almost completely.

Some call him Ric Flair

Sounds like that's what they're waiting for - getting some more video in the game so the screen and targets don't show the same clips repetitively.

Can you earn dice with less sides for the roll to up your odds? Real D&D has lots of different dice with different side counts.

Why is the 1.5 gain one better than the 1.8 gain one?

The better screen material wants 1800-2000 lumens minimum. I'm really questioning if the Stern happy meal pico projector can meet that threshold.

To quote George W Bush, "That was some weird shit."

But after a while, it's just boring. Not a great long-term pin.

EDIT: Dialed In owners downvoting - surprise! But remember, Denialed In owners...

As you are now, so once was I
As I am now, so you will be
So be prepared to follow me.

I'm assuming pinstadiums from the dealer?

Well, after spending 6 months with it and being bored to death the last couple months, pretty sure my opinion of Dialed In isn't changing, barring a major overhaul of the code design. Second weakest JJP pin.

Isn't that about 80% of the posts in here this past week? No one would have noticed.

Is the series popular in the UK?

End of Jan/beginning of Feb. Premiums are the end of Feb-ish.

Wait, so the female characters are more teflon and dominant, but they have more flaws? If they lack less flaws, that means they have more flaws...this sentence is confusing.

It'll happen on all of these eventually. A pressure-fit plastic post that long is gonna work its way out from the ball hitting it, making it act like a lever and wiggling it out of the pressure fitting on the metal part. Just plain the wrong part to use there. They should have used they type with a roll pin (thanks:flynnibus for the actual part term) to hold the plastic post to the metal fitting on the base instead of a pressure fit one. But the pressure fit one probably saved Stern 4 cents. It's gonna cost them a lot more than they saved to fix this in the field.

You aren't officially in the hobby until you've been Who-Deyed. Welcome.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that it's a known thing. A badge of honor.

Well, that's a low bar that's true of pretty much every recent new out of the box Stern except Batman '66 and GotG. Munsters code is a box of lights disaster.

What's a "blue" slang for?

That's not a normal Spike 2 error. Don't ignore it. Literally none of the Spike 2 machines we've had ever did that once.

The error is there for a reason. So, not normal, even the handful of people you know with one has it. I'd check the 48v output from the power supply and see if Stern got a batch of them with the 48v slightly low (which would draw the error when everything powers on at once at boot). If the 48v is dead on 48v or a hair below, you can bump it a half a volt with the pot.