I must be about the only oddball who actually likes this game. It’s not one I’d necessarily want to own, but the game has a somewhat interesting layout that deviated a bit from the typical designs, and it does hook me into dropping additional quarters.

Sure it isn’t one of Stern’s pinnacle achievements, but neither is it a “turd” (see Thunderbirds), and I do think it’s somewhat unfairly maligned. I think it was simply a victim of hype, exacerbated by the way Stern marketed the upgrade from SAM to the Spike system long before the the first game was revealed. I think this allowed the speculation to fester too long, becoming ever more tantalizing and raising expectations to an impossibly high level as the details of the system’s capabilities became known.

Of course, with that level of anticipation it’s inevitable that some disappointment would result, but I think the fact that the first game on their hot new system ended up looking and playing like any other average title and didn’t seem to take advantage of the upgraded capabilities of the new system is what really turned people off. (After playing the game and skimming the manual, I am fairly certain this pin could have been done with the SAM and possibly even Whitestar boardsets.)

I imagine one of the reasons they chose a conservative design for the first Spike game was to test reliability of the system before committing resources to a game with all the bells and whistles. Fine, but they should have been much more low-key with the announcement of the new system, waiting until they were able to build a game that could more fully exploit the capabilities before marketing it to that extent.

(And yes, I do indeed believe things are insane enough that it would sell out today!)