This is a good point...I would also say the low BOM may also be a culprit. Look at ST, or SM..they're both great layouts but suffer from one thing or another that had nothing to do with Steve's design

Have any of you actually asked him what he thinks of the competition? Not much is the answer, but toss enough money at him and who knows???

I like how this is always the argument when people say a game is clunky, yet I've seen national-class (The only reason I'm not saying WORLD class is because I can't remember if I've ever seen Colin on WOZ before) players struggle with WOZ in tournaments and league many many times.

The best flow that WOZ has is from the upper playfield with the house. Haha

Not every game needs to insanely fast to be considered good. There's plenty of high flow games that are not well regarded. Sometimes non stop action gets dull and often prevents moments in the game from occurring. Personally I think its nice to have a blend of flow and stop and go.

With WOZ there's so many different things to shoot at including a variety of targets, shots that drop into / pass through an area, and 2 upper playfields with their own shots (1 having a hidden shot behind the castle doors). The player can focus on different areas of the game that correspond to specific goals. Want to go after Crystal Ball modes, go for hitting the BALL standups. Want to go for Munchkin modes, then hit the RAINBOW targets to light the upper left mini playfield. Those are are just a couple of the areas and on top of that you can then stack the Crystal Ball and Munchkin modes with other modes for bigger points. Attempting to earn the 4 emeralds throughout a game is a lot of fun as it acts a reward feature for completing goals, something very few games do. Hell, then if you even get the 4 emeralds and reach the Wicked Witch wizard modes you can also go after the 10 or whatever diamonds in the game to reach the super wizard mode.

What I mentioned above is the fun of WOZ and I wouldn't substitute a mini playfield or a mech for another ramp just to add more "flow". What JJP did with WOZ is incredible and hell the game is still receiving code updates 8 years later. WOZ is a modern TZ in my opinion, is loaded with fun toys / mechs, has a ton to shoot for, and has one of the deepest rulesets in pinball. I'm sure some people will disagree and that's cool...but I'll go to my grave saying those things lol.

I’m going to give my counterpoint to your well thought out point you have made in your evaluation of WoZ

WoZ blows.

so, has anything been confirmed or is the flow thread now?

flow (resized).jpg

Would you own a Bram Stokers Dracula? I'm the same way with my games.

AC/DC.

Steve Ritchie is a living legand. I love the man.

The production schedule at JJP doesn't support 3 designers.

For sure. But I’d never use it in a tournament, so that why I really haven’t pulled the trigger. But it’s definitely a fun casual game.

Yep. But I was just joking. Hence the

Yep and who cares.

or who turds

I have been known to do so now and then.

You do. 104 posts in 7 years, and you cared enough to post twice about it.

If I saw Steve Ritchie at a show, I would (try to) get the skinny…

Steve Ritchie is awesome, I would try to steal him away from stern if I made pinball. I hope he enjoys his life now. Every moment.

Why couldn’t his talents be in both places? Two paychecks.

Non-compete clause.

You're not going to allow someone that the success of your business depends on at a high level to work for a direct competitor.

Why is BSD a bad tournament game? I'll never forget that epic Johannes / Daniele IFPA world championship final match.

Seems you forgot how the game shit the bed during that match. Haha

Very great match though.

The game just has way too many super weird bugs that just seem to happen randomly.

I guess so!

Gotcha, makes sense.

Yup we know

Did I call it or what?

Also: WOZ sucks.

I use it regularly. Bugs rarely show up but the auto-launch can be temperamental. If your optos are flaky and it loses track of a ball all bets are off.

The upside is ball times are so short the odds are none of your players will have time for the game to misbehave.

Could a JJP playfield hold up to a Steve Ritchie design? They've never seen speed like that before.

That would be great f-14 is one of his best. Just imagine internet connectivity and playing linked NBA Fastbreak style.

There’s just so many games that are rock solid for tournaments with short ball times. Not worth the risk for me. Now if I could just get my Grand Prix to stop taking a dump during tournaments. Haha.

Can you spot all seven differences?
The King of Clunk.png

Who knows how this shit works. Seems like Dennis Nordman is always designing 6 games for 4 different companies at the same time.

Now taking full advantage of the ignore feature, the peace and quiet is nice It's a great time saver as well, the ignored users can now argue and throw insults at a brick wall.

Occam's Razor.

They should be Jersey cops, stuck in traffic at the George Washington Bridge for a week.

GWB_Bridgegate_entrance_Sept_2016 (resized).jpg

Depends who has the better negotiating position to fight to keep that out or not.

Most of the big names have worked as independent contractors who were not exclusive at some point or another. Many, like artists and roles like David H continue to be independent and take work with multiple manufacturers.

Weird bugs? My Drac was used in the tournament at CAX for several years and never had any issues. I got more compliments on that game than any other game I brought. It had upgraded flipper coils (11629's) so we jacked it up to 7 degrees and it played wicked fast. It was also regularly used in league play without issues at the location I had it at.

BSD is an awesome tourney game as long as you have all your optos and switches working properly. Pretty cool when you consider that it only had one software revision. It doesn't have a lot of different strategies, but everyone loves Drac.

I'm only talking about someone on Ritchie's level. The guy is easily the most well known pinball designer, for better or worse. There's plenty of reasons Stern WOULD release him from a non-compete, or why he might still be working under per-game contracts. It's pretty well known that Steve and Gary don't always get along.......but I'm just presenting the possibility that at some point he may have stopped being per-game/contract and signed a non-compete that Stern doesn't want to release him for competitive reasons, and he may have to wait out whatever term that is to go elsewhere, even if he isn't actually doing work for Stern.

*edit* Changed "them" to "Stern" for clarity on that last part.

I'm sure your drac is awesome and everybody loves it and you get lots of compliments and your league loves it too and it's the best but game is famous for getting confused due to the complicated ball locking issues.

Don't take it personally bro!

It's not Ritchie's first time around the block.. he's probably in a strong enough position to avoid any non-compete that exceeds his actual employment time (so no moonlighting, but probably less/if-any restrictions on post employment). But its all speculation because there are really no rules here - its all about what the two parties agreed to. Non-compete enforcement in Illinois seems to have pretty reasonable standards. I would expect a relationship like Ritchie's to be an employment contract and not just a rank and file employee offer.

As you say - its a possibility - but none of us know AFAIK what the real deal there is.

Hey we all love Steve and he cranks out the playfields but let's face it, he's old and expensive and isn't exactly setting the world afire with his layouts lately, and if he really wants to leave Stern...maybe they wouldn't exactly be upset to see him go?

We are talking salary cap here...you see tons of aging, expensive NFL players with big contracts walk because their team wants to move on and another team wants to make a big splash and sell some tickets.

That could well be what's happening here. JJP can win the week with a press release and get people talking about something besides disintegrating playfields for a few days, and Stern could shed some salary cap and keep their youth movement going at the same time.

And everybody's happy! It does happen every now and then.

That's a fair point. Might be why he was contract in the first place for all we know. Didn't want to risk getting stuck there with Gary.

It's not complicated. As long as the game passes Mist test in diags without errors, it should be fine in tournament play. If you pimp it out with LEDs that interfere with optos, that will cause problems. Please don't denigrate a fantastic tournament game. If your game is having lock issues, find a better tech. It's not the software causing your errors.

But don't believe me. Jim Belsito was the head tournament tech at CAX for years. He liked my Drac because we had to do very little to prepare it for tournament play. Ask Jim if Drac is tourney worthy next time you see him.

Here's what PAPA game notes say. No mention of ball lock issues.

Dracula is a game where rhythm is very important. Flipper hop on this game can be devastating to players, and it should be fixed or avoided at all cost. Turning off the ball-saver on Dracula will also turn off the ball saver during multiball. Considering the short ball times on this game at factory settings, and the fact the plunge and subsequent randomized pop bumper action are out of the players’ control, Directors are encouraged to leave the players a ball saver. If available, directors are encouraged to use the custom 500k mystery award rom.

https://replayfoundation.org/papa/learning-center/director-guide/game-notes/

Okay, we get it, BSD is your favorite game.

Frankly, I hope I never see it in another tournament ever again...at least not until I get to own one for a while.

I think it’s really important everybody has a bsd in their tournaments.

sttng too, to bring it back to topic.

Definitely not my favorite game, but it's a little surprising to see experienced tournament players suggesting it's not tournament worthy. PAPA used it a lot of years.

The reason people like it is because it's fast and there's essentially only one strategy. Go big (triple stack), or go home. Double stack may get you into the playoffs, but the triple stack will win you the trophy.

Who's this Steve Ricci guy everybody's talking about?

So let’s say this silly rumor that can’t possibly be real turns out to be true....

Gonna be fun watching the JJP fanboys who have been trashing steve and Zep all year do a complete whiplash.

I hope those guys are working on the material! You don’t want to just try to come up with something this important off the cuff.

If true, I'd like to see him design standard size playfield games for JJP. Widebody games add work for everyone, take longer to design and build and increases costs. Steve told me he prefers to design standard size games. Get back to normal size, tone down complexity of rules, get games out faster and lower prices.

Oh, and give the flippers some actual power. It's not enough to barely be able to make every shot on the game. Not satisfying at all.

Hey, don't misstate what I said! I never said it wasn't worthy. I said I hope I never see it again. That game is a BITCH. Also, I don't like super-optimized scoring games like that. Me learning the best way to get points on a game is basically the death knell in my collection. Once I get in that mindset that I need to do things in a very specific way every single time, I get bored.

Like...even if I find a BSD...it won't stay long, because I'll just be pissed every time I don't get a good bats......like in tournaments.

A jjp fan layout and maybe a sewer and physical lock could be cool. I doubt Richie is going there though.

I'm not a huge fan of his recent designs. Love sttng, but if I want fast, smooth flow, I go to Borg's iron man. Way better.

Interestingly, both titles include the Borg...

Lucky you. I’ve seen too many to want to take the risk. Everything with the switches and optos needs to be working flawlessly. Never seen a game that suffers so much if a switch or two are acting up.

That's a bummer. I miss my BSD. I really only want tourney ready games in my lineup.