It's easy to understand why Ritchie would want to go somewhere he could theoretically be working with a larger, or infinite BOM, since JJP is more than willing to ask the customer 9k+ for a game.

It won't be enough to save JJP, IMO. I don't care who they steal away....with the prices they ask for the level of issues and support they offer?

I know for at least a little while, Ritchie was basically a contractor. If you look at some of his older games, they had the "SRP - Steve Ritchie Productions" logo on them as part of the contract deal. World Poker Tour, for example has his logo on the translite.

Elwin (if Stern has half a brain) is likely under a non-compete clause, being a newer designer. You want to lock someone like that up for a good while when you're investing (and risking) so much on their performance.

Which Stern would know before his first game....how? If someone like Ritchie with 40 years of experience can make BKSOR and LZ....everyone is a risk to some degree, plus Stern had to invest in Elwin to get him up to speed on all their tools and procedures. Non-competes are extremely common in niche markets with a high skill floor like this.

C'mon. Use that pink stuff in your skull. The only way what you said makes sense in response to what I said is if Stern released him from a non-compete early. Why would they do that?

Ha, right? I remember how big a deal that seemed to me at the time that they were "Using Williams parts!" Little did I know at the time that the electronics matters just as much as the physical parts. Oops.

STTNG and Stern ST play so differently I wouldn't really hesitate to have both in a collection. Honestly, rules wise, the Stern game is *substantially* better, and not just because of the depth of the rules, but all the little nuances and playfield multipliers from the warp ramp.

Yeah...pretty much. Lots of fun games, but it always seems like the interesting stuff got cut or didn't really work as well as intended. Upper PF on GOT, lower PF on AC/DC Premium, the vertical eject on Star Trek that got removed before production that was supposed to throw the ball to the warp ramp, etc. How much of that was Steve's fault vs. the mechanical engineers or coders, I can't say.

I've never really been a Ritchie fanboy, though...always preferred Borg's games when it came to Stern, with the exception of AC/DC.

Exactly. Nobody said anything about the number of shots on JJP games...that's never been an issue. They shoot clunky, and feel clunky. In order of CLUNK for me, least to most, it's Pirates -> Dialed In-> WOZ -> Hobbit. I haven't played Wonka yet, but my wife has and she didn't like it...and she typically appreciates flowy games more, so I'm going to guess it's between Dialed in and WOZ somewhere.

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.

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.

Occam's Razor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Holy crap, you guys are still holding out on another update? At this point, wouldn't it have passed the time that Tron had between launch and the last code update? That would be bonkers.

Right, which IMO makes it even more unlikely it would see another update at this point.

I never even got to the original wizard mode when I owned my Premium.

" Jersey Jack Pinball (JJP) is the industry leader in quality"

OH MY GOD, I CAN'T BREATHE, SOMEONE COME PUNCH ME SO I CAN STOP LAUGHING.

.....Steve, probably. He likely got a pay bump or the same, along with being able to design games with more mechs and less cost cutting. Hopefully he got a nice long contract so they can't just walk him out the door when his game isn't an instant hit due to all the OTHER issues.

It will seriously be strange to play a Ritchie game with JJP flippers...I just don't see that working out well. Can't wait for the 1500 buck price hike purely due to Ritchie's name being attached. Ya'll have fun with that....

Oh please. Get the hell out of here with these BS strawman arguments. If Ritchie never existed, someone else would've filled the hole. If you want to make an argument that pinball wouldn't still exist without Oursler, then we can have a reasonable discussion. Ramps saved the industry and changed the game. What, exactly, has Steve ever added to pinball in that way? The claim to fame of innovations on a Ritchie game is flashers (Okay, those are pretty widely used), magnet accelerator chains (Um.... HS2, No Fear, and Star Wars.....all Ritchie games..), and.....uh.....a laser pointer with a splitter filter on it?

He just makes solid games, that's all. He's not a god. I hope he gets the chance to do something really unique with JJP. I don't even understand why the hell you chose to quote me there. I haven't really bagged on the guy (or Lawlor for that matter??) at all on this thread. I said JJP flippers suck, especially for the type of games Steve has designed anytime in the recent past...they'd probably be fine for WPT, though....that has nothing to do with Steve or Lawlor, it's an issue with their mechanical and electronics designers.

I might give you the first one. It's pretty ubiquitous. That was a dumbass error on my part. For some reason I was thinking OG Iron Maiden was older than BK, but it's not even close, several years off. Oops.

If I ever see another magna save, it's too soon. That's the most useless crap gimmick in pinball, particularly with it being on a lockdown bar button instead of where your damn hand actually is. He actually made that WORSE. This is the worst application of a magnet in pinball if you ask me, as long as we aren't counting Magic Girl....

Kickbacks towards the player...I mean....I'm a fan, but it's not exactly mindblowing. I guess if I had been older than SIX when F-14 came out....it might've blown my mind. I could see that being pretty jarring for the status quo at the time.

I'll split the difference with you, overall. Still, I think he can do better than this stuff. I hope, anyways.

I'd love to see Ritchie do this one. A fast paced flowy game would fit the on-the-run kind of mentality of Dune without it getting so deep that it worries about the overall themes...which are impossible to convey in pinball.

I dunno, let's figure that out. Maybe I can eat my hat on that like with the upper playfields.

High Speed had small wireforms, right, or am I imagining that? Was there anything earlier than that?

*edit* Crap, lol, I obviously posted that before I read down the thread.

Lane change is a good one. I get annoyed playing solid state games that don't have it.

Farfalla (1983) SORT OF has one in the shooter lane. It's held together with brackets, not a welded loop of additional wire though. High Speed is 1986.

High Speed wins by 9 months.

Right? If nothing else, this thread has helped refresh my memory of when these things came into existence.

I played one three days ago, actually.

Pretty sure I peaked at "got invite to IFPA World Championships and turned it down".

There's a magnet?

I had that thing up at least 7 or 8 times between different balls at a tournament this last Sunday...but I never noticed any magnet? What's it supposed to do, and when is it supposed to fire?

Uh yeah...never saw that...lol....

This is brilliant. I'm going to start self-flaming myself on all my posts now to prevent anyone else from having the opportunity.

This is LITERALLY every JJP game I've played. Hobbit may be *the* definiton of "Multiball or bust" gameplay. Here's modes...WITH MORE BALLS......here's multiballs that stack on top of modes with more balls, and stack on other multiballs! Here's mini wizards that are multiballs that stack with multiballs and modes with multiballs!

Pirates ain't far behind with 4+ easy to get multiballs.

There is not a SINGLE Stern game where I spend as much time in multiball (of any form) as Hobbit. Not even REMOTELY close. You can toss around words all day long and it's not going to change the simple facts.

If you're playing book modes on their own, you're doing it for one reason...to see the callouts and animations. Which is fine. They put a lot of work into that. But it's a stupid, STUPID choice if you're going for score. There is absolutely no reason NOT to stack in Hobbit other than that, and if you choose to handicap your progress or score.....I'm not about to stop you, and I'll gladly take that W. I don't think you need to preach to me about Hobbit rules in that regard. I had -triple- the score of my nearest competitor at a league night this last tuesday, and in fact, I did have +2 mode balls because I intentionally delayed the MB start to start the book mode with the +2 balls BEFORE starting the multiball. I had Into the Fire on ball 1 without even intentionally going for it. The game IS entirely about multiball, whether you're using it to give yourself more chances to make shots in a mode, or playing the "main" multiballs. Period. Hobbit without that would be a complete piece of trash. I understand thematically why they made that choice, and I *really* wish that it wouldn't be used as a competitive game, EVER, because of it. It plays way the hell too long for that crap, specifically because getting into multiball in any form is a complete and total joke, and you're just as likely to start Beast Frenzy on accident as you are intentionally. I've had 3 ball games of Hobbit where I am not even remotely kidding where I've had SIX+ Beast Frenzy MBs. It's ridiculous. It should not take an hour and a half for a 4 player league game, or 45+ minutes for even Colin MacAlpine, his kid, me, and my kid, to play a 3 ball parent child finals where it was 1 ball parents, 1 ball kids (Mine was like NINE at the time, mind you), 1 ball split flipper....and yet it did.

I actually enjoy a well playing Hobbit.....alone. But with other people? Hell no. Hard pass if I have a choice.

I'm sure all that is adjustable in the settings, but I have no control over that in 99.99% of situations.

Believe it or not, if they would just remove Jack from the company entirely, fix their QC issues, and get their pricing under control or at LEAST stop changing the prices mid-run and announcing 20 different versions of the same game just to milk more money out of people.....I'd probably be a JJP evangelist. But they seem determined to KEEP doing stupid things that have been bringing them down since WOZ. I was defending WOZ when it was not popular to do so. Dialed In has interesting things to it that I like, and Hobbit....as long as I'm in the mood to play a half hour or more of multiballs.....is to me the best example of how to do a video screen interface that's informative and visually appealing. That's one area where JJP leads the industry currently. None of Stern's LCD animations even remotely come close to the integration of video assets and interface design that Hobbit has.

Stern's screens are like .MOV files in the era of 4k YouTube. Functional.....but not good to look at.

I have a lot of mixed feels about Hobbit, clearly. LOL.

You do realize I said I have no control over it 99.99% of the time....yes? These are location games. Two separate locations, same behavior. I ASSUME it's the default settings, but how the hell would I know given I don't have access to the system menus?

Well...good luck to Steve. Hope he gets what he wants and JJP doesn't bone him with more crap playfields, because the way he designs games...they're certainly going to need to be able to take more abuse.

This is pretty much true of all pinball manufacturers at this point.....even Spooky to some degree, but that's a different issue of volume and size, not greed. I feel like I'm getting a loaded game for 8k, but.....it's still 8k, which is CRRAAAAAAAZY compared to the days of 4200 NIBs when Tron came out. I guess I'm the schmuck for falling into the "theme sells games" trope becuase....Ultraman....but also I wouldn't pay 10k for Godzilla regardless of what it turns out to be, so.... I dunno anymore. I never thought I'd be spending 8k on a game, either.

I've passed on two locally available wedgeheads under 500 in the last few months just because working on EM's is exhausting to me.

This so easily goes both ways it's not even funny. Talk about a straw man argument.

The issue with JJP has never been about the playfield layouts. Even Hobbit, which was completely DECIMATED Pinside-style is fun to play. Dialed in? Really fun game....when it works. The issues have always been about poor public-facing personnel (Jack) and quality issues, which they swore up down left right and center that they were going to lead the industry in. So far, the only thing they're leading in is chipped playfields and mechs that can't hold up to location play without excessive babying.

It would be freaky, and cool, if they put a tiny vial of blood glued into a cutout in each playfield....somewhere it's impossible for the ball to get to! I'm not sure how that wouldn't be considered biohazardous materials though and probably a lot more legal issues than they care to deal with.