I was one shot away from TI2 again last night. Getting so close is what keeps me coming back to this game. I actually blew it because I was so focused on finishing the mode to get my 11th drawing. Must focus on TI2 next time.

thanks! no dice, only have 6 inches. Saves me 700 bucks i guess!

One of them came from a mystery award. Another good reason to avoid that shot during multiball, modes and 2X scoring

Saves you a lot more then that.

You'll hit that TI2 soon and then only a few steps away from SIB or LTF!

That's one of the things I LOVE about this game. There is a mini-wizard mode obtainable for every level of skill, or for every lucky/unlucky game. Even when I have a crap game, chances are decent I can get TI1 and still feel satisfied. A slightly better than average game I can probably see TI2. If I'm really on I could see LTF or SIB. And I have been very close, but haven't quite gotten Final Showdown yet. From there I know I will still have Snowball as a final goal. It just has such a perfect build-up and fun payoff at each level along the way. Few games manage that level of satisfaction for everyone so perfectly. Even a total beginner can probably kill (or at least see!) the first Demogorgan without any idea of what they are doing, and that's a HUGE moment for them. This game just nails it from that standpoint. I've said it before, but it's Lonnie's best code by a mile.

Anybody have some pictures of the stern art blades installed?

Contemplating my options. Ive searched and not easy to dig up for some reason.

Just joined the club!

My first pinball machine... my wife enjoyed her first few plays so maybe it’ll start something

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I’m generally anti-mod, but I love the Stern blades for this game. 2nd picture shows an installation issue I need to fix.

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Awesome, those look great!

Congrats.. But seems that in this case you should have said "OUR first pinball machine"

Makes it easier to get more. I know...

not really, if you ever need to elevate the game for something, for example, changing a leg or whatever else, you will need to remove the topper.

I hope they use the opportunity to add some bell and whistles too! I dunno anything.

Need full power Shaker during Demo!

That’s what Pinball Browser is for

"if the get time"???

WTF.

Final mode not working right is pretty big IMHO.

"Sorry your car can't shift into overdrive, it's a software bug. If we have the time we'll fix it".

If it takes someone months (or longer) of trying to get to the Final Showdown, they finally get there, and they do well enough to actually beat it but then get cheated out of the Snowball (victory laps) mode, I bet they won't feel like it was a "minor" bug.

If they know about it, they should fix it as soon as possible, and they should make it a relatively high priority.

The fact that it isn't the reality shouldn't even be acknowledged as it just gives the message that we don't really expect it to be fixed anytime soon.

With my luck when/if I ever beat the game I am sure I will get the bug.

Lol

Today made a new GC of 600M.

Slowly learning how to get the ramps, Working on the timing to get combos, all that fun stuff

This game is really hard for my skill level, with that said, I’ve noticed that after only playing this game, other games seem easier.

So I guess it is making me a better player.

Have to agree with RobT on this one. I don't think they need to drop everything to throw out a release to fix it, but there is no reason why Stern couldn't put resources towards fixing known, reproducible bugs. Use a more junior guy, or give the leads a couple of weeks in between games to chase things like this down.

Stern has gotten a lot better with code releases in the last couple of years, the "if they get time" thing feels like going backwards.

Anyone considered tapping in another GI lamp socket into this spare space

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I get why they don't. And I don't really expect they will. I don't even own the game because they dropped it so soon. What I said was there is no reason they "can't", and am disappointed if this is their reasoning. When I worked I fixed bugs for software that we didn't sell anymore all the time. Customers were still using it, they paid for it, so we supported it. Pretty simple.

That’s exactly what happened to me with Dirty Harry. Games that used to seem hard became easy. I never should have sold that game.

Agreed. I emailed Stern about the Monster Hunt / Demogorgon bug, which is objectively bad. You’re in a mode where the major shots are blocked by the ramp. Not a huge deal, and I still love the game. But it would be nice to be able to play the mode the game picked for me.

Fun, and hopefully relevant story. In the early 00’s, I managed a software team that did the DVR application for millions of cable settop boxes. This was before the streaming era. There was a Yahoo group about our product, and it was the first time that a software team could be crucified on the internet. People said “The manager needs to be fired!”, but I was living and breathing our product. We rushed it to market with lots of bugs, because Product people were joking “kill the engineers and ship it!”. As the engineering manager, I would read the newsgroup and focus on what most people said were the problems. And I mean, unless 5 people said it was a problem, I would ignore it. We were drowning in our vendor’s bugs (the vendor was pretty much forced on me). We had recording reliability problems, so I set up a tiger team to fix them. Our first release didn’t even properly support series recording. We were all working until 10pm.

Our QA team didn’t like me focusing on the newsgroup, and there was a lot of shit to sift through. But if I saw a recurring theme (“My recording just disappeared!”) I would log a critical bug and ask my team to focus on that.

I don’t think software business practices have changed that much in 20 years. Managers have to focus on the career-ending bugs, buy a lot of pizza and hope things work out alright.

As an epilogue to this story for anyone who got through my wall of text, we used to go after work to a place called “Lupita’s” to play Revenge From Mars and drink beer. So I hunted down an RFM until I found one, and that’s partly why I love the game so much.

yeah, I think something needs to be changed there, I run into this issue often and the risk reward is very low to get the demo out of the way.
I just actually lost a game at 600M due to this, literally due to this.

Today I was able to get past 500M twice. First time since I got this game. I think I am getting there! I want to cross the 1B mark!

I think you mean the risk/reward is HIGH to get the demo out of the way. Especially if you’re on “What’s That?”.

risk is high, reward is low,... yes I actually just lost the game on that demo mode...lol

Has anyone added any supplemental lighting to their game? I am torn, I like the dark theme, but I play in a dimly lit (on purpose) room. On either side of this pin, I have a TMNT and a Star Wars both with PinStadium Neo. They make the Stranger Things look very dark.
I was considering Pinstadiums (not the Stranger Things specific ones, just the regular ones because I am going with Stern's UV kit) but have the brightness at like 10%. But I think even that is too much. I could always do spotlights. (FWIW - My kids are deadset against the Pinstadiums on Stranger Things) I wouldn't put bright bulbs into the spotlight. I have hundreds and hundreds of LED bulbs from years of upgrading and some of the original LED bulbs are dim compared to today's bulbs.

Just wondering if anyone has done anything here.

Your kids are right. Ask yourself why you had to add PinStadiums to your other games in the first place. If the room lighting is too low, fix that first ( I have my high-quality LED room lights on a dimmer). Then if the glare bothers you, buy glass to fix that ($250 a sheet, in bulk). I have pins with incandescent lighting, and nobody ever complains that they’re too dim, because the room lighting makes up for it. That’s just my little opinion, but I know I’m howling into the void. People would rather make their games look like a grocery store than solve the problem holistically.

Hi guys! Just got my Stranger things pro today and the game is fun BUT the ball keeps hitting the glass every time I try to hit the Demogorgon.. It's very annoying.. Anyone else have this problem?

My pro is the same.

It would be much appreciated to get another update. I made a huge list of bugs/tweaks for the game. It has around 60 entries. I wonder is they every make another update to at least fix some of them.

Yeah, imagine sweating the entire time. To get to the finale, just to find out the game crashes or some other bugs happen…
It would be fixed. Not ASAP but in the near future.
For example GB also has the chance of a game breaking bug appearing in the wizard mode.

Great That’s how it should be done.
I mean they don’t need to support titles forever. Since they eventually need to move on and develop other projects which earn „new“ money.
But they should at least support it like 5 years. Until they call it „discontinued“

Literally every time or once in a while? Can you hit the demos mouth consistently?

Why not temporarily move one of your other Pinstadium sets to it so you can see for yourself? Use lightweight double sided tape to temp secure them at the top and bottom of the strips since you won't want to remove the magnet strips from the original game.

I have a Pinstadium kit that I will move to a new game for the heck of it to see what *I like* and not rely on the eyes & opinions of strangers.

No pinstadiums but I added a long strip light (blue) to the back of the machine. It looks incredible. It looks almost like UV effect. It looks awesome when the TK has balls on it. Only negative is it washes out the ramps some---no big deal to me. I also changed many bulbs to the tower bulbs (comet) and it brightens things up. Mix of white and purple. All towers red and purple in the shooter lane ---looks amazing. On a side note over 4.5 bil a couple days ago and the snowball dance worked! So I did not get hit with the software bug---this time anyway!

The lighting in my gameroom isn't a problem. I have LED recessed lights in that room. If I want, it can get absurdly bright. (I believe that they are 1200 lumens per can) I just have them on a dimmer at the lowest setting which is where I like that light level. Years back (prior to 2012 when I converted to LED), I had incandescent PAR30 in there. Those can dim much lower than LEDs. I could turn up the lights but then, it would be too bright for my liking in there. (I typically like my rooms to be very bright....except for that one) Glare isn't the issue. I also have a sheet of Voodoo glass on that pin. (As well as all of my other pins).
I've had over 25+ games in that room at that same (or lower) ambient light level. All of my pins prior to 2010 or so had incandescent lighting as well. (Mostly 90s Bally/WMS) Never had an issue with games appearing too dark. The other games with PinStadiums were ok without them. I didn't have to add the Pinstadiums to "fix" a lighting issue. I added them because I like the look. I am not nuts about adding them to a Stranger Things because I believe that they would alter the feel of the game.

I simply asked about whether anyone has added supplemental lighting. Not sure what you are getting at by referring to a grocery store look and why you are lamenting the fact that you are howling your opinion into a void.

I could do that. I just think that even at a super dim setting that they would be too bright. I was thinking that a few spotlights with less bright LEDs might do the trick, but I hadn't even thought of swapping over the Pinstadiums. So I might try that this weekend to know for sure if I should buy a set for that game.

Thanks.

I have a ton of mods on mine. I put in a 4 way splitter. I was too lazy to make it myself and just bought the one that LER mods sells.
I will be getting the UV kit (on order)