I've also wondered about that....I thought maybe the gold color made it play not as good as the standard TAF.

But then again the White mountains in my WH2O make it much more fun to play....maybe we need a WH2OW ranking.

They should both be rated the same.

Yes, agreed, i have wondered about that myself, do they use differing software versions maybe?

+1, why not clear the slot so another pin can make the top 100 ?

I'm with you all on this one.

Yeah, when I joined I thought that was weird...
Especially because 'Gold' was so far down the list.
Pin-tastic has is right... Oh wait, Starship troopers is 101 (right now). Hmmm.
Maybe TAFG should stay!
Or at least bump "Firepower" up a couple of spaces.
Do it for Steve!

It's the way the plastic mustard gold pop bumper caps and bookcase look. They're dragging it down.

That's uhhhh... just my guess.

You are all right - In fact, The Addams Family Gold should be removed from the database because it's ... well it's basically the same game - just like Avatar and Avatar LE are the same.

But.. the decision to have TAFG in a separate database entry was made a long time ago. Back then, it felt like the right thing to do because these games were rather different and that was way before the whole LE business Stern has recently gotten into. Plus, TAFG has rating comments, ratings, owners and wishlisters of its own. Should I merge these with the "real" Addams Family entry?

Please advice!

I personally would like to see this happen, but maybe it would be best to put a poll up to get some more input from other members.

I understand where everyone is coming from, but I don't agree. The two Addams pins may play the same, but they most certainly look very different. Since aesthetics is so heavily weighted in the rating system, I don't think there is any choice but to have both games listed separately. In fact, I would argue that ALL LE's should have a separate listing in the database. This is especially important when the LE plays differently or has extra audio, as is the case with the recent Sterns.

Yea, I think that would be a good idea.

I think they should be merged.

They should be merged, always thought that was a little weird.

Hmm. Not sure what to do yet. I'm currently leaning towards merging the two entries into one. Anyone else want to put in their 2 cents in this matter?

Here is another vote for a merge...

I vote to merge !

I also think they should be merged.

I vote to merge!

If it is the same game only with more "bells and whistles" the listing should be merged. After all LE are limited. Therefore lower production numbers than the common machines. Just because a company makes a "LE" or "gold" version of a game does not technically make it a totally different game, or different theme. the same gameplay, flow etc is there. Should we have seperate entries for games like TZ and others with/without mods? No. Basically LE's are normal production machines with factory mods. No difference.

Robin,I believe you should merge them.

I believe the ROMs are different in the gold too.

I don't know why this is the only game that has two separate ratings. Tough to get an accurate rating on it compared to others when it is separated into two like it is IMO.

I've got an idea. How about when you rate a game with multiple versions, you get to check off a box indicating which version you are rating? A person could choose to rate just the regular version, just the LE, or both. When you pull up a pin's ratings (i.e. Tron), separate scores would be shown for each version. As far as determining where the game falls within the Pinside rankings, you could simply take an average of both scores. I know it sounds kind of complicated, but I think this idea makes a lot of sense given the recent divergence we've seen between the features/gameplay on the pro models vs. the LE's.

Merge! Makes no sense the gold, special edition has a much lower rating than regular as most collections would have the gold if they could.

I've had this same idea over the weekend. I could simply add a checkbox to the ratings page to indicate one is rating a different "version" of the game. This mechanism could also be used to indicate that one has an L.E. version of a game in their collection. And lastly, locations on the pinball map could have games listed as L.E. (so you could find out where to play a TRON L.E.)!

Questions:
- Would a checkbox suffice? I.e. does a game always have one Limited Edition. I think so and this is easier to implement as it would be just a "flag" in the database.
- Could anyone list all games that should have a "has special edition version" flag?

I Picked up a TAF last week,, he had 2... The other TAF had Gold Edition roms installed.. It had a few diff- DMD sceen's and Voice call out's ,, Noth-n More !!!

Some quick stats for TAF:

There are 563 ratings for TAF and 82 for TAFG
Rating for TAF is 8.591 and rating for TAFG is 7.793 so the new rating would be somewhere around

((563*8.591) + (82*7.793)) / (563+82) = 8.490

There is another problem with merging these two entries: 53 people have rated both games. It's going to be kind of hard to merge these!

TAF=IPDB 20. TAFG=IPDB 21. That's why they're considered different games. The IPDB list doesn't have the LE versions of the other games (probably because of the confusion caused by the case I just stated and the case under discussion here).

I spoke too soon.
LOTR=IPDB 4858.
LOTR LE=IPDB 5558.

Eight Ball Deluxe=IPDB 762.
Eight Ball Deluxe LE=IPDB 763.

Avatar=IPDB 5618.
Avatar LE=IPDB 5653.

Black Knight=IPDB 310.
Black Knight LE=IPDB 3799.

I would take the higher of the 2 ratings and discard the other one.There were most likely some protest votes on TAFG.Should be 1 game rating with different addons like mods for your favorite game.

I love TAF but don't like TAFG. I find the gold / yellow pieces on the playfield to be ugly (especially in the bumper caps in the graveyard!). The gold wire ramps and legs / lockdown bar don't seem right to me either. I believe that's why the Gold version has a lower rating than the regular version.

Perhaps the Stern games should have separate entries for the regular and LE versions.

Even though it is not perfect, I vote to merge TAF and TAFG. I am more concerned about these new Stern LEs that are legitimately different than the regular releases, like Avatar. Gary Stern was described the aspects of Rolling Stones LE right after I had played a regular Rolling Stones, and the gameplay sounded very different, as I believe my ratings for the two games would be considerably different, whereas my ratings for a LE like Elvis or Addams Family where the differences are mostly cosmetic, sure the rating would change a little, but no enough that it would truly matter.