I would have liked to see a much bolder and striking art package. Thinking film noir or Frank Miller's Sin City. They could have created something iconic with the right artist. I don't like the cartoonish art for a collector priced limited edition.

So this is where Alien money went?

This has to be the about the lamest thing I've ever seen in pinball and that video sucked. The video emphasizes for 16 seconds on the fact that it has three rocket like pop bumpers but something about them (like perhaps there too far apart or something) makes it look more like there at half power or something. I think the best pops on any game are those on T2, now those things are "rocket" bumpers.
The theme is horrible and is being sold as "family friendly"??? Give me a break!! A tiny little screen that has very basic graphics like Gilligan's island? A price point of $7500+shipping?? I don't care what the quantity is for that kind of money. This looks more like a home version that shouldn't be priced over $2K, and I still wouldn't buy one. I'd rather have a row of older proven games for that much cash. I'm not against simply playfields but this is ridiculous for that kind of money. One good thing is that I'm glad to know my money is still safe in my pocket.

John

Honestly this game is making Jetsons look AMAZING, and I didn’t think that was possible.

I’m done with this “let’s start a pinball company” bullshit. You gotta great idea for a game? Build a prototype like TNA and try to Partner with Spooky or write a check to Spooky like Pinball Co did for jetsons.

It requires some very large testicles to ask $7,500 for that.

I wish them the best of luck but $2000 more than a Stern pro, that's a pretty high bar to meet.

also noticed its using ws2812 style addressable leds. There is quite a big debate over weather these are a good choice under a pinball play field due to interference.

This was the original design but the bean counters wanted to keep the msrp below $9,000. Probably a good move.

2A2EB8C8-5F14-4467-AC2F-8C1C776C9C42 (resized).jpeg

They fewer you make of something the more it costs. And if you're a new company it's even higher.

I agree the price seems high. But I'm sure these people learned from Andrew how NOT to make pins.

A higher price ensures all costs are covered. They're not going to get partway through construction and run out of money like TBL which was clearly under budgeted for how complex it was.

But how did we get to this point?

Just because you CAN make a pinball machine doesn’t mean you should. I’m not convinced they’ll sell 100 of these glorified home games.

And if they do, god help us all, because games are going to get Shittier AND more expensive in short order.

This is what happens when countless nooobs dive into Pinball manufacture to try to hop on the gravy train while there’s still some gas in it, while at the same time countless nooobs enter the hobby to throw money at the crap they churn out. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but the more Pinball companies we have, the more crappy games get made.

The ole “competition is good for Pinball!!!” Myth is exploded with each undercooked, overpriced, rushed out game by yet another new company.

We were much better off when there were two companies than we are now with 28. I liked when Pinball was a small industry populated by dedicated individuals, rather than a cynical get rich quick scheme with a seemingly endless supply
Of folks diving in to strip the mine before the whole thing collapses.

Rather the opposite.

The rumours of various staff having to take legal action to get paid or be reimbursed for expenses etc etc were neither just rumours nor the result of 'disgruntlement', as Andrew would have you believe.

Why'd you think the staff / contractor turnover was so high?

By the same measure, just because you don’t want to buy one doesn’t mean your choice means anything. Pass on it. They’ll fail or succeed at their passion project without you.

Says the bitter old man.....

might be worth playing the game before condemning guys. I agree its pricey but gameplay can be decisive! I mean I bought an IMDN LE and I can't stand the freaking music but the game play is epic. Hopefully we will get one at UKPinfest (www.ukpinfest.com) and we will stream it.

yes its like a SS machine but with modern electronics lets give these folks a chance.

Neil.

More pinball is always good. Don’t like it don’t buy it. I won’t be. Too high price point for what it is but it will sell cause of its limited nature.

But heck I enjoy my Marvel Zizzle so my opinion doesn’t count.

Levi, I tend to agree with your points; too many companies putting cost into a limited market isn't good for anyone; but look at TNA and Archer... Its hard to know when or not to build a game.

Archer and TNA whitewoods were brought to pinball shows with lots of people saying "take my money" .

Any new pinball is good and it's not something i would buy but i think they well sell them all in time. They also did it right buy having a full game to show and having it ready to ship right away.

In my opinion you can have this discussion on every pinball machine.

The one thing Stern has that the olf Williams games don't is: They're new and shiny!

But I still think most Williams offer way more bang for the buck (and have the far mor advanced toys).

Look forward to playing it at ukpinfest next month

I’m not going to buy this game. Just to get that out of the way.

The whining in this thread is some sad comedy though.

“We want hand drawn art!” “No, not like that!”

“We want more adult themes! They should remake Kingpin!” “This mafia theme doesn’t feel family friendly!”

“This simple gameplay is gonna suck!” Okay, so explain the rules to me. Oh, you don’t know anything about them? Huh.

“We can’t wait for this game to be revealed! Let’s start 10 threads speculating about this new game and that new game that we barely know exist!” “This is too many pinballs, they’re making too many games now”

Maybe the game sucks. Not a clue. No one here can explain even the most basic part of the rule set though, you don’t have a clue either.

Just a bunch of sad sacks crapping all over a passion project from some people who escaped Andrew Heighway’s garbage heap and wanted to get to work on a game that wasn’t a shit show. They built 10 games in their spare time and hope to drum up enough interest to do a limited run with them. Hardly criminal behavior.

Don’t buy it. I don’t recommend you do, we know nothing about it and the play might be boring. But shitting all over it with barely any info other than it’s a little pricey like every other boutique pinball has been for years while prices on the mass produced games rocket up too strikes me as pretty sad.

I usually like to do that before buying one too.

Supreme being the exception as most of those are locked up in some rich dude's mansions and there really is no where around here to play one.

.

Uh oh. That’s what I was afraid of after hearing Joe K. describe how he feels about it

First of all I applaud anybody that can build a pinball game, announce it and be ready to sell it shortly thereafter.

Great job guys!

They are obviously going for a very limited collector market.

Can they sell 100? Who knows.

Can’t believe it’s a huge $$ maker but more a labor of love

I wish them good luck

Not many people realise how much it actually costs to design and produce a pinball machine and make a profit / cover the hundreds of costs associated
with it. (heighway/dutch/skitb certainly did not..) Any one who can do this without asking for any money up front and produce machines is pretty impressive to me. Hopefully the profit will be put into the next game with a few more features, maybe bigger display? who knows. Not every one has millions in investor/pre order money to start with!

I think they have done very well! (plus they appear to live 20min from me )

Congrats!! Machine looks cool and fun!!

Love the art and great to see something new coming from across the pond.

Price is mega ouch !!

Best wishes for a successful run!

Seriously, how much for a Heathkit version?
I bet a ton more sales from the DIY guys like me. Assembly manual and everything but cabinet wood. How much more fun would that be!!

recently saw a 'butterfly' and 'mars trek' side by side.
non operating, but their playfields were still beautiful.

It hasn't been announced yet

Fonzie says pinball prices..........

fonzie-jumps-the-shark (resized).png

Well, at least I got something useful with this thread. I was looking forward to The Beatles but with the talk of another super LE and now with you hinting it's going to be a stripped down game at a stupid price I'm not very excited anymore

I'll hold out hope that It's something awesome still even though it sounds like all hope is lost....

I think that particular pinball episode aired a long time ago.

I'd buy another Capcom Breakshot for a fraction of the price if I wanted this style of gameplay.

The boutiques are mostly responsible for the "rocketing prices" across the board of pinball.

Half-baked, get rich quick boutiques are ruining pinball. The hobby - and possibly even the industry -as a whole would have been much better off without them. Prices are up across the board, quality is down, and as more and more sub par, overpriced crap floods the market, we are getting closer to a 1983-style industry crash as newbies become unable to discern the difference between good games and bad and more and more consumer money gets flushed down the drain betting on losing horses.

Did someone slip you a decaf this morning Levi? You seem a little grouchy.

I made post #21 on this game and did not think I would be back as with this game there is little to talk about. With all the post made I was curious what the hell people were talking about but this is Pinside it is just 4 pages of bitching

No, just a bunch of folks commenting on what was posted in the thread, a basic pin at a premium price from yet another boutique company. Gameplay? They are apparently still working on it. Why announce it if the software isn't ready? Why post that heavily edited video with the dubbed sound?

So now we get the name calling and guilt tripping. I'm having flashbacks to a couple bozos sitting around a campfire making big plans. Anytime a negative thing was said, certain members of the community would vouch and assure and attack. Of course, the sheep rally around.

It's cool that a small team built these pins in their spare time. But judging the pin as revealed against its $7,500 peers? This appears to be a mediocre product with incomplete software.

Archer and TNA were impressive, even as whitewoods. Most could see that. I don't think folks are really helping them when they say "looks like fun, though it's missing all this shi*". Does it really look like fun to you then? I think people want to be supportive and nice when it doesn't cost them anything. It's like telling the designer of the Pontiac Aztec "Killer SUV dude. It's beautiful". No, it's not, and probably not a good idea to put it into production.

I'm not a fan of boutique pinball manufacturers either, but it's hard for me to see how we can blame them for "rocketing prices" or poor quality. No way to dictate taste or value!

snaroff

Looks about as fun as Motordome, for about $7000 more.

That's a bit over dramatic don't you think?

JJP started the skyrocketing prices with Woz at the time. $6500. And possibly saved pinball at the same time. And as we learned later, they can't make a profit at that level. Stern and JJP have created a race to the top of the pricing wars.

They are the only ones that really matter in the price discussion now. Somebody selling 100 games? Don't think so. Spooky? Don't think so.

Let's talk about Stern and JJP raising their prices with every new release. It's NOT because of the boutique pin makers.

I kind of agree in that it's the kind of behavior that happens in the boom time, and then it goes pop.

I can't be the only one who used to be mega excited about a new pinball game, but now I admit to having gotten pretty blase.

Maiden was a breath of fresh air because new designer, unique p/f, great rules, well implemented.

The more games that hit the market, the harder for anyone to generate hype and excitement.

The fact that JJP was started with the intention of being a high end pinball company, charging high end prices is the reason pin prices have gone crazy. Stern saw what JJP could get for a game and thought they should be able to charge a similar amount. Thus began the ever increasing prices of both these companies, born out of JJP's high end nature, Stern's desire to capitalize, and plain old competition. And it has only just begun!

Of COURSE it's over dramatic. How else do you expect to get anybody to read anything around here?

All I know is people continue to bitch about Stern "raising prices" when in fact you can still not buy a cheaper new pinball machine, anywhere, from anybody. JJP started as a "boutique" too, and every company since has come out all guns blazing with similarly priced machines. So why blame Stern? They are the only company still selling new games for reasonable prices, and the LEAST responsible for the price wars.

The rest of the Johnny come latelys, all of whom charge much higher prices, bear the responsibility for permanently raising the bar on prices.

I don't know. Breakshot has 3 flippers, drop target banks, and a cool interactive toy. It's so modern and complex. You can look at both and get the pleasure of saying "Well that's a pretty rare game" though.

As were TBL, Predator and Alien.

What's your point?

I think it's to be commended that there was no "look at what we're going to make. Give us your money so we can do it."

They've managed to make 10 machines with no external funding, no commitment to foreign factories for 1000's of unique parts.
It's been done as 'financially responsible' as could possibly have been.

All those people saying "It's too expensive", or "It's too simple" why not get off your ar$e$ and design and make 10 machines yourselves and see and what price YOU could sell them for.

Have you seen the prices of some of the $h!t being sold as exclusive mods? Pinstadium are selling their kit for as much as $280. I have made similar for under £20. While there's enough people out there with money to throw away prices will continue to rocket.
I doubt any of Team Pinball will be retiring from all the profits they make from Mafia.

No, I can’t. Because then I’d be a hypocrite

I own enough modern Stern games that it’s very rare I make that argument about the cost comparison between modern and classic machines. But in this case, it was appropriate due to the design of this game.

No they aren't, you're smarter than that. You're quick to pull out that "that's just business kid!" card on naive people all the time, so you don't get to pretend the world doesn't work the way it does. JJP and Stern aren't boutiques, very few 'boutique' games have ever even sold. Prices are high because the people who make games discovered people will pay them, end of the story.

Yes. I agree. Jack came along and marketed himself as the anti-Stern, and sold people on what was going to be amazing quality. Then he put a premium price on his machine, and some of us thought he was insane. Then he sold machines hand over fist. Gary saw this happening, and one day decided to increase his margins. It all went down over the course of about 3 months. $5000 machines were now $7500. Just because.

same scenario currently being played out with spookys ACNC.

how unfortunate that game prices from new companies have to be where they are today. as ben heck points out, games need to be priced to make the business viable. if 7500 mafias is the price point for that to happen, 7000 Houdini, 6450 ACNC, etc then todays high costs of development, BOM, labor, rent, etc are dictating these prices. the barriers to a profitable entry into pinball seem rather daunting if a company knows their machines must sell consistently for ~7K. i have to side with crazylevi. the prices these boutiques must charge to be profitable do lend a helping hand to stern when it comes to their ability to raise prices by setting a bar [no matter how small in stature] above the pricing of stern pros.

i sense the upcoming influx of NIB inventory hitting the market will eventually take a toll. the $2.8M due for the balances on ACNC 450x[5450+300+400 balance, shipping, sales tax]. the $1.4M due for the balances on TNA 200+x[5000+300+400] - that's $4.2M due spooky alone. the $$ outstanding for JJPOTC when it begins shipping this fall. and then CGC#3, AP#2, deadpool, munsters, also expected in the short term. even a trivial 100 mafias at 7500+ship+tax/vat equates to another ~$800,000.

all that NIB money expected from hobbyists has to come from somewhere. what $$ figure in machines can be sold before the market begins to resist absorbing any more? what if a glut of NIB availabilty results in a secondary market where games currently in production are reselling for less than or equal to MSRP and the secondary buyer is saving shipping and potentially sales tax [see houdini below]? what will happen to lesser firms if they are unable to sell through the number of games they were expecting or necessary to remain viable?

i have no idea how evan [surfsidedetail] ultimately fared at clearing out the 20+ machines shipped in for comiccon last week, but based on the for sale thread, even with attractive discounts it didnt appear that socal was exactly jumping at the buying opportunity. this week there were two houdinis for sale at 6200 and 6250 that sat/have sat for a period, 10% off the MSRP.

perhaps the elephant in the room is deeproot. a number of posters in this thread didn't seem overly surprised that a 3 person 'team pinball' showed down this complete game with 10 units available for shipping. 'team pinballs' accomplishment makes it more conceivable that deeproot, with the talent they have on board, will deliver multiple titles with in stock delivery sometime in 2019. it will be interesting to see the NIB experience [features, price, delivery] they can offer customers and how it impacts their competition. a new catch phrase of theirs might very well end up being:

deeproot: we gave the 'BOOT' to 'BOOT-IQUE' pinball.

While a hell of a lot more responsible than Predator or Jpop for sure, why not just make 1 whitewood and gauge interest? Why make 10 of something you aren't sure is going to be well received? If they don't sell, the burden is theirs, but it still sucks for them.

I don't get your logic here. If you can't build a competitive product, then you probably shouldn't do it. The "gotta have it" folks may save them, but I wouldn't count on it. If you want to build a basic functioning pin to show you can do it, fine. Now go back to the drawing board and build something desirable. When you know you've got something, build 10 of those.