After an unlucky first-ball, I was under the impression you could restart the game by holding the START button (after ball is sitting on the plunger for ball 2,3,4,5). Is there a setting I'm missing or does LOTR lack this feature?

Is there a setting that can override it? Any other thoughts on why it isn't working?
A1-35 is set to yes, game is set to free-play, and I used moviestar-setting-mode and set it to 'home use'.

I do have freeze-time enabled and if it's a ball-save mode, I've tested 'restart' multiple times with long ball times.

Thanks for the tip, I'll look into the shooter lane switch (although I do think it's working).

Hi Jasper. I'm Rez and I also have an addiction problem. After seeing those Ringwraiths, I must add them. Damn you.
Fair is fair though... have you heard "Wool's" pinsound mix? You should. Pinsound is quite expensive for what it does, but it's probably the best mod I've added.

For those getting new playfields, is the printing quality essentially the same? The original playfield is a bit muddy. IMHO, the playfield artwork should be 'improved' if they make a 'vault edition'. Please tell me the artwork and inks are the same... (so I can avoid the time and expense) PLEASE!

You add the pal and 10.02 ROM. I like it. It seems to fire the 'right' amount.
The only downside I've noticed is if you have a bad first ball, game-restart doesn't work (after adding this mod).

I can't think of a playfield that deserves 're-mastering' or 're-envisioning' more than LOTR's playfield. For such a brilliant game, the quality of the playfield art (and printing) is a real shame. Frankly, it's kinda ridiculous that they'd remake playfields with that level of poor quality nowadays.

Was the source art lost or are they worried about legal approval of any modifications? Can they borrow a higher quality printer from JJP? lol Even a super-resolution process like this would go a long way: http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/nvidia-super-resolution-tool-launch-2947926

I believe the Woolmix is already in .wav format. But when you guys say 'drop it on there', you do mean 'extract the files from the .rar archive' right?

This is what I did as well.

I've got the Rottendog board and it works well. I had a lamp matrix short-issue and the sdb004 reproduced the behavior exactly.
The only issue I noticed is the spacing between connectors were 'off' by a few millimeters so mods dependent on perfect connector spacing (like the pinduino) won't fit.

I don't have a video but I'll add another vote to assure you the improvement is very significant. For LOTR in particular, with the sort of lighting effects it employs, it's a big deal. It improves the 'feel' of the game. Adding pinsound was the next best upgrade for this game IMHO.

I haven't noticed loud static but there are certainly odd areas of near-silence when certain animations are playing and the mix has very low volume, etc. These issues are entirely consistent so might be 'fixable' somehow. I haven't confirmed if the clips are normalized, have wrong gain.txt values, etc. Perhaps there is an issue with certain file formats or certain overlapping samples.

I was getting too many airballs and tweaked the flipper settings. This helped more than I expected.

If I were adding Leds again, I’d get all warm white smd bulbs and let ledocd do it’s thing. Personallly, I don’t like rainbow colors on LOTR.

I have not, but it's one of the few games where I'd be willing to practice my decal-skills. The original print quality of the the decals (and playfield) isn't very good so I wouldn't stress much beyond the cost and time.

Right, so the beard dick isn't so pronounced that it's poking me in the eyeball. My jerk friend pointed it out to me (hah!) and ruined the LE for me. I hadn't considered an alt-translite when I bought my LOTR, but in hindsight, that would work....

Perhaps, but these have that label as well: https://www.pinballlife.com/lotr-special-flipper-coil-090-5020-2ot.html

Aren't these the 'high power' coils people refer to? I've got these and they're a bit overpowered in my game.

On my game, the prior owner used various types of LEDs so I tweaked brightness here and there to even things out.
Also, for this game in particular, I prefer a warmer, dimmer look so will likely reduce the overall brightness as well.
As the final step, I might try and slow the fade ramp but will probably need to swap a bunch of LEDs that start flickering.

It looks fantastic. Please post a link to the new thread once you start it. Count me in for this.

My game had the high-power coils installed. The main problem for me was they made the pinball feel like a marble. So I removed them for the APB 'medium' coils and I prefer the feel of the game much, much more.

1. not enough to justify the expense
2. don't know

I love Pinsound on this game because while the old sounds are iconic and great, the audio quality si poor. And most important, several guys have made amazing mixes that change the vibe and add some variety.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_S8osaFI4b/

I don't know for sure, but it looks like Lior might be working on new playfield artwork for LOTR...

lior2 (resized).jpg

I can confirm this after ~5-10 games.

Wow, yeah, nice job with those 'path of the dead' mods. They look great.

He's asking about the backglass only. But prices on pin-stuff is silly nowadays. I REALLY don't care for the LE backglass but I'm sure someone born yester

Would you pay $1000 for that backglass? I highly doubt it. Besides, Gandalf's junk really harms the price on that thing.
The idea that pinball games are investments and there are tons of rich pinball morons is an anomaly (not the norm) and isn't sustainable.

Love love LOVE the Tron theme.... however.... if you swap Tron 2.0 for Metallica then I'm with you.