you know you love SWT
I tend to agree the sega year were the roughest for Stern. A lot of poopy games. Baywatch isn't bad, if you pretend it is a different theme.

awww, I like Stargate a lot.

All my favorite games ironically for the reasons you listed. I like the chaotic nature of his layouts. I don't want a game to be 100% skill driven. There has got to be some chaos involved, it feels more magical when you get a good game. Besides, these designs were made to drain to make money, so they did just that.

Why I love and respect the bot. BTW, having owned it for a few years now, I know when those drains are gonna happen, and can prevent them a good amount of the time now. It takes having a weird connection to the game, which takes about a good 1000 evil drains at least before you start to notice the pattern, it isn't quite as random as it seems, and usually happens under certain circumstances. The fast shoot out of the pop bumper is the usual culprit you can't react to fast enough to, so I just stay on my toes while it is banging around in there and get ready to nudge. Others are just the slings, which you can predict and nudge. I can get one good game every 3 or so now, where it use to be like 1 in 20 games. But it took owning it, it is one of the reasons I like the game so much, there is a lot of skill involved preventing those drains, but it still gets you 1/2 the time, like when you just get a bad fast deflect off of something. That makes me wanna come back and kick its ass.

A good pin to me is one that is easily understood but difficult to master. That's why I like most of Ourseler's designs. He puts just enough F-you into the game to make you wanna come back for me, but not so much that I wanna torch the game. They are defensive games more than offensive sometimes. My least favorite aspect of his designs are the nearly 90 degree targets that really can only be hit by accident. Other than that, I prefer his designs to any other. I like shorter ball time games for the most part (with the exception of LotR), so his games have always had more of an appeal to me for that reason. I can always escape and get in a few quick games, then run off and do something else.

I had Laser War, that got more laughs though, and as kids of the 80's, it was the good kind of funny, like Genesis funny.

SF2 is just a disaster. Poor Blanka.

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IS NOT

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although the similarities are striking