If you wanted hot chicks on the translight, you should have wished for Resident Evil. Imagine these two along with Milla Jovovich's character. Instead, we'll be lucky to get Maggie sandwiched between two dudes and that obnoxious Carl kid. The modes would have also probably been more exciting than, "the farm," or "the prison."

RE Chicks.jpg

Ha ha - yes, it will be interesting to see how many fangirls he loses if this does in fact go down as has been suggested. Maybe not that many given he's straight in real life? My guess is male viewers will be far more traumatized than us girls. I'm not fussed either way. Although it would be interesting to see how this is handled from a story line perspective... And the comic gives us no leads here since Daryl isn't even in it. Guess we'll have to wait and see...

As long as they're not re-purposing Mick-on-a-stick...

Stern may not have any choice at all in the matter.

The license holder decides, and often you are only allowed to use the "clip art" images.

I think there's a good chance we'll get a Zombie-on-a-stick/Big Buck type toy.

Or some thing like this...image.jpg

I get the gore or comic book lovers. If the translites are all show photoshop jobs I could see trying a comic book alt translite or something. Sounds like fun.

But I have to say, I don't really get the sexy zombie thing. Rotting women with their faces half sloughed on in bikinis don't really turn me on.

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Get in touch with your inner necrophiliac

Then stay away from The Doll House during the day shift

Total peanut gallery opinion here, as I don't plan to buy: Theme--good (popular, and who doesn't like zombies??). Artwork: Greg Freres good, Stephen Jensen--may be better than ugly photoshopped stuff. Design: I like Borg's designs, often standard but different enough to be interesting. Programming: Lyman. 'nuff said, definitely a plus. Dots: Bogus. Seriously, these days licensed themes really cry out for a hi-res display, both for coolness factor and for practical reasons--can show players scores clearly along with graphics/hints/animations/etc., diagnostics and settings are easier to deal with (WOZ settings screens are SO nice to deal with!) etc. C'mon SPI, lose the 20+-year-old low-res monochrome display technology already!

Overall, this could be a pretty solid title, even with the *ugh* DMD.

Too funny

I love dots. I don't hate the idea of progress, but WOZ level graphics just aren't it for me. It's like instead of making the game modern we've just advanced from dot matrix to the CD ROM era of FMV games. We've rocketed forward to Night Trap!

Seriously, the spastic witch stuttering in the middle of my LCD vs the dots on Metallica? I'll take the dots every single time. And even those I hardly have time to enjoy. Who can watch Sparky get the crap beat out of him during Battery CIU when you're too busy trying to keep the ball alive?

That's a half truth... all the characters are photos, but on the other hand it is the best artistic example of what can be done with photos from another media.

We need a new term to differentiate 100% custom hand-drawn art (e.g., Dirty Donny) and the "artistic photo/clip-art" approach. Yes, both are done in Photoshop, and yes every game includes hand-drawn art to integrate the photos and clip art on a game, but let's not pretend they are the same.

lol just spat my hot tea all over the keyboard

Who said anything about it turning us on?

I think it's more of the conflicting emotions of being able to see/imagine what was once clearly a hot chick and quickly realizing "holy shit that has turned nasty". Do I really want to kill that formerly hot chick who is now rotting and wants to eat me alive?

The LOTR translight is hand painting by Jerry Vanderstelt; it is not photographic.
Jerry also painted the translight for Elvis.
http://vandersteltstudio.com/

Agree 1000%, DMD……..awful and needs to go, its time to step it up, everyone else is

This is one title I just don't even really care what the artwork looks like, just doesn't matter to me, after all, I still love WPT!

And it won't even come close to Jpop's RAZA, which is true artwork, so I just don't care, I want it to be a great pin!

If they mail this one in like STLE, imho, then I'll be out from the jump, but I'm thinking/hoping it will be great

It looks to be Ice. Saw pf snippet. Interesting. All I can say right now.

Very fam friendly Frolic. Bicycle girl is smiling, I think?

Just in case ya missed it.

"MM will still be collectible...don't worry."

...
There will be a lot of toys in this pin.
...

I just stole this off the store site. It is the iconic scene on the train tracks they use all the time. If it has to be photoshop I could live with something like this.

WalkingDeadTrans.jpg

So, what I am getting from this thread thus far. TWD details. None. Got it.

Yup. Just peoples wishes and gripes even before there is anything to gripe about.

The game is months away, so there are no details to give.

I'm guessing this ISNT a pre-view of the Stern title by the sam ename:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/317740/

That tall man sure gets around.
th-3.jpeg

In this day of PS4 and Blu Ray we are all used to stunning graphics on our LCDs. Problem is they come at huge cost that the budget of a pinball machine can't support. Hence the ho hum graphics on WOZ. The screen is way too big and the split screen a bad concept. I gave up playing after about 30 games on the 4.0 software and have not touched it since. It will be leaving my gameroom soon for its new home. Hopefully Stern will go to a DMD sized LCD soon if only to add color. When they do, I hope they don't just do it because they feel they have to or because the salesman who owns the company dictates it. It needs to *belong*.

Easily my least favorite classic video game of all time is Dragon's Lair. It was simply a bunch of linked video clips based on joystick inputs. I really don't want to see pinball games become like Dragon's Lair where certain things down below trigger the same canned video sequence over and over. I get that Dragon's Lair feeling every time I see the Toto and Over the Rainbow sequences and the huge screen really puts it in your face. I'm all in favor of a small LCD (13 inch) and occasional clips of video, but I would also like it to be a really cool looking scoreboard and custom displays most of the time. Small LCD also allows a full size translite and speakers down near the playfield. Personally I don't like the sound coming from up high. I would gladly trade stereo for sound that comes out from the correct angle and not overhead. Most important though is the emphasis should be on the playfield and gameplay itself and not the "scoreboard".

I'm glad JJP is there and some people love their platform. I just hope Stern follows a different path when they change displays. It is good to have choice. Not too long ago there was none.

Repeated screen scenes are in almost all game media. Not a super big deal to most.

And as the first dude in 1983 to beat dragons lair on the east coast, the repeated scenes were only a success when a crowd watched a good player.

LCD is great if you have video to draw from. I guess with Stern titles being licensed, that would be possible for all/most. Of course, downloading new updates could be much larger going forward. (Worth it in my opinion)
Games like Spider-Man and Tron would be 100 times cooler with the actual movie clips. Repeated over and over again, or not. ACDC as well. Concert footage would be awesome.
A game like Met though... You'd lose some great dots that would be difficult to replace.

I'm not an LCD hater. I'm not from the "but you can't see the backglass when it's off!" crowd. And progress doesn't scare me. But I'm with John_I in that with enhanced displays come enhanced expectations. DMD animations are somewhat crude, they're low rez, but there's a charm to them. Just like there's a charm to old video game sprite animations. And look how many games, especially lower budget indie titles, are using that fake 8-bit look. It's a style that people like, but it's also less work, less resources, less time, less money.

I'm not trying to bag on WOZ, and I think some of the 3D graphic work they have is really solid. The looping character animations for things like the Scarecrow work fine, even if they get a little annoying after a while. But the Witch really bothers me. When she does that stuttery jump from one looping animation to another in the middle of the screen it just feels glitchy and awkward to me. It looks broken.

It's just a lot harder when you have high rez graphics to get away with that kind of stuff. We expect things to be smooth and slick, and notice when they're not. There's a learning curve to all this, I'm hoping Hobbit takes what was learned on WOZ and ups the ante.

That doesn't always mean more animation, it can just mean smarter decisions. For example, if the Witch just had a looping animation where she was breathing, and glaring, turning back and forth a little, and then instead of awkwardly jumping towards her pointing or whatever, fire a different animation behind her. A blast of flame curling up behind her and vanishing for instance along with a sound effect. Green smoke. Etc. It wouldn't break the looping, so it would feel smooth still.

Hell, you've got a whole screen to work with! Don't limit the fire to just behind her, blast the whole screen! Break the 4 quadrants for a moment, and really light the damn thing up. That would wow the crowd watching.

Stern I think is committed to moving to an LCD eventually, and I'm sure the whole industry will figure all this out. In the meantime the DMD doesn't bother me, the playfield is still what really matters. Give me another game with the level of polish of Metallica, from custom toys, to innovative and involving rules, and some great DMD dots and I'll be stoked. And open my wallet!

As an IM Vault owner where the DMD animations are probably its weakest feature, I don't find myself looking at the display unless the ball is stopped. With a center shot and post stop where Iron Monger rises and when Whiplash magnet hangs onto the ball. I also look at it briefly to see how many more drones I need to hit for War Machine and not much else. I played a couple of games on a WOZ LE yesterday and don't think i looked at the display once.

How can one keep and eye on the ball or balls while still looking at the display? From a players perspective I can only see this being effective when the ball is captured. I also played a STLE on 1.5 code yesterday and the experience on a standard DMD was still amazing.

I agree with Aurich, the LCD is not the complete answer. For all those saying how an LCD will bring in the youth, please take a look at Minecraft. I watch my 9 year old turn into a compete crack head playing this, as well as all his friends. The graphics are a complete throw back to my youth "42 now", but they love the gameplay. This, to me, proves the point of Aurich, it's all about the gameplay.

Spot on about minecraft, my kids are hooked as well. Plants v Zombies Garden Warfare is another one they love playing.
I have a hard time getting them off the xbox live to play the pins but they do like playing rfm if we are all playing together.

I'm convinced there is nothing that is going to bring "the youth" to pinball, unless you can figure out a way to text and surf the internet with it, along with watching Netflix on the back box LCD.

Kids love video, they are lazy, pinball is too much chopping wood for them, you don't stand up playing xbox.

This is one of the best things you have ever written. I mean that in a non sarcastic or pandering way. You hit the nail on the head, on a very hard to explain subject.

.

F--- the youth they can't afford pinball machines anyway. I wasn't able to buy a pinball to I was in my 30's and even now almost 40 years old, outside of fellow pinsiders that live near to me I don't have 1 buddy from the arcade days that owns a pin or ever will. Very special breed we are and the market reflects that. Kids and arcades are dead for the most part, much more of a chance that Pinball FX2 will take off but real pinball will always be a niche hobby

Thanks.

And yet, you are the only one that gave my post a thumbs up.

Not anymore

My girls are 10 and 7, and I can't get them to stop talking about MInecraft. It's because they can imagine the world, by making it less detailed and more crude they're able to inject whatever they want with their imagination over it. Sometimes it's better to not spell it out.

Like in Alien, it's way scarier that you never really see the creature until the end. It's all flashes in strobe lights and little bits. It's freakier because it's harder to reduce it to "a guy in a rubber suit".

My daughter asked me the other night as we were driving in North Carolina "why do the woods seem scarier at night?" And I told her because in the dark our brains make up things to fill in the parts it can't see. We add wolves and bogiemen.

That doesn't mean there isn't a place for beautiful, high rez graphics. But they're harder to pull off. You have to fully realize the vision when you don't give the brain room to finish it for you.

I'm seeing a Zork pinball machine in their future.....

My daughter likes the EMs. I asked her why she doesn't play the newer machines and she said she doesn't understand the scoring on them. To bring young people into this hobby maybe it needs to get back to the basics. It may have advanced too far for younger people to understand or have fun with.

I was eating lunch with my girlfriend at a restaurant arcade and saw 2 young girls that only played Black Hole and Gottlieb Spiderman the whole time. I thought it was funny they picked games with 7 segment displays and no toys in a place that has WOZ with the LCD and new Stern LE games.

There's a lot to that.

Had friends over yesterday for a BBQ. We played a ton of pinball! But 90% of the pinball we played was on my Bow and Arrow and Sure Shot. Why? Because my two non-pinhead friends could understand the rules on these games. How am I going to explain the rules on a pin like AC/DC or Metallica to them?

It comes down to them simply batting the ball around and trying to keep it alive as long as possible without having many specific goals other than to start a multiball, vs having a decent understanding of the rules/goals on the two EMs.

The amount of fun the 3 of us had playing against each other on B&A was ridiculous.

I am looking at some of my machines and it is true. The older games have numbers on the playfield that tell you what you are going to score if you make a shot. DMDs don't. If I was a newbe and walked up to one of these machines, I would probably say "neat, but what is the object here"?