The major concern for many of us is that we purchased thinking the same team that got spooky to this point and did such a great job coding R&M, was the same team doing UM/Halloween. Experienced layout designers of the past were also abandoned, which was discovered after making our deposits. It wasn’t until well after paying my $2k, that it was revealed by Bowen K that he was also no longer with Spooky. Gone too, the main programmer from the past that got Spooky to this point. Confidence in a completely new team trying to code 2 machines at the same time is quite low. Not to mention watching streams of players struggling to get any kind of flow going is also not encouraging. This is not complaining it is reality. As always hope the best for Spooky, that somehow they can pull this off sooner rather than later. But the troubling shots to the ramps that come straight back at the player without making it, along with the long subway/elevator ball delays and upper PFs having such short ball times and issues keeping balls up there is more than concerning. Love the theme and artwork, just troubled by the rest. Let’s go Spooky!

This, hands down. The score of the game could use some improvement. They have some good tracks - and soft jam is appropriate for many spots of the game - but the music could really use a bit of diversity and possibly something heavier for the monster battle. Spooky should have gotten Scott Danesi to do a little something on the music for Ultraman, he’s a truly elite musical talent and his style would have meshed well with Ultraman.

The above notwithstanding, the sounds of Ultraman are fantastic. Superb job with sound effects on this title Spooky!

In addition to some improvement to the score, the big thing this games needs: (1) ball staging to speed up game play, and (2) full screen utilization for the monster battles.

Yea, R&M is an absolute code masterpiece. The best coded game in pinball in my personal opinion and truly a world under glass. Spooky knocked R&M out of the park.

What number is spooky currently with Ultraman?? I’m all in on this theme since I watch and enjoy this as a kid. Hoping to get this as a complete finish game when it arrives. I believe I’m 250sh. I haven’t had a chance to play this in the wild

Early 100's as of now.

Is ball staging even possible without changing hardware? If you turn the game on, how would it get the balls into the staging areas?

Of course it is. First ball in the subway becomes the staged ball and another ball is served into play. Ball enters subway, ball gets kicked out of the lift. Game over, kick all the balls out.

Ok, with that then, you’ll have a point in the beginning where you might have longer delay times. I was thinking like BSD, as soon as you turn on the game, it automatically gets a ball into the staging area.

By like 3 seconds on the first ball.

You asked if it was possible with current hardware.

No Fear and Who Dunnit handle it that way: if the VUK is empty, the first ball to enter it is kept there and another ball plunged into play. Staged ball remains in the VUK from there on out unless needed for multiball, or removed manually.

Can someone please send Spooky a couple cases of super strong coffee?! Let's get something going on in here!!

Oh, ok, thanks. I have only played those sparingly, so I didn't realize that.

We're all working super hard to push out games while maintaining quality. As you can probably imagine there are always new challenges, but we are finding solutions to those challenges on a daily basis. Exciting things are coming.

PS: I prefer a lighter roast. You get more caffeine that way.

Who is this referring to?

Who is this referring to?

Who is this referring to?

Spooky has lost 2 team members that we know of. Who are all these others?

Scott Danesi, Eric Priepke, Bowen Kerins, David Van Es.

Eric just put out a code update for R&M so I believe he's still with them. Scott doing a game for P3 Multimorphic but may be back to do another Spooky game unless that's changed.

No he’s not, but he’s being a good dude and supporting his game. Eric rules!

Well that is strange, props to Eric for doing that.

Scott and Eric were both contract employees. Scott works for Pinball Life for his real job and Eric was doing R&M after his day job too. I wouldn’t say either are lost, and they could be on any future titles they feel like, as I’m sure Spooky would contract with them again without a doubt.

Fawzma is their main programmer and has been with them since Rob Zombie. Maybe you're talking about David van Es who left, he did animations and sound.

Saw these decal mods over on the HWN thread. They look really cool to me. I'm in for 1 if some brave modder wants to take it on.

cbda2f0c11743601f27bf62b0fb6bb1620c1008d (resized).jpg

I am double-posting like a freak, but I noticed the Bemular pf, the ball will fly into the side art when things are just right. Does anyone have a recommendation for a part to place in where the phillips screw is right now. I'm thinking a post of some sort...but I defer to the Jedi Council here.

PXL_20220108_200826382 (resized).jpg

This is accurate. Alot of people seem to be under the impression that we hired Scott Danesi and Eric. Although we would happily hire them they both have other careers and were contracted on RIck and Morty. Would love to hire Eric to code another game any time he wants. Obviously Scott is still welcome to do a game anytime he wants as well. I'm not sure where this perspective that we like hired and fired them is coming from. Although Eric did an amazing job on rick and morty I don't think it's fair to say he's our main programmer after only coding 1 game for us.

I will also note Fawzma is one of our longest running employees and has been our full time programmer for almost 8 years now. Coding the majority of our games.

We only made 2 team changes on this project and we replaced them with 4 team members. So this idea that we somehow have fired our whole team is absurd and flat out ridiculous honestly.

No one used the F word….but many of us assumed that the team that made R&M so special would still be involved with this game. That’s not absurd or ridiculous. However, it is our fault for making assumptions. It is what it is, and until the code is at a place that’s very polished & fun, there will be grumblings of this nature. Looking forward to not having to grumble. Ultimately we all want the same thing.

Played a few games on the Sega Genesis today.. it's hard to finish off the monsters at times but it's really fun!

Thanks so much for putting things into perspective and giving us a bit of a pep talk! As a future UM CE #350 owner, and hopefully a continued Spooky buyer in the future, it's good to hear this kind of thing. Helps calm the nerves.

Actually, it is.

It's a forum, will always have to many dickheads with there comments. Guys it's so so so simple, If you have a machine on order, when you get it play if for 6 months and worse case you don't like it sell the bloody thing. people selling there spots cause codes not up to scratch?? really?? I'm no ultraman fan but taking a chance on a machine that's a little unique and decent bang for your buck I rather do that then what, buy a RUSH or MANDO stern pinball with the quick cheap and build and outrageous price increase?? At the end of the day a pinball can be bought and sold. Spooky has not even hit a quarter of there builds and people are wringing? seriously? well that's pinball for you I guess......

My Ultraman CE from Game Exchange (#129) is coming up soon and I currently don't have the room. Would really like to grab a later number instead of leaving it in the box for a month or two. So I am looking at trading spots or would sell my spot to buy a later one.

Machine - For Sale

For sale or trade spots: Ultraman (Collectors Edition) #129 Archived

NIB - New in box (personal) - “Ultraman CE #129 from Game Exchange. I haven't received a build order yet but it should be coming in the next week or two. I am looking to move back to a later number. Ideally I w...”

2022-01-18

Coatesville, PA

Palmer

1,000

Archived after: 1 day

Viewed: 106 times

Status: Not sold: Decided to keep game

Thoughts:

Maybe Spooky should offer a good faith deposit refund.
With a 10% refund charge for administration fees it would show good faith to customers and every one is happy.

If the Ultraman and Halloween turn out great down the road as Charlie says Spooky should have no problem selling the spots to buyers that want them and are happy with the product. Win=Win for everyone..

No company wants unhappy customers deposit money. Do they?

What do you say?

Fair point. I hope that more people get to play it at TPF and in the wild to create a more positive word of mouth which pulls these prices back up. Might be an opportunity for Spooky to make more money though by providing a partial refund then reselling the machine.

People selling the game aren’t all flippers. People are selling the game because they don’t like it. Their reasons for disliking it are valid.

Before someone insults me in a good vs. evil fit, I’m a buyer & my game is probably going to ship soon. There are things about the game I do not like. However, I think it would be stupid to forfeit my deposit, and I’m willing to “take the ride” & see if Spooky can fix it. This isn’t ideal. I’d rather be thrilled about my new expensive game, but I can’t change reality. We can have an honest conversation without defaulting to extremes.

There is far more grumbling in the UM camp as opposed to HWN. How do you all account for that? Proximity to Godzilla theme? Just seems strange as UMs are far more ltd and they basically the same game.

I know it’s not Ultraman but after watching some of Bug’s Halloween stream Spooky put out today gives me hope. I think streaming the game while giving an explanation and talking about future code updates will help ease everyone’s apprehension. Now if they would do it for Ultraman as well that would be awesome.

I think it’s because we know Ultraman has the potential to be more fun, just based on the source material. Ween owners want to be scared. We want to have a smile on our face while we play.

Pretty ridiculous response to frankmac sensible thought.

Having many people publicly "throw in the towel" isn't good for Spooky/business. Spooky's growth and improvements to manufacturing & hardware are impressive, however software is what brings the game to life. The software on the UMCE I played wasn't simply unfinished, but bad (obviously subjective). Nevertheless, I've been buying games for nearly 2 decades and have never purchased a game this unfinished. My financial loss on the game isn't Spooky's problem...it's mine. I purchased the game without playing it because I had such a great love fest with my Rick & Morty. Didn't really occur to me that an entirely different team would be working on this game. Oh well...live and learn. Buying a game before playing it is always a risky move.

Agreed.

You act like there’s no context behind this. People are getting games and hating them fast. Trusted collectors who’s tastes people trust. That rightfully worries people when people are buying games like Godzilla and gushing about the experience, but selling Ween or UM quickly.

We’re going in circles here - but many of us thought the team behind it was different.

In any case - what's the point of shaming buyers? No one is a "bad guy" here. Buyers didn't know they were getting a game that was barely past prototype code. It's in everyone's best interest for these games to be great.

David Van Es is listed. He's not involved. Bug also said that Bowen was consulting. Bowen denied it later.

...but you're right. We made a bad decision...that doesn't change the facts and reality about this game at this moment: It's highly unfinished. People don't like it. You can't blame our pre-order ignorance for that. The GAME ultimately speaks for itself.

Rick and Morty was down at one point, up now. Alice Cooper was down, up now. Other companies games have done exactly the same things on many titles.

Speculation today is no indication of what tomorrow holds.

You have a commitment from a company to stand behind this game and get it right.... it shoots great, we have all the assets, it will get there.

Peace out pinball people. Have an awesome week!

And you were wrong.

Obviously, this is anyone's fault but your own.

Think part of the problem is that HW has just gotten a lot more "face time" on both sides....both from stuff Spooky has put out and from people with games in hand, fixing problems, reporting issues, etc. Like, for example, I'm posting more on the HW thread than I do on the Ultraman threads....because there's nothing being said over here, at all. It's just the same 2 or 3 posts being repeated ad infinitum. Meanwhile, if I'm reading the HW thread, I'm at least educating myself on the possible issues that may show up when my game arrives, so that I can quickly resolve them and have a better playing game if they're present on delivery. News and updates regarding things that the UM owners care about is slow to come out, and we're all just impatient little shits lol.

We didn't "think" anything, we were TOLD in no uncertain terms that Bowen was going to be working on Halloween and UM.

7k? My invoice was for $10,500!

That's my recollection as well...a player I have a lot of respect for.

No, he's right. We were told certain people would be working on these games, and that turned out not to be true.

The weapon with fingerprints and drivers license at the crime. Lol