I just ordered that print, it is available on Etsy. The artist is Chet Phillips.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/200342274/space-godzilla-pinball-11-x-14-signed?ref=search_srv-2

According to Chet, Japanese characters translate to: (title) "Free Game" (text) "Blinking lights, noisy sounds and a rising score are proof of this player's skill against an enemy."

I bought that other spot. I wanted an Ultraman CE from the beginning, but hesitated and they were all sold out. Then Godzilla came out and Alien, and after getting on those lists I felt like that was my quota of new pins for some time. Well, I won't see either of those pins for a while (fall or later), and when this deal came up it was just enough to put me over the line, combined with a much sooner projected delivery date. Very excited as I was a fan when I was younger along with my brother, and he is going to be pretty surprised when he comes over and sees it in my lineup.

And by the way, most of my collection is older, I really only have two newer pins, Houdini and Munsters Premium (B&W) with the topper. There is no other way to say it, both of those had a similar pinside "reputation" in the beginning. And today, both have had code updates (several for Houdini, and two recent huge ones for Munsters.) Both are great fun to play, and I picked both up on the secondary market for a very good price. Ultraman will be my first NIB in the house - can't wait.

Congrats to SKWilson and marksf123 for getting their UM! I am at 189 - no options email yet but it has to be getting close I would think! I saw Riefepeters (168) got the options email. Anyone above that? The closer it gets the more times a day I have been checking my email...

Options email came today! #189

Great gameroom! I didn't notice the mirror on the end at first - it was the "second" Super Chexx that caught my eye. I have seen this trick before floor to ceiling, but clearly you don't need to do that to get the same effect!

Got my invoice yesterday #189 and paid! Wanted to pick it up in Benton but gas prices/time vs shipping ($335) made it better to just ship. Morgan was very patient with me while I made up my mind

I agree 100% - that is why we were planning on it in the first place. It is shipping with RL, so we are comfortable with that. We have two other trips to Wisconsin over the next two months so we figured this one could wait - maybe do a detour on our trip to Madison in June to swing by ...

#189 has been delivered! Too rainy to bring down to the basement to setup today, I will have to stare at the box until the weekend

UM189 (resized).jpg

I know - amazing. Here is the timeline -

Options email Friday 11/15 in the A.M. I response in the P.M. I chose no butter (there are no other options on the CE).
Monday 11/18 late A.M. - Game is ready, invoice sent. I ask about shipping as I was going to pick. Shipping was only $335 so I said ok, new invoice sent in afternoon. Paid Monday night.
Tuesday 11/19 late A.M. Morgan lets me know they can load on a truck that day. I say sure and it came today (about 24 hours later, 300 miles away). Lift gate service, pallet jacked down the driveway to the garage.

I realize I am relatively close but still pretty damn quick. I wasn't going to be able to pickup until two weeks from now but did not expect it to get here so soon by shipping. Go Spooky!

I think a lot of people will want this combination. Many Godzilla owners will be disappointed they won't be able to get their hands on one.

and to be honest I do have a GZ premium on order but won't see it till the fall. No worries, plenty of UM to play in the meantime.

Just updated the Software to 1.07 this morning, went well with NO issues. To be sure, I reformatted a 32gig FAT32 16kb cluster thumb drive to FAT32 with 32kb cluster per Spooky's instruction. I also did a full reformat (not a quick reformat) so that took longer but just wanted to make sure. The actual update was pretty quick, it was the test game afterwards that made me almost late for work

I have had no real issues at all, just a couple of sticky balls, but not completely stuck, minor adjustments for them. I feel pretty confident in my purchase and I find there is plenty of flow and action. Only real shot issue is the right orbit shot and I have a Houdini so I ought to be better at hitting a difficult right side shot. When you do, though, it is a pretty good feeling.

Looking forward to putting more games on 1.07 tonight!

Install went perfect, no issues, screen is sized correctly, I played 10 games with no issues (one ball search which was found). I like the interface over the previous one.

Only comment - screen transitions flickered, I don't recall that before but I would not call that an issue. Did not notice any content added.

Happy to have the update which looks like a lot of bug fixes. Good job Spooky! (and keep it up )

My ball has not got stuck here but it does not feed to the flipper well and sometimes a little bump is required. What is the feeling of the design intent here - I am functional but should it be a clear feed to the flipper like I suspect MT45 's does?

I just installed 1.08a this morning and it reset my high scores and audits - is this normal behavior? I don't recall it happening when I installed 1.08 from 1.07...

No fee just let Morgan (Squirrel) know who to transfer to (at least that is how I got mine).

I like my game, zero regrets and I love that there will be more code updates over the next year. I have it sitting right next to Godzilla, which I also like. They play different and that is ok. Spooky would have been better off waiting until the code was better on release, I am sure they wanted to get ahead of Godzilla and that hurt them, not help them. I am myself am not concerned about resale prices, however I do think in the end the value will materialize, when the code matures and there are 10,000 Godzilla's and just 500 UM.

The layout is fine and varied enough to take advantage of code changes. Increase the UM callouts, more video from the show, add some modes or in-game challenges - looking forward to the next software release, was happy with the last one.

Played about 10 games last night - plenty of depth here to unpack. Having a difficult time keeping the ball in play on the upper fields during a multi-ball. This is going to take some work to master that. That is good, I will be holding onto UM for a long time...

Though I am not in the hobby to make money, I don't like potentially losing money more than anybody else.

That being said, I have a Munsters Premium black and white - with a topper I was lucky to get from Marco at the retail price. My wife loves this pin which I bought at a VERY good price due to the early bad reviews. Major code updates and a couple of years later - I have turned down multiple offers and I see them listing above north of $10K (more with the topper).

I also bought Houdini at a crazy low price. While it hasn't appreciated as much, it would be a solid win with appreciation over 10% a year. I personally think this one will become even more desirable over the years.

Bottom line, not worried about my Ultraman's value AT ALL. (Full disclosure, I did buy out a reservation at a steep discount so my basis is low to start.) I have said before but will repeat why I know this to be the case:

1. Code updates will continue to come (hopefully one here with a Halloween code drop before the end of the month). Last update was a big one and on the right track.
2. Only 500 total with even less CE's. Godzilla's are well into the thousands. Any Ultraman owner that wants a nice Godzilla to sit next to it will not have a problem getting one. Other way around... not so much.
3. Halloween owners love their machine, it is rated twice that of Ultraman and - it is the same layout. That means code improvements will make a difference, and there is an active community that will help keep both machines up to date and relevant.
4. Ultraman is an ongoing IP. New movie coming out, TV series. Interest will remain in this theme that is important to me because I watched the original series as a kid.
5. This machine is just beautiful. It just is. Art is fantastic all away around. Cool topper I didn't have to hope and pray I would get before they all sold out (or that was overpriced - not looking forward to the Godzilla topper release for those reasons).
6. The variety this pin offers is something different than a typical fan from Stern, which is available anywhere in multiple titles (Mando, AIQ, etc.). Different isn't always better and I enjoy playing fans as much as the next guy, but how many do you really need, especially in your home collection?

I lost one of the ship rockets too - haven't found it yet.

This is great! Coming home from a party guess I will be downloading some code in about 30 minutes

Installed and working - no issues so far!

Complaints about my Munsters - too easy, standard Fan layout, unfinished code, etc.
3 years later an unexpected, pretty good code drop and it all turns around.
I bought it at a fire sale price and could double that now.
With Ultraman, we won't have to wait three years for the code, next one coming soon (ask @rotordave!)
Oh, servo repair - $10 for three at Amazon, took about 20 minutes, one of the easiest, cheapest repairs I have made to any machine. I also think Spooky is using the better servos now in their builds, because they listen to customer feedback!

Great! I love mine, and new code drop is pretty imminent! Looks like you are planning on getting Scooby as well - me too, tracking June ...

OK, just got this installed and played a couple of games. Didn't get very far in because I drained a few times looking at the screen improvements instead of the ball!
Overall:
Video system overhaul is a MAJOR upgrade - screen transitions were VERY smooth and VERY fast. Also, this was not mentioned in the version notes but I thought the entire screen looked crisper, easier to read (not just the videos)
Sound was very good, you can notice the changes. I did not change any of the values yet for SFX/Voice/Song mod but will be playing with that later
I did notice a few of the new callouts - nice
I also noticed a lot of little enhancements throughout the screens - nice touch!

This update seems rock solid to me, like a deep dive into the basic code, underlying platform. I feel that a lot of the original code from this game is probably long gone with this update, and can understand why it took the time it did. In cargument terms, feels like a frame off restoration has just occurred. I will have to get a few more games in to really get the whole picture but I want to thank m4tt for a job very well done!

Ok, code downloaded and installed and a few games played. I have to say, the last update was awesome but the ball save issues were annoying - that seems to be fixed along with everything else m4tt listed.
I wanted to order the Vimtoman mods but was hesitate to put any $$ into the game in case I wanted to sell. After the 1.11 update, I felt like the game was where it needed to be and I ordered the mods yesterday before the 1.12 announcement. Man I feel extra good about that decision today!
@m4tt, thanks and the fact we are not done with more goodness to come - fantastic, just fantastic!

https://www.spookypinball.com/game-support/

Scroll down to Ultraman v1.12

And it is on a thumb drive 32 gig or less, formatted with FAT32 system. Actually, I really like how fast the Spooky pin's update, way faster than Stern's update process. Also look to see if the file name is code_UM.pkg and not code_UM(1).pkg (meaning it downloaded into a directory you already had a previous UM update downloaded in. That won't matter after this update, as m4tt said he added code to check for that.

Speaking of updating, my usb cable in the cabinet has a male end instead of a female, I just update using a USB port in the backbox. Anyone's else come like that? I have been meaning to get a female/female adapter and keep forgetting...

Well how about that - it does! That will make the next update a little easier

Excited, looks like a lot of game improvements in the Halloween code drop including a new mini-mode.

Downloaded and installed - so far so good!

He didn't say, just said this was a beta version of the update. It looked great though!

Downloading now - says V1.15 - because it has everything Halloween V1.14 has and more! Excited!

I only got a couple of games in and haven't tried the wizard mode yet, but everything looked good - real good in fact. m4tt tremendous job with this, I can't thank you enough for where we sit with this code today from two years ago - top notch and waaaay beyond just fixing the basic issues. Good luck to Godzilla owners who want UM sitting side-by-side - you are NOT getting mine.

side by side (resized).jpg

Yes the topper can be removed. You probably could extend the cables and set to the side if you wanted. I actually broke a tooth off the saw plastic through my own stupidity, and Spooky sent me a new plastic NC. What a great company, customer service is the best!

UM Topper (resized).png