If they are all going to be at the Premium price point I'll speak with my wallet and pass.

My apologies I thought it was a pertinent to the conversation. I guess it's safe to say at current price point it doesn't appeal to me at all. I'd prefer an original design over a re-skinned rehash of something old for such a high price.

Batman TDK changed to
1966 batman

But at premium $... I'm out.

I want them to re-release older titles like Quicksilver and Star Gazer.

Shrek seems to be exactly what you're talking about...

Happy New Year to you, and hope your BSD is still treating ya well, as in kicking your butt

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To me, living in a pinball desert and only getting to play the machines that I own, it may not be appealing as I bet it would be to those that have access to tons of pins in the wild or friends with arcades. I haven't tried 95% of the machines out there, so lots of mechanics and 'new' toys in pins that you all take for granted or are used to are completely new and amazing to me. I played one game of TOTAN at the Atlanta Expo year before last and was amazed at the magnets to the point of standing there and watching others play, whereas I know most of you think it's a decent game at best and not a keeper. So I don't even know what I'd want to put in a game, as I haven't experienced what all there is these days.

But that's not to say that I wouldn't be interested in taking a pin layout that's proven to be popular and have a complete(ish) and good rule set, then skinning it to my or my husband's favorite theme. The only way I can play a pin is to own it, so we mostly end up with whatever pins we can find locally. I get attached to them anyway and am out of space for much more, so it would be cool to just save up our money and order up exactly what we wanted without having to attempt to build it ourselves someday. I personally can't stand the Simpsons and have therefore never really played TSPP, but I bet if it was rethemed to Rocky Horror or Sucker Punch I'd love it.

From what I've read retheming didn't save Stern any money when making Shrek. It would probably make more sense just to make a new game for whatever license. Spider-Man was a little different because it wasn't a complete retheme so it made sense but not from a price standpoint. I'd say Stern will never be and shouldn't aim to be a boutique manufacturer. They should use broad reaching licenses and leave the niche licenses to smaller manufacturers like Spooky.

"Stern reportedly used the existing Family Guy pinball game design, but re-themed it with all new artwork and software.

Jeff Powell created all of the playfield sound effects and edited the speech and music. He tells us some of what it took to make it happen:

The speech was the typical editing of "lifted" movie sound track speech with a lot of custom speech. Each of the "sound-alike" voice actors had to be personally approved by the major actors, according to the contracts Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, and the rest have with DreamWorks. That led to quite an 11th-hour deadline nightmare for Gary [Stern].

Another huge nightmare was in nailing down the licensing of Smash Mouth's "All Star" for the opening music of the game. I recorded an instrumental version of the tune with Dan Peters, a guitarist Chris Granner introduced me to years ago. We also found a singer who was able to piece together for us a reasonable vocal knockoff (Smash Mouth's Steve Harwell is a rather unusual sounding vocalist).

Well, Smash Mouth said they would not allow anything but the original recording to go into the game. Of course that meant bigger bucks. I have no information as to what Gary paid, but ultimately the original recording starts the game and runs through the first chorus ("Hey now, you're an All Star..."). From that point, it's my instrumental version during the remainder of the general mainplay.

The rest of the music is all lifted straight from the three Shrek movie soundtracks. But let me tell you, it is not an easy feat trying to make seamless loops out of orchestral music that's not composed for a coin-op game. It's quite beautiful, though. And, thankfully, we had the room to put in all those long loops, as this game has no foreign speech.

Overall, what was supposed to have been a 2-month job converting the game sound from Family Guy over to Shrek took closer to four months."

I'm not really hung up on themes but I can see the potential to revive weak selling but great playing games or making a great game more widely accepted.
Mustang is the first one that comes to mind because the theme is the first thing people complain about but they usually say they like the way it plays. I wouldn't sell mine to get a "cool" theme version but I can see others buying it. ( same thing with AC/DC)
I'm not a fan of Metallica's music but it is a great playing pin. I play it but don't own it due to my wife's dislike of the theme but I would be very likely to buy a more "family friendly " re-theme version.
Different from both of those with something like KISS. I don't think much of KISS as a band and really don't care for the pin artwork(demon head in particular) that comes with the theme but more than that I don't enjoy playing it so a re-theme would be wasted on me... I wouldn't play or own.

I think this could be a very cool idea- would love to see some great playing pins updated to a different theme that would otherwise never get made (Scooby Doo, Zelda or Harry Potter come to mind). There are also many other great bands that could be chosen for a smaller run using MET or ACDC. IMO, lots of potential here.

I posted about this before...

Wheel of Fortune re-themed into Road Warrior. - "Bust a deal, face the wheel"

But for folks that own a pin like met or mustang are you really going to buy the exact same pin layout with new art? I have a large collection and though I like shrek as a character, family guy was plenty and owning both would make me puke. I enjoy new creativity, some people like rehash. Too each their own. I am sure there will be an exception or two nut jobs that will own both Spider-Man pins but you are talking one or two at best.

MM VE

Going forward, any new titles need to have LCD. Enough with the 1980 dot matrix which pinball adopted way too late in the first place.

And you're going to pay a heavy price for that tv screen, and all the content they'll have to develop for it. I'd rather see the money on the playfield.

WWE into UFC

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The main purposes of new pins are recruitment (getting people to try pins) or retention (keeping existing customers buying more pins). Reskinning a successful layout with a new theme is more of a recruitment activity--for example I love playing TWD, but I'm not "into" zombies so I haven't seriously considered buying it. I'm already into pinball and gearing up to buy, but there's also a (significant) segment of consumers who don't even think about owning pinball machines. Turning TWD into a "Muppets" machine with an Animal bash toy in the front and Kermit call outs wouldn't necessarily "retain" existing TWD owners who probably wouldn't want the same layout again, but would attract new buyers who were really into the Muppets but had never considered owning a pin before.

Still, reskinning alone as a recruitment tool is probably not cost effective. With my TWD/Muppets example, the number of current pinball players rejecting TWD bc of the theme and the number of potential new customers who would be motivated to spend thousands on a pin just because they like Muppets a lot would not justify the licensing costs of obtaining the rights and the marketing costs to make new customers aware of the machine.

Where reskinning has real power is when it can be combined with cost efficiencies and/or customization. For example, given the reactions to the current pricing for NIB titles, there's a very real segment of consumers that are shut out of new purchases at the current price points and would love lower cost options. There's real potential if a company can reuse tooling, etc to cost engineer reskinned machines that hit in the $2-4K range. (I have no clue if that's feasible or realistic in this day and age, just that it's a price point that a lot of older machines sell at).

Likewise, there are a *lot* of fandoms that aren't large enough to support the development costs for a unique machine, but could be pooled together to create a large buyer base. Imagine a "music" or "sport" platform developed with relatively generic callouts where bands or teams could license a limited range of customized assets (ie graphic panels, background sound clips). If I can order a machine with my favorite band's artwork on the backglass and playfield and their music blasting in the background, am I really going to care all that much if the extra ball callout is a generic voice yelling "Encore!"? There might only be 30-50 Steelers fans interested in plunking down $7500 to own a Steelers pin, but across the NFL, that would be 900-1600 machines sold. And a Steelers fan isn't going to care that the 49ers fan is playing the exact same layout. All they will want is to have a fun machine that shows off their favorite team. Digital printing makes print-on-demand a LOT more feasible now than it used to be, even 10-15 years ago.

Once again, none of this is "retention" based activities. Existing customers would not be the target segment for these machines, although a well designed base platform would certainly generate some sales there as well. It would be more about attracting new or lapsed consumers to sample modern pinball.

It isn't really about same theme with new artwork it is about completely new themes. If you are trying to argue that FG/Shrek are not different themes and just art changes I would disagree, I see them as different themes that play the same way and having one of those a year would be OK with me (yes it would be boring if that was all Stern ever did).
I doubt I would duplicate pins based on theme alone and I wouldn't really expect many people who own something now to buy the re-theme BUT this is really for the people who won't/didn't buy a pin initially because of the theme alone.
This is an opportunity to sell to THOSE people ... look at the "Why no love for Mustang" thread, the majority of people who say they won't buy it or bash it is because they hate the theme and can't get past that in order to discover it is a great playing game (ok for many it is, some don't like it - just like any pin). Wrap the game in a "Fast and Furious" art package (or whatever) and now you have a whole new group buyers who see a "new" pin not a rehash (won't be a rehash if they never bought or played the original).

I love playing MET but based on my wife's dislike of the theme it won't be in my house, change it up to Muppets or Scooby Doo and I'm going to be an owner.

Pure VE or a VEr ( VE refresh like Spider-man) are a completely different story ... same old theme (with SM fresh art). If somebody didn't like the theme on the original I doubt new art fixes that. If they are nuts about the theme (see Star Trek) they may want it anyway but IMO Stern VEs are really meant for those who want a NIB version because they didn't get the original (or maybe for OPs who want a fresh version of a popular pin)

No single pin will ever be universally accepted, we all have different ideas of what a theme should be or how a pin should play, new, VE/VEr or re-theme should it really matter as long as there are fun pins to play.

Jack-Wokka-Wokka-Pot!!!

I've rethemed my WD to be the Moonwalking Dead feat. Michael Jackson's Thriller. Changed music and a lot of call outs. Its like playing a whole new game!

Moonwalking_Dead_(resized).jpg

It's not a TV screen, it's an LCD panel. LCD panels are cheaper than DMDs.

The beauty of licensing... they don't have to develop content for the screen...they can get it with the license! Sure they have to "piece it together" but if the license is a movie or TV show, the footage is all done already.

The idea of a re-theme is valid and I think most folks would be on board if it was a theme they enjoyed. Good layouts can always translate to another theme. The problem was the price hike.

I think Stern could have kept the side armor and shaker on SM VE and priced it a bit better. Unfortunately, I think the increased MSRP may turn folks off in the future.

What about Space Jam to NBA as well. They did more then just change the art and even then they sill reused some old dmd art from Space Jam. It just at times seems cheap. WMS did it with jackbot and how well did that do?

That's pretty cool and you did it yourself at your taste without paying thousands for a vault rethemes

That's bad ass actually. If I ever get a TWD you can bet I'm gonna pester you