Stern - Stuck it out after Williams closed and coin op was a wasteland. Plugged along and with Simpson's Pinball Party really started rolling. Keith's Godzilla is a great game.

Jersey Jack - Pat Lawlor, Keith Johnson, Eric Meuinier, Steve Ritchie.

Spooky - Built up by themselves from the ground up. In addition to great games they have a loyal customer base.

Multimorphic - Gerry driven and given to new ideas and ways of doing things.

American Pinball - Built some fun games. And recent hires seem to be heading into an exciting future.

Chicago Gaming - Built three remakes so far. And with people working with them or hired by them. Very exciting times coming from CGC. And they have me : )

LTG : )

I think Stern has absolutely perfected flippers. So snappy and powerful. They’re almost too good because so many people complain about their flippers now when they get games from companies other than Stern.

I'm going to take it a bit old school and include some older companies.

Data East - Extremely sturdy and well built legs / Digital Stereo Sound

WMS (Williams and Bally) - Low maintenance thanks to the broken switch reroute system / Detailed operator reports

Gottleeb - Single player EM machines

bend you over

I have to add:

Sega- oversized DMD and animations were fantastic for its time.

American Pinball- best customer service in the business right now.

Williams- best use of non licensed pins.

Stern- agree from post above, flipper strength is great, parts quality not so much.

Spooky:
Best quality playfields/clearcoat
Best factory audio/speaker systems
Real backglasses in all game models
Best standard powdercoating

Stern:
Best flippers
Best themes
Best rulesets
Best layouts
Games play great out of the box
Generally the most fun to play

JJP:
Best attention to detail
Fit and finish
Best LCD graphics
Best lighting
Premium feel
Unique mechs and toys vs. Reusing ideas.

I’m going with Spooky, they actively address issues even constantly engage customers / respond to threads right here on pinside. They also are great at creating hype for their upcoming titles.

Stern - knows how to create a sense of value & maximize profits by adding a minor adjustment across existing models. Stern is great at price increases.

DeepRoot - knows how to take your money

JJP - knows how important metal washers are

American Pinball - knows pinheads will buy just about any theme

Honorable people mention hands down Llyod aka LTG he helps the most random people from various manufacturers.

Stern: Nothing crazy, just reliable pins that are well-rounded.

Jersey Jack: Premium everything. Even the NIB packaging is premium!

CGC: Gorgeous playfield construction. And LTG.

Spooky:
Best at catering to their customers (small run niche themes).
Best at humor (who else has F-bombs in their games outside of lyrics)?.
Best at updating their customer base on the status of manufacturing.
Best customer interaction. (I know some have had problems).
Best at creating hype

Stern:
Most fun to play.
Best rules.
Best layouts.
Best themes.
Best manufacturers (ability to get games out).
Best games for the home environment when you have time to delve into rules

JJP:
Best looking games
Best sounding games
It is not my favorite game, but objectively Jersey Jack's "The Hobbit" is the most beautiful game I've ever seen and is fantastic on paper. The sound package is amazing, it has a talking interactive dragon and tons of drop targets. The screen is huge. All of their games impress me on paper.

CGC:
Best business model. Don't reinvent the wheel... sell popular wheels people can't get their hands on anymore. Outstanding build quality. Great market of selling accessories and having tiered price models that don't take away from the game. Best interactive toppers

Data East:
So much in each package. Another company with games way ahead of their competition on paper. Best licenses (at the time) Think about what Addams Family has in it on paper and then think about Last Action Hero. Free interactive topper, 6 ball multiball, underplayfield magnets, free shaker 2 captive balls, a giant moving crane that interacts with the ball... Many of their games blow away the competition... on paper.

Deeproot:
Best shipping accessories.

Haggis:
Best manufacturer in Australia

American Pinball:
Built like a tank

Homepin:
Participation trophy

Bally/Williams
Best pinball for the casual and most fun way to blow 50 cents.

Gottilieb:
Best chimes, best pins with simple rules, most approachable to non pinball people.

Stern Classic:
Best rules/gameplay for tournament people

Arcade1up/Zen Studios:
Best at introducing new people to the hobby

"Am I a joke to you ????"

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Elvira has some great F-bombs

I retract my points on there being no F-bombs outside of lyrics in non-Spooky games... But Rick and Morty still has the filthiest callouts of all time sprinkled in.

Spooky definitely has some adult content…

RZ =
“Is that how you fuck your grandma?”
“Put your initials up, then go fuck yourself.”

Stern does one thing much better, that I feel is overlooked.
Light and Sound.

Not the callout license assets, but the few seconds of crescendo, sound, and playfield lighting effects at that moment.

I find other manufacturers significantly less, and its more subliminal when playing....

Just my 2 cents.

What does each manufacturer do best?

Stern - Making the best all-around games to flip for profit
JJP - Making the heaviest games every 2 years
Spooky - Making FOMO
American - Making games with themes no one wants
Multimorphic - Making games on only the top third of the playfield
CGC - Making copies of games

/s

Stern - Rock solid great playing games wit themes that fit what I like -mainly Rock pins - all keepers
JJP - next level stuff - huge wow factor love my GNR LE - definitely a keeper
Spooky - Unique games and outstanding customer service and communication but I had a very disappointing first experience with Halloween and immediately sold it. Maybe something with a better fit for my style of gameplay will come along down the road.

I have zero "under the hood" experience with any game made after, say, 1999, so I'll toss in my antiquated 2 cents:

Gottlieb: One word: Craftsmanship. All eras were mechanical brick houses. Everything seems to hold up. The "fat boy" flipper mechs are bulletproof. Drop target banks, bulletproof. The underside of the playfields were silkscreened, and the wiring looms are always tight. Early versions of their solid state boardsets notwithstanding, the System 3 boards finally reflected the build quality in the rest of the game.

Bally/Williams: Creativity and original storytelling. These people brought some of the most well thought out original themes ever to grace the silver ball. As far as I'm concerned, they're really the only people who were able to weave an original story through the artwork, rules, sound, and gameplay in almost every title.

Data East/Sega: Fierce competitiveness. When I listen to interviews with people who worked there, it sounds like there was always a push to do more and try something to one up the competition and make unrelenting compromise when the going got tough. That fire, I'd like to think, is what kept them around to see the rise of Stern through the lean years into the 2000s.

Lol yeah I was a bit confused myself. I love games of all eras and all manufacturers. I think modern Stern flippers are a cut above. Not sure about the Kool Aid. The GIF is great though, so I couldn’t bring myself to downvote it.

Stern can actually build games in a timely manner, all other manufacturers are light years behind

Absolutely. Who do those damn workers think they are wanting paid? Trying to provide for offspring, food, housing and healthcare…. Stern needs to move production to a third world country where labor can be more readily exploited so that our luxury purchase pinball machines can be as common and inexpensive as wal-mart tshirts!

(Sarcasm)

I have agree
I am working on a Robocop and Star Trek 25 at the moment, and I keep wondering why they dropped certain features (I know, cost)
Robocop has nylon caps on posts, different colored playfield posts, colored GI
Star Trek 25 has washers between posts and the plastics, and advertises that "Hook" is coming

Perhaps folks missed several postings in regards to Stern flippers beating stops into dust on new games.

This is an ongoing issue to this day.

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Sorry about the lack of clarity...
My feeling about the post above mine was the Stern has the best flippers.. kind of surprised by that comment with flippers that need replacing because of crappy coil stops !
Happy that so many manufacturers are making product..
Just thought that was a fan boyish comment where Stern does no wrong.
Apologies if I have offended.

I was surprised too as Godzilla owners are reporting the same problem and having to replace the stops with replacements from PinballLife. One would have thought Stern would have had a handle on the problem but clearly they don't and this has been going on for a few years.

I don't think it's that big of an issue. Even if it is, not that hard or expensive to replace a few coil stops. Nobody is cancelling orders or avoiding Stern over it. Non issue.

Is to people who just spent 8-10k on a new pin and have to replace stops in under 100 plays.

Hardly "awesome" in my opinion.

Adding to my previous post:

Capcom: Technical innovation. Zero GI strings (every bulb is CPU controlled AND pulse width modulated for dimming effects), burnt bulb detection, discrete switch wiring with remotely mounted diodes with advanced diagnostics, utilization of the same solenoid for all applications with software controlled strength (no need to stock multiple types of solenoids). All in all, really cool advanced stuff.

Zaccaria: Wicked artwork. Seriously, very few games have artwork as rich in color as Zaccaria does. I (think?) they actually used a more advanced color silkscreen process that included more colors than other manufacturers at the time.

Interflip/Playmatic (other overseas manufacturers?): Polyurethane clearcoating. I always thought this was an interesting topic. Listening to interviews, Williams knew poly clears were superior, but reluctant to adopt them because they WANTED their games to wear out and become disposable. Why create a game that would last forever and never need replacement? Obviously, they eventually caved, but I think it's interesting that the early EMs essentially still look brand new compared to the domestic lacquered finished playfields.

Thank you! Our niche amusement could be so much cheaper if overseas slave labor was used in the production of our toys! Expecting us to foot the price of a living wage in America for our leisure time pursuits? Selfish at the very least and monstrous if we're being honest. And anyone who knows anything about recent history knows that the working class in the US has made astronomic gains economically over the last 60 years compared to downtrodden CEOs, owners, and shareholders, smh, which is why there should be zero unionized industries in this country. (Opposite day)

---

In the spirit of participating in the original intent of this discussion, I like Stern for their abundance of mass appeal themes that mesh well with pinball culture. They have a good mix of nostalgia, ie, all the band tables, TMNT, Godzilla, etc, as well as multiple entries from present day massive IPs like Star Wars and Marvel (looking forward especially to an Ahsoka table!). I like Jersey Jack for bringing in some classic mass appeal IPs that are perhaps a bit unexpected in pinball culture, like Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka (and I hope they keep mining that trend, imagine I Love Lucy pinball bahaha). And I like Spooky for their potential to bring off the wall themes with their small production runs that other manufacturers might not go for (and also for the chance that lightning strikes twice causing them to create something else just as flat-out cool as Total Nuclear Annihilation).

Cheers!

I guess I should have said I prefer the way they play. I don’t want modern Stern flippers on my Meteor, or any other classic game. Agreed, I have replaced too many coil stops prematurely on modern Stern games.

My opinion was only that I prefer how the new Stern flippers play. Not sure why I’m the modern Stern apologist of the thread, but I’m happy everyone is getting all this off their chest.