My AC/DC feels better than any of my W/B games ! Elvis , not so much .

Many people will agree that Iron Man was a big hit in the solid feel department. Others will say as soon as they changed the name from Sega.

RBION feels solid as a rock.

Tron and AC/DC are much more solid feeling than a Williams.

Most of the bashing is BS and people just nitpicking. The machines are not as bad as you would think reading about them. Same as the Chevy v Ford v Dodge. They are all pretty good but every couple of years one will have a small problem and it gets beat to death.

My RBION and whirlwind both feel solid and are both great games. My space jam feels cheap and I can see why people diss the segas. RBION really should be rated so much higher then it is though, I think a lot of the bad ratings are from people who played it a couple of times and didn't get into it's depth.
In terms of newer sterns I've played a lot of transformers and that pin feels cheap and seems to have a lot of issues with quality (the one I have played has, yours may vary) but I still rate it highly and have a blast playing it when it works correctly. I do think with the quality issues though it's a case of the few buyers who get stuck with a lemon venting where as the happy buyers have no need to vent.

Well then, maybe you should sell me your Whirlwind

1986.

Sorry, couldn't help myself...

im in the minority, but IMO bally/williams pins are the ones that feel cheap...all of my DE and gottlieb games have been solid and sturdy with little to no problems...willams/bally usually are basket cases...

Every time I've played a Tron Pro (no mods) it's felt and looked very cheap to me. Same goes for Avengers LE. AC/DC Premium is great though, and nothing about it seems cheap, except for the moving band, but it's more cheesy than cheap looking. None of the older Stern games look and feel cheap to me (LOTR, TSPP, Spider-man, etc).

x men and acdc le are fine but ironman and rolling stones feel cheap as hell. I hated both. I know there is a new love trend toward IM but still, both RS and IM are on location locally and I don't play them becose of the weak cheap factor.

Stern started feeling cheap when they bought Chicago Coin.

Everybody has different perspectives.

I have a HUO RBION next to my X-Men LE and the X-Men feels better than the RBION to me.

Powder coated side rails vs. generic black side rails, back glass vs. translite, LEDs vs incandescent bulbs.

Have the X-men next to my B/W games, and again I don't feel a drop off. Didn't notice a drop off either when I owned my BSM.

To me, Stern was starting to get cheap when Striker Xtreme and HRC came out. Then when TSPP and LOTR were released, that changed.

Those things you mentioned aren't "feel" though. Also I don't think comparing LE specific features with a pre-LE game is fair.

Long ago when the pin was a virgin from the factory, it was innocent. But after getting slapped around and many coins in her slot over the years, she started to, let's just say feel "dirty". She used to be a one owner pin. Once she was dumped for a younger newer model with bigger LEDs, she started shacking up at various guys houses. Afterwards, she felt cheap.

I think a lot of it is in the weight. Somehow people associate the weight of the machine to higher quality. In fact, heavier weight is not desirable and only makes the machine more difficult to transport and repair. One thread recently talked about how high quality and heavy the JJP WoZ machine felt. Big deal I say. When's the last time a stern machine cabinet fell apart be aide it buckled under the weight of the rest if the machine? Ridiculous.

Ithink pinball manufacturers like stern have learned from past mistakes made by bally Williams. They made too good of a product in the 90's which resulted in an over inflated market of pinball machines. Why buy new machines when the 8 year old pin is still making operators coin and seem to last. I'm not saying pin manufacturers are making a shitty product but I'm thinking the life expectancy on a particular part ratio is lower now then before.

The disadvantages now is that pinball is turning more into a residential market and clients expect their games to last since they are not routed.

My two cents

Post of the Day!!!!!!!

RBION feels old school... When did Stern make the transition to the smaller pop bumpers? Was that around 2007? I'm not saying the games are less reliable, but that was when they started looking cheaper and feeling really light.

They always had a lighter flipper feel, which I think is a lot of what people describe. Its less "thunkier" than the older Williams stuff if that makes sense. I think that feel combined with the heavier Williams cabinets is what makes them feel more solid.

I do also feel this is getting to the point where Stern needs to address it. Maybe I'm just used to old klunkers, but Avengers felt alarmingly cheesy to me.

Before people start piling on that I'm a Stern hater, I love RBION and LOTR, but if you don't think the newer stuff has a distinctly different feel than the older games, I don't think you're being honest with yourself. Just look at the amount of metal playfield elements on those two vs. the new stuff.

Okay-

Pro today versus old Stern- only differences pre-Iron man are Lock down mechanism, playfield support, and metal apron to plastic apron. Only thing you "feel" would be a plastic apron in terms of game play. I've put a 100 games on an Iron man and it doesn't feel any better or worse to me than anything before it.

I had a TSPP for 4 years, played slower than other pins I had, but I didn't think it felt inferior just different as it was not a fast flow game because of garage vuk, Otto hole, I/S hole, etc....

If people want to judge a game on light sockets, thicker gauge wire, Diamond Plate clear coat, metal ramps etc..., that is a different debate for quality of BOM used. Feel is just too subjective as it is an opinion.

Sometime around 1984

"Feel cheap" and "feel solid" are such amiguous terms in pinball, though.

Take the most solid feeling Wms built machine you can name and put buttons on it with worn-out springs and it'll feel sloppy and cheap. New buttons and it feels solid as a rock.

Sometimes just changing plastic posts to metal ones makes a huge difference. Or new rubber. Etc.

Plastic aprons definitely don't help. Wireformed ramp returns seem to always add a solid feel. So many factors that I don't think it can really be tied to a particular company or build. Cheap-looking is much easier to define. Cheap feeling is tough.

I love the Chevy to Ford comparison someone mentioned. I know die hard fans of both and the argument is the same as in this thread. Imo, Stern and BW only feel cheap if you are biased one way or the other.

I love my two Sterns but, I also really enjoy playing my buddies BW games. I don't feel either is of better quality through game play.

I respectably disagree. Iv played both Pro and Premium ACDCs and there is a huge difference in feel or 'cheapness'. I think thats the rub. You gotta pay Premium prices to get a 'solid' stern. My Tron definitely feels less solid next to my SM and LOTR.

for me another part of the "feel" is that when missing some shots I flinch expecting the machine to break. With other machines they seem more solid when the ball hits something. Doesn't help that 2 acdcs near me both have issues already and the TF near my work is constantly broken too.

They must put more time and care into certain games.

Its the vibratey-boink instead of the solid clunk of missing a shot. I feels you bro.

So you don't think that your Tron feels much less flimsy than your Whitewater?

yeah thats it for me. I'm generalising a bit as I have not played avengers or x-men but the other newer sterns I've played have been like that. "feel" is kind of the wrong word, when I'm using it I mean it in the same sense that a nice ramp shot may "feel" good, some contact "feels" weaker for me it's hard to explain. If the majority survive the hits well in a few years though then I guess their fine but so far I'm not sure their surviving on route well in my area.

I think this is completely subjective. I finally got to play a modern Stern in Lord of the Rings and to me the thing felt like a giant Zizzle. I think the sort of mailed in photoshop play fields might color people's views, like inexpensive and lazy might equal "cheap". Regardless, those slings felt like toys.

I don't really have much experience with Sterns though so the above is not an opinion, just an observation based on a single afternoon.

After playing all my modern Sterns, All the bally williams seem cheap and feel cheap. Most of the operators I know have had fall less service problems with Sterns, bally williams were always having problems on location.

Sometimes something as simple as tightening the leg bolts makes the cabinet and whole game feel more solid.

I was trying to compare apples to apples.

That is TOTAL BS...!!!!!......

Stern started to lower it's quality after 1999, once WMS was out of the picture.

I always thought that Avatar was the 'modern' demarcation of going 'cheap'.

Seems to me that the topic would be better titled, "When did Stern STOP feeling cheap?", since it appears to be a foregone conclusion that, if they once did, since Tron or so they do no longer. Or at least since ACDC. I'm not in the market and have never laid eyes on one, but even given the JJP / Stern pissing matches I've witnessed I'm not sure I've ever heard one single opinion against that machine.

I noticed tron adn forward the pf's jump around in the cab when the auto plunger fires. Never used to do this.....

"When did you stop beating your wife?"

Sorry, that's what this thread sounds like to me.

well put ROFL

Well now you know one who has had tons of problems with Sterns! I will happily admit that they do get played the most of my games on location, so that definitely plays a role, but they have far more serious and frequent issues than my B/W games. Most of the time when one of the B/W games has a problem it ends up being something really basic like a broken wire. The Sterns tend to have dead transistors and optos, and shattered paper-thin ramps and plastics. Oh, and almost every single EOS actuator has snapped off. I just begrudgingly ordered $150 worth of the pieces of junk yesterday. I know people claim Sterns don't need EOS switches at all, but my Iron Man's coil burned up days after one of the actuators snapped off, so I figured I'd play it safe and replace them all.

When I put my Iron Man out less than a year ago it was new. The other day I found the entire right side of the right ramp snapped off, despite the ridiculously flimsy included metal "ramp protector" (I should've gone for the Cliffy). Sure, B/W games have ramps that eventually break too, but this wasn't just a crack or small chunk. We're talking about a 4 inch length of the wall of the ramp, all the way up to the screw. The plastic they use these days is just pathetically thin.

To answer the original question though, there isn't a point past which Sterns started looking and feeling cheap, however you define that. They have always felt this way. Search RGP, you will find posts about the cheap feel dating back to Monopoly and certainly back into the Sega/DE years as well.

I strongly disagree. I enjoy the gameplay and flow of Elvis and believe its one of Sterns best games. As much as I like the band I wish they could have done much more with AC/DC.

Nostalgia has a funny way of making things seem better than they actually were.

Thank god Stern doesn't make pins like the ones from the late 80's into the mid 90's.

Seriously. Thank god.

Imagine finding out your new AC/DC was only allowed to be built with the technology available in 1989.

I'll take improvements and advancement over the old rhetoric any day.

A '57 Chevy rides nice. A 2012 Lexus rides nicer.

Day ONE.