On the website they say: animated award.... so this is true, it's an animation on the display.

It still has a spinning disc with animated awards on the back screen they've changed their web site, it used to say spinning disc's, and that's not the list I put up.

I cant imagine that they cant re engineer this to work. hard disk drive motors, a disk with a hidden or visible rotating magnet, or simply my 75 year old slot machine with tens of thousands of plays and still works with Concentric rings! (just being annoying :} )

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216 animated awards is correct.
It's an animation on the display...not on the disc on the playfield...

I have to say, this was unexpected. Nice post.

All this talk of spinning discs and questions about when was the last time a major mech was pulled from a game got me thinking. I came up with exactly one example that occurred twenty five years ago, when B/W released JD. Deadworld is the main toy in Judge Dredd and it occupied the center of the game. Deadworld is a large spinning disc with three holes that was designed to physically lock three balls for multiball. Operators complained about it's reliability (which ended up being more a problem about the game's optos registering less than 100% and messing up the internal ball count) and the ring was replaced with one with slots instead of out holes at the beginning of production, thereby rendering the lock a virtual one.

I might be in the minority of the actual doer's, but I cancelled my order until I actually see a finished product off the assembly line. Tired of per-order promises only to come up short in the production. While it's true this maybe a first for JJP to actually remove a key feature from per-order to production, just tired of having my funds removed in general (blanket statement for all companies) with half ass codes out the door, poor coding updates as promised and now missing key innovative features such as triple spinning disc map. As it goes for the chest I can live without it moving. Any who the new game for me is the "wait and see". Want me to buy it, then win me over.....

Ok tear me apart now.

The whole situation is pretty wonky if you ask me. I’m almost to the point where I can move on from the triple disc even though I’m disappointed. It appears the new art will be a good bit better then the barf look we saw! Lol

The trunk really has me scratching my head though. Just seems perhaps they spent so much time trying to get the disc to work and ran out of time on the trunk and said F’it.

Even though this is a minor toy, it’s just so half assed for them to do that.

Make the son of a bitch work please!

They went on to sell over 6000 Judge Dredds this way. And years later it still had a reasonable value of $1400.

So wait Odin is PRO JJP now after a week of trashing them?

This shit has more twists and turns than a Monday Night Raw story line.

It was 6000 not 8000 and I'm still on my first cup of coffee of the day.

Scared Stiff had a few things removed as well, right?

I would not be surprised at all if Jjp releases the three spinning disks as a mod or in a LE version in the future.
Probably aready plannned but they’ll say they finally got the mechanics to work properly when sales start to slow.

Just curious does anybody give a shit that the spinner "changes directions and moves at variable speeds" - making it quite unlike any other spinning disc we've ever seen on a game - or is that just not gonna cut it?

Since people STILL refuse to believe they are never gonna be able to buy a triple disc mod for this thing one day I guess nobody does. But I thought it was interesting.

My guess is they have a window for POTC to hit the production line before it’s needed to ramp Toy story. So they are dealing with a real deadline problem. And not many games shipping to generate revenue.

Anyway, I’m (likely) out for now and will just get on the Lawlor Toy story bandwagon in the fall. My deposit is sill holding my LE until they ask for payment. I’ll hold out hope until the fat lady sings.

The problem is, who's gonna believe anything remotely new or innovative shown in the Toy Story reveal will stick around for production?

NANA, It keeps Stern for stealing the Idea and actually making it work! What a slap in the face that would be!

This is all just a ploy by JJP to spike DI sales as they are now in stock and readily available. Force everyone to panic and buy a DI now and then swoop back in a few months from now and say we heard you and fixed the spinning disc so that everyone panics again and buys a POTC. The most import thing is that all of you panic though. This is real important stuff after all.

This mistake isn't going to be made again. That would just be incredibly foolish and would cost them a ton (more) of business. Chances are they will, moving forward, delay reveals a bit longer and test things more to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. I'm sure they didn't think the backlash would be this intense. If you think back to the Hobbit, Smaug was supposed to be more interactive than he was, but due to licensing it never came to be. It was talked about as a feature, but never came to fruition. They may have thought this would be a similar situation - but of course there's a big difference in talking about a feature then removing or scaling it back versus actually having people play it and then remove it.

Wow, people are really freakin out about JJP.Toy Story is Pat Lawlor’s
game so I’m thinking it will be complete and ready to rock when they roll it out at TPF 2019

He came up with the concept, thus the patent. Watch the reveal video at expo where he gives props to the the engineer that made his idea become a reality.

Yes and your description is how it should read not a “Mechanical spinning disc map WITH 216 animated award combinations....”

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I haven't really been interested in the game from the start, but I do like JJP as a company. I, for one, am glad they came out and told the truth and did what they had to do. Better to be honest and take your licks up front. Otherwise, people would have their pitchforks out 2 months after owning the game and a bunch of spinning disks start breaking. It would have been like the Xenomorph on Alien not working (see how great that went). I don't think JJP had much of a choice. You gotta keep the line moving. Unfortunately, sometimes it is best not to see how the sausage is made, y'know? Just watched a bit of the last stream with the single disk, and you know what, the game still looks like it played the same. I think this will all blow over, eventually and JJPOTC will be redeemed.

I like JJP as well, but the $500 increase for DI and now for POTC puts them in rarefied air, they’re charging a ton for these games. Therefore expectations are really high. While we can assume they did try hard to get that disc to work, it still feels like they just gave up in the end. And this kind of situation is exactly what JJP should be concerned about. The JJP fans are willing to pay more than the average new pin price for the best machines on the market. Pulling this out at such a late stage has people questioning the value they are getting for their money. Yes I know it has a rocking ship, cannon and now a lame single disc and will have excellent rules/code, but at least to me it doesn’t seem like we are getting our money’s worth on this one. I still want to play it, but I’m not sure I need to own it. (Cancelled LE order).

Actually the patent is worthless unless JJP can make the product commercially viable

And obviously they cant

I remember when DI was announced there were tons of posts on Pinside proclaiming the death of JJP and how awful their new game was. Today DI is praised as a masterpiece and highly ranked on the popularity charts.

It will be fun to check back in with this post in a year or two. I predict in 2020 that POTC will be ranked 18th on the pinside charts and Eric Meunier will have just announced JJP Indiana Jones.

...one can dream right???

A lot gets left out of Williams games. Though most are never known.

On TZ, besides the third magnet. On early games there are two sets of opto cut outs in the apron over the auto launch, so two sets of optos were left out, as well as the opto for the third magnet. The stage door flashers. The two posts by the pop bumpers ( later a plug was there, later no holes ) . The too short playfield rests were dropped for longer ones.

The Williams examples known or unknown aren't weak.

LTG : )

Here is a Bally example.

The year is 1975 and our country is about to celebrate it's bicentennial and Bally is striving to become the top pinball manufacturer which shortly there after they would go onto become. On Freedom they removed an entire pop bumper from a key location, but that didn't stop them from selling over 5000 units.

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What's next? Ship isn't as reliable as they thought so they make it stationary! But hey, you still get to shoot a cannon, lol!

For 10k, the chest ought to work as intended.

This is because the Europeans complained they couldn't hold the ball as easily while they drank beer and bragged about their upcoming shot. Not because of cost or reliability. And the audience was 99% operators.

I love the motion design from JJP, but the last thing their games need is more stuff moving around on the screen.

I never really get why manufacturers bow down to these Europeans, when it was the USA that was celebrating it's bicentennial.

With the money they saved, they need to go to real GI lighting instead of those terrible light tubes they've had since WOZ. Oh well, more money for the pinstadium guys.

This isn't the first time for JJP. Remember the drama when they started removing features from The Hobbit...(but that was supposed to be due to Warner Bros... hmmmm...)

Exactly. If you want to be the Ferrari or Lamborghini of pinball, I expect you to find an answer, not compromise. This isn't an entry level machine

If you compromise on features from original marketing, you should compromise on price.

WOZ lighting is terrible, but all subsequent games have been good.

Since you are an expert on Italian cars can you assure us they've never removed a feature from one of their cars before release?

Cause I'm pretty sure they have.

Also - cars!

After marketing them on their vehicles and without adding more features? Sure can. I could also say in my experience of the auto industry and the 12 brands I've worked with (including some italians), I don't know of anyone that has, especially one that marketed a feature and then pulled it back while charging the same.

I know you guys hate carguments, but it's the only world I've known since I was 13.

Do you really advocate getting less for the same money?

I think he advocates giving shit to every one with an opinion.

I advocate not giving a shit about something that cost everybody (besides JJP!) literally zero dollars, and advocate not buying the game in it's released shape if they are no longer interested.

I also advocate not pretending that this is the first time in history a prototype product has been changed before release.

I also advocate finding something else to compare pinball machines to besides cars, just to mix it up a little!

Now THIS is rich, coming from you buddy!

Right. So you never had an interest in the game.

Many of us were super excited for this title, emotionally committed based on the amazing features on the title. So removing the very thing that got us committed an excited left a mark.

I can understand why that doesn't apply for you if you never had an interest

As a car guy you know the problems that come with knowingly releasing a defective product. The pinto, the Corvair, and Firestone explorer tires come to mind.

You aren't getting "less for your money," you are getting something that works. I'm sure you realize that at this point. I know it's emotional for everybody but sometimes this stuff happens.

I'm still trying to get over the Tucker automobile never being officially released.

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/\ feels like that sometimes.

Indeed.

I hate to use the couchgument, but after being emotionally committed when I pre-ordered my Lazy Boy couch and seeing the piece of junk they sent me, and now going thru two trips from the service tech and boxes of new cushions and parts cluttering up my house, just to have it now look worse than before, I'm frazzled!

Heres another mech from antiquity, Crank one handle, all three rings spin as one cranks the handle.
Speed changes, and Random stops. The Combo rewards can be random, and really need not be tied to sensing ring position, but certainly
a couple key sensors can be managed.

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The problem is that no one believes cocentric spinning discs, while definitely innovative, is a technology so bleeding edge, so out there, that it could not be engineered with a reasonable amount of time and effort. It comes off as a cool feature they promised, sold people on heavily, and then couldn't or wouldn't be bothered to get right.

I don't see an issued patent for the disks on Google patents yet.
Interesting, JJ Pinball did get a patent on their individually resetting targets of a drop target bank.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US9700783B2/en?assignee=JJ+PINBALL+LLC

So suddenly the exact same system actually works? There is DI sitting next to a Houdini and GOTG Pro in a nearby location. The DI is dark by comparison and the Houdini and GOTG Pro are nice and bright. They need to just put in sockets and LED bulbs, long overdue.