Right now it sounds like a judge is the only one who can decide.

It's weird that whatever title is being worked on when a company closes it's doors suddenly becomes the brass ring. Given it's not done and very few of us have played one, I'm not sure I understand the emotional investiture. It's an unfinished game on a dead platform that is legally encumbered to such an extent it's unclear who owns it. It sounds like THE tar baby of the pinball world.

It would be cheaper/faster to build a knock-off called "Sorceror Cubes" than it would be to try and complete what exists. The reality is there's nothing sacred about the existing rule set other than that's what they had when the doors closed.

_{Post edited by swf127}

I absolutely agree with this. It's a piece of pinball history that deserves to be preserved and if the owner is sharing it with the community, that's icing on the cake.

Oddly enough probably not but let me explain why. Creating anything of any real value is usually an iterative process. Geniuses might be able to lay out something with no changes, but the rest of us are constantly making adjustments as we go to reach the intended goal. I've written quite a bit in my career (software & otherwise) and if I were forced to abandon an effort mid-stream, I'd have mixed feelings about people holding it up as my coda. If you want to play it out of historical interest or to understand how a pin evolves during development, then I totally get that. I just think hiring a pack of bozos to pick up where a guy like Lawlor et al. left off and try and call it a Lawlor pin is doing him and pinball a disservice.

I think pin2k was an interesting technical achievement that had a great deal of potential. I'm not denigrating anyone's work. All I'm saying is that nostalgia is a powerful force. It's one of the big reasons we're all here, right? We're grown up a bit, are well-off enough to buy some toys and we're buying all the crap we liked in our late teens and twenties. If you're going to move things forward, we can borrow ideas and concepts from a platform like pin2k, but I wouldn't limit ourselves to what already exists. I'm far more excited about what Heck & spooky are doing precisely because they're opening up the platform. They're making it accessible in a way that's never been done before. If I have to choose where to spend my money, it's a remarkably easy decision.

I doubt Lyman is going to give up his job for a six figure payday and my guess is Stern might have a problem with him taking a leave of absence to work on a competing product.

I don't know Lyman, but one would presume it would need to be in "F. U. number" territory.

I'm not sure why you guys are so fixated on this pin. How many pins that come out look great when you see photos or short video clips but SUCK when you sit down and really play them?

I only beat a dead horse with another dead horse. A bat won't get the job done.

That's true of just about anyone but I doubt it's true for Lyman. He's a brand in his own right at this point and the fact he worked on a game drives sales. If Stern doesn't have him in a set of golden handcuffs at this point, they're idiots.

If Lyman isn't under some type of non-disclosure and non-competition agreement, that would be funny. If that were true after they took on venture capital, I'd be stunned. Then again, I'm sure in your model him uploading the code for MET to github would be cool with them as well, no? I mean, we're all friends here right?

If it were something that Lyman wanted to do, was passionate about and got approval for, sure. The reason I'd expect Stern to object is that it's a directly competing product. It's not a "threat" to Stern per se, but it sucks dollars out of the pool of available pinball collector dollars when it ships. IE: People who might have bought the new Stern might buy Wizard Blocks instead.