I love the Wonka movie like many of you and I was super excited to hear a game was going to be made. My first thought was, “This game will be like WOZ, only with the magic of Willy Wonka and Pat Lawlor........Amazing, How could they screw this up???”. It seemed like the game had so much going for it......I was singing the Candyman song for 3 weeks straight, no lie I had my mother, aunt and 93 year old grandmother in a car singing along with me! This game was going to cure cancer and wipe out the national debt! Fast forward to when video started to emerge and my boy Kaneda started to back pedal........”This cannot be”, I thought. “This game was going to be the greatest game ever created?”. “I know this to be true because Jack mixes it with love and makes the world taste good”. But unfortunately the game fell from the pinball heavens like a sack of WWE pinball poop! There was no Candyman to be found in this game, not even his distant cousin. I was pissed, “how the @#%* could Jack screw up another game??”. On top of that, in walks the playfield issues.......Are you kidding me???
Fast forward to several weeks ago, when a fellow New Englander was selling an SE with pooling around the posts for $6700. I decided that if the game dropped to $6500 I would buy it........and it eventually did, so I bought it. I am like many of you and I try to own each game at some point even if I think it will suck........I have been wrong so many times that I don’t fully trust my first impressions about games, even though I am not shy about announcing them. Anyway, I picked up the game, set it up and immediately started to play. My first thought was, “Damn, this game really does suck, it’s so slow and the flippers are so weak!!”. I Played about 20 games and was already thinking about selling it. I texted my buddy who had an SE and started to bitch to him, “This game sucks!”. He loved his Wonka and kept telling me to shut up and text him when I got to 50 games........”Bull shit!”, I said. Well I finally got to 50 and that punk was right. I cranked up the coil strength on the flippers and pop bumpers and all of the sudden the game started flowing like a hurricane. In fact, it was flowing so fast I was getting air balls off the right ramp. Thankfully JJP sent me the fix in 2 days.....and the problem was solved! Anyway, I was starting to really enjoy this game and it’s super fast flow. That being said, I still hated the music, sounds and callouts....”Who is this loser they hired??. “He sounds like a kindergarten teacher giving instructions to a child, I am a 44 year old man and I don’t want to hear some prick talking to me like I am a 5 year old”.
Well After a week of ownership, I passed 125 games played and my brain began to focus on the incredible flow, amazing light show and beautiful playfield art and less on the loser narrator reminding me the Candyman was dead. The distractions of the numerous sounds subsided and all I could hear was, “I’ve got a golden ticket!”.......which brought me back to my childhood. This game was winning me over. Now, after a few weeks of ownership, I am fully converted and really enjoying this game. Is it perfect?, heck no, could it have been better?, damn right, but is it really good?, yup! Now that I am keeping it, I am excited to unlock the code and find out all the new things to uncover. This game is a keeper and it will be in my collection for a while. I WAS WRONG ABOUT WILLY WONKA!! I can honestly recommend this game, providing you crank up the coil strength. Thedarkknight77