long post for the OP:
when you have no pins; going for 2 is the way to go. When you have 7, you can be a little bit more picky, choosy, and selfish. I own ACDC pro - fantastic game - love the gameplay way more than the premium. That said, i was just recently in the market for a new game; at the time, my 3 pins were serious, fast, brutal games (SW, IMDN, ACDC) - so i wanted something ‘different’ ‘quirky’ and ‘fun’. Wonka & WOZ were at the top of that list. I had owned WOZ in the past and would love to own again. I love Ritchie games so wanted to wait and see BK3 too. So i waited...i saw both reveals; BK3 - hard pass, even though it looks super cool it was just too serious and brutal and sort of similar to IMDN in the atmospheric sense. Then i saw Wonka; it checked a lot of the boxes i was looking for, even the price hit my budget at $7500. But it seemed half baked, the sounds and display did nothing for me, I didn’t see any excitement or Adrenalin factor (yes its hard to tell those things from the streams, and who really knows when they’ll start rolling out. I think Wonka would be worth revisiting in about 6-9 months when code gets baked more.
So that left me at a standstill; i started looking at 2 for 1’s with my $7500 budget. Had a few options with some 90’s pins like DH, R&B, WCS, and even MBr was a choice - but again, another fan layout with MBr meant an easy pass for me on that. Then, some friends and Pinside’s started diverting me towards Deadpool. And they told me to get the premium, not the pro (cause i like stern pro’s). It was right in budget. Problem was, i played the pro numerous times on release and hated it. But 8 months later, the code is at 1.00 and i put it back on the radar. I sought out an LE to play on location and had fun. It didn’t say instant buy when i played it on location, but i watched a couple streams and talked to more Pinside’s and everything they were saying was checking all the boxes for what i was looking for. I pulled the trigger on a Premium and just got it this week. Holy hell is this game that good and more.
Moral of the story; do your research! find out what you want as your next game. You have a pretty brutal lineup, so it kind of makes sense to get something quirky like Wonka; but research for me showed that i really didn’t want a wonka movie themed pin - for myself. So find out what you are really after. And if you haven’t given it a look, check out DP Prem/LE.
hope this helps and isn’t too much rambling haha
Quoted from PokerJake:Would you rather buy 1 machine or 2 machines for just a little more? The games in question are AC/DC Pro and MBr CE or Willy Wonka LE. I really thought Willy Wonka was going to be my first JJP but still can't get over the prices. The ACDC and MBr were not much more than the Wonka shipped, all NIB from same distributor. The discount for buying multiple machines was substantial. The Wonka Standard was tempting but the loss of the Wonkavator and being a little underwhelmed by the machine in general pushed me towards the LE model. Then the price of the LE swayed me in the direction of the others. Plus the fact that MB is my wife's all time favorite, although she would have loved Wonka if not for the price. I think Stern Pros and the remake Classics are at an excellent price point.