Not this lawyer.

It won't be the Dominos delivery boy I can tell you that.

You've lost your sense of humor.

You ass-u-me that Stern is only paying minimum wage. My guess is that they pay their assembly workers more than that.

I knew I could count on you to be the exception Rob!

There is no federal mandate to raise the current minimum wage above $7.25/hr, it has been mandated that government contract workers get paid at least $10/hr. Stern and JJP have no government contracts that I am aware of so they will not be affected by the mandate, nor will 90% of other businesses. Minimum wage in Illinois is $8.50, set by the state.

Many industries will be affected by the new rules concerning salaried employees up to 65k getting overtime pay, though only a few at JJP/Stern would be in that group.

Who would want a nib WOZ at this point?

10K by Labor Day at this rate...

#shiphobbit

My pinball soul died a little when I played Wrestlemania LE.

Jack renewed the license for another 3 years ....can't blame him for wanting to continue to sell his flagship product, especially since it's the only thing they can build/ship right now.

I'm sure someone's buying them! Always remember that people who post on pinball forums are a tiny fraction of actual customers.

Yeah...maybe, if Stern could only work out all of their QC issues their having here lately...

Lately? Unfortunately almost all NIB pinball has QC issues....no one has been able to solve that 100%

I understand there have always been QC issues...but according to all of the KISS threads, Stern has really screwed the pooch on this one...almost to the point where I've considered canceling my LE order.

I was hoping they go back to numeric displays.

Crappy animations suck.

My situation to a tee.

I can afford to buy any pin I want.

However I won't pay those prices (even worse, New Zealand prices) because they just aren't worth that much in my eyes.

I can import half a dozen classic Bally SS machines from the USA for the price of a new Stern Pro. I get more enjoyment from the 6 classic pins than I do from one new one.

Simple equation in my eyes.

rd

I was hoping they would go back to mechanical score reels.

Every display since sucks.

That may be true of the Stern pro market, but not of the upper end models. Pinsiders own like 40% to 50% of the LE's on Tron and Xmen, and that's just the people who have it in their collection. WoZ, which is estimated to have 2k to 3k machines built, 600 of which are owned by pinsiders (so between 20% and 30%). 20% to 50% is a big chunk of the upper end market. Some things like predator and AMH are probably 100% pinsiders.

I would be hard to imagine a more stripped down DMD game than AFM, yet it is the funnest game of all time.

I don't look for how much crap is piled up on the playfield, I look for entertainment.

.....and they gave you WNBJM.

There is no pleasing you.

Those score reels suck..

I lit mine with green LEDs

Have you seen the dots on MET and TWD? Awesome animations rule!

Nice!

But they took out the drop targets...

WOZ

JJP

$9500

Yawn

Wake me when they deliver an affordable & complete game on time without preorders.

A fella could buy damn near 3 HUO Stern Pro titles for $9500

Shit, those won't be complete either lol

With all the greed by the bigger companies now, I don't want to hear them wining about not getting enough support if the market dives again.

Pat's game will be in line of the standard pricing. No LE model.
Plus it's not licensed so that saves on the BOM cost per unit.

Great points. Think about AFM though and its features. Motorized drop target bank, drop target behind that, scoop shot behind that and a moving mini space ship above of it. The game also has a physical ball lock, moving mini martians around the playfield and a divertor. The game isn't as feature packed as TZ or MM but there's still a good amount going on there.

Also, AFM would be nothing without its great rules, audio and callouts. Rules, audio, and callout quality can make an average looking game amazing. Stern needs to work on that department and by that I mean not just rules. They are inconsistent in the quality of their rules, audio and callouts across their games.

Entertainment in a pinball machine is important to me as well but it's only worth so much. Take LOTR for example. Incredible game. Is it worth $8k? No. At some point a games feature set plays heavily into its maximum asking price. Any manufacturer can easily take that mindset and say "hey, as long as the game is fun take out these features here and there as people will buy the game no matter what"...that's bad news when that happens.

As far as we know the prison toy in TWD Premium may have been a zombie bash toy that when hit flips up or down and reveals a ball lock. Same goes with KISS Premium / LE where maybe the Gene Simmons head toy could have been motorized and the player could shoot pinballs into the toys mouth. Stern could just say "hey, why do that, these people will buy the game no matter what as long as its fun to play so take those features out of the game, make it more basic and let's increase our profits".

That's true.

That will take $20 off the price right there.

Just leftovers from BK2K, which probably had more total features (and a much better soundtrack) than AFM....lol

Exactly.

Without its great rules, it would be nothing but 6 shots.

Being unlicensed won't lower the BOM. No art, video our sound assets to use - everything will have to be done from scratch. Plus - it's Pat...probably going to be lots of custom toys/mechs.

They did. *shudder*

image.jpg

So Pat's game will only be $9980 now? I'm in! lol

No one gets into pinball due to greed. There are better businesses to get into if you're greedy. Unfortunately, manufacturing a niche and largely irrelevant product at a low price is difficult. High prices are what they have to sell for to make the business work.

More what?
More lights? More colours? More flippers? More modes?
Definately not more fun, that's for sure.

Hey, those are alphanumeric.

Real men prefer numeric only.

Can't have both, I guess.

Everyone's opinion will vary on if it's more fun or not, same with every game. Feature wise though, what you get for the money, a WOZ standard knocks the socks off any Stern LE.

Real stainless steel armor like classic Bally / Williams games, 26" LCD, 4 flippers, 5 magnets, mechanical monkey toy, a mini playfield with standup targets + loop shot + mechanical doors + shot behind the doors, another mini playfield with a mechanical spinning house that opens, 2 VUK's, witch toy, physical ball lock, saucer, two mini outlane games, stainless steel habitrails and one of, if not the deepest rulesets in pinball.

Also, when you open up a WOZ and look under the hood take a look at the sides of the interior of the cabinet and how different they look compared to those on Stern games, look under the playfield and see how wires are ran to solenoids, notice how a lot of the cables are shrink wrapped. Everything under the hood on a JJP game is on a different level. There's just more attention to detail.

Yes, and then there's the lights, lots and lots of lights that produce some of the best lightshows in pinball.

Those are gonna show up at that Atari ET landfill one of these days.....

Do you know how to tell if it's a real good game or not? Turn the sound all the way off and play it. Then you will know. Try it some time.

Actually if you did that with WOZ it would be an improvement.

Tron would be reduced to an above average game using this approach.

Okay. Just tried it.

All my games suck.

Inflation is around 2 percent a year. More if you go by none government numbers. I am not in the market for a woz but the price will change on materials from the start of a run to the end. His call but it might be just too that he will squeeze a few in at the end for a little more before starting the next machine.

Greatest moment in television history... but maybe I'm bias

I can't imagine ever spending $9500 on a single NIB pin, I would much rather have numerous HUO pins for the same price.

You should have seen what it did to a No Good Gophers.

Please tell me you have this on a macro....if you type this f*cking list up every time you need to defend WOZ....

Anyway, all that stuff is generally irrelevant - people pay for FUN, not the tech behind the fun. Most people would rather play Iron Man than WOZ...that tells you everything you need to know.

I do have it on a macro on my PC! Pressing shift then typing "W", "O", "Z" launches it

"all that stuff is generally irrelevant" and "Most people would rather play Iron Man than WOZ"

Wow. I guess I just expect a lot in a game when a pinball machine of all things cost $7500+ It matters big time how much a game offers when the price tag is nearing or is above the $8k range.

Fun is only worth so much before I think "yeah it's fun but its not worth this much". As for Iron Man I think it's a great and fun game but it isn't half the game that WOZ is feature and code wise. It's fast, fast and fast. Of course its so fast as less mechanical features on a game (drop targets, ball locks, scoop shots, VUK's, multiple moving toys) can result in a game playing quicker as they are not slowing the ball down. The game also isn't $8k and I'm sure if Stern listed it at that price people would say no way as they would expect more.