The MM remake idea only works because demand is high for a title that isn't *that* rare. That proves beyond a doubt that it's not just a rarity phenomenon, but is based on gameplay, too. Once prices on beaters got to $9k+ it became obvious that if one could build these in a reasonable volume for $5kish, one could sell them for $8k and make it worth doing. Boom, we see MM remakes.
Now, I'm not in Rick's head and I've not been paying much attention to pinball for about five years now, but before that I was *quite* involved. In fact, *I* was interested and investigated buying the Williams pinball rights back when they were first sold off. I'm not going to go any further than to say it became pretty obvious Williams wasn't interested in selling to anyone who would likely do good things for pinball.
But all that said, I'm not certain there's another title worth remaking. What I do know is that if the MMR happens without major snags and ends up successful from a monetary standpoint, it will be a LOT easier for Rick to do other titles because he'll know his costs even closer AND he'll have trust enough in the community to launch a pre-order campaign without such a nicely finished prototype. Don't get enough interest? Refund the money. Get enough? Boom, do it.
CC is an interesting question. I think *if* Rick can do it with updated software, it would probably sell. If not? No way. It's price is driven WAY more by lack of supply than it is about gameplay. I have an HUO one and I can say it *is* a really good playfield. But the software is also very limited. The folks saying "but my distributor couldn't get rid of them" are right, but that was a VERY low point for pinball in general. The collector community alone is bigger now than the coin-op pinball industry was then, IMHO (and yes, I worked in the coin-op industry back then).
MB? I dunno. I don't care for the game, personally. Not sure why. Would it sell a thousand or more copies at $8k? Probably.
AFM? No way. I think it's teetering on the collector price side of "not worth it." I agree with the sentiment that it's value is a bit overblown and always has been. I think they generally do trade for MUCH lower prices than they are advertised for, much like folks here have said.
And personally, it still kind of sucks that we're all soooo interested in remakes. There's no way that prices on the older titles are going to keep going so far north that the list of remake titles worth remaking is going to grow enough to keep that as an interesting business. We're debating the one or two more that might work, and even if that takes a couple more years to do those, there won't be two or three more by then worth doing, I don't think. Stern is doing okay with this movie license model and tiered game levels, but I still feel like someone with a good creative team could skip the licensing and create unique titles that will sell.
I also wonder about the head-to-head thing. I just sold my Joust head-to-head. The reason? Gameplay is just so simple. But could it be done better? Absolutely. I'm *very* tempted to try my hand at design and build a prototype of one. My biggest problem is while I think I could do an interesting and fun playfield, I don't have any graphics or sound skills at all. *sigh*
--Donnie
Jennings, LA
