I am in for a CE. First JJP purchase.
It was exciting to see the lead-up/reveal create so much buzz in the pinball world. It goes to show that pinball remains relevant more than ever in this day and age of mobile/console/PC games and that the pinball community is passionate in wanting only the best in game design!
I won’t compare this game with the other JJPs since I feel they each appeal to their own fan-base and are fun in their own right! I wish I had a WOZ, Hobbit, and TPOTC but for me personally the connection to purchase was not strong enough. I am happy for all those who did pull the trigger and enabled JJP to continue making bigger and better games.
Regardless of the pre-hype and post-reveal, I am committed to buying WWCF due to several reasons:
1) It fills an emotional element that resonates for me (fan of the movie).
2) It looks appealing to the eyes even in its unfinished form.
3) Those who have played it lean towards fairly positive comments on flow/gameplay and desire to play more.
4) I reflected that historically I have gravitated and enjoyed PL’s games even at times before I knew they were developed by PL.
5) While WWCF May not be revolutionary, I see an evolution in refinement and learning from previous games developed.
While concerning to hear all the analysis on faults with the sound/art/toys/component design, the call out from the floor was that these were still prototype versions of the cabinets which had some SE/LE/CE components mixed together and not in their final form with final GA code. They were put together to show how far they’ve come and how close they are to start production. Of course it would have been preferred to have final products shown but i’m sure a marketing decision/strategy was implemented to get people to possibly pause on purchasing a competitors newly announced pin if they understand their average customer may have budgets to buy only 1-2 machines a year.
Also, if JJP was using the reveal event (and the next few other events) to get hands-on user feedback before fully locking down final form, all the better and brilliant!
I remain positive the coding will improve, the call outs/wizard modes/video clip integration will vastly improve, and the feedback from the JJP base will be heard/taken action upon where they can (when it doesn’t cause a devastating financial impact to the build or hit legal licensing barriers).
Don’t get caught up in the emotional highs and lows of all the fanboys and haters or the vendor comparisons. No one should have any regrets with any vendor’s pin purchase if they find joy and happiness from the machine. Find the machine that provides you that joy and don’t look back.
Will WWCF be perfect? Probably not. Will they miss what seems like obvious movie theme integration scenes? Probably. Will it have unforeseen issues? History says yes. Will it be fun? Most likely (at least for me)!
Cheers!
Gas