Just going through random stuff when I remembered this hype reel for X-Men. So weird seeing it now after the crazy roller coaster of emotions that all us XM owners have gone through over the past year or so. So much potential.....hopefully we will still see it finished.

Funny to see that the whitewood prototype they had back then had Wolvie as a captive ball shot with a bunch more inserts circling it. Made me think about how awesome it would have been if that Wolvie shot, instead of a bash toy, was a set of in-lines, like MET, that ended with a magnet that fired the ball back. Would have added so much to that area. Oh well, could'a, should'a, would'a.

Still a blast to play, logged in some time tonight with it. Can't wait to see it finished *fingers crossed*.

Hmmm.....I also remember a somewhat recent video on YouTube that had an alternate white wood shown in it that had some weird line inserts leading to the Clops shot, some weird "burst" insert window above the hero wheel and the spinner was in the Beast orbit.....I'll see if I can dig it up.....

Well that didn't take long to find....

I'm sure the usual "XM sucks, what a turd!" brigade will get turgid and start posting the usual stuff, so be it :p

Aww, shucks. Thank you! I would have spent the time anyways figuring it out front to back....because that's just the way I am, I dig game code and all the nooks and crannies of what makes a game unique. All the games I have I've gone through and figured all the code scoring out pragmatically, but X-Men needed some explanation given how friggin' deep it is. If it wasn't me, Dug or someone else would have.

I actually would have loved to do a Bowen-esque video breakdown of the rules, but:
-I'm no where near a world class player such as Bowen and Keith
-I don't have the proper cam and mic set up

Thanks for the kind words, man. Just trying to do my best to attribute somehow to the hobby while hopefully helping a lot of players understand this misunderstood game.

Yeah, me too, pity it was costed out. And there were three standups in both the HFC and BH banks on that white wood

Always thought the same thing. Guaranteed money for the maker, as "we" would all buy it just put of curiosity.

I replaced my Wolvie with a Bowen figure I custom drilled to fit. It looks awesome, but honestly, it didn't change the gameplay that much. Wolvie's waist really doesn't take up THAT much real eastate. The Bowen figure I mounted is slightly slimmer, but I didn't necessarily make anything "easier". The resin bust of the Bowen figure would sometimes not register a hit on Wolvie unless I got a strong hit on the left side. So what I "gained" in space, I lost in switch sensitivity.

If someone was able to fabricate a durable plastic custom Wolvie to mount there that worked, I would gladly spend $80-100 to get a nice, well painted alternative to the stock Wolvie.

My Bowen Wolvie attempt thread, for those curious to what I was talking about:

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/rcades-x-men-full-bowen-mod-attempt-1

I will have to try it this way when I get my reprinted Wolvie back from Zdoor!

Sweet. Would be helpful. The original method remount I did worked fine, but adding extra bracket might make the angling a tad better, so I figure I'd give it a shot

I emailed him this morning, hopefully he'll reply, haha.

Having my new aux board on its way right now. Nothin too screwy yet, just one of my NCs is starting to act inappropriately, so I figured better to have and not need than to need and not have

Absolutely bupkis. No reply from Waison, or anyone for that matter. :/

Also starting to think that the dots and callouts are an issue as well.

Because for a "sufficient" finish to XM, some of the major things we'd like are Deadpool implemented/finished, the third Wizard mode finished and some type of integration bonus to the villain modes for completed heroes.

All of those require new dot animations and callouts. There is ONE Deadpool callout (I think it's Deadpool, certainly isn't in the game currently) that I could find in the pinball browser, but no extra dots at all. There's a couple unused dot animations, including a nice "lock is lit" animation that I'm not quite sure why it's not in there, but there's nothing there to facilitate the new modes at all.

A lot of things have to align correctly for XM to get finished "correctly":

-Waison/Mike need to have the free time or be given the time between projects to finish the programming
-Mark needs to have the time to make new dots
-new callouts need to be recorded from the voice actors for the new modes
-there needs to be enough space available to fit all the data in

That's a lot to fit in amidst an already packed release schedule.

I'm hoping above all hopes that they make the time to finish this incredibly ambitious code, but it's a tall order. All I can think of is to keep letting Stern know that this updated is NEEDED. Not only to make the owners/operators happy, but to rebuild the confidence in the community from the 100's of possible machine sales they're losing because of "us" not wanting to gamble anymore on NIB Stern titles in fear that it will be just another game that sits unfinished for years. Email Lonnie, Waison, Gary, or talk to whoever will listen, but don't be a dick or annoying, just let them know that finishing code IS important to the community and that not finishing code and, even more so, no COMMUNICATING any plans or stages of the current code situations for games is hurting their business with a large portion of the community.

But hey, IM, SM and TRON all took a long time to finish, and look how they're regarded now! So here's keeping my fingers crossed!

Good to know, thanks for the update!

I know <everyone> likes to take a sh!t on Waison, but over the course of this whole XM stuff I've grown of the opinion that Waison isn't a bad programmer at all. And over the course of time I think that will show. XM was the first pinball game Waison ever got involved in as a lead programmer and I think we all have to admit, it was a pretty ambitious undertaking. He really shot for the stars with the ideas behind some of the modes for XM. DR wizard mode is probably the best wizard mode from concept integration to theme in pinball. Purposefully using the NC mechs as "shields" to block shots and represent turrets is pretty creative. I think he just bit off more than he could chew, but now that he's been through it an experienced it all, hopefully he will learn from it and his future endeavors will keep improving.

We need new blood in pinball design and coding. As much as I think we'd all love it, Lyman can't do everything, and pinball needs the new generation to grow and carry on what's in the future. I'm as guilty as the next guy in the past of taking my snipes at Waison, but then again when I switched careers and started in a new field, I sure as hell wasn't awesome from day one. So I've since changed my "stance" on blaming Waison for XM's woes.