I deactivated my ice man ramp. Game plays better that way. Great game, I think it is my top rated game on Pinside.

I like the code on XMen. It's deep and complex. Fantastic game.

I still give Ritchie 100% credit for getting this game done right code wise.

Back at HAAG 2013 he had about twenty minutes of Q&A at a seminar. I asked Ritchie in the seminar if XMen (which was a disaster at the time code wise) was done. He said, in summary, yes Stern was done with XMen and he was sorry for that as the game and theme deserved better. Borg had apparently stopped pushing for it to be finished (Ritchie didn't say that but I could read between the lines of what he did say and that was my conclusion, for what it is worth).

Pinside went absolutely bonkers. Stern then dedicated the resources, two or three weeks or so as I recall, to making the code great. They were giving some limited feedback to some of us at the time while they were doing it and testing it and they finished the game.

That experience gave me the confidence to buy five more NIBs from Stern over the next two years (as I saw they would finish games) though my confidence has been shaken again over the past eight months or so.

Stern worked closely with a few really good players the last time they worked on this games code. They were very interested in what the players wanted and implemented the suggestions they received.

I'm very happy with the XMen code. That said, assuming Stern would even entertain spending resources on a final polish, what sort of stuff would you want added?

The only thing I can think of is completed heros should not restart...that way you can focus on the ones you've not completed.

The real mirrored backglasses on the LEs are flat out the best backglasses Stern ever produced. It's not even close. Both Wolverine and Magento are amazing.

I can't recall now if Avengers or XMen were the last true backglass, it was one of those two. Regardless, Metallica and every Stern since has had the fake backglass with the mirrored ink stuff...looks terrible next to the XMen true backglass.