I am a proud owner of Magneto #241.
I previously had purchased 5 machines. Xmen was my 6th. 3 of my first 5 were NIB (LOTR LE, SM, IM). The other two were HUO (POTC and TSPP). But the NIB purchases were games that had complete code already by the time I purchased them. Xmen was my first NIB pre-order in July 2012. A few days after I ordered mine, the first videos were leaked. So much hype and excitement. Got home from vacation and the game arrived mid August. Loved the look of the Magneto LE version, and really liked the theme, layout and toys. Loved the lighting. Voice acting was great for most characters. And the music was extremely well done. Wasn't thrilled with the code early on, but thought it was unique and had lots of promise.
Then reality set in (for far too long). I was not at all prepared for the unfinished code, the release delays and lack of communication. I naively thought that all games got code as good as LOTR and TSPP within a few months. Boy was I ever wrong. The 1.23 craptacular xmas power pack "present" that Stern and Waison gave us sucked so bad. Just the Wolverine voice bug (where every shot made gave a Wolverine voice callout) almost drove me up the wall, let alone all the other bugs. I became one of the early and consistent bitchers about the code, and communication. So many of us banded together, pleading for fixes or at least some info. And unfortunately, many people pulled the plug on the game and moved on. The code just sucked too bad for too long.
When the next updates finally arrived, the reputation of the game was already sewered. What a colossal waist by Stern. The hype and excitement in the pin community was off the charts. And they just blew it. However, if there was one thing that I think Stern did change as a result of this game and the backlash from pinside was how they communicate with their customers. While its not perfect, I think they are a bit better about letting us know about code updates.
I am so glad that they did not abandon the game. The subsequent updates were solid. Bugs were fixed. Rules had complexity and simplicity to them. The toys in the game became well implemented. Villains were nicely tweaked to be a bit easier and Deadpool mode added great strategy and help to finish villains. Super cool and unique wizard modes were added. And it was so cool that they allowed the owners to set up the code how they liked it with respect to stacking.
This is now one of my favourite games I own. I really hope that it gets at least one last code update. No need for new modes, but just some polish and bug fixes. I think, in time, the LE's will be more and more sought after as there are no premiums.