Angus is not hand-drawn, nor is it original. It's taken directly from the cover of their Highway To Hell album. In fact the criticism of the pro version is that they unnecessarily clipped the outsides of his portrait (mainly the hair) to fit the size of the lower playfield in the Premium/LE versions even though those boundaries are not applicable to the Pro version.

Perhaps the horns are hand drawn but the album cover/Angus's face is a photo. The Australian cover of that album is the same photo with some added graphics.

The point is people are interested in art that is original to the pinball machine like they used to do, not photoshopped from a third party source.

That, a removal of the artificial limits on the LE's, and no game play differences between the two. With the Pro/LE model Stern just shoots themselves in the foot if demand is greater than or less than supply, plus the required leap of faith to purchase the LE sight unseen without playing is, as history proves, a hit or miss proposition. What other business requires the customer relationship to be such a gamble?

That's not the point... it's a flawed business model leaving customers unhappy and/or Stern losing profits. Removing production limits on the fully featured game allows everyone to buy it that wants one, and Stern keepss the profits rather than after-market sales on these artificially limited production runs. Adding a Premium model, or keeping the LE to cosmetic improvements is the only solution that benefits everyone.

I think that's too high. Go to any pinball on-location database and search for a game made in the past year, compare that count to those collectors you know that purchased one, and extrapolate it out to the 3000 average production run. It points to collectors being Stern's and JJP largest consumer base. Considering the backlash Stern received from their Costco experiment and the increasing demand for the full-featured models (LE or Premium) from both Stern and JJP it seems clear the demand for the full featured game is much higher than the current under 20% Stern is allocating in their production runs.

Honestly I'd like to think that realization happened at Stern with ACDC sales, especially the Premium edition, and X-Men was already too far along to fix it and X-Men production is delayed due to this "surprise". Even now they could just swap the LE tag for Premium on X-Men and the problem is fixed, but they won't; they are fixated on milking the "Limited" thing at the expense of sales and customers.

Yea, Stern has been actively rebuilding their business the past couple of years, but I'd attribute their recent success to hiring back talent and choosing the right licenses. It's a fairly static customer base, so sales tactics are not nearly as important as it is to other industries.

Once they achieved strong sales again, they started to heed the calls to reverse their trend of cheapening the games, it's great progress. Now that all the Stern attitude has turned from "when are they going to fold" to customers putting a deposit down on a rumor of the next game, they are in a position unfamiliar to them for years.

But frankly Stern has been stumbling with the LE thing. Avatar LE wasn't even announced until the Pros shipped, which really ticked off some buyers of the Pro. Tron LE was such a huge success that after-market prices have jumped thousands of dollars... none of which Stern gets, leaving hundreds of customers that would pay Stern's Tron LE price today, but not the street price, but Stern has no way to fix it. Transformers LE they split into 3 versions, over-promised and under-delivered on a few functional items, again ticking off customers who pre-ordered the LE because they didn't get to see the final product before they had to pay. Finally they got everything right with ACDC.. 3 LE's 1 Premium, 1 Pro. Everyone who wants the full game gets it.

Then the VERY NEXT game they are rumored to toss out their only win/win premium-priced game model strategy in years, and the only complaint left with Stern is consistently people worried about getting burned on the Pro/LE strategy again. "Is the pro missing features the designer wanted, and is only in the LE" "Do I risk a pre-order without being able to see it first at risk of under-delivering". This what Stern's customers need to be worried about?

One of Stern's strong points from a consumer perspective is to move onto another title rather than milk a title until no one wants it any longer (which is JJP's business model). I think here you are missing this piece in your analysis:

There is no reason Stern is required to cap production to 10k annual production numbers and try to distribute those counts amongst 3 titles w/up to 5 models per title. They should be able to expand their production output to meet demand so that unexpected ACDC demand doesn't cut into X-Men production, and so they can re-run more Trons or SMs.

A short term alternative is to change their current allocation of 8500 Pros+1500 LE/Premium to, say 5000 Pro+5000 LE/Premium (or whatever, based on demand), so they make more money without the cost and risk of expanding the assembly line, but they chose to limit the LE production and Premium availability regardless of demand. It is an odd business model and a bit of growing pains for them, but I'd like to think they'll get back on the right track after X-Men.

Then why is ACDC LE selling near the Tron LE price? It's not Stern making the margin between retail and street pricing, it's speculators. Wouldn't customers be happier if Stern produced more of them at the original price?

Yea, the fanboys were out in force when Tron was rumored.

One can only imagine the pin where the entire art package is as nice as that Magneto pic. I won't hold my breath.

300 of each (total 600)

Simple..it's easier for them to make less games.

I'm actually surprised so many Wolverine choices considering he is mostly yellow, a color that gets any pin razzed when someone decides to spruce up the trim with it. I'm actually a little disappointed to hear of the single characters being featured rather than a bunch, so we'll just wait for the final art to decide.

I'm just saying Wolverine himself is mostly yellow with blue trim.

No one does; there is no business justification for Stern's artificial limitations on their product runs, especially the full featured products that everyone wants. Just keep in mind their slightly flawed business model ultimately benefits the pinball community.

For example lets take Stern's 10k production rate... if they were 100% profit motivated (and licenses didn't expire) they'd be building at least 5k past titles still in demand like SM/Tron/LOTR/etc, and 5k ACDCs. Instead they're giving us 3 new games, each with production runs that will most likely not meet demand, e.g., 3.3k ACDC's + 3.3k XMen + 3.3k Avengers. Stern is obviously a company run more by enthusiasm than profits, and everyone benefits. We need more companies in the world like that.

Premium AC/DC sales didn't adversely impact LE sales so that shouldn't be a concern. The worst case scenario is for Stern to do what they did with Avatar...pro comes out then later on they were like "hey now we have an LE" and people who bought the pro that otherwise would have purchased the LE were livid at having wasted their money on the operator version. Just announce all the versions and differences up front and everyone will be happy.

Plastic ramps are a near certainty... there are inserts underneath.

Right with you there... while girls would not be too excited about X-Men, I could finally see how WOZ would be the perfect complement for the wife and kids.

You've got it... $200

If they truly want to announce after E3 then it will be late Thursday.

Not sure I see the concern with JJP at E3. WOZ is not new news, it is just another step in a year-long reveal. It would be a concern if X-Men is truly inferior and with JJP having the stage he can point that out. I doubt that is the case, so maybe we can be optimistic and hope Stern is tweaking X-Men with the same color changing LEDs to add to the feature list

I love that an un-announced run of an unofficial game (official in title only) has already sold out before pics or specs have been released. Vaporware at its finest!!

We heard that last week. Next week it'll be the same thing.

If LE's are all spoken for then Stern has no reason to delay announcement... don't even need a working game for a couple snapshots and a spec sheet with pricing.

Interwoven characters on the playfield was exactly what I was hoping for as well... and overall more comic and less cartoon.

Never mind the wolverine on the backglass and the Wolverine toy are two completely different renditions of him

In reality X-Men spans decades with many characters and artists, so choosing a single version of any of them would do a disservice to the source material.

First rule of pinball: It is not an investment; focus more on what you like rather than resale value.

My gut feel is that both will have very similar resale. Pinside has a slant toward Wolverine, but frankly most other forums I frequent are 50/50 split, with several leaning toward Magneto.

As if there's no way to switch back and forth?

I agree about Lost World... I watched it when it came out and didn't think it was any good, but then wound up reading the book a year ago. The book was actually decent, so I thought I must not have remembered the movie correctly... but when I re-watched it, I was disappointed yet again.

I agree.... The Pros look awesome up close on all sides but my only comment is on the brown hue from a distance, which at first glance could be attributed to the number of characters, but it's probably more so the background colors (browns, reds, oranges and dark purples). The LE's have less characters but a nice consistent color scheme. It's all give and take... when all is said and done, they all have some of the best cabinet graphics in any pinball machine.

On my RCT I find them grippier than standard red, making it very solid feeling game play.... and easier to keep the ball in play using the tips of the flippers. I don't notice any negative issues with catching the ball on a flipper. Every color plays different, so keep that in mind as much as aesthetics.

Yes, 300 Wolverine, 250 Magneto.

We need a FAQ for people not willing to read the previous 2500 posts

You have a good point but Stern still believes people are generally ok with play change between Pro/LE.

Frankly this particular issue can be solved via software if they choose: If the ball comes down the ice ramp while it is positioned over the right outlane, the outlane switch can be soft-activated. I somehow doubt they will do this but they have that option.

Sounds like you guys are looking for something more like WOZ whose purpose in being is to introduce something fresh.

X-Men has never been positioned as anything but a game based upon proven past designs, as evidenced by a layout which is 85% similar to 8 other games over the past 20+ years, and many shared software modes isn't surprising in any game... they all have the "hit this ramp x times" and "hit this target y times" and "hit this z shot combo".

I do hope that this software team will in the end pull off something unique, as has been advertised. X-Men has enough going on that I can't believe it'll remind anyone of TF, and we have yet to hear the custom sound and dots which should be a big improvement over the sound and crappy video clips pulled from movies as in TF/SM/IM/etc.

Interesting take, but not what I've seen. The way it typically works is at the beginning of a production run Stern/Distributors throw out the first few Pros to the public, reviews go up, people scamper to try to get their hands on one, and sales follow to the point where Stern winds up selling all their models in advance of manufacturing. ACDC Premium didn't negatively impact LE sales.

Probably more effort than taking a few snapshots, and that took a couple days to do!

So we can assume 52*5*25=6500 pins/year as a conservative estimate?

Nope... Stern doesn't like to confirm a game until a month before it ships.

Unmatched if you pretend CSI doesn't exist?

Haha, Stern sure gets an endless rash of crap for leaving actual game play out of the video...

Note to Stern: Next promo video leave out fake voices, it'll save you and your customers a lot of grief!

Those DMD animations are awesome, even better than I hoped for!

I've wondered if it wouldn't be better to give the playfield plenty of time to dry out to help reduce dimpling, but who knows how much time passes between CC and shipping... could also be the CC they are using too.

CPR playfields also are 2-3 weeka old at the of customer receipt. They recommend a minimum of 30 days of open air after receipt to allow it to cure before touching the playfield with a ball, wax, or novus -- in other words, anything.

Haha... sounds like a good theory... if wear spreads evenly across the playfield. Maybe CPR doesn't know what they're talking about.

Knowing UV is bad for decals, I'd be a little hesitant to throw UV at the playfield. Maybe bake the game in a hot garage?

It's an art to make a game and ruleset that people want to play over and over. Early reports anticipated mini wizard mode(s) and a more final wizard mode, I think that's a better answer that would keep both the lesser players and the expert players coming back to it, assuming mini wizard modes are more attainable than the final wizard mode. Once I've seen the whole thing I tend to not want to play the machine quite as much as I do while working toward seeing it all.

I've followed this game from the rumors to finally seeing it and touching it in person and I have to say it looks like it's one of those rare games to have (for the most part) met the high expectations everyone had for it.

Hi-def artwork on cabinet and playfield is top notch (though I do wish they would have filled the empty space on the playfield). There are a lot of gadgets, and a lot of shots, but everything is well integrated so game plays fast and the shots are not overbearingly tight. Ball times are not as short as Iron Man, and of course no where near as long as LOTR. Magnets are well integrated into the game, in use quite a bit. The lighting on the game is hands down one of the best, with mode-based multi-color GI's, and subtle touches like the lights under the mags spinner to the radar-like light rotation under the big "X" insert.

It took a while to realize that the skill shot lanes are missing. I don't miss the cheesy skill shot lanes where you have a 90% chance to drop the ball into the blinking lane, it's instead replaced with a soft plunge and proper use of the upper flipper, which requires...skill!

All of this is better in person than any pics or video can represent, but initial impression is very good!

The bad: code looks good at this point but obviously not finished... Unless the nightcrawler integration is improved, I don't think the ramp and spinner are enough to make the LE an obvious "must have" upgrade based on mechanical devices, so that really needs to be taken care of, and once it is then the LE is the real deal.

Looks like a decent list to me... Anyone with Stern connections forwarding such suggestions to them?

I agree with this.

Beast shot is very doable... one game I hit it 3 times in a row, which was impressive to me because I owned a Roadshow for several years and that right ramp shot through the pop bumpers seemed much more difficult.

Xavier appears to be designed for the right flipper, which means the figure doesn't even come into play.

That's what I thought too, but here it is a top 20 rated pin of all time (only bumped to #21 by XM).

Nah, the Pro is defintely not as brightly colored as Magneto. From a distance the Pro looks busy and dark-ish with a lot of dark browns, reds, and oranges on it because there are a lot of characters. Both the LE's do a better job on color scheme aspect because of the focus on one character.

Hmm, When I setup my machine I raised the leg levellers to max height in the back and to min height in the front and the bubble still indicates the back is not raised enough. Anyone else have this issue?

Speculation drove a lot of people to purchase the LE that otherwise wouldn't have, and distributors stockpiling them winds up skewing sales stats, and is a hit or miss investment for them.

I think ACDC LE pricing was also carryover speculation too... odd to me as premium availability should dampen the LE market... I understand the Tron LE thing more so than the $9k ACDC LE runup. However we've seen the Tron Pro stockpilers start sweating recently too.

If you bought X-Men because it's fun, then good for you!

Based on the soft wood pitting of these playfields I'd think a Mantis or a Cliffy is mandatory for the scoop to eliminate major hole wear.

Can't let this thread just fall off the first page after all these months. Anyone notice the code update today??

V1.21 - September 24, 2012
=======================
- Fixed an issue in Sentinels mode where new sentinels may not appear after one was destroyed. This only occurred when Magneto Multiball was started during Sentinels mode
- Adjusted the scoring in both Beast and Iceman modes. Scores are now 700,000 for the first shot and 1,300,000 for the second.
- Fixed an issue where Magneto "ball locked" and multiball jackpot speech calls repeated in an unintended fashion. These speech calls are now evenly spaced for repetition.
- Fixed an issue where hitting the pop bumpers during Beast mode overrode the full shot award. Now the Beast shot award has higher priority.
- Added back panel flasher lightshow for Storm mode.
- Added sound effects to the outlanes.
- Changed Xavier mode. Now when Xavier mode starts, the player can attempt to blindly find the mutant. The player has the option to hit the Xavier shot instead to reveal the mutant. Finding the mutant blindly is worth more points.
_ Fixed an issue where the side banks were not displaying their information correctly.

+1. TF getting a power pack update more than a year after it's release is a good sign that X-Men may be seeing updates even a year from now.

That was so 4 hours ago. What, doesn't everyone read every post of a 7500 message thread? Haha...

That can be easily handled in software. Whether they do it or not is another question.

Now that Stern is fixing customer pricing at the distributor level, distributors have to earn their bump in pay.

Agreed, Stern is very lucky in that their customers do 99% of the marketing for them, because Stern is terrible at it.

I'll just ask one question: Did X-Men hype and leaks cause any negative sales for either their current run machine (ACDC) or their rumored game (XM)? No. Did it keep people from spending money on other (WOZ or older) games while they waited for XM or for those who didn't want XM they could now comfortably pull the trigger on ACDC? Yes.

What's the negative about releasing info about their next game? The negative for NOT releasing info is this: Because the next Stern is a non-existent product at this point, I'm going to buy another game because I haven't a clue as to the title or the awesomeness of the next Stern. When they make an announcement I most likely won't have the cash to jump on it.

IIRC most of the X-Men leaked features were delivered. What's left is the code... it's always what's left.

Most people selling X-Men are those who bought it without playing it first. It's the inevitable response from the LE sales model, not necessarily a negative, just a fact of the pre-sales business model. Here's what I've said before about the LE strategy:

a) If a game is great it will sell out and customers who didn't get in on the sight-unseen presale will be left without the ability to buy, or paying higher than original prices. Bad for Stern, bad for customers except those who gambled on the purchase

b) If a game is bad, Stern will be left with unsold inventory, customers who gambled on the purchase will be upset. Bad for Stern, bad for customers.

c) If a game is decent, demand = production, everyone is happy, but it's also not an (a) quality game, and good luck predicting success in advance.

I think the main issue with voices has to do with lack of consistency. Beast's voice simply comes across different than everything else. Several female quotes sound like they are reading lines off a page with absolutely no emotion that pull me out of the game. Sentinel Mode is my favorite, it's really well done. There are a lot of real gems in this game, but doing a quality once-over on all the voices and quotes to achieve a better level of consistency would really polish off the sounds.

PS: Iron Man is hard too... don't hear any complaints about that!

Only if Waison is working on Avengers too.

Definitely white rubbers. Maybe some lighting mods, and plastic protector kit (looks a lot better than metal washers). I never knew there was an issue with the storm ramp protector.

Yellow rubbers are more bouncy than red or black. I have zero issues hitting Xavier with red, whether the ball is moving or cradled.

In the beginning Lonnie was rumored to be the mentor, but appears to have been pulled quickly, leaving the new guy holding the bag... so as a result there were and still are no senior coders with a stake in it. Everyone seems perfectly happy to leave the burden to the new guy who hasn't the seniority to pick and choose what to do with his time, and now that Waison has been pulled onto other projects, it's back to "will he tweak the code in his spare time because the company will no longer allocate time for it." It's an unfortunate, but not uncommon situation in business.

What I would really like to see is the source code for older games get released to the public domain. Many software companies do this once their product is dead, so releasing code for games that haven't been manufactured for 30 years (especially if the company no longer exists) would allow past games to be enhanced and finished by enthusiasts and receive new life.

Xmas code update where they enabled and defaulted stacked heroes + stacked villains. In fact in that release hero modes were defaulted to 1 shot if I remember correctly... wild stuff!

Wasn't Lonnie was involved with XM as well... wizard mode and mentoring Waison on his first game? So either Lonnie dropped the ball on the mentoring part or Stern allows inexperienced coders to lead a game. Not good either way.

Ah, that would answer a lot of questions.

To be very technical there is a huge difference between "solo" and "lead", as not one of the games you mentioned was a solo effort according to IPDB:

Tron Legacy "Software by: Lyman F. Sheats Jr., Lonnie D. Ropp, Tom Uban"
Transformers "Software by: Lonnie D. Ropp, Waison Cheng"
X-Men "Software by: Waison Cheng, Mike Kyzivat, Lonnie D. Ropp"

Lyman obviously had several notable "solo" projects before he joined Stern, so I assume you mean "at Stern" for both guys. So obviously Waison did have some experience before X-Men, enough to get him lead on XM, but still had two others involved in the code. Any one of the three could pick it up to finish it off.

So you're saying it would be a financial boon to Stern to release enhanced code for an in-production game to coincide with the release of a brand new blockbuster movie based on the same theme rejuvenating sales of said pin, and increase sales of all future releases by restoring faith in their existing customer base? That would make too much sense.

Well, no use making any more with the new movie starting to be advertised. They need more room on the line for the 6th variation of ACDC.

10k posts before update!

It's only been 6 months and 9 days, but who's counting

It's like saying "we still make pinball machines." Thanks for letting us know you're still in business... maybe 6th variation of AC/DC is in the works too.

Keeper for me as well... it has still has a high replay value just as it did when it was brand new 2.5 years ago.

You can tell it is for many others, as this is one of the longest running threads on all of Pinside.

Good choice!

Impressive! A game that takes you 2.5 years to reach a wizard mode is a deep and challenging game indeed. For comparison, how long did it take you to reach Valinor?

I understand where you are coming from. I'm in the camp that doesn't believe LEs should have functional differences at all, but if they do, the games should be designed as an LE and then parts removed for a pro else you have little oddities like wolverine having different positions for no good reason. For the record I don't understand the Wolverine fuss, I could always make the beast shot as easy as any game with a shot through the pop-bumpers.

Ultimately The only real issue XM had is perception. Code wasn't great until it was finished and by that point Stern had wound down production... it's Stern's biggest business fault today, inability to maximize profit when a game finally comes together, and thus the wasted license comment applies. I love the game though, and it's been re-gaining lost appeal since the code was finished.

Due to the simple fact that LEs have more mechanical and electrical parts, odds are there will be more issues with LEs. My experience says XM LE was nearly perfect relative to my METLE, which is not the public perception but it is my reality.

AgreedBeast and Storm are the two that people regularly mention, but they are also the ones with the most personality. Could they be better? Sure, we'd like to get callouts from the real Storm and Beast, but voice actors did fine.

"All the earth's elements are at my beck and call"

I agree, Beast's delivery is odd, but the lines are humorous. Storm's delivery is dramatic and impossible to take seriously...strikes me more like a princess with super-powers, used to using her looks and powers to get her way, seemingly perfect villain persona.... and no Asian accent that I can tell. I would be far more disappointed for Storm's voice to be replaced than Beast. Everyone else comes across as more serious, which is more like the movies and less like the animated shows... I'd actually like everyone else to slightly more more light hearted, but ultimately it works, as X-Men have different personalities.

It'll likely require a campaign to get them to do it.

How do you know this?

Makes sense to me... I've never warmed up to Tron.

Glad everyone isn't wimping out on this, I think it's more psychological than fact based. When I play I find both Beast and Xavier much easier to hit with the original wolvie than I do the Cyclops, Iceman or Phoenix shots. In fact I measured the width of all 5 openings and they are all about the same, but the latter 3 are further up the playfield, so technically Beast shot is already "larger" relative to the position on the playfield, and thus easier to hit. I can't see that wolvie blocks Xavier either... there's a straight open line from the point in the flipper to make the shot into the Xavier slot. So for me adding the Newton ball would cause a game imbalance. To each his own I suppose.

I also got the impression from that stream that there still remained a possibility to revisit the XM code, but nothing was planned. At Stern it's up to the individual developers to take the initiative, but no one outside of Lyman has any track record of polishing off code on their own, so if Waison doesn't feel like working on it, or it doesn't have a direct impact on the bottom line, it won't get another look.

Yes, Heroes remind me of fellowship characters, and Villains remind me of ring modes. There's a lot to do to get to the wizard modes.

They can be replayed once completed, just useful for points. Completion is useful toward Danger Room if Hero stacking is off.

That is what happens on mine as well... but by the time the ball comes back to the flippers it is already down permanently, so it appears to be only for show.

In Nightcrawler mode my Nightcrawlers work perfectly. In Rogue mode he always pops up and down a couple times at the beginning and then goes away for the rest of the mode as if it's purposeful. Are you guys saying he is supposed to stay up for the duration of Rogue just like full Nightcrawler mode?

This is true, the LE looks dimmer because of the color changing GI, meaning 2/3 of the lights are red and blue. Recent Pro LEDs are particularly blinding, I would actually re-do the GI if I had one.

Even dialed in the game is still tough!

It is a really terrible design, made worse by gluing the threads at the factory because of a second design issue. I have a core that will not come out, so I have to waste money on a new assembly.

You should close up the outlines and put it on 5 ball with hero stacking to make it even easier!

I'm kidding... Mostly The real value of the mod to me is to get Wolverine less, but that can be done with software...Stern, please make a configurable wolvie hits setting!

I agree, features are more than worth a $500 upgrade... and there will be more RZSSI's made than there were Magnetos.

Aren't cointaker bulbs in Stern games? I've had plenty of them come out.

Well said. The difficulty level coupled with the fun factor is what makes a game long lasting.

Doesn't factory settings have hero stacking? I turned it off long ago... though now I'm debating whether I should turn it on because the game is so challenging any little boost helps.

It was YES at one point, but you're right, it's currently NO stacking. For a change-up I turned it on, and it's 100x easier to get all the heroes. Literally! It does take a significant strategy away from the game, so I'm with you, I wouldn't recommend it.

Yes, the best advice to anyone who asks about any game remains as: "play it and make your own decision."

I've had a real desire to own perhaps 20-30 games out of the entire pinball universe, have actually owned and rated about 15 of them, and XM shows up as #3, only behind MET and LOTR. I have it higher than SM, IM, GNR, TWD all ranked higher on the Pinside 100. Sounds about right for me, except that I did sell LOTR long before XM, so I may need to adjust.

The gels look great!