Sorry to rain on the parade, guys, but it really looks like Stern's Quality Control department got fired en masse before they started production. Already had numerous Stucky Balls reports (one from KME himself!), including a great picture of the ball trapped under Wolvie's arm!
All the Pro machines are are severely gutted Premium games.
Gonna be interesting seeing how this measures up.

Goddess, what a mess this machine is.
Good luck spotting where the ball is under all those ramps and crap on the upper playfield. The insanely flashing LEDs will help, I'm sure.
Is there a target or mode where you can get Magneto to SHUT THE F**K UP? I was actually shouting this at the game by the third ball. I would love to fins a DMD screen shot of Magneto and the locked balls so I can change the text to "STFU MAGNETO". Then I would probably make a t-shirt of that.
Whose great idea was it to have a metal ramp obscure a good part of the lower playfield?

I think I'll just go back to playing AC/DC. Funny how many different games are getting the acronym POS, eh? X-Men=POS.

AC/DC LE (Pro version sucks!), TRON, and Spider-Man are all great modern Stern games.
Most of the games I have here are fostered out of other pinheads' collections so that they would see some occasional play. No problems getting people to play them, we had more than 50 people at our housewarming party and no game went unplayed.

I've been playing pinball for more than 40 years all up and down the West Coast and grew up on EMs and early SS games. Me, I'd take Bally Paragon or Atari Superman over most recent games. Older games tend to be more affordable, too. Plus the local pinball community, most of who I think would disagree with some of the sentiments listed above, also has a rather large EM following.

marksf123: No, that was out of sheer frustration that anything you hit got a commentary. We shout back at the screen during Rocky Horror too. It's sometimes like a whole room full of people with Tourette's syndrome. Funny, sometimes pinball competitions are like that too.

Eskaybee: I didn't know those revisions were already in effect. I'll check which version Shorty's has tomorrow, but I bet it'll be 1.1 since it was new last weekend at Skill Shot's 25th Issue Anniversary party.

jackal123: Barracora, Special Force, and Fish Tales don't just go "ding-ding-ding". And the latter two have ramps.

Defending? Nope. Just stating. Next month some of them will be gone and replaced by others (Judge Dredd and Dolly Parton will be here soon). I did mention that we're more of a foster home than a collection, right? Plus we've already been an emergency service bay, something else the local pinheads were quick to pick up on.

The House With No Name (our current moniker) is already slated for at least six IFPA/WPPR tournaments in the next year, so you can bet the lineups will change prior to those. The first one will be September 29th this year. The occasion? My 50th birthday. Now THAT'S gonna be a party! Not to mention a great IFPA tournament name listing. I may never top 400th in the world rankings, but notoriety is heaps better than obscurity, eh?

Cantankerous old bastard? Yep, you'll see my picture next to those words in the encyclopedia. Even so, I'm doing my part (and more) to ensure that Planet Pinball remains far from dead. Who do you think most of the locations in Pinside's Locator came from originally?

marksf123: But I really AM a cantankerous old bastard. Just check out some of my otter posts! I totally believe you about the college thing, that cinderblock wall wasn't in too many living places I'd ever been. You could get some good money if that backglass was still around and in as good shape as in that pic.

I wasn't even trying to compare Paragon with modern games, I was just saying I'd rather have a competition with that than most modern games. Let's see how the kids deal with the Beast's Den or balls leaking through the double flippers!

I didn't have any idea so many people here actually owned this game. I think there's one person in the Puget Sound area actually buying it. TRON had six buyers out here, LE being three of those. AC/DC LE got three buyers. X-Men, one in total. Just saying.

Hey, at the end of August there's gonna be an official Seattle competition using Data East games only! (Let's see what that touches off.)

RobT: What a sad bastard you are. (Let's see if THAT gets ignored.)

Don't have a La-Z-Boy. More than likely one of our old dogs would be in that anyways. The reading glasses, well, you got me on that one. Index finger typing? Not when I learned on an old Underwood! Plus I did random bits of journalism way back when, so knowing your way around a typewriter was pretty important. I don't really watch TV. It's lost its attraction for the most part. Besides, I'm usually swamped with programming requests. The latest is this IPDB/KLOV/Aurcade cross-reference grid and an online store for people to buy beer swag from a friend's brewery.

Wise_Guy: Nope, you're not late at all. The official release parties haven't been held yet, and field sightings are rare, so you're right on time, actually!

Damn! Respectable score, dude! Now you need to go up against Raymond or Maka here in Seattle and teach them a thing or two! Won't say Cayle, because only Cayle knows where he's gonna show up.

*mental record scratch* When was the color DMD for MM released? I thought they'd only just finished Addams Family?

IPDB just listed all three versions of X-Men last night. Aurcade was first to list the game, though.
5822=Pro, 5823=Magneto LE, 5824=Wolverine

Wolvie doesn't wanna play ball.

Magneto really DOES have the power!

StuckyBalls-Wolverine.jpg StuckyBalls-Magneto.jpg