Two grumpy old men review The Simpsons Pinball Party (very, very long!)
The Korn
descriptions and/or comments previously posted on The Simpsons'
Pinball Party, so please bear with if I/we are repeating information
that was previously posted and/or make remarks that are redundant
and/or repeatitive of what others have posted. To that end, I keep
having to smack Mike every time he starts a sentence with, "Well,
someone on RGP said..." :)
Anyway, if you haven't figure it out yet, this is really a combo post
between myself (TheKorn) and Mike (Wolffy). I'll do my best to
distinguish who's saying what, but if it doesn't say who's saying
what, it's me. :)
Second preface: I'm a big Simpsons fan. Mike is a big simpsons fan.
So we're both bound to love the game. It wasn't like with Dr. W*ho,
where I didn't really like the theme that much but wound up liking the
game a whole lot. So keep that in mind; we both really like The
Simpsons, for whatever damn reason. (Drugs, alcohol, fat chicks, take
your pick; they ALL go with The Simpsons!)
So we (SheKorn and I) whap on by Mike's place to pick him up, what
with greenhouse gases getting more sparse and oil just gushing from
everyone's back yard like it is these days... You know, carpooling
and such! His dog decided to <a
href="http://www.wolffysoft.org/ww/tips05.html"> maul us for the
better part of a half an hour</a>, but some beef jerky sticks came in
handy and we made our escape. On to Stadium's Tickets, or whatever
the hell it's called. Ask Lloyd, he knows. :)
The first thing that you notice about the game is that it's next to
the change machine.
Wooo! Gonna need it!
No, seriously, the things that I/we have to say about this game break
down into two main areas... The good stuff, and the bad stuff
complete with opinion section, which is what you are all here to read,
anyway. So bear with, or skip to the bottom if you're an impatient
jackass. :)
THE GOOD STUFF
(Korn) The game's layout seems promising. Five flippers, how can you
go wrong? Hell, even if you break two of them, you're back down to a
"normal" number of flippers for a WPC game, right?
Anyway, you've got a big giant Homer head sitting on the playfield
close to where Kenny sits in South Park. Upper playfield with
something that looks like a couch as a ball lock mechanism and two
flippers, plus a ball stop area. And I'm sure you all saw the
"leaked" playfield drawing from six months ago or the "honor and
pride" (snx) snapshots of the playfield, so I'll quit wasting time.
You know what it looks like.
(wolffy) The game shows some promise in that they tried a couple of
new things to add a new twist to a common game. The right drain
escape hatch to the plunger seems like a great idea, despite that I
couldn't get the ball to bounce my way. The artwork on the playfield
got back to the style where the playfield resembles a little theme
park. For those who liked the WPC and WPC 95 era where each player
gets their own quote when the start button is pressed.
Willy's quote is the dirtiest but Quimby's is the most true to the
Simpson's series.
(Korn) Not having the ball launch area completely closed off is
actually a _very_ nice surprise, and was quite fun to try and put
enough english into the game to get the ball back into the shooter
lane. More than once I managed to get the ball into the shooter lane,
only to have wound up tilting along the way. (No pain, no gain!)
Also, once you finally get the couch multiball started, the game is
reasonably fun. I wound up stacking two multiballs by accident, which
was a nice surprise.
The Simpsons license is also incredibly strong. I predict that the
game will be a moderate success, based mainly on the license. Look at
Mouth Park; pretty lousy game, but they couldn't make enough of them
to go around. I think the same thing will probably happen with The
Simpsons. And The Simpsons is a better overall game. (But not by
much...)
THE BAD STUFF (and opinion)
(Korn) Well, you've probably noticed that "the good stuff" section
isn't that long. Don't get me wrong, The Simpsons ver 2.0 has some
good stuff going for it. But it also has more than its fair share of
defecits.
First off, the game has no ball saver, except at the start of
multiball. THIS GAME NEEDS A BALL SAVER MORE THAN A CRACK WHORE NEEDS
A HIT. It's entirely too easy for a player to miss the skill shot
(intentionally or unintentionally), glance off a target, and have the
ball go SDTM. In the 80's, that worked. But it's 2003 here, and
players are used to a ball saver.
I'm not saying you need a long ball saver, I'm saying you need a ball
saver for at least 2 seconds.
(Wolffy) The first bad thing is Vince asking if I want to sit on his
lap. The game obviously has an autoplunger and it works cause it did
kick balls out during mutliball. The playfield was designed in such a
way that slow balls (and there are many of them) either roll gently
SDTM or hit one of the rubber posts that are in awkward locations
adjacent to the jets and roll toward the drain. This is going to be
common on this playfield so to not implement the ball saver, or have
it's factory setting to off is just a flat out bad idea.
(Korn) I disagree a bit; the game is NOT a drain monster. But in the
same turn, you have to work the game a hell of a lot just to keep your
ball alive. But my big beef here is that on the skill shot, if you
try and go through the quick-e-mart (i.e. "FULL POWER PLUNGER") and
miss, the ball will glance off of the target in the middle and drop
SDTM. And there's no amount of game enligsh that you can use to
affect the outcome. i.e. by pure chance, you're screwed.
(Wolffy) You may not have seen it as a drain monster today, but did
you notice the kickout from the Itchy & Scratchy saucer, that thing
barely hits the left flipper and it does so at full force. Wait for
this game to be on location and the combination and the flipper
becoming misaligned from standard use and now you have a game kicker
shooting the ball SDTM (think WW lost mine kickout phenomenon).
(Korn) OK, last quip about this... That's simply a design decision
(the I&S hole), and I don't think it would really have _that_ much
problem on location. Hell, first time the flippers are rebuilt
they're likely to be misaligned anyway; that doesn't change that the
ball is still going AT the flipper, so it gives you half a chance. My
beef is that the game _doesn't_ on a bad skill shot.
(Korn) The good news is that there's speech, custom speech. LOTS of
speech. In fact, the damn game didn't shut up even after we unplugged
it and rolled it into the Men's john. Don't get me wrong, there ARE
some good custom quotes in there, probably the best of which is the
tilt quote, "(snake) Dude, you are TOTALLY busted." That was good
enough that I had to tilt the game a few more times. Really, it's
THAT good. Ok, maybe I was trying to save the ball, whatever, it made
it not so bad that I tilted. :)
But the good part about the speech is also the bad part about the
speech. EVERYTHING says something, save for the pop bumpers and the
slingshots. Hit a right orbit? Bart's yacking. Hit the same orbit
the other way? Homer mouths off.
(Wolffy) Well that part is true but you are going to have a fun time
figuring out what is game specific speech and what is re-recorded
quotes from the series.
(Korn) Yeah, I'm so sure that Homer busted off, "Shoot the right
orbit!" sometime in the thirteen years it's been on the air... :)
(Wolffy) True there are some but the problem I have with the speech is
that there clearly doesn't appear to be any script. It's great that
Stern got Fox to have the actual people lend their voices to the pin
but someone dropped the ball on this one. There are many, many quotes
from a majority of our favorite characters, but the way in which the
speech is used is poorly implemented. Comic Book Guy for one doesn't
shut up and I have no idea why he continues to taunt me.
(Korn) Well, that's your own damn fault for not paying attention.
You kept hitting the Comic Book Guy hurry-up, so he was telling you to
get your ass in gear. Can't really say there's a problem there.
HOWEVER, the game is definitely voice happy. For example, hitting the
right ramp four (five?) times starts treehouse of horror. But instead
of making a sound effect three times and then rewarding the player
with a juicy voice sample when you actualy DO something, the game
over-bombards you with utterly irrelevent sound quotes each time you
hit the ramp. ("I need more beer", "Have a pickled egg", "Is there an
Al Kaholic here?") It definitely makes the game and the speech far
_less_ special, simply because there's so damn much of it being used
so superflously!
(Wolffy) What causes you to think that way is somewhere in the design
decisions Stern reverted back to the Data East practice that everytime
a switch is closed the game must say something. Someone on that
development team coded a vocal response to every OnClose event the
playfield can generate and in many cases it just isn't needed. Most
of the modern games we call classics all have the speech based on the
mode and the game responds to how well/poorly you do in that mode.
This type of game encoding and use of "custom" resources is just plain
sad in 2003 pinball machines.
(Korn) Damn dude, you're harsh.
(Wollfy) Well then lets move on to another problem with the speech.
When I had an absolute poor game where was comic book guy saying
"worst game ever"? It's not there! Did Stern actually have a script
when the went out to Fox studios? Was there some thought to how the
game was going to work or how the players were going to interact with
the characters and vice-versa? Clearly in my mind they did not. They
had an idea of a few good quotes that they could work with and those
quotes clearly ended up anywhere a ball hit a switch.
(Korn) The idea I really got from playing the game is that Stern went
up to Azaria and crew and said, "Say a few lines like Homer" and
recorded them. That's how random the sound bites really seem. Except
for EVERYTHING Bart says, none of the other characters that were
recorded seemed to have known that they were going to be shoved into a
pinball machine. I fully expect that if I play another game, I'm
going to hear Barney say "I need a shave" if I hit some target.
(Wolffy) LOL! But I see what you mean. Moving right along, lets talk
about flow. I had a a hard time finding any. I mean this game has so
many shots that stop the ball it would have Pat Lawlor drool!
Literally the left ramp, the garage (at times), Otto's mini-orbit, I&S
saucer all stop the ball play. In fact even the jet bumpers stop the
ball play and that is quite an accomplishment. Now mind you that I
like many of Pat's games but Simpsons' takes this style of game design
and makes it annoying.
(Korn) I'm not going to fault the design for this; this is a style
issue. Some games flow, others don't. This one definitely doesn't,
but that doesn't mean it's a bad game, per se. It's just a design
decision. There's a _little_ flow, mainly the big left orbit into the
upper playfield combo, but that's really all the flow I could find in
the game.
What I couldn't help but feeling while I was playing this game was
that I HAD PLAYED THIS GAME BEFORE. Yessiree bob, Stern has released
The Simpsons' before! And it was even based on a cartoon that time,
too!
This playfield is _really_ close to the layout of South Park. The
bumpers are in an almost identical place. They have an almost
identical shot through them, with the change that it's an orbit in
Simpsons' and it was a dead end shot in SP. Where Mr. Hankey was, you
now have the Quick-E-Mart. Where you had Chef, you now have the
Garage. Where you had Kenny, you now have a Kenny with a lobotomy,
Homer Simpson. Even Cartman's trash can hole is there in the form of
the I&S sinkhole. Terrence & Phillip have been combined in mass to
form Comic Book Guy. Pretty much all of the shots on South Park are
the _same_ shots on Simpsons', just with different playfield art and
different plastics around it.
(Wolffy) Since you brought it up lets talk about the Homer head. Why
is it there? It is one really big playfield toy but you don't
interact with it. If you are thinking Funhouse, STOP IT you are so
wrong!
(Korn) Damn dude, you're harsh.
(Wolffy) They took the time to mount this giant Homer head to what
clearly has to be a flipper mechanism so it moves slighty to it's
right, but it serves no purpose in the game. You could easily take
this out and reclaim the space to fix a shot or two. At least with
South Park you HIT kenny and made him fall over. Nothing happens in
the Simpsons.
(Korn) I understand that it's a hook to draw people in, but it's hard
to justify the expense of the thing when it doesn't add to the
longevity of the game. All it does is sit'n'shake, kind of like the
guy with that muscle disease that's always nodding off to the right
while he's talking to you. For mechanical action pinball, there's no
action in Homer.
Mike's on the can now, so I can take a minute to tell you HOW MUCH I
LOVE THE UPPER PLAYFIELD! No really, I actually like the thing. (So
why isn't it in "the good" section? Poor planning. :) ) Two mini
flippers, I remember those! And hitting a ramp on a mini playfield,
why not? It's actually kind of cool! The omnipresent Stern dot
display is up there, not doing much of anything. If I were going to
cut costs in the game, I'd take out the second dot display, and move
the "Mystery Mirror" to the spot it now occupies.) It would make more
sense, because the hole you hit to activate the "mystery mirror"
(calling it that because I can't remember what it's called at the
moment) is ON the upper playfield. So what's this dot display doing
up there? Beats me; seems to be completely out of place and not
useful for much of anything. Great, Mike is off the can, so let the
bitch session begin... :)
(Wolffy) Okay you like the mini-playfield and I honestly welcome its
presence back in today's pinball games. The problems that I have with
it is that it is designed so poorly. Why are there two flippers?
Well not because there is anything cool to shoot for. You need the
lower flipper to feed the upper flipper. That is all it does. The
upper flipper then has the ability to hit the couch ramp (lock) and
the three stand up targets that exist. You can't get the ball up to
the upper PF unless you hit the VUK. The garage shot will at times
divert the ball to the VUK. The left ramp only feeds the VUK. I mean
a ramp ending here? What the VUK! Once the ball is up on this
playfield you have your choice of feeding the upper flipper, hitting
the ball repeatedly into the rubber guide wall, or letting roll down
the mono-rail. Yes that is how it is laid out, the left ramp goes to
a VUK which goes to the upper PF which goes to the return habitrail.
Wow someone messed up. If you need more proof of that look under the
flippers. The PF is actually cut out as if the flippers were going to
levetate from below. I managed to get a ball stuck in this cut out.
Thank goodness Vince knows how to rock the head of a game to free a
ball but I see this being a problem on location. Plus, if you need
two mini-flippers of which one only feeds the other wouldn't it be
smarter to change the layout of the playfield and use just one normal
flipper?
(Korn) Yeah, I really have no idea why there are cutouts underneath
both flippers up there; doesn't seem to serve any purpose.
(Wolffy) Lets keep in mind that this playfield is up there while there
is nearly one square foot of open space on the lower playfield. I
don't mean that there is open space to hit long shots but there is
nothing there, no inserts to mark your progress in the game, in fact
no feed back indicators that we are used to seeing on pinball. Given
how small the upper PF is there is an excellent chance that all those
shots could be incorporated on the main PF, which would not only
reduce production costs but may also help ease the flow of the game.
Hey it gets rid of a VUK anyway. Plus isn't maintance on games with
upper playfield so much fun operators rush to do it?
(Korn) OK, you have a point there. It'd be interesting to hear
something from Stern about how they made it easy for Operators to get
underneath that upper playfield. Please, tell us it's so easy to get
under that playfield that Aron Boag is going to volunteer to get under
it for all the Detroit ops! :)
(Wolffy) My point exactly. Not only that let's look at the parts,
these mini-flippers aren't common parts. They have shafts that reach
to the under side of the main playfield (think No Fear). Now why in a
day when everyone is complaining about parts and e-bay would you
increase the number of custom parts in a pinball machine?
(Korn) Big deal. You buy some small flipper bats, rip out the
shafts, glue in an old WMS plunger that you have hanging around and
cut off the end with a dremel. There! Small flippers with long
shafts!
(Wolffy) Another problem I have is with the music. Normally when
playing pinball and a special mode is started, the music becomes
something other then main play tune. That other music usually
increases in volume to further draw the player into the game. While
the main play tune is the Simpsons' theme beaten to death, the I&S
multiball tune is actually quieter then the main play tune. You can
hear it is the I&S tune from I&S land but it is not played at the
level you expect your background music to be at when there are
mutliple balls in play and lights are flashing and Scratchy is
*whispering* jackpot to you! Where is the pizazz that comes with a
well played multiball. Where is the umph that indicates I'm doing
great and if I stop now I'm a poor pinball player?
(Korn) Being the one that actually played ALL of the multiballs (cuz
I'm just THAT damn good!), I have to say that it was indeed a strange
experience. There game was definitely lacking "Eugene Jarvis"
moments; yes there were three balls on the field, but the game
certainly wasn't acting like anything had changed. No pumpin' tunes,
no blazing light show, not even a heavy explosion or over the top
announcer to signify that you've hit a jackpot. I did hear Scartchy
saying jackpot a few dozen times, and I think a couple of the other
characters, but if I didn't speak english and KNOW what Jackpot meant,
I could have easily mistook it for regular old ball time. Let's hope
they translate the word "jackpot" into whatever the local language is
when they export the game, or they'll never know anything happened!
The strength of the license is also the weakness of the license when
it comes to the music. You pretty much HAVE to use The Simpsons theme
as the music. (I suppose you could be really ballsey and use "Hot for
Teacher" by Van Halen, but I doubt Groening and crew would approve!)
So then you have the problem that everyone KNOWS The Simpsons' theme
and is sick to death of it. So then you decide to make the music very
low, like background music. And that's pretty much what you have in
The Simpsons; you have the theme playing pretty softly in comparison
to the omnipresent voice quips. If it sounds like a mess, then I'm
getting my point across. :)
(Wolffy) Damn dude! Your HARSH!
(Korn) Yeah well sound is my thing. And there isn't going to be any
bumpin' stereo dumped in a Simpsons any time soon, let me tell you!
As for the sound quality itself (i.e. voice sample quality), it was
average. Wasn't anything spectacular, wasn't trashy. A couple of
them sounded a litle hollow, but acceptable for a noisemaker sitting
next to a NFL BLITZ 2000. :)
One suggestion to Stern: if you insist on making a noise every time
the right ramp is hit, _please_ randomize the order of the quotes. It
gets REALLY old to hear the same quotes played in the same order time
and time again. (Better yet, quit blathering every time the ramp is
hit!)
(Wolffy) The one thing Stern did do that is interesting, instead of
using a flasher when the ball is about to be ejected from one of the
many locks, the flipper the ball will roll past flips five times to
give you the hint of where to look and what to use. Don't worry, it
only does it the first time for each flipper for each game. The only
time you'll get sick of it is when you play ten games in a row (like
what we did).
(Korn) I thought that was an EXCELLENT feature. It's like what I do
when my mom or someone else new to pinball is playing, except that I
didn't have to do it; the game did it for me. Mechanical action
pinball at its finest!
That pretty much wraps up Wolffy's and my impressions of The Simpsons
ver 2.0. There were a couple of other odd things that are probably
"sample" errors (game feeding two balls to the shooter a few times,
for example) but don't seem worthy of mention here.
Overall, I think the game is going to do moderately well, based mostly
on its strong license. No way in hell would I buy this game for my
home collection, even being a big Simpsons fan; the game just doesn't
have it for that market. For the occasional player, however, I think
The Simpsons is going to do just fine. It's not a _bad_ pinball,
despite what Mike says. It's just not an excellent one.
Now I have to give Mike his chance at a retort. Flame on! :)
(Wolffy) Well I see one problem that needs to be addressed if they
want the game to take any money on location. Keith and design crew
need to LEAVE THE COIN LAMPS ON! When we arrived I was ready to drop
in my money but some attract mode pattern turned those lamps off and I
could not see the slots to insert the coins (Season's Tickets has a
dark game room). Not only that places like the GameWorks chain uses
card readers which read the +6V supply to determine if a game is
powered on. You don't know how pissed off I am after a round of HRC
and I have to wait two mintues for the damn game to stop its light
show so I can coin up. I know I reported this before but apparently
Stern doesn't care too much about games taking in money.
(Korn) Damn dude, you're _harsh_! Stern gives a damn if Gayworks
can't figure out how to rig up a card reader the right way? Sounds
like GameWorks' problem! (But really, leave the coin lights on. It
was pretty damn funny watching Mike try and shove a quarter into a
dollar bill reader!)
I'm sure you'll all have lots to say. Have at it! (But remember, TWO
people wrote this, so you're likely to get TWO answers. Or none at
all. take your best shot. :) )
----
FWIW, Mike just mentioned something. Although SheKorn has been a
silent partner in this review process, she did contribute valuable
insight. She managed to fall asleep while playing The Simpsons! Not
a joke, people! She was there, flippers in hand, and
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......
...And she LOVES pinball!
Lloyd Olson
The Korn <the...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
On to Stadium's Tickets, or whatever
> the hell it's called. Ask Lloyd, he knows. :)
Awesome review. I saw a long Korn post coming up and got the popcorn and
enjoyed. ( Can't wait for the Korn report from Expo this year ) You guys
should do a website and review games. LTG :)
ARTMAN
playfield. It does look quite wasteful but then again, seeing as I haven't
played it I can't fully judge.
After a game gets taken from the test location and the Stern crew goes back
at it how long does it usually take before production starts and then the
game hits the streets?
Art-
ps. cute dog there Wolffy :o)
Manic
that goes on (understandably).
I hate to see a return to DE/Stern overuse of voice samples on every random
target and switch. Makes it hard to play more than a couple games.
Wms really had down the "orchestration" of pinball: not doing so good?
Then you would get muted, low-key sounds from the standup tagets, etc...
Starting to nail shots? Then the SFX and samples would *really* kick in.
Easy to overlook until you play some DE/Sega games and get voices yelling
at you the entire game.
Hope Stern sells a bunch for location though - attractive game
with a good theme.
"The Korn" <the...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b2262ce8.03010...@posting.google.com...
Micheal D. Webb
to PLAY the game?
Mike
Manic
"Micheal D. Webb" <spide...@email.msn.com> wrote in message
news:#fcXWCItCHA.1732@cpimsnntpa03...
Actually they were the first to comment on the lack of flow and
many play-related issues. Check out the comments on slow-returning
balls, etc... every other review I've seen didn't get into play
mechanics at all.
But it was just their opinion... albeit one with extremely detailed
examples to back it up ;-)
I'm sure it'll be a big seller in any case.
J o n a t h a n
but the comments are good. Hope the crew at Stern take notice and use your
comments to improve the game.
I was already afraid that the soundbites and music would be an issue, as for
most Stern games. Sorry Stern, sound is very important in a game. The way
you described it was exactly what I was worried about. Random quotes is
already better than constantly the same quote, but if it makes no sense for
the mode one is playing, the game will get dull in the end. Hopefully it is
not too late to make changes for improvement. It may be a bit more work, but
it is the final result that counts. What will cost more? improving the sound
system, sounds, quotes, tunes, etc and sell more games in the end, or keep
it as it is and sell less games, and keep the same problem occuring on the
next game too, with the same result...
As for the Simpsons tune: There are more musical themes in the show, in fact
I believe every location has it's own tune of version of the tune. Obviously
Stern might be limited in tunes contract wise, as for 3 vocal actors.
However, changing tunes when a new mode starts is helping the player to
understand the game and makes the game less boring. If multiple tunes is not
possible as there is not enough ROM space, I would seriously suggest Stern
to make the investment of improving the soundboard and put this game on a
hold. The better the sounds and tunes are truly part of the game you play,
the more games will be sold as more people will like it, I think. Besides:
the soundsystme needed improvemnet anyway.
As for the cutouts in the mini playfield below the flippers: most likely
this is done so that operators can remove the miniplayfield if needed,
without removing the flippers. Acutally a very smart move I think.
Jonathan
The Korn
> to PLAY the game?
I have no idea where a comment like this comes from, since it's
literally stated in the review that we played it multiple times. But
for the record, we were playing the game continuously for the better
part of _three hours_. Yup, hogged the machine the whole time!
(Nobody in the bar seemed to care... :) ) I dumped in somewhere
between $8 and $12 into it, and Mike half that. (I was paying for
SheKorn's games, after all!) Made liberal use of the 5 games for $2
pricing. :)
It would be absolutely moronic and completely ass-holeian to write a
"review" of a game that one hadn't at least spent some _decent_ time
playing. Add to that some games grow on you after multiple plays and
you really need to play at least five games before you can even think
about forming an opinion on a machine. It would have been a
disservice to rgp AND to Stern to start spouting off at the mouth
without giving the machine a fair shake.
Since I knew I was going to have SOMETHING to say about The Simpsons
(good or bad!), I made enough time and brought enough money to get a
good "feel" for the game, and also give it time to "grow" on me. My
game play on The Simpsons got tremendously better along the course of
that few hours, so that I just barely missed getting onto the high
score board. (I believe me top game was just shy of 26M. Not too
bad, considering Simpsons is using old-school scoring.)
In other words, although the review was just the comments of two guys,
they were the _informed_ comments of two guys. Yeah, you might not
like what we had to say (it happens), but can't fault us for jumping
on something we've never played. All three of us played it! A bunch!
[And luckily, none of the features seemed broken at the time, so it
wasn't skewed by mechanical failure towards the negative!]
The Korn
> After a game gets taken from the test location and the Stern crew goes back
> at it how long does it usually take before production starts and then the
> game hits the streets?
IIRC, it usually takes about a month, sometimes two between when a
game is first on test and when it starts showing up at distributors.
How long it takes a game to show up on route after it hits the
distributor is, well, anyone's guess. :)
I'm sure Keith & Co. will have something more definitive to say about
that.
Yancy Blaylock
> As for the cutouts in the mini playfield below the flippers: most likely
> this is done so that operators can remove the miniplayfield if needed,
> without removing the flippers. Acutally a very smart move I think.
I think he's right. There are two big black knobs near the mini-flippers
that look like "thumbscrews" for removing the mini PF. And with flipper
cutouts, that's two less things you have to disconnect from the main PF
to lift off the mini.
Yancy
Kim Scheinberg
>
>As for the Simpsons tune: There are more musical themes in the show, in fact
>I believe every location has it's own tune of version of the tune. Obviously
In the opening credits alone, there are many variations on Lisa's sax
-k.
_K_M_E_
about the quotes but we will see. We all know Keith is a player so what
annoys us will likely annoy him too. I have faith that everything will be
OK. Ballsavers suck!... when I was your age we didn't have ballsavers so we
had to get good quick (8 degree incline in the snow even) ... :)
The Korn
You know, that use is so obvious that I have no idea why it didn't
occur to myself or Mike! (duuuuuh..... :) )
One thing Stern could do to avoid having the cutouts being ball traps
would be to mount some trap fixes attached to the lower playfield that
would "poke up" through the cutouts. (i.e. mount them in the center,
so the "hole" would be half as wide.) They wouldn't be in the way
(since the playfield apparently lifts straight up) and would improve
the problem of a ball getting stuck.
J o n a t h a n
> occur to myself or Mike! (duuuuuh..... :) )
I hear this a lot, I think I have a talent in discovering obvious things : )
> One thing Stern could do to avoid having the cutouts being ball traps
> would be to mount some trap fixes attached to the lower playfield that
> would "poke up" through the cutouts. (i.e. mount them in the center,
> so the "hole" would be half as wide.) They wouldn't be in the way
> (since the playfield apparently lifts straight up) and would improve
> the problem of a ball getting stuck.
If it realy is a problem I think it will be easier and cheaper for Stern to
come up with plastic caps that fit in the hole below the flipper as that is
also easy to remove.
J.
Cameron Silver
>Wow someone messed up. If you need more proof of that look under the
>flippers. The PF is actually cut out as if the flippers were going to
>levetate from below. I managed to get a ball stuck in this cut out.
>(Korn) Yeah, I really have no idea why there are cutouts underneath
>both flippers up there; doesn't seem to serve any purpose.
The mini-playfield is held in place by three thumb-screws .. Remove
the screws and the entire thing lifts out of the game. Those cutouts
are there so that the mini-playfield can be removed without having to
dismantle the flippers first.
>(Korn) OK, you have a point there. It'd be interesting to hear
>something from Stern about how they made it easy for Operators to get
>underneath that upper playfield.
The mini-playfield is held in place by three thumb-screws .. Remove
the screws and the entire thing lifts out of the game. The playfield
is cutout beneath the flippers so that the mini-playfield can be
removed without having to dismantle the flippers first.
Cam.
Alex Chapman
dunno.. i mean, he's definitely got enough of a thing against them to
have left the ballsave off Austin Powers, which on many machines meant
an ugly center drain if you plunged Ball 1 before Dr. Evil was
retracted fully (think left jet exit).
Manic
"Cameron Silver" <cam...@buzzneon.com> wrote in message
news:3e19f73f....@news.cisco.com...
Maybe you would like to also explain twice why it apparently
is also functioning as a ball trap ;-)
Orin Day
Manic <manicmus...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Actually they were the first to comment on the lack of flow
To each his own I guess...while I didn't find the whitewood to be a
Ritchie or Nordman shot to shot to shot to shot to shot and repeat style
game I did find the paths the ball took to be more interesting than just
about any game I'd played...ever. Especially shots to the mini-loop,
I particularly enjoyed that area of the playfield.
I also liked the upper playfield too, a "make the shot and get it over
with" area, not like the massively exploitable WWF.
As far as the complaint about the upper playfield mini flippers being
"game specific parts" I'd say get over it...Stern's business is to produce
and sell games now, not to worry about who will be looking for parts 10
years from now. Especially a part so easily reproduceable as a straight
steel rod, though Stern does go the extra mile to fill parts orders.
Anybody looking for an ID4 alien head? The game is well over 5 years old
but when I was at Stern in July there was talk of yet another run of
heads. I bet you wouldn't have seen this at WMS in a similar
situation.
But still I wouldn't be surprised if said flipper mech were almost
interchangeable with the mechs used on WWF, you know, the kind that
actually allow a main playfield shot or two to travel under the upper
playfield? Of course I imagine that not many posters here have spent
much time inside a WWF. :)
OD
--
Orin Day "This too shall pass"
lob...@lobsterdevil.com - Mike Ditka
Orin Day
_K_M_E_ <slam...@cox.net> wrote:
>Wow, you guys are harsh... relax, its just a game ;) I will agree with you
>about the quotes but we will see. We all know Keith is a player so what
>annoys us will likely annoy him too. I have faith that everything will be
>OK.
When a game first goes on test the choreography - light shows, sound
calls, etc. is always not quite there, it's always a bit of a rush to get
that first game out.
>Ballsavers suck!... when I was your age we didn't have ballsavers so we
>had to get good quick (8 degree incline in the snow even) ... :)
And ballsavers and outlane posts are almost always never liberal on a test
game, one would think that folks would have figured that out by
now. Especially given the fact that word gets out so quickly to so
many good players exactly where the game is.