I hate Stern

[Björn Wessman]

I was at an amusement park playing pinball this week and they had some 20+ tables of which all but two where Stern, most of them quite new. And damn, I hated them all! While the rule sets and play fields can be good, the mechanics are just crap. Flippers feel like they are using rubber bands - old dried out rubber bands, ball moves like it was underwater, precision is next to none with the ball enindg up at totally different locations when executing two almost identical shots. And most of all, the overall feeling of quality is very, very poor. Feels like playing a children's toy . I actually enjoy Stern tables more on TPA than IRL since on TPA there's at least a little less randomness.

After a couple of hours I gave up and stuck with the only Bally (Addams Family) and Williams (Monster Bash) tables. Such a shame there's only one pinball manufacturer these days

 

[Espy]

Can't say I agree. I have played a lot of Sterns and they're all very good quality. Which is only natural given all the progression in pinball manufacturing that has taken place since Williams bowed out. You sure it's not just that the operator isn't taking good care of them?

 

[Björn Wessman]

No, some were of course in better condition than others, AC/DC being the best, probably because it was "new", but the feeling of quality is still much less than of the older Williams or Bally tables. Avatar was decent but not good, Rolling Stones were awful, Simpsons Pinball Party as well (loved the layout, theme and gadgets though). LOTR bad, T3 bad, Pirates of the Carabbean bad, etc etc.

 

[Björn Wessman]

Might add that I learned playing pinball on Williams and Bally tables in the early 90's, and that's what I'm mostly used to playing. I guess it takes a while to get used to the Stern type of tables. But even so, I will argue that Stern tables feel much cheaper quality wise.

 

[Espy]

I might be wrong but I think general consensus is that they're the sturdiest.

 

[switch3flip]

I have some friends who hate Stern as well, for all the reasons you just mentioned. While I generally prefer Williams, Spiderman (Stern) is one of my all time favourite pins.

 

[Sumez]

I like both. I guess there are a lot of bad Stern tables, but I had the pleasure of playing with a lot of the good ones. Namely SM, Avatar, ACDC, Iron Man, LOTR, TSPP, and Tron. All of those are great tables, I think.

Especially SM and LOTR are amazing, I really love those two tables, and they are definitely among my favourite tables ever, if not -the- top two.

I don't like Avengers, and Rolling Stones is horrible, and TSPP definitely took some getting used to, so it's obviously individual based on the table. But I do think a lot of them are definitely on par with, or even better than, most classic Bally/Williams DMD tables.

 

[mmmagnetic]

I haven´t played a whole lot of real pinball, but a local cinema has some Stern machines, Spiderman and Tron. The one thing I actively disliked about them are the playfield graphics. They look so... photoshoppy, with no sense of style or character.

It´s a shame, because a nicely drawn playfield is an important factor for me. Modern Stern ones just lack a certain clarity. Just slap some actor photos on there, done! (Though I have to add that I actually like how garish the field on RBION looks. It just fits the tables theme and design - messy, loud, chaotic.)

It´s a shame, because the history of pinball is full of very imaginative designs, always reflecting the taste and styles of each decade. Oh well.

 

[Espy]

I have some friends who hate Stern as well, for all the reasons you just mentioned. While I generally prefer Williams, Spiderman (Stern) is one of my all time favourite pins.

Here here! I was completely addicted to Spider-man for a long time, before it was tragically removed from my arcade and replaced with a... Raven.

Was so close to getting to Battle Royale, too. On my final game before it was removed I was less than 10 shots from it.

 

[Sumez]

I agree that "actor photos" on pinball machines tends to look terrible and cheap, usually taking any sense of "style" out of the design. Modern Sterns have become a bit better at this, and I don't think eg. Spider-Man is too terrible in this department, as what you're seeing is mainly CG or costumed characters, with only Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst on the slingshots being really jarring.
LOTR, however, is terrible in this department. I'd have loved a LOTR table based entirely on the books, with no relation to the movie actors - maybe basing the design on John Howe illustrations or similar. That would have been amazing. But as it is, they obviously needed to tie it in to the movie release, to improve sales.

I also dislike the movie-clips played on the DMD on a lot of newer (SAM) Sterns, like Spider-Man, Avatar, Tron, etc, where you can't even see what's supposed to be going on, and it just appears "slapped on" with no relation to what's going on in your game.
Fortunately they've gone away from that, and both Avengers and Metallica uses awesome "hand made" DMD animations like classic pinball tables.

 

[Sexton Hardcastle]

There's not much available for pinball where I live, but I've played a lot of Avengers (well, Wizard of Oz also, but that off-topic)...



If I get another ball stuck under the Hulk's arm, I might have to throw something at that machine. I haven't been able to decide if I keep playing it because I like it or because there's so few machines around here which are in decent playable shape.

 

[mmmagnetic]

I also dislike the movie-clips played on the DMD on a lot of newer (SAM) Sterns, like Spider-Man, Avatar, Tron, etc, where you can't even see what's supposed to be going on, and it just appears "slapped on" with no relation to what's going on in your game.
Fortunately they've gone away from that, and both Avengers and Metallica uses awesome "hand made" DMD animations like classic pinball tables.

Yeah, compressing movie clips into super-lowres black and red pixels looks horrible, I agree. The Spiderman machine I got to play some weeks ago had the sound turned way down as well (with a Daytona USA machine roaring right next to it), so I had even less of an idea what I was doing, with some vague shadows moving across the DMD.

I usually don´t pay too much attention to DMD stuff, but I recently noticed how great many of the older animations look. Creature From The Black Lagoon for instance has terrific art, and does a really good job of recreating little movie scenes (when multiball starts) as well as the 50s graphic design feel.

Pixel art, especially when it comes to really low resolutions and limited colors (in this case, only black and red) is something most modern artists probably have very little experience with. It reminds me of the difference between a well-made classic Gameboy game and something like Donkey Kong Land, where they compressed the 16bit prerendered graphics into something that was extremely hard to see on a monochrome screen with heavy ghosting and low contrast:

Compared to something like this:

(sorry if that is a bit off-topic)

 

[Espy]

I actually kind of like the movie clips on the DMD, but clearly that's just me...

There's not much available for pinball where I live, but I've played a lot of Avengers (well, Wizard of Oz also, but that off-topic)...



If I get another ball stuck under the Hulk's arm, I might have to throw something at that machine. I haven't been able to decide if I keep playing it because I like it or because there's so few machines around here which are in decent playable shape.

This annoys me to no end, too. And often the ball search catches me off guard and the ball drains. Makes you wonder how it never twigged to any of the designers that it was a huge ball trap. It seems they were just in love with the Hulk, giving him his own themed cabinet and everything. Probably the only product related to that movie where Hulk was given primary focus, which I always found odd.

 

[Chris Dunman]

Looking at the OP's comments, could the key words be 'Amusement Park'?

Maybe a pin set to maximise drain, minimise potential for a player knowing the table to spend all day, thereby maximising return would have something to do with it?

I would suggest that while not being a huge Stern fan, a tournament ready version would play like a dream..

 

[Tom]

I was at an amusement park playing pinball this week and they had some 20+ tables of which all but two where Stern, most of them quite new. And damn, I hated them all! While the rule sets and play fields can be good, the mechanics are just crap. Flippers feel like they are using rubber bands - old dried out rubber bands, ball moves like it was underwater, precision is next to none with the ball enindg up at totally different locations when executing two almost identical shots. And most of all, the overall feeling of quality is very, very poor. Feels like playing a children's toy . I actually enjoy Stern tables more on TPA than IRL since on TPA there's at least a little less randomness.

After a couple of hours I gave up and stuck with the only Bally (Addams Family) and Williams (Monster Bash) tables. Such a shame there's only one pinball manufacturer these days

the flippers get weak on all pinball machines from all manufacturers if the game isnt cared for properly, personaly i prefer the stern flipper feel over williams.

 

[DaPinballWizard]

Some Sterns I don't like at all. T3, Transformers, Rolling Stones. Others are decent. Pirates was ok. Tron was ok too. AC/DC, Metallica, LOTR. I wouldn't mind owning any of those. Next is Star Trek. Bring it on.

 

[Tom]

i will actually get a metallica some time this week, it will be awesome =)

 

[francis247uk]

I think Stern get far too much hate from the pinball enthusiasts.
Sure they're not perfect, but if they weren't around you would literally just have Jersey Jack mass producing pinball.

The more pinball manufacturers the merrier I say, give Stern a break.

 

[brakel]

I hate Howard Stern. Does that count?

 

[karl]

The first time I played a Stern it felt a bit different but the lack of precision on the flippers that OP is talking about is of course not true. They could never get away with that.(if it was true, no one would buy them)

When it comes to rules and layout, many of the old williams/Bally designers/programmers now work with Stern so that should not be an issue.

Now when it comes to building quality, I have to say it like it is. Stern does not reach williams to the knee caps. Flipper humming, kitchen light tube in the back boxes, cheaper lockdown bars, bad prints and less clear coat on the playfields, etc. I could go on and on and on.

I still find many of the Stern games (Metallica, AC/DC, TRON, Spiderman, LOTR, TSPP at least) to be at least on par with the old classics when it comes to gameplay, rules and pure fun and those are the most important factors, for me at least.

I enjoy Stern games a lot more than Data east and Sega games, that's for sure