The "what does machine build quality mean to you?" thread

[Zombie Aladdin]

I'm trying to look into what makes a table good or bad. People seem to typically be incredibly vague about them. Austin Powers comes to mind in particular about a game a lot of people dislike. It borrows a lot from Medieval Madness and Monster Bash, two very well-liked games. I have yet to play on a good-condition one, but I don't understand why it's so badmouthed.

There is no table easier than "South Park".

My little nephews have played that one straight for nearly an hour, it's THAT easy.

Yes, that's a good one for beginners too, though you have to make sure it's at a setting appropriate for whoever's going to play it, it being South Park and all. I hear South Park collectors are snapping them up rapidly though. That being said, ease is not the only factor I use in determining if it's good for someone who has never played real pinball before. They are:

1. Ease - How long can a person keep playing it? Can they progress easily? Are they rewarded well and frequently for surviving? That is, tables where one can last some time but not score well unless they make a number of accurate shots, such as Monster Bash or High Speed II: The Getaway, cannot be beginner-friendly. Games where balls drain easily and quickly, such as The Simpsons Pinball Party or Star Trek: The Next Generation, would not pass either, of course.
2. Approachability - Does the game make it obvious what you are supposed to do? If a solid-state game, does the DMD/alphanumeric display do a good job telling you which shots to make? Can you look at the playfield for the first time and get a good plan? Do the voice clips clearly explain what to do in few words? You can last some time in NBA Fastbreak, for instance, but it moves way too fast for someone new to the game to know what's going on. This was how White Water was for me too before I read the rules: Each shot has its own name, and without knowing which shot was called which, I was totally lost--I was scoring less than 1 million points per minute.
3. Simplicity - Are the rules simple and straightforward? Note that a ruleset can be simple and straightforward without it being shallow or boring. Junk Yard is a good example of that. While not a beginner-friendly game by any means, Taxi is another. From what I've seen with beginners, complexity of the playfield itself does not intimidate them. They can stare at the machine to study it as much as they like before playing. But if too much is thrown at them at once, or the rules are confusing, they will become confused, then frustrated.
4. Welcomeness - Does the game make you feel welcome? This is a lot harder to explain as it's a more abstract, subjective concept, but it all comes down to if the machine feels challenging or punishing. (A litmus test when you play any game, whether it's pinball or something else, is that, once it's over and you lose, do you think, "I could have done better if I did this differently" or "This game is totally unfair and deprived me of better performance"? The former is a game with challenging difficulty; the latter is a game with punishing difficulty.) Beginners will be fine with the machine insulting them, but they will not tolerate a game that feels punishing. X-Men is such a case of a punishing game due to its magnet on a spinning disc. A ball flung into the drain via this magnet will make them feel cheated. Most EM tables will feel punishing to newcomers too.

Bear in mind that tables that you experienced people would find bad are not necessarily bad for beginners. Beginners value very different things on a pinball machine than veterans.

Back on topic, i'm surprised someone threw out Frank Thomas' Big Hurt. I have no idea how that machine came about, but there is actually one such machine in public rather close to where I live. I ought to visit that place and try it. I'd guess it's not that hard, as the licensing rights presumably lie mostly with Frank Thomas himself.

 

[shutyertrap]

I'm trying to look into what makes a table good or bad. People seem to typically be incredibly vague about them. Austin Powers comes to mind in particular about a game a lot of people dislike. It borrows a lot from Medieval Madness and Monster Bash, two very well-liked games. I have yet to play on a good-condition one, but I don't understand why it's so badmouthed.

Austin Powers is bad mouthed by me for these few reasons I can remember...because I haven't touched it since it came out! For starters, it was an incredibly cheap looking table. The 'toys' were nothing more than action figures stuck on the table, or so they appeared. The colors on the playfield were obnoxious, and not in a good way. From a graphic art perspective, there just didn't seem to be any real thought put into the design. It was one of the first tables I had seen with clearly photoshopped images on it, though I know SEGA had been doing it themselves. The audio package, again from what I remember, was terribly annoying. Just hearing that theme song over and over and over again, and I don't recall the call outs being any better.

Truth be told, I don't recall how the machine actually played. I just know I officially hated STERN after it. I had given them a pass on RBION and Monopoly for some of the obvious shortcuts in the build quality. RCT didn't win me over in the least when that damn troll was slapped on the table and had annoying sound effects to boot. Austin Powers was the final straw for me. It just seemed like a cash grab on a popular license. It felt soulless.

It was years before I started paying any attention to STERN again. Someone approaching Austin Powers today, might not have the same feelings I had back when it was released, just due to what the pinball climate is today. But back then, it was truly despised.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

I see. I can understand why the art would be something that would turn people off from it. I have not seen any of the movies, so I can't tell if it'd be intentional or not, but I always got the impression the movies were rather trollish. (I must wonder what a pinball machine made by Penn Jillette would look like. The Penn & Teller books are already trollish enough as they are. I read one, for instance, with a black-and-white spiral pattern background on every page designed to disorient you and make it difficult to make out the letters.)

"Cheap-looking" is something I'm trying to look into but cannot really get much headway. In the case of Austin Powers, does it mean that the plastic characters on the playfield were action figures just sourced from elsewhere and not made specifically for the game? Maybe it's because I never saw any of the Williams or Bally tables when they were at their prime in the '90s, and by now they've become worn down and dodgy in their gameplay having been in service for 20+ years, but I honestly cannot see the quality difference between games praised for their high quality like those '90s tables and the modern Sterns accused of cutting corners. Iron Man, for instance, is said to break down within 6 months, but I've seen some well-maintained Iron Man machines, and they look sturdy to me. (On the other hand, I have never seen a Monopoly without flaking artwork or a malfunctioning safe door. Is that what is meant by cheap quality?)

 

[CC13]

I'm trying to look into what makes a table good or bad...ear in mind that tables that you experienced people would find bad are not necessarily bad for beginners. Beginners value very different things on a pinball machine than veterans.

For myself, I find that the best metric of quality is whether or not a table can grow with the player. This is a big part of the reason that the Bally/Williams DMD output is widely considered a golden age of pinball—the objectives are wonderfully balanced on most of those tables, with something relatively easy that's worth going for to appeal to beginners (usually some form of multiball) and more strenuous objectives for veterans. This is why I took exception to DokkenRokken's suggestion of Gilligan's Island—delivering the Lava Seltzer scores 50M points plus an additional 50M/shot for the rest of the round, whereas it takes a while to score 1M by anything other than the jungle or Kona. Once you get consistent on your ingredient collecting, you can score arbitrary amounts with little effort (also, whose bright idea was it to have the only method of getting multiball be via a mystery award?).

Austin Powers is bad mouthed by me for these few reasons I can remember...because I haven't touched it since it came out! For starters, it was an incredibly cheap looking table. The 'toys' were nothing more than action figures stuck on the table, or so they appeared. The colors on the playfield were obnoxious, and not in a good way. From a graphic art perspective, there just didn't seem to be any real thought put into the design. It was one of the first tables I had seen with clearly photoshopped images on it, though I know SEGA had been doing it themselves. The audio package, again from what I remember, was terribly annoying. Just hearing that theme song over and over and over again, and I don't recall the call outs being any better.

Truth be told, I don't recall how the machine actually played. I just know I officially hated STERN after it. I had given them a pass on RBION and Monopoly for some of the obvious shortcuts in the build quality. RCT didn't win me over in the least when that damn troll was slapped on the table and had annoying sound effects to boot. Austin Powers was the final straw for me. It just seemed like a cash grab on a popular license. It felt soulless.

It was years before I started paying any attention to STERN again. Someone approaching Austin Powers today, might not have the same feelings I had back when it was released, just due to what the pinball climate is today. But back then, it was truly despised.

Don't forget the Mini-Me spinner; it gets stuck really easily if what I've heard is true and rarely spins more than 3-4 times per shot even when it works.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Wow, I played on a WEIRD Austin Powers then. The artwork was incredibly worn down, with the wood visible on about half of the playfield (probably why I was not bothered by the art--there wasn't much of it left), the sounds were at full blast and could be heard from 250 feet away (which would be annoying with most tables anyway), all of the inserts were turned off (so I had no idea what was going on or what to shoot for), but the Mini-me spinner kept spinning and spinning and spinning each time I shot the left orbit. It would keep going for like 15 seconds before finally stopping.

I know Gilligan's Island's scoring is incredibly unbalanced (I figured as such when I was new to pinball and was getting scores of around 2 million and saw the leaderboards started at 500 million), and definitely, I've observed that as a big reason for appeal to experts on a pinball machine. I discovered similar things in arcade fighting games, for instance--the hardcore would cry foul if any character has anything worse than a 40% to 60% matchup against any other character on the roster. But with pinball and fighting games alike, beginners don't care if the game is balanced or not--they want to be able to push buttons and see stuff happen.

About the only thing beginners and experts in pinball seem to agree is very good to have (besides the table functioning at 100%) is multiball, and even then, they like multiball for different reasons.

With me and most people I've seen who wanted to try out pinball for the first time, the one thing they want to do the most is the same: Survive. Even if there is a relatively easy goal for beginners, it means nothing if all three of their balls drain before they can reach it. I've watched beginners go at games from the Golden Age. Nine times out of ten, their games are over within 60 seconds. They do not achieve any goals, not even the easy ones. They launch the ball, get a lucky shot in maybe, then drain. Repeat twice more. They get frustrated and leave. (Most Sterns are no different, by the way.)

I think people nowadays also get frustrated more easily. We're raised on video games where, for the first hour or so, it's very hard to lose, and you feel like a champ for the first third of the game, if not the entire game. Older video games, from the '90s and earlier, still had their roots in the quarter-munching arcade environment, and gamers then, I feel, were used to getting beaten silly and were more driven to keep trying at something they were initially bad at. Pinball still has that arcade type difficulty, which I think is too much for people nowadays, who, if they cannot feel like a champ within the first 5 minutes, will give up, with the exception of those tables that were either designed with beginners in mind (Gilligan's Island, South Park) or the truly rare design that can appeal to beginners and experts alike (Spider-Man (Stern)). (I don't think any less of modern gamers as previous generations though. Just that as game design has changed, so have the gamers, and pinball, which cannot change, would have little hope of getting these people even with Golden Age machines.)

 

[shutyertrap]

"Cheap-looking" is something I'm trying to look into but cannot really get much headway. In the case of Austin Powers, does it mean that the plastic characters on the playfield were action figures just sourced from elsewhere and not made specifically for the game? Maybe it's because I never saw any of the Williams or Bally tables when they were at their prime in the '90s, and by now they've become worn down and dodgy in their gameplay having been in service for 20+ years, but I honestly cannot see the quality difference between games praised for their high quality like those '90s tables and the modern Sterns accused of cutting corners.

The Stern machines I'm talking about that are 'cheap looking' are from their rebirth, not what they are currently putting out. From a distance, they look fine. Look closely, and you'll see a lack of polish in how they put the things together. Wire runs that are fully exposed, cheap looking plastic parts that should have been metal, little things. Look at a beat up Williams or Bally table and you still won't see those things. They shoehorned that LED display into RBION, Monopoly, HRC, and RCT for no reason other than cost savings over 3 tables. Look at the fonts on the numbers of Austin Powers, they're just so generic.

Stern was doing what it had to do in order to survive, but man was it a turn off to me. I don't believe it was until LotR that they started turning things around, but even after that there were missteps. Take a look at Sopranos and Playboy and tell me they look like high quality builds. Again, not talking how they play, just how they look.

I posted over here my thoughts during my most recent league night visit. All the tables were fully restored, so it was real easy to compare how things looked. The Gottlieb, Sega, Zaccaria tables all paled in comparison to the Bally and Williams stuff on hand. I was actually surprised at the 2 Data East machines on hand, G'n'R and Star Wars, because they looked top notch too. The Stern machines were all of the LE variety, so they too were fantastic looking. This is all purely the visceral feeling I get walking up to these machines. Williams rarely made an error in comparison. I think the reason Popeye and Bugs Bunny get hated on are specifically because of how they look.

Simply put, it's hard to get that 'cheap' feeling solely from photos. Get put into a room with a large selection of machines though, it becomes quite obvious.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Hmm, I think I'm starting to get a clearer picture. Exposed wires are definitely a no-no if I were in charge of how the machine would look, though I wouldn't say that re-using of parts is really all that bad except where they wouldn't fit. (I just thought that the mini-DMDs were supposed to be a trademark thing.) For plastic parts that should've been metal, which parts would those be? Are you referring to connectors, support structures, and such?

Playboy was made during that same early Stern era, I believe, and while the one I've played on (at Family Amusement Corporation) is showing wear and tear, it seemed satisfactory to me. I also thought that Sopranos, which was made a few years after that, was of a decent quality build. I'm guessing you're refering to the safe being a plastic cube with stickers on it and the stripper on the pole whose legs seem to be missing.

Maybe growing up on McDonald's instead of home cooking, Chinese knockoffs of toys instead of the real thing, and using bootlegged material my family sends me as gifts, I am easy to please in terms of quality and never developed a good sense of it. I have to wonder, however, if nostalgia plays a part in "that visceral feeling." I have been in places like Pins & Needles, 82, Family Amusement Corporation, the Orange County Ice Palaces, and participated in It Never Drains in Southern California, and I never felt that way with the Bally/Williams tables. They felt the same to me as the Sterns. What was always most important to me was if everything works properly, if the layout was good, and if the rules were good. Heck, I wouldn't even mind plastic aprons or a plastic sheet in place of the glass covering--the latter, if done well, would functionally be better than glass, as it is less resistant to breaking and more scratchproof, big plusses when used for public play, where they'll get exposed to kids with no sense of restraint and...thugs with no sense of restraint. I also honestly don't mind having a poster printed and glued on top of the wooden board used for the playfield instead of it being silk-screened. It affects the texture, but as an artist, I...really don't like silk-screened stuff that much. (As a plush collector, for instance, I refuse to get any plushes with silk-screened faces, only embroidered faces. THAT reeks of cheap build quality.)

Hence why I wonder if nostalgia has a role in all of this--as I only started playing pinball in September 2013, I have been exposed to many different styles and approaches all at once, and I wind up treating them all the same. Actually, it took some time for me to find Bally/Wiliams Golden Age tables, as these 2001-2006 Sterns are dominant and thus my foundation on how pinball is like.

Still, I notice that even now, Stern gets that criticism from the reader reviews on the Internet Pinball Database. Are they just being snobs, then, when I'm seeing tables like Transformers and Avatar getting points docked for cheap build? (Certainly, I see no reason why they couldn't put a figurine inside the amp suit though.)

 

[shutyertrap]

I don't think nostalgia has anything to do with it, as I had these opinions in the heyday of the early 90's. Data East tables were always second to Williams and Bally. Gottlieb Premier themes always felt like the Chinese knockoff version of a Williams table. Sega tables you just hoped were functioning.

 

[Jeff Strong]

I kind of like the layout of Austin Powers, and the theme (Oh, behaaaaave baby)...but yeah the build quality is questionable. Every one I've played had at least a few issues.

It would probably be pretty fun in TPA since we wouldn't have to worry about anything breaking down. Same goes for the Data East pins that are worth playing.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Hmm, interesting. The only SEGA table I've seen on location that I can visit with any regularity is a Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that's well-maintained. By comparison, there's always something wrong with the Black Knight a few feet down from it.

I also just had a thought: Were the Gottlieb/Premier tables sold at a lower price than the others? That may have been its business strategy, if they are as cheap as you say. I really can't say much about quality of Gottliebs compared to Ballys and Williamses, however, as they seem to be somewhat less battered than the Ballys and Williamses from the same decade. (I assume they were played less.) All in all, this has been a thought ever since I looked at pinball discussions on the Internet, about "cheapness" and such, and it has never been obvious to me.

By the way, one thing I do know is at least one other patent Williams is sitting on: It's a feature where the game can confirm if a switch is broken, usually by it figuring it hasn't been triggered in some large amount of games, and re-designate other switches to serve its purpose. For this reason, machines from Williams, and Bally when the two had been merged, have a reputation of holding up well with time, as a broken switch was harder to notice. Data East, Gottlieb, Capcom, and SEGA, not having that patent, could not do such a thing, and so they would feel like they break down faster. Williams still has the patent, which means Stern can't do it either.

 

[vikingerik]

Just noticed this thread, so here's a whole collection of thoughts.

What is so hateable about Harley-Davidson? Seems fine to me, it's got plenty of speed and multiballs and a wizard mode, what else do you need? Ok the video mode is annoying but that's the only objectionable spot.

Austin Powers is fine on the pinballing but annoying in the theme and audiovisual package. The franchise was always grating if you weren't into that juvenile style of humor and has aged even worse. But nothing at all wrong with the pinballing. If it were exactly the same game but with Elvira's boobs, we'd love it.

I don't get the complaints on Stern build quality. Ok they don't include complicated mechanical gadgets like the Gumball or Path of Adventure or STTNG's cannons. But neither did plenty of the best Williams games like AFM, MM, MB. I've never felt the Sterns were any different mechanically from the other manufacturers. If there's any difference, it's that Williams owners and operators took better care of them while DE/Sega/Sterns were more prone to neglectful operators that would let them rot. (And the point about Williams exclusively having broken switch compensation is a good one.) Complaints about cheap character figures on the Sterns also seem out of place, it's not like the AFM Martians or MB monsters were premium artisan pieces either. I have never once noticed any of the complaints here about playfield art quality or things like wire placement.

I still think the perceived excellence of Williams and weakness of the other manufacturers are all because of the audiovisual packages. Williams games go CRAZY with joyous revelry and yelling when you start multiball or nail a super jackpot. They get you PUMPED. Stern used to be able to capture this too, most obviously on LOTR, and also good on TSPP, POTC, and Ripley's. The Stern multimedia experience went significantly downhill starting around Sopranos and Elvis leading to the modern ones that feel so bland.

Beginners are terrible at pinball because aiming pinballs is hard. The core requirement of stopping the ball for a controlled shot is completely counter to instinct and takes at least hours if not months to years to learn and internalize. The only way to make a table newbie-friendly is to put a big wide target in the middle that will get hit lots of times by random whacks, since that's all a novice is capable of doing. AFM demonstrates this most clearly, obviously. Terminator 2 is highly overlooked in the newbie-friendly department, it's very easy for them to get in a couple whacks at the skull and start multiball.

 

[jbejarano]

Just noticed this thread, so here's a whole collection of thoughts.

What is so hateable about Harley-Davidson? Seems fine to me, it's got plenty of speed and multiballs and a wizard mode, what else do you need? Ok the video mode is annoying but that's the only objectionable spot.

For me, the most annoying part of Harley Davidson is the really bad voiceover. Not all of the voiceover is bad, but the generic sounding guy that does most of the callouts really grates. I've done voice acting, and that voice is not only inappropriate for the theme, it's just annoyingly bad. And yet, playing on mute is not a good option, because as awful as that voice work is, he does call out important things.

...And yes, that video mode drives me up the wall as well. It's always the same thing and it shows up too much.

...On top of that, I think the designers wasted the traffic signal toy. High Speed makes excellent use of the traffic signal. It's a compelling part of the game. Back when Harley-Davidson came out on The Pinball Arcade (long before High Speed was released), my expectation was higher. Turns out that on Harley-Davidson, the traffic signal serves no purpose other than decorative flashing lights. Very disappointing. Especially with Red Light Multiball being an important mode, they could have used that better.

...Then there's the annoying "music" that plays during Patch Hurry-Up. I guess I'm extra motivated to try and get that patch to shut it up.

...There are a couple other minor annoyances, and to be fair, there are parts of the game that are pretty neat. But, taken as a package, Harley Davidson would definitely be in the bottom quintile of my favorite tables on The Pinball Arcade.

P.S. I hasten to add that I don't think any of these are problems with FarSight's reproduction of the table. These are issues with the original table.

 

[shutyertrap]

I don't get the complaints on Stern build quality. Ok they don't include complicated mechanical gadgets like the Gumball or Path of Adventure or STTNG's cannons. But neither did plenty of the best Williams games like AFM, MM, MB. I've never felt the Sterns were any different mechanically from the other manufacturers. If there's any difference, it's that Williams owners and operators took better care of them while DE/Sega/Sterns were more prone to neglectful operators that would let them rot. (And the point about Williams exclusively having broken switch compensation is a good one.) Complaints about cheap character figures on the Sterns also seem out of place, it's not like the AFM Martians or MB monsters were premium artisan pieces either. I have never once noticed any of the complaints here about playfield art quality or things like wire placement.

Ask anyone who has an Avengers table about build quality, and you'll hear stories of the Tessuract (sp?) cube breaking. Or balls getting stuck behind Hulk. Find a Simpsons machine in the wild, tell me if the Itchy and Scratchy drop targets are functioning. There are all sorts of issues Stern has had with toys on their machines. I'm not saying Williams hasn't had its fair share, but when someone spent 8K on a Stern vs. whatever a Williams sold for in the 90's, there is cause for concern.

As for the quality of the figures themselves, I pointed out Austin Powers in particular because the figures looked identical to what was being sold on the toy shelves at the time. The AFM martians aren't fantastic, but at least they were original. Shoot, the boogies on Scared Stiff look like party favor finger puppets. So no, Bally and Williams were not immune from corner cutting either.

From my experience, when I go from playing a Williams machine to immediately putting my hands on a Data East or a Pro model of Stern, there is a difference in feel right away. You can feel it in your hands. Flippers on Data East were always worse than Williams or Gottlieb. Touch a late 70's or early 80's widebody like Embryon, and the thing feels like a tank. The best way I can truly describe it is like this...a Lego brick and a Mega Blocks brick might look the same, and they can even connect with each other. And yet a the plastic Lego uses just feels better, and is proven to last longer. I can feel it in the weight, the touch, and how they click together. There is just something about it.

Now, there are examples and arguments that can be used to knock Williams and Bally down a peg, for sure. Same as there are examples of Stern, Data East, Capcom, etc. that raise the bar. I'm simply making a broad statement of why there is this perception out there.

And again, this has nothing to do with my opinion of how the games actually play, score, or do their light show. This is purely how the machines hit me on a visceral level on approach and putting my hands on them.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Okay, I think I got the picture for the hate for Austin Powers now. I guess the movies came out when I was in my middle school and high school years, so I always thought it was some international sensation on the scale of The Simpsons. Heck, any time a new movie in the series came out, at least until Goldmember, I'd see a lot of adults and middle-aged people chatting about it. In college, the TV shows most often talked about were the ones on [adult swim], namely Family Guy, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and The Boondocks. The idea that the Austin Powers films are a love-it-or-hate-it thing never occurred to me until now, as I've been surrounded by fans of toilet humor my entire life. (The Boondocks is satire disguised as toilet humor though. Considering I really enjoyed the Wachowskis' take on Speed Racer, I didn't find the Austin Powers pinball machine that grating either. That, and I watch a good amount of anime, and nowadays, they can be really visually overwhelming if you're not used to it. Just watch any 5 minutes of Kill la Kill, for instance. They make the Michael Bay Transformers films look lazy.)

I suppose, then a pinball table themed on Eminem would receive similar scorn...? I suppose the pinball crowd is a very different one than the ones I'm used to.

I definitely remember stepping up to an Attack from Mars and saw the Martians were rather cheap-looking, barely-painted chunks of plastic. They look like the sort of thing you could get a bag of from a dollar store. Some still had the ridges you could see from the molding process. The villains in Spider-Man, on the other hand, were intricately detailed and painted and looked like they could've come from a hobby shop, especially Sandman.

I actually have a few ideas brewing in my head that would allow a beginner to feel welcome while letting the experts have their way too--I'll keep them to myself for now though. Suffice to say that most of them actually come from observing video games and what they do that pinball doesn't. (Not can't, just doesn't.)

I also apologize for having led the topic far, far astray. Should I put up a new topic somewhere?

P.S. Every Simpsons Pinball Party I've played either has fully-functioning drop targets or the whole thing isn't working at all, except for the one at Golf and Stuff in Norwalk. A bigger issue I've seen are a malfunctioning garage and weak upper flippers. The one at Valencia Lanes has both (and a Bart who always got stuck halfway up), the one at Family Amusement Corporation had weak flippers but were repaired recently, the one at QT Chicago Dogs has a garage that refuses to open, and the one at Fuddruckers Burbank has all of its inserts turned off and weak living room flippers.

I also feel The Simpsons Pinball Party is hurting a beginner's impression of pinball, at least around here. Because they are so common in southern California, it tends to be the pinball machine people will try first because they are familiar with the TV show. (If you go to a place with 3 or more machines, and it's among them, just watch. People will gravitate towards The Simpsons Pinball Party over anything else.) Unfortunately, The Simpsons Pinball Party is also one of the least beginner-friendly games, as it requires series of precise and quick shots to progress, there is no ball saver, and you are punished for whacking the ball aimlessly. This becomes their first impression, and they never play pinball again.

 

[Pinballwiz45b]

Find a Simpsons machine in the wild, tell me if the Itchy and Scratchy drop targets are functioning.

The middle one malfunctions where I play TSPP. Now I basically have to shake it out of there if it doesn't lower before kickout -.-

 

[vikingerik]

Yeah, I'll admit that TSPP tends to be broken on location, the Itchy targets and garage door. But I think that's more a function of choosing gadgets that can break rather than the build quality of them. Drop targets are always fragile. When was the last time Williams ever used them? I can't think of any of the 90's games offhand that did, besides Cactus Canyon that had about nine machines ever on location. There's really no reason to use drop targets, since plain standups can do the same thing and are much more reliable.

TSPP is in a uniquely bad place in the intersection of mechanical complexity and huge beatings on location from the theme attracting lots of kids who just violently bang on the flippers constantly. South Park can have the same problem but there's less on it to break. If Williams had made machines that attracted hordes of hyperactive ten-year-olds, they'd be broken too.

BTW, TSPP isn't all that beginner unfriendly. The garage door isn't hard to open and shoot with random unskilled whacks, and then you get to bang around the upper playfield for a while. And since locked balls carry over game to game, multiball can sometimes start with just one shot. Itchy multiball is also easy.

 

[shutyertrap]

Over in another thread, this discussion kinda hijacked it. So I've moved all related posts here so it can continue as it is a rather healthy and interesting discussion.

It's been civil and informative, so let's keep it that way!

 

[Bowflex]

Stern has had much questionable build quality. Looking under the hood, the playfield was (and may still be) a lot thinner than the wood used on other tables. Wires are often a mess and not bundled or orderly. I've heard stories of poor soldering and loosely connected parts and wires. I think they have become better over the last few years. I definitely have hated the poorly done art. It looks like someone hastily took random photos and plopped them wherever. Metallica is so refreshing for the original artwork and hopefully a sign of things to come. They are getting better but they have a real heap of issues with their tables, especially after converting from sega to stern.

 

[shutyertrap]

I agree, Metallica was a complete breath of fresh air from Stern. I'm not sure if Star Trek and Mustang were already too far in development for Metallica to have rubbed off on them, but they are certainly less photoshoppy. Star Trek LE is quite good looking in person. The laser and LED light show is nicely integrated, rather than just being an add on. The car toy on Mustang looks better than what they used on NASCAR too.

I think the true test of where they are going will come with whatever table they have planned next. Should be far enough removed from Metallica to get a sense of what the future holds. I still haven't seen a WoZ in person, but I've heard that thing is really built solid. Hopefully I'll see sometime soon.

 

[jaredmorgs]

Hi vikingeric

Plenty of Bally / Williams tables feature drop targets.

Indiana Jones
The Shadow
Star wars episode one
Revenge from mars

That's just a few from my memory, as late as it is here in Australia currently.

The reason Stern drop targets fail is they haven't been redesigned since the 80s. Look at the drops on Flight 2K. Now look at the drops on TSPP. Same huge drop surface, with a teeny tiny shaft. Designed to fail.

Bally and Williams drops underwent a design evolution as flipper power increased. Ribbing at the back side of the drops increased strength. A shaft the same width as the contact surface meant no twists when balls hit them. Opto banks instead of leaf switches increased reliability in drop detection.

Sure they break. Not as much as Stern targets do.