What table has been the biggest letdown/surprise on TPA?

[DokkenRokken]

Of all the tables that have been released, what's the one table that you've never played that was the biggest letdown/surprise to you?

Letdown- For me, I'd say "The Champion Pub". From all the pictures and videos I saw, I thought this one was gonna be ridiculously good. However, I got bored very quick with it, not to mention the jump rope thing rarely works for me and is hard as hell to accomplish. It's just not nearly as fun as I thought it would be.

Surprise- For all the negative comments I've seen about "Class of 1812", it's one of my favorite tables to play. From the goofy raps and chicken, to the awesome little animatronics, I just love everything about it.

 

[Kolchak357]

Surprise - Ripley's Believe It Or Not. Ugly pin that I really had no interest in. But after I gave it a chance it became one of my most played. I still think it's ugly though.

Letdown - Haunted House. One of my all time favorite real life pins. The TPA version looks good, but I hate the way it plays. Flippers are too strong and it plays way too fast. Doesn't even feel like the wide body beauty it is. Sadly, I rarely play it.

 

[Baron Rubik]

Surprise - Space Shuttle (hated it in WPHOF, TPA version plays totally different).

Letdown - Black Knight in TPA is a poor shadow of it's real self (still playable but it needs to be fixed now emulation is possible).

 

[netizen]

Surprise:
Whirwind - It's just as vicious and thrilling as I remember it being, Even though it's a free play it still makes me get that "just one more game" feeling when it hasn't utterly destroyed my confidence.
Centaur - For a game I had never played in the wild it makes for a challenging game each time with differing strategies.

Letdown:
Theatre of Magic - The TPA flubber syndrome begins here!
Black Rose - Hitting whirlpool from the upper right flipper, and more flubber. IDK WTF happened during the beta tuning

 

[Sean DonCarlos]

Surprise: Class of 1812 - By all rights, I should find this table simplistic, boring and annoying. Yet I can't stop playing it.

Letdown: Twilight Zone - Unless/until FarSight restores some semblance of the real machine's dignity as one of the ballbreakers of the pinball world to their version of it in TPA, we're not really playing Twilight Zone.

 

[PC.Doctor]

Surprise: Central Park - for a 60's pinball machine, it was pretty easy for me to complete all the standard goals and only 4 out of the 5 wizard goals.

Let-down: Ripley's Believe it or Not - the table looks like its worth playing but trying to obtain Ripley's letters is as difficult as shooting a Super Jackpot in NGG.

 

[Captain B. Zarre]

Surprise:
Flight 2000 - Interesting table choice (#206 on the Pinside top 300) but great! Multiball is cool and while lacking rules it's still fun for a spin

Letdown:
Scared Stiff (for a while) - So easy it gets boring. Thankfully a recent tuning update with the Fish Tales release makes it much more fun
Fish Tales - I was SO going to like this table but the unbalanced Super Jackpots and mutant pygmy flippers don't do it for me

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Surprise: Scared Stiff. Elvira was before my time, and the machine is definitely really dated in its theme and artwork. But when I played it, I enjoyed the campy humor, and I like the increasing tension when you get the Stiff-O-Meter started.

Letdown: The Champion Pub. It's one of those machines, I suppose, that you just have to play for real. There is a Champion Pub on location about 35 miles from me, and it's just so fun hitting the plastic boxer, hearing the sounds of the ball hitting things, watching the metal jump rope bar spin, and so forth. It just doesn't have the same impact when the boxer is an inch tall and the cheering is barely audible rather than being the sound you're hearing the most.

 

[vikingerik]

Surprise: Teed Off. Everybody said it was a bad shadow of NGG, but they're nothing alike past the theme. Teed Off has quite an interesting layout with some good flow. And the unbalanced scoring actually converges back to balanced at the high end with three different ways to abuse multiple billions. Yeah the gopher speech is annoying but don't get hung up on that.

Letdown: Haunted House all the way. Yes, the flippers are far too strong and it plays ridiculously fast and jumpy, not at all like the real table should.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

The other thing of note is that Tee'd Off came about years before No Good Gofers. Tee'd Off can't possibly be a shadow of No Good Gofers as Tee'd Off finished production and was out on the market before No Good Gofers was even in the planning stages.

 

[Man-Machine]

Surprise: Whirlwind. In theory it sounds like it shouldn't work but does.

Letdown: Class of 1812. All the hype and the table turns out to be shallow and puerile.

 

[Bowflex]

Surprise: Probably Flight 2000. Unbelievably fun and fast paced. Addictive gameplay and watching multiball start is just a beautiful thing to watch. Also Star Trek TNG just because it is so evil in real life and I can actually make progress on the table on TPA since I can practice and figure out how to combat the constant drains instead of wasting quarters.

Letdown: Toss up between Cactus Canyon because it plays nothing like the real one and is way more difficult (I actually am all for tuning it to play harder because it is too easy in real life, but they went too far on this one). Also Champion Pub could be so good but the draining and SDTM shots are way too common to allow it to be as enjoyable as it should. Finally T2 gets a nod. I just don't find it very fun and nothing really brings me back to play it over and over like other tables. Maybe an update can fix all of these. I'm hopeful.

 

[DokkenRokken]

The other thing of note is that Tee'd Off came about years before No Good Gofers. Tee'd Off can't possibly be a shadow of No Good Gofers as Tee'd Off finished production and was out on the market before No Good Gofers was even in the planning stages.

I think Tee'd Off is one of the worst Gottlieb tables ever made. I literally hate everything about. It doesn't even come close to being anything as awesome and fun as NGG.

 

[invitro]

Letdowns: WHO dunnit is not supposed to be all that good, but I was really looking forward to it, and it is so easy that I played it for a total of one day. And it's much less interesting that I expected.

Harley Davidson is even worse than I expected and is my least favorite TPA table.

Black Knight was a bit of a letdown, until its graphics got an upgrade, or at least I think that's what happened a couple of months ago.

The slot machine kickout on TZ is too easy, but this is only a minor letdown to me.

I don't care much for Cactus Canyon, and expected a little more because of its high IPDb rating, and that it's considered a big collectible. But the deathstroke was vikingerik's word that the optimum strategy is to just play Gold Mine MB and shoot the Bonus X lanes over and over .

Surprises: I expected Class of 1812 to be typical Gottlieb crap, but I have had a real ball playing it, and think it's comparable in quality to its WMS contemporaries.

I liked Genie from the start, and have grown to love it while I've been serious about the 3M goal.

I'm bored of it now, but Black Hole was my favorite table for a few months at the beginning of TPA.

I don't like to play Elvira and Party Zone and similar games in real life, probably because I've only played worn-down ones, but I get a fair amount of fun from their TPA versions.

I believed Firepower was a typically massively overrated Steve Ritchie table before WPHoF, but now think it's at least partially worth its reputation. I have liked all S. Ritchie tables more (except BK2K) since WPHoF and TPA.

I have been very pleasantly surprised by all the Gottliebs. I even think I wouldn't mind if Farsight made more of them, the SS ones anyway.

I thought Black Rose was supposed to be a rare WMS clunker. I loved it from its release, and think it has one of the all-time classic playfields. I think if it had high-quality sound and dots, and the big Sink Ship jackpots were toned down some, that it would be on the level of similar-era games like CFTBL and FT. Actually as it is, I'd rank the 1992 tables TAF > FT > BRose > Co1812 > DrWho > CftBL > LW3 > CBW > HS2 > Star Wars (haven't played much of Hook, OpThunder, Super Mario Bros, or Al's Garage Band).

 

[DarkAkatosh]

Surprise: Cue Ball Wizard. I wasn't even going to purchase this pack but I play that table quite often. Its hard for me for some reason. I haven't finished nine ball play.

Letdown: Funhouse. Way too easy and it's almost impossible to drain. Miss a shot, no problem! That's not what pinball is to me.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Letdown: Toss up between Cactus Canyon because it plays nothing like the real one and is way more difficult (I actually am all for tuning it to play harder because it is too easy in real life, but they went too far on this one). Also Champion Pub could be so good but the draining and SDTM shots are way too common to allow it to be as enjoyable as it should. Finally T2 gets a nod. I just don't find it very fun and nothing really brings me back to play it over and over like other tables. Maybe an update can fix all of these. I'm hopeful.

Is that true about Cactus Canyon? I REALLY ought to play a real one then, so I can at least see more of the game. I was always wondering if the defualt scores on Cactus Canyon were really high or if I just sucked. I figured it's the latter as my Hall of Fame Points is the lowest of any table I've obtained in this game.

Champion Pub is definitely easier on the real thing. It's the only table for which I have a higher score on a real machine than on The Pinball Arcade.

I think Tee'd Off is one of the worst Gottlieb tables ever made. I literally hate everything about. It doesn't even come close to being anything as awesome and fun as NGG.

I didn't say anything about its quality, just that it came first.

 

[DokkenRokken]

Is that true about Cactus Canyon? I REALLY ought to play a real one then, so I can at least see more of the game. I was always wondering if the defualt scores on Cactus Canyon were really high or if I just sucked. I figured it's the latter as my Hall of Fame Points is the lowest of any table I've obtained in this game.

Champion Pub is definitely easier on the real thing. It's the only table for which I have a higher score on a real machine than on The Pinball Arcade.



I didn't say anything about its quality, just that it came first.

Never said ya did, was just stating an opinion.

 

[Bowflex]

Is that true about Cactus Canyon? I REALLY ought to play a real one then, so I can at least see more of the game. I was always wondering if the defualt scores on Cactus Canyon were really high or if I just sucked. I figured it's the latter as my Hall of Fame Points is the lowest of any table I've obtained in this game.

Very true about Cactus Canyon. I once walked away with a bunch of credits left on the machine at the PHOF in Vegas because I couldn't stop getting replays. My girlfriend enjoys a casual game but is not the greatest player and she managed a replay! It was so easy it got to the point of being boring, which is sad because it has a good playfield, some really cool modes and great humor and sound. I am truly hoping they do another run after Medieval Madness with the finished software or at least put the finished software out along with the code updates they are doing for some of the older WMS tables.

 

[superballs]

Off the top of my head:

Biggest Surprise: Big Shot
I'd never played it before but I got 2 good solid months out of it almost exclusively, even skipping other releases, which brings me to...

Biggest Disappointment: Scared Stiff

I played it once, and found it so easy and boring, that I ended up playing Big Shot.

 

[Kratos3]

Surprise: Whirlwind
I think it's the most underrated table on TPA.

Disappointment: T2
For a table that needed a Kickstarter, I thought it would be way better. It's not a bad table, but I just don't feel like I want to play it again and again. Some tables make me want to keep trying, but not this one.