Re: 2008 Stern Titles

On Dec 15, 6:05 am, spazzma...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Dec 15, 12:06 am, metallik <lsc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

TAF is a great game that did great things for the pinball industry
when it came out. It had basically one toy (the hand), maybe two if
you count the bookshelf.

Actually, 4 if you count all the unique features: Thing hand,
rotating bookcase, Thing flips (intelligent flipper) and the Power
magnets. And a topper with the flashers in it.

I think Stern should be charging at least 6 grand a game. You should
see the bull*** I unbox that cost at least that and more. A wood
cabinet with a PC and a 32 inch LCD screen and they charge 6 or 7
grand? And even being THAT simple they can still eff it up.

We all know that there are less arcades nowadays, but the one's I see
seem to be doing pretty well. They are all going to want the latest
machine. So that is how I figure Stern is going to increase revenue
for 2008. Instead of increasing the price of the machine 2000 bucks,
they will increase the title count. I know my business buys 5 of
every title, regardless. So this will obviously put more money in
their pockets, at least from my end.

I assume that Stern is straight up taking a gamble here. Probably
putting their butts on the line with that much tied up into R&D. But
now is the time for them I guess. Seems like their 'machine' is
primed. The aces are in their places. They have a good platform.
Probably only 1 of the next 5 will have the ruleset that we see in FG
and TSPP.

Hope it works out for them, or in a year we will be talking about the
rising cost of alot of their titles because of Stern closing their
doors.

-Jeff

Some more good points have been made and glad to see suggestions
offered up for enhancements. POTD requires you to nudge the ball and
I like nudging, but the difference in nudging it right or left is a
few points. If it had a few holes to navigate around aka IJ and
penalties for getting stuck in a hole like maybe clearing out any
stacked bonuses, you would have to work real hard to make a good
score. This would become a good reason to have POTD there instead of
being filler material. The leaning tower of Sauron, also referred to
as trees earlier, is ineffective. I'd say either replace it with the
swaying trees or improve on the mechanics. If you went the route of
the trees, put them on a spring and have them swaying back and forth
without requiring any mechanics. Cheaper than what they did with the
mechanical device and a nicer effect. If you want an idea for
improving the effect of the moving tower, how about mounting it on a
flat piece with a pivot in the middle? When the tower shakes and
needed to be knocked the pivot could allow the tower to swing down and
a version of the crumbled tower wcould replace it. This could work
like the pivoting boxer in CP. These two changes, and others could
have been incorporated from the getgo and would not necessarily cost
more to include. It is the design team's responsibility for creating
the game and they could do much more than we can in the span of a few
minutes. LOTR is one of their bester efforts so it would only require
a few changes.

On POTC, I like the suggestion about how to effectively work it into
the game. It could be written in with an option to disable, just as
mechaincal components are. When on location it could be turned off.
Those playing the game that got into it would know there is a feature
available, should they decide to buy one. The Home User could decide
whether he wanted to include or exclude. As stated, this would add a
pittance to final cost. POTC is also one of their better designs and
would not require that much effort to make it complete. They should
have sold a lot more of these than they did and I contend it is
becuase it just lacked a bit (I Know can I be more vague). If it had
been a bit better, I would buy one, as it is, it doesn't crack my top
18 pins and that's all I have room for. If you want a really wild
idea, how about incorporating a hologram under the playfield. Just as
the movie had a bunch of underwater scenes with the dead, that could
have been something. So they spend another $500 per machine, I'll bet
they could have doubled sales.

Simply adding stuff does nobody any good. The shaker motor on BSM
doesn't support the theme or pin in any way. The hologram on POTC
would make perfect sense and could have been great. It could have
been improved from the earlier CFTBL design and more like a dmd mode.
Maybe designed and offered as a $1,000 option. Either you get the
base model with painted window, or one with clear window hologram
generator. I do think Operators would have gone for the extra cost in
this case. Maybe we could get Lloyd to weigh in here.

Maybe the mantra in the industry has alsways been see what we can
remove and not piss the Designer off but save a few dollars. I
suggest it should be changed to what can we add or do differently and
and not cream the total budget. There should always be a number of
things that fall into that category. If they incorporated those
things, that would eliminate my whole premise.


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