No claw it seems but a
Funnily enough I thought the same thing which makes it quite appealing to me.
When he said "What's the point of designing a wizard mode that only three people will ever achieve?" it really resonated.
I've certainly found myself gravitating towards fun games with satisfying shots recently.
Cactus, M'Bash, Attack FM & Fishy are here at the moment and not only have I never enjoyed pinball more but the kids are playing them too.
The bloke in the video said it was fun ( I guess he would say that tbf), if it is then I'm looking forward to playing it despite it being a Lawlor game
I watched the featurette and when Lawlor talked about simplicity, and said “What’s the point of designing a wizard mode that only three people will ever achieve?” it resonated.
Then, I read some Pinside comment and realised I chose LoTR precisely because it has an ‘unobtainable‘ (or virtually so) Wizard mode. It’s not getting the mode that’s important, it’s knowing it exists and can be worked towards. What’s important is having mini-Wizard modes, etc. as well.
Having watched some of the Joe Katz video, I still don’t think these folks really understand how kids play pinball. Or, at least, how my kids play pinball.
LONG RANT COMING UP
My older son (aged five) tends to like pins where it’s obvious what to shoot walking up to the pin (he also likes Flash Gordon - go figure). So, he likes Funhouse (Rudy), The Addam’s Family, Stern Godzilla, Gigi, MM, Cirqus Voltaire, etc. All of these have large bash toys on the playfield - or LOTS of pop bumpers. He also enjoyed hitting the Balrog when we first got LoTR, he likes Mando due to the Razor Quest and the huge Grogu, and - in practice - he enjoys TWD because of the well walker bash toy and pop-up zombie.
TS4 doesn’t have anything big and obvious, such as a Buzz Lightyear stood in the middle of the playfield, that you can shoot as a novice player. Pat Lawlor is right that little kids generally start playing pinball by hammering both flippers madly (all the kids we’ve had visit have done this), and it’s good to give them benefits for that, to encourage them to play again, but new little kid players can’t make shots at all - so, in general, they need something big in the centre of the playfield that does something, which they can hit by accident.
Lawlor also talked about ‘ten year olds’. Ten is WAY older than the age range for a primary coloured pin like this one, and also for the ‘flap madly’ phase of pinball playing. The pin he’s describing is for kids aged 4-8.
The average little kid aged 4-8 is either not reading yet, not a confident reader, or isn’t comfortable with large numbers. Not only does the main screen have a huge amount of information displayed (inc. lots of numbers and complex words), but it has a SECOND playfield displaying EVEN MORE text. It is hard enough as a novice-intermediate adult player to track a screen showing a picture and two lines of text, never mind large amounts of text and numbers indicating EVERY ASPECT of the game status. They’ve tried to solve this problem by having loads of callouts. Once you resort to loads of callouts, you’ve admitted your pin is visually unintuitive. In general, your pin should be understandable on walk up (e.g. there’s a big monster to hit with a pinball), and - secondarily - a parent can just tell their eight year old to “shoot the flashing lights”.
As further advice to pinball designers, they should assume they are designing an EM with an apron rules card, and - if they can’t explain the game status to a player without a big screen - go back to the drawing board.
On theme, if they wanted child-friendly, they could have not bothered licensing the Toy Story 4 theme, cut the pin cost, and spent the rest of the money on a giant T-Rex mech for ‘Dinosaurs versus Monster Trucks’. They would have little boys queuing up for that one!
In summary, I’m not a great pinball player and I’m pretty sure I’d be a worse pinball designer. But, I’m sure, as a mum of two small boys, I’d be able to design a better pinball table based on a Disney cartoon than this one…
I look forward to playing one on site sometime, in the company of both my boys. I’m prepared to be wrong and for them to love it and at that point, of course, I’ll eat my hat!
END RANT
