Just copied this from the Blues Brothers thread to prove a point.
1 - I don't know about anyone else, but there didn't seem to be much of a gap between rumours and official release compared to previously? Saying that there's still people referencing Matrix.
2b - Majority of people saying that there's better games out there are referencing non-Stern games
3 - replace Jaws swallowing ball with no guns on playfield.
Wonder how closely things will follow the prediction as time goes by?
I love your 1-7. It both feels a convincing reading of Pinside threads but, also, perhaps a little too cynical in practice
There seems to be a group of people who get very noisy and angry on Pinside, who behave exactly like that, but I also think there are a lot of buyers - probably the vast majority - who don't do that stuff.
I still find it amazing that I get about one Houdini owner (always Houdini) per year DMing me to complain about my review - I don't understand the pin, it's different at home, blah blah. Then, there are the people who up-rate literally every positive review of their favoured manufacturer and down-rate every review of rival manufacturers, like they're supporting rival football teams
It does seem to be primarily a 'Stern' phenomenon though. The Elton John forums, for example, tend to be pretty quiet apart from people turning up every now and then to insult JJP - despite, usually, not having played the pin they've arrived to complain about. No one was excited by Elton John, so they didn't get to be disappointed by it either. The same seems to go for the other smaller manufacturers (except American Pinball who, for some reason, attract really angry fans).
So far I think it looks decent and likely plays and feels like most of the Sterns, fun but nothing really special and unique that draws you in unless you are a massive fan of the theme.
Yeah. This is me. Three of the pins I've bought NIB, I purchased after playing them with no prior interest. I remember being completely 'blah' about Godzilla, played it, and ordered one of the first Prems into the UK. I spent a couple of years on a waiting list for TNA after stumbling into one in the corner in Pinball Republic, playing a game, and Googling it furiously. I'm currently waiting for an Elton John despite not being a fan of the theme and being 'okay' (shrug) about previous JJPs.
I'm completely 'meh' about John Wick. It may be amazing when I play it, but I won't know until I do. It does look to have the mediocre production values and odd design choices of about 70% of modern Sterns (the remaining 30% are up there with the best of the Bally-Williams era). No manufacturer is going to be uniformly good producing three pins a year and I guess the solution is not to buy the ones that turn out to be not that great
But, you know, the Stern army on Pinside seem to get super-mad if they can't buy a new pin, sight unseen, every three months because it has insufficient guns, or the shark doesn't eat the ball...