I now have little or no confidence in Stern to bring a Avengers pin to full fruition and not be riddled with issues. I doubt they could even get the full and decent game together that it deserves let alone all the Quality control issuses that are going on.
Avengers would be a much bigger title than ACDC and I can't afford to have them to stuff it up, so I won't be buying one new if they announce it.
Stern will just rush it out, like they did with this title and leave buyers pissed off and disapointed.
I bet if it was JJP doing a super-hero theme it would be pretty amazing and not some rush job to cash in.
Seems to me that the problem is NIB and Sterns inability to send out 100% games. No reason why you can buy AVENGERS or any other title, but i wouldnt be going for the NIB experience, it would make sense to buy one relatively new or prechecked... having the pleasure of being the first to play your game is fraught with issues
It has me a little scared Gav, I am super keen on a Avengers pin and would love one NIB but if I bought one and got it home and it was DOA or whatever I reckon I would go right off the deep end...yep 2nd hand or next to new would be the only way to go for me. I just can't trust them though, I sorta hope they don't do one then I won't have the worry of it.
I hear ya Daz and all this has raised some serious concerns regarding Stern products.
There are 2 ways to look at this though. ACDC is the first pin that predominantly sold to the home market... many faults have been hilighted.
Now this may have always been the case with Stern or any other pinball manufacturer, but the dealers have in the past acted as a buffer zone to the general public... i doubt we will ever find this out as any dealer has to create confidence in their product, so they keep quiet about the percentage of faulty ones.
Other way to look at this is that Stern have dropped the silver ball on this one... we dont know and i doubt we ever will.
What you yourself do know as one very happy owner of Iron Man is that once the machine is 100% it is by and large reliable.. same as many other Stern titles that eventually go to home use... theyve been tried and tested and seem reliable.
Moral is i guess.... use the dealer as your quality control and dont get too caught up in being the first to open a box....
.... Maybe Silverball could tell us if the level of faults is primarily related to ACDC or wether its quite normal for a Stern product. An answer to either of these points would replace a lot of lost confidence... its a 1 off... or its normal but you never knew till now.
My main concern with any future Stern product is the use of surface mount EVERYTHING. On WPT they had surface mount, but transistors etc were still through hole allowing simple repairs.
It was only the advent of SS games that a locked on coil became an issue... didnt matter with EM as those brass switches can handle plenty of current.... discrete components cannot.
IF we are to have surface mount technology as the norm for a Stern pinball then they need to move away from the use of coils to rebound a ball... its could all be done with attract and repel magnetic fields.. the concept of the MagLev train has been around for decades.. it works TOO well and they cant stop the bloody thing.
Nearly 40 years of SS pinball technology and in all that time its Achilles heel has been the coil and its current backwash... now Stern make a board that has surface mount diode and transistor??
Its just plain stupidity
