With everyone here so horned up and loving the look of this, I had to look again and guess what?
A BIG FAT NO FIRKIN WAY! What am I missing? show me the way please.
Where do you start ?
The artwork is unfreakenbelieveable. The most iconic pinball of the 70's is suddenly thrust into the limelight with modern technology. When was the last time ANY pinball had this much brilliance in the artwork. Even as a standalone piece of art, the playfield and backglass are awesome. Kevin O'Connor, Dave Christansen and Paul Faris were the best artists in pinball from any era. The fact that O'Connor was commissioned to do the artwork is in itself, something that Stern had done their homework on.
To draw a comparison - What if Stern wanted to do a similar job with say Fathom or Paragon. FIRST thing to do is replicate what worked best - the artwork ATTRACTED customers to the game. The playfield design KEPT them playing. I would not be at all surprised if Stern use one of these guys in the future. They did a similar job with Metallica - They brought in Dirty Donnie for the Metallica artwork, and they will most likely look at Derek Riggs IF they did an Iron Maiden machine. The artwork is a BIG letdown on arguably Stern's best game in 20 years - AC/DC. Imagine an artwork package of KISS on AC/DC ?
The playfield has had positive comments already. The flow looks good and the features don't really make sense at the moment. The levitating ball ties in with the "Love Gun" song in their live shows. Again, they did their homework.
Cabinet is simple. I like the LE, and I don't care if I'm spending an extra $2000 on fancy legs and trim. I'm a KISS fan, and it has the original four members on the cabinet - again, a tie in with the original.
The fans - Unless you are a fan, or you know a fan - you will NEVER understand it. If you don't like the music, again, you will never understand it. There is NO fan like a KISS fan. It's rabid, its diehard and it consumes a lot of time and money. My personal collection is worth $30,000 AT LEAST. I have not spent a cent collecting anything since 2004. If you have never seen the band live, you won't get it. There is a certain "magic" or "chemistry" of that original line up that is timeless.
Seriously, I was definitely expecting this is be a piece of crap that depicted the current line up. I was expecting photoshopped rubbish and cost cutting cheap toys with a rehashed playfield design. I was not expecting, not for a single minute, that this game would even look HALF as good as this. I don't care that the code will not be ready, I don't care that the trim etc is not worth the extra $2000. I don't care that there is no shaker motor, or topper included. I don't care that is has no LCD (I don't want that crap on a pinball anyway). I don't care if it costs $10K, 11K, 12K, 13K..
The only way I can draw an analogy for you Andy - Imagine a pinball with a surfing theme that had a wave you could ride forever ?
Didn't you mention "life is too short", or "You only live once" on the Big Juicy Melons thread - That's the FIRST thing that popped into my head when I confirmed my KISS LE.
I have way too many games to restore for customers and the chances of me actually PLAYING my own restored game within the next 3-5 years is impossible. So this machine is something I CANNOT wait to play.
