a guy in the US played the Spiderman Home version and thought it was worth sharing incase felt tempted to buy one and what he didn't mention is that when on slingshot activated it activated both showing the cost cutting features of the game as well.
Not having a coin door is not good. Yes this game was built for home use only but with the high MSRP, it does not make this machine worth the coin. If you have a coin door and coin mechs, then you could at least try and put on location to make an income and it would hold value based on the fact it could potentially be an earner. With this machine being priced $1000 less than a Pro model, it clearly is not a good value. If it was priced at $2800-then maybe it would be worth it to a homeowner?
I was able to play the new Spiderman and here are my thoughts....
First thing is it is much smaller than a standard machine and would not look good in a typical lineup. Second is this machine is really light and thus feels really wobbly and not very sturdy. You can easily shake the machine back and forth because of the lightweight cabinet. The layout actually flows pretty good and the ball times are long. The flippers are very responsive and I was surprised on how well they played. Main target is a Doc Ock with drop down targets located on left side instead of the middle with Sandman. It played very basic with not a lot of frills. The DMD pixels look very generic and honestly-cheap. There was one thing that I really liked about the game, and that was the ball stuck feature. It is a brilliant feature where the ball gets caught in a trap on purpose and you have to knock it with the ball in play to remove it. When I first got the ball stuck there I was like-WTF? Then I bent over and read what it was and was like-that's awesome!
I commend Stern for trying to expand their customer base and get more homeowners into the hobby but unfortunately these pinball machines with a lower build quality and no coin door simply are not the solution. Stern has tried to enter this market with the Iron Man/Batman Classic and the "Pin" with little to zero success. They had to blow out the remaining "Pin" models at a discount. I think a pinball machine built for the average homeowner would need to be priced at $2000 or less which is not feasible. Now if Stern were to make a downgraded Pro model priced at $3800 with a coin door for operators, then I think they could potentially sell more units to potential new customers. I think people would be more willing to spend thousands of dollars on a toy if they know they can sell it for close to what they paid for it. Having a coin door will help the machine hold it's value. You can only cheapen a machine so much before it becomes just a paperweight, and worthless. If Stern keeps the coin door and can get the build cost down without compromising much quality-then they may have an opportunity to capture more new blood into the hobby.
