Jjp announcement - Pat Lawlor to make an Original theme

[Strangeways]

Be interesting to see if he comes up with a new layout. Great stuff to see a legend join the team, might help overcome some of the bad blood the JPP saga has caused to date.

 

It is a "home run" for JJP. Great news for our USA friends, but the brand has suffered some problems downunder, so they need to sort out the issues - which they have sorted to a point. I agree they have to drop the pre order deposits. It won't work here in Australia. I think the WOZ fiasco has affected all new pinball manufacturers. New pinball sales for $10,000 is not going to happen.

Another Widebody with Pat Lawlor + ORIGINAL THEME = pinball collector's dreams answered. Major news !

Is it definitely a widebody being proposed?

I assumed a widebody as that was the indication at the release of the company - all games will be widebody. But I can see them doing standard size to keep prices down.

[oldskool1969]

 
Me likey very much an ORIGINAL theme, finally, hope it is a funny pin and not serious one. With Pat doing it you would think it would take the piss a little, fingers crossed.
Man how far away though? Will be broke by then. I do know a reputable Aussie distributor worthy of my business though  
Here is hoping

[Shaneus]

I like that it's an original theme, but I just can't get excited about a game from a guy that's known for creating deep rulesets. I want us to go the other direction and have things still replayable, but with a simpler set of instructions. Look at CSI's instructions, for heaven's sake:


But, in the very least, one good thing that will come out of this would be that it would force/encourage Stern to stop thinking about making licensed tables for once. I'm sick of them by now, and I want to see a Steve Ritchie original license again (even if it is along the lines of High Speed 3 ;) ).

[GORGAR 1]

A mate in the USA told me about this news last week and jack said this one will be a standard size pin NOT a wide-body

Peter

[Shaneus]

Is WoZ a widebody? If so, does that mean this could be a smaller screen or... even a standard-size display? The latter would make sense, given that it's not licensed that have to make *all* the animated content from scratch.

[GORGAR 1]

Is WoZ a widebody? If so, does that mean this could be a smaller screen or... even a standard-size display? The latter would make sense, given that it's not licensed that have to make *all* the animated content from scratch.

Yes WOZ is a wide body standard will be great nice and fast :-)

Peter

[Pinprick]

KEWL!

I love Pat Lawlers games, Banzai Run is one of the favourites in my collection.
I can't wait to see what he comes up with this time.   

Amen to that!

No need to listen to deprecatory wankers like CC

[Pop Bumper Pete]

I want someone to build brand New Twilight Zones, or something very, very close......That sold well, why not another huge run of brand new machines. JJP doesn't have too many hassles securing licences. Twilight might be available.

Would anyone buy a BNIB Twilight Zone. At the right price ?

Cavey, I do not think we will see another 'Fully Featured' pinball machine (like Twilight Zone)

When you have compare the features that Jack included in Woz, with what has been announced for The Hobbit, you will see that that Jack is including less while raising the price

[oldskool1969]

No need to listen to deprecatory wankers like CC
[/quote]

      

ha ha ha ha ha

[Cow Corner]

Keep buying 10k + machines, it's not like I care or anything.
 

[Caveoftreasures]

some good comments from members, espescially Pete (PBP).

If JJP is smart, their machines have to be better everytime than each of their previous title releases, n not cost more.
If Stern can do it, and they have, JJP HAS to, or they will go broke. I say Stern has cause you are getting more n more from each new title/release.
note - (price is a bit hard to talk for Australia because the aussie dollar from $1.15 to 93 cents is a aussie only issue, not a USA Stern issue/or Stern cause).

Man, what do people think about JJP doing STD body. Goes a bit against what the JJP company said from day one. JJP is evolving, but its evolving a bit backwards if Hobbitt isn't as featured/toyed up/hardware incl like WOZ, and now they MIGHT be doing std bodies.....JJP needs to blow us all away next release to get back some kudos from the Woz machine being so late etc. Then the next has to also be viewed as the ducks nuts. People want better each trip, not less...see how it goes. time will tell....

[Pop Bumper Pete]

Cavey, Jack has only released one title. WoZ!
Yes, it is well built. But I hardly ever see it described as 'Fun'
A lot of people are not liking the multicolored LED's, they do not know what they are supposed to be aiming for
Also there are a lot of people that are selling the game soon after receiving it

I think The Hobbit does have potential. I like the pop-up trolls that block various shots

But I don't like the LOTR the pinball machine, I find it tedious and boring. I also found The Hobbit movie tedious and boring.
I want FUN!!!

[pinnies4me]

Yes, it is well built. But I hardly ever see it described as 'Fun'
A lot of people are not liking the multicolored LED's, they do not know what they are supposed to be aiming for
Also there are a lot of people that are selling the game soon after receiving it.

A little off topic but. I wonder if the quick sales are related to all the issues a lot of people seem to  be having with the electronics? Read this on pinside:


...just want to point out something here. Seems like several people are having repeated yet very specific switch/behavior issues with their machines. Whether it be winged monkeys, castle doors, munchkin locks, crystal balls, etc... there seems to be a definite pattern here, and nobody can put their finger on it. We have some serious issues with switches and in-game events, we can all agree on that...

But, there is a tremendous mystery here.     And I believe it's also linked to the LED issues. The guys before have mentioned voltage spikes/fluctuations in the LED power/data lines. Where is this noise coming from? Why do the LED issues seem to cause such bizarre and unpredictable problems with game behavior? People have tried lots of things. Installing older software, resetting, swapping LED boards, etc. and yet the problems don't seem to improve.

Mike (Pintucky) has a hypothesis: nearly each machine is different in hardware/configuration in some way, and the software builds are responding erratically to these "random conditions." Different power supplies, different LED boards, different monitors, possibly hard drives, sound boards, etc. Both owners and tech support workers seem to be clueless as to exactly what's going on here. This mystery is really bothering me and and I know it bothers others. People even seem to be selling their games in frustration because of the endless issues.

But, here's my idea. What if it all comes down to a common problem? Are we all at a loss as to what's truly going on? If there's something going on behind the scenes, maybe JJP should be more transparent on their research? And if this is true, will there be a fix for this "insanity?" I can't help but think the owners are missing something.

[Retropin]

Im not saying for one minute that I have the solution here, but a recent conversation I had with my sparky  was on a similar issue. He was having problem all over town with data lines in businesses... lock ons.. random triggers etc.. this would affect computer systems, controlled lighting etc.
He said that when you put an oscilloscope on the AC you are no longer getting a good sine wave.. lots of noise is present, this is a pretty recent thing and getting worse over the last few years... the noise was affecting those things around it.. data lines etc.
He puts it FIRMLY down to LED's.. or rather the Switch Mode power supplies that run them. 99% are from China and cheap, they are switching at a high freq rate and many are not as clean output as is required by Standards.

I don't know how a JJP machine works .. it may not have a SMPS installed.. my guess is that it does though, it will precede the RGB controller which is another device id be having a look at as well as the LEDs themselves.

[Caveoftreasures]

It would be good if this thread could be split off at the point where we talk about Pat versus WOZ issues. (Hiring someone like Pat might in a weird way fix some of these issues. (see bottom notes later in green).
Just saying cause I wanted to add some input about data lines n anything controlled thru anything with a data plug/pinned connection/socket on the end of it.
People have tried "moving to this technology" in the Alarm industry with disastrous results n I found out why. Data cable/connectors hate heat. As soon as the cables get hot, nothing but problems n if the socket connectors are also hot, nothing but unexplainable random ghost signals start to appear.

Sometimes old school (copper) cables are true, tried n tested over many decades. Moving too fast to anything data cable wise with heat or multiple signal path (signals going both ways versus one way only) can be massively problematic.
I could write 20 sentences about the telephone and alarm industries n the massive problems with some companies attempting this new way of running cables, with nothing but ongoing issues...... the problem is the sockets at both ends n the data cables themselves do not like heat or too many signals at once. They just don't handle high traffic in any industry. If you look at a modern data telephony base station, they don't run many connections (signal points) per data cable. They just don't handle more than basic signal traffic without basically shutting down n restarting sending scrambled data. What Gav has said is spot on for the sparky industry as well.

Hope some of the Pinball designer dinosaurs like Pat Lawlor say to JJP lets go back to basics. Lets use what we know what works. Being space age cutting edge is useless unless you have massive reliability. This is where hiring people like Pat could work out in JJP;s favour. He might say lets scrap some of these ideas u guys are trying to use. Hard to argue with a guy like Pat who has been designing truly reliable systems n pinball machines for 30 plus years.....food for thought.