Wizard Of OZ Pinball

[Caveoftreasures]

Brett , don't forget the the WOZ has a very deep rule set etc etc  , Keith's been on this for more than a year , unlike Stern's half bake effort .
How long have buyers been waiting for Xmen upgrades and and and and .
Jack may release this game almost complete  , I can,t see that been an issue .
Don't forget he has heaps more on the play field !

Totally agree. No pinball machine ever ships with complete code, and even if someone did say that it was complete, we all know there will be a revision shortly thereafter because players find faults or areas that need to be addressed. Alot of people have said JJP wont ship a machine without complete code, and JJP isnt like everyone else, but the realities are, that releasing pinball machines with finished code is almost an impossibility.
Can anyone name a pinball machine that never ever had a code update done which was a perfect machine, not needing adjustments, I have never heard of one ever.....

People need to get used to the fact that pinball code is an evolving species, designed to be tweaked here n there as time goes on. There is nothing wrong with code updates, just like your home or work computer, its a normal part of life so expect it and embrace it cause it makes pinball machines better.

[GORGAR 1]

Brett , don't forget the the WOZ has a very deep rule set etc etc  , Keith's been on this for more than a year , unlike Stern's half bake effort .
How long have buyers been waiting for Xmen upgrades and and and and .
Jack may release this game almost complete  , I can,t see that been an issue .
Don't forget he has heaps more on the play field !

Can we have a discussion without the need to constantly bad stern it's getting really boring.

Peter

[Retropin]

Can anyone name a pinball machine that never ever had a code update done which was a perfect machine, not needing adjustments, I have never heard of one ever.....

Yep... pretty much every machine ever made before about 2003, so about 100 years worth of machines. Code updates were introduced by STERN and accepted by the buyers who were glad for anything coming out of a factory.. any factory.

You the buyers accepted it and now its the norm.. personally i dont like it one bit. As far as im concerned, if it needs an update then it wasnt finished.. quite simple

[pinsanity]

I think we need to differentiate between 'tweaks' which fixes minor faults in game code (changing a sound or light sequence for example) and major code updates (for example the inclusion of a previously missing mode or award).

[Ant68]

Brett , don't forget the the WOZ has a very deep rule set etc etc  , Keith's been on this for more than a year , unlike Stern's half bake effort .
How long have buyers been waiting for Xmen upgrades and and and and .
Jack may release this game almost complete  , I can,t see that been an issue .
Don't forget he has heaps more on the play field !

Can we have a discussion without the need to constantly bad stern it's getting really boring.

Peter

Well I do have quite a few NIB Sterns , and I do support Stern, just my point of view from pass experience , that's all .
I also bag the inflated prices we are paying here .Nothing wrong with that is there ?
 

[Caveoftreasures]

Can anyone name a pinball machine that never ever had a code update done which was a perfect machine, not needing adjustments, I have never heard of one ever.....

Yep... pretty much every machine ever made before about 2003, so about 100 years worth of machines. Code updates were introduced by STERN and accepted by the buyers who were glad for anything coming out of a factory.. any factory.

You the buyers accepted it and now its the norm.. personally i dont like it one bit. As far as im concerned, if it needs an update then it wasnt finished.. quite simple

Gav, the reason I thought that every pinball machine has had code updates after release, is that i have looked up the 40 plus DMD pinnys I have on the Internet Pinball Data Base, and all of them, and all different manufacturers starting from 1989 thru to 2013 have various code updates listed.

So I was under the impression that 99 percent of DMD machines had code updates, and many of them after production.

I wasnt really referring to pre DMD or pre say 1988 cause I dont know how earlier models like my 1978 Phoenix by Williams got updates etc, but can u see what I mean about the IPDB etc ?, was I right about that ??

and how does SS or earlier stuff with Led score screens get updated, is it a rom ?? I am assuming pre SS stuff was mechanical ??

It would be good to know this stuff and I am sure others might be wondering also ?? 

[Retropin]

Cavey.. you cant include a software update cos someone wants to shove LED into a machine that was designed to have incandescent.. thats not a software update on a game due to incompletion.. its the owner wanting to put something into a machine that it was never designed for.... completely different species

[Caveoftreasures]

sorry, u misread me, i meant pre 1989 machines with LED displays like say Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (although its a 1990 machine) but i meant machines pre DMD screens, machines during the eighties, how did they get software updates, was it a rom like 1990s dmd pinnys, and did u get my point about almost every dmd pinny having many code updates after production all listed on IPDB.

so i couldnt work out whay u thought no machines prior to stern machines didnt have code updates when almost all 90's dmd machines did have....see IPDB ?  

[beaky]

I am not sure if code updates and software updates is the same thing but a large portion of  SS machines and dmd  machines have game software updates done because there are mistakes / hiccups in the  first version of the software.
they just add extra setting and functions, or make things run a little or a lot smother in a lot of the rom updates.

[Strangeways]

DMD = any machine with a DMD. Not an alphanumeric (Funhouse) - even though it is a WPC.

SS is anything from 1978 ish to Funhouse.

Operators NEVER bothered with code updates at the start of the DMD era. They simply didn't exist on Bally / Stern / Williams. What left the factory remained the same. There were changes on DMDs - ST TNG comes to mind as a very buggy game when it was released because the rules were so deep. Cactus Canyon is the only title where there was seriously unfinished code. But no game in this era left the factory with unfinished code. That's issue has only just started recently with Stern (and now JJP). I think we will see games produced with unfinished codes, but perfectly playable - AC/DC is an example. What Stern are doing is they are trying to improve the game by accepting feedback from operators and home buyers. I don't see this as a bad thing, because cost cutting by Stern in the mid 2000's meant that once a game was finished, no more development $ went back into improving the software, or attending to any bugs. The book was closed for that title UNLESS it was affecting earnings. So I see it as a good thing that Stern will revisit code on new releases, as they are receptive to feedback. What I don't want to see is the deliberate release of a title with unfinished code to beat the competitor to the next release. I accept teething problems and revisions, but not wholesale changes with 100 fixes..

[beaky]

i do agree that operators didn't bother with any software updates, but not all ss and dmd machines left the factory with the same software revision.

[Caveoftreasures]

When u look at alot of the Sega machines (stern prior to stern) there are multiple code updates on almost every release, same with all the other manufacturers during the 1990's DMD era. If u look up almost any title on the Internet Pinball Data Base, they all have software updates, even Bally/Williams, Gotlieb, Data East, Sega, you name it.

So, to me, this code upgrading has been going on well before Stern called themselves Stern again in the late nineties, 2000 etc.

The code updates for Avengers is huge etc, wait til u see the code updates for WOZ, they will be just as big, because as ANT said, this game has alot of hardware and a million things to do during gameplay.
Without any doubt, I reckon WOZ will be the most advanced Pinball Machine ever made to date.

I will be a buyer again for sure, IF the local price is reasonable. Bringing one in direct from JJP may be worth investigating very soon as well.
I will have to settle for a std model, but maybe I can get JJP to pimp it out with extra stuff to make it very close to a LE......

[Caveoftreasures]

Another recent article

http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/2/28/4036620/jersey-jack-wizard-of-pinball

various links on ths page worth clicking on, most of the links are simply unerlined

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Enada-Show---Texas-Pinball-Festival---AMOA---First-Boxed-Game-Ships-.html?soid=1104524641178&aid=gSDub5L_NfU

[Freiherr]

I like where Jack says:
Guarnieri gives the example of a recent AC/DC themed pinball machine. "If you didn't know any better, you might think it was built ten years ago. There's nothing about it that says it was built yesterday."

It kind of reminds me when a critic once said to Angus Young that seventeen ACDC albums all sound the same. Angus then said to him "that's eighteen albums".

Jack, what you said is precisely why ACDC is still a good seller.

[GORGAR 1]

Hopefully wont be long now.