Batman

[Level42]

Will be playing the new Batman within a couple of hours !

(Yes, let the Stern bashing by Xiaou begin....... I don't care, I will see for myself if I like it or not)

[Mauzy]

Wow your lucky. Always seems you guys get all the new pins over there pretty quick. The newest thing around here is SPP...

Will be playing the new Batman within a couple of hours !

(Yes, let the Stern bashing by Xiaou begin....... I don't care, I will see for myself if I like it or not)

I thought he loved Stern?







 
Sorry. Couldn't resist.

[Xiaou2]

 www.pinballnews.com     has a pretty in depth set of Pics and partial review.

 On the NY pinball group... a guy posted that there was one to play nearby...  However,
after playing it,  he said:

"I'll refrain from reviewing the machine until I have something good to
say. I will say that the software is light years from being complete."


 Have fun.

 (Color me disappointed / unimpressed.   A Shock, I know    )

[JeepMonkey]

A little off topic, but I played the old version (Michael Keaton) this weekend at an auction for the first time.  It was OK.

Let us know how the new Batman plays.

[Level42]

Yes, played it a couple of times. I bet that the "hardcore" pin players will not like this machine.

I must say I like the artwork and color setting. It's definitely a change from POTC and IJ4. I bet this one is designed by another team (didn't research that).

The crane is a lot of fun and a novelty to me (maybe it's used on another pin, don't know, but I liked it).

Even a very moderately skilled player like me was able to strike the Joker multiball target pretty easily. I had one game with 2 Joker multi-balls happening. My top score was somewhere around 63 million at my 5th or so game.

I also had a my go at the new IJ and I must say that I was not impressed by it. Most people I talked to there were disappointed by it. My friend Luc said it was much a clone of POTC.

Now, I like POTC better than IJ. But all that is probably because I'm a "casual" player.

One thing I noted about the Batman:
The start butting is a cheap looking green with the text START on it (DUH !!!). It looks really ugly in the overall blue setting of the machine. The same goes for the flipper buttons: they're red, like on all (Stern) machines.
Like if we don't find the buttons if they're not red !  Why didn't they use blue ??
If I'd own one, I'd immediately replace the flipper buttons and start button.

I talked about this with the host of the day and he mentioned he had plans on trying a blue filter for the dot-matrix. I told him that will not work. The dot-matrix is red and LED's have a VERY narrow light frequency. Put a blue filter in front of it and you will either see nothing (if it's a dark filter) or red leds (if it's a light filter).

The only way to do that is replacing all the LEDs and getting rid of the red plexi

The new dot-matrixes look very nice by the way.

All in all, the batman is better than POTC, a lot better than IJ but not as good as LOTR.

Pics and a very extensive vid of Batman here:
http://www.gameroom.be/gazet/view.php?a_id=1303&rub=

There was a problem with the Batman. The "hole" for the scarecrow crane sometimes didn't seem to register. A ball-search was followed but it didn't eject....hmmm. Happened twice, the second time I had two balls in there......


I also had the chance of playing the following pins:

Roller coaster Tycoon (Yugh!)
Monopoly
LOTR
POTC
Playboy (Stern)
Freddy (Gottlieb) WEIRD !
Stargate (Gottlieb)
The Soprano's
The Simpsons
Austin Powers
Frankenstein

and I'm probably forgetting a couple.

Also saw "bingo" machines for the very first time in my life....weird things ! Some very old one's (from the late 50's)...

[Mauzy]

I didn't watch the whole video, but the new DMDs do look pretty cool. Ive only played a couple of the relatively new Sterns (SPP, Monopoly, POTC, Sopranos, RCT... i guess more than a couple) but Ive never noticed sound that clear. Its been a while since I played the machines that I just listed, so do you the the sound is as clear in POTC, SPP, etc as Batman? I'm used to a little gravel like in Addams Family and Bride of Pinbot...

Batman does look like one of their nicer attempts, thats for sure.

[ChadTower]

The crane is a lot of fun and a novelty to me (maybe it's used on another pin, don't know, but I liked it)..

Demolition Man.

[JeepMonkey]

The crane is a lot of fun and a novelty to me (maybe it's used on another pin, don't know, but I liked it)..

Demolition Man.

It looks like the crane from Last Action Hero.

[shardian]

I went thru most of that review, and I was less than impressed. The toys look really bad -  the Joker especially. I would play one if one landed near me, but only because it's pinball. I don't even stop by the mall arcade anymore to play POTC - it's that boring.

[ChadTower]

I like POTC, but admittedly, I like it the way I like Cannonballs from the ice cream man.  Then again I only know of one location pin anywhere near me and that's a beaten up Roller Coaster Tycoon at a bowling alley that won't make change for you.

[Level42]

Yeah, but it functions totally different than Last Action Hero's. 

I think Batman is probably Stern's worst looking title, second to World Poker Tour.  It's getting very obvious they're cutting costs as much as possible... each game has less on the playfield than the title before it.  :/

So a busy playfield = a good pin ?

I know a lot of older pins that have very open playfields too.

I don't envy anyone at Stern these days. Whatever they do, they can't do it right.

For Christ's sake, they're the only one left ! At least there is _something_ coming out to complain about......

[ChadTower]

OTOH, I'm not a big fan of some of Williams' most popular titles because I like to see the ball most of the time.  Playfields with three layers of toys that require me to memorize an NFL playbook just don't do it for me.  I didn't like my Twilight Zone at all and sold it off pretty quickly.

[shardian]

I played this at lunch today at a local go-cart place with Wade. I'm sure he will chime in too once this gets bumped up.

Anyways, the only thing good to say about Batman was it was new and shiny. There were multiple gameplay problems that were obvious design flaws. Balls were jumping off wireform rails left and right. I tell you what, they used the absolute minimum metal in those rails they could get away with. The pop bumpers looked like something you would find in a zizzle toy machine - and I'm not exaggerating.

The new DMD did look pretty good, but the sound seemed a little busy. The music was overpowering the voices and sound effects - which is a setup issue for this pin. And what is up with the music anyways? It was kind of crappy.

And now for the oft quoted Stern complaint: the cheap feel. I swear, this pin is only a step above a zizzle in overall quality. Remember the plastic pieced together hotel on Elvis? Well this pin takes that cheap idea and goes whole hog with it. If it can be made out of a piece of plexi with inkjet quality art on the back, then it is done on this machine. The joker 'toy' is a huge waste of space. As is the completely pointless batmobile bridge thing on the left. I had to point out to Wade after his game there was even a batmobile there. The other toys look like tacked on action figures that a home user would put in there for ambiance. The Upper playfield is, you guessed it, a piece of plexi with inkjet art under it. I saw no point to this addition at all.

As to gameplay, well I would have to play it more to get a good feel for that. It was pretty simple to get joker multiball. You basically just keep hitting the right ramp and the joker area and things will happen. The right flipper return wireform was pretty notorious for dumping the ball right into the outlane. And like I said before, this was a major design flaw and not because of damage or wear. If you hit the right ramp even moderately hard, the ball would jump out, fly over batmans cape, and land somewhere randomly on the plastic playfield thing. If it did somehow make it all the way up the ramp, it would hang on that silly metal ramp that runs across the back of the game.

Over all, if it is the only pin within a 50 mile radius, it is worth playing once or twice. It is set up for 75 cents though, so you might be left stinging a little afterwards.

Unfortunately for Batman, there was also a Tales of Arabian Nights, Addams Family, and Harley Davidson  - all in excellent playing shape - sitting near the Batman. The build quality, game quality, and toy quality absolutely destroy the batman. That is pretty sad for game 10-15 years older to do that.

[koolmoecraig]

Agreed.  I have yet to play a Stern game that doesn't look and feel like it was made in Taiwan.

[Xiaou2]

 
 I think Taiwan could do much better actually.