Arcade Collecting > Pinball
Stern layoffs
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on December 08, 2008, 11:40:27 am ---I got a laugh over 700 sales of Family Guy! After 'Rare Hero' has been whoring his involvement in that game for 2 years on a daily basis on RGP. Must have been a much needed slap in the face for him, though I'm sure it's now a "Cactus Canyon" level collectible in his mind.
--- End quote ---
I hate the FG license. I completely ignored that game until it came out as Shrek. Too bad nobody locally bought one. I can't afford a new game and even if I could I'd probably buy 5 decent shopped older ones instead.
shardian:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on December 08, 2008, 11:40:27 am --- I think Gary was dealing with economic realities that the designers/coders/general public weren't privy to.
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EXACTLY!
Steve Ritchie only showed up for a few months to design here and there by his own admission in his GRM interview. I guess he has forgot about that glowing pile of butt kiss that was that article back then huh?
RayB:
--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on December 08, 2008, 07:39:31 am ---Steve Ritchie's take on it ... when I was reading it, I thought he was channeling Xiaou2 ...
http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.games.pinball/msg/557be0c8fd315b20?hl=en
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Anyone wanting to know what he's responding to, it's Mark's post on this page: LINK
I must say "Mark" is spot on with his suggestions (but I think its all too late). Redemption showed obvious signs of taking over as far back as 10 years ago. Why was pinball not offered with ticket-dispensers? Why has pinball not been "redesigned" to keep up with the times? Even aesthetically, as Mark pointed out, the cabinet design is very old fashioned. It may be a "classic" look, but that means identifiying with an ever-aging customer base.
Why haven't LCD screens been integrated into pinball machines? Just look at how Pachinko has evolved in Japan (10" or larger HD lcd screens with full motion animations and interactive games mixed in--though admittedly, Pachinko is also on its way down in Japan).
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijnAVA5ee8Y[/youtube]
I guess you can re-package the same game only so many times before people really tire of it. (I'm sick of platformers and formulaic hack n slash video games for example, so it's not a problem unique to just pinball).
Ritchie touched on a couple correct points though. Stern seems to be operating his business on a "this is the way it is" philosophy with zero room for R&D. Take Atari in its heyday for example, they would have dozens of games in development at the same time, lots of testing on location and then only the cream of the crop made it into full production. That's necessary, otherwise you end up producing even your mediocre games and that's just bad for everyone. But that takes a lot of cash to burn. In a shrinking market, that's probably just not possible?
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: RayB on December 08, 2008, 12:25:46 pm ---Why has pinball not been "redesigned" to keep up with the times?
Why haven't LCD screens been integrated into pinball machines?
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Williams had the right idea and just didn't give it enough time to grab market share.
ChadTower:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on December 08, 2008, 02:21:40 pm ---Maybe, maybe not. SWEP1 and RFM were far worse than people generally remember, though.
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I really like RFM. SWEP1 relied to much on the license but Tilt gave some very plausible reasons why that game design fell so flat. I'll always be convinced that the concept had serious potential that just didn't get a chance because of the corporate rug yank.
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