Avatar Pinball -- Stern

broseph123

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Has anyone heard anything good/bad about it....or even been lucky enough to play it?
 
"With SPECUAL 3D BACKGLASS!!!!!"

It seems even pinball, one of the most classic forms of gaming, is being touched by the 3d craze :p

Also, idk if its just me, but that playfield looks kind of simple.....
 
"With SPECUAL 3D BACKGLASS!!!!!"

It seems even pinball, one of the most classic forms of gaming, is being touched by the 3d craze :p

Also, idk if its just me, but that playfield looks kind of simple.....

You'd think they would "upgrade" the dot matrix display to a 3DLCD, and have stupid glasses hanging off the front of the machine.
 
You'd think they would "upgrade" the dot matrix display to a 3DLCD, and have stupid glasses hanging off the front of the machine.

Even if they don't do glasses for hygiene reasons, you would think they would put a normal LCD on there with the neat thing call color! Even use RGB LEDs if you want to be true to pinball heritage with a cool update....
 
Using an LCD is not a simple hardware switch over. It would be expensive and a major undertaking.

Anyways I'm pretty discouraged by the disembowlment that Stern is giving these new machines. Crappy software can break an otherwise good machine but good software can't save an otherwise crappy machine. FTR I haven;t played it. Like most others I've watched the youtube videos. What I do know is what I want/need out of a machine to have fun and this game is reeeeeaaaalllly lacking in the fun components for me. The toys are cheap and being interactive is next to nill. Lame stand up targets and a few pops ... woo hoo! Bah ... this seriosuly sucks because I was really looking forward to buying this. Ironman puts this to shame and even that pin doesn;t trip my trigger but it's most definently better than Avaturd. My personal opinion of course.
 
Using an LCD is not a simple hardware switch over. It would be expensive and a major undertaking.

Anyways I'm pretty discouraged by the disembowlment that Stern is giving these new machines. Crappy software can break an otherwise good machine but good software can't save an otherwise crappy machine. FTR I haven;t played it. Like most others I've watched the youtube videos. What I do know is what I want/need out of a machine to have fun and this game is reeeeeaaaalllly lacking in the fun components for me. The toys are cheap and being interactive is next to nill. Lame stand up targets and a few pops ... woo hoo! Bah ... this seriosuly sucks because I was really looking forward to buying this. Ironman puts this to shame and even that pin doesn;t trip my trigger but it's most definently better than Avaturd. My personal opinion of course.

I personally love sterns LOTR pin....it really makes this look pathetic :(

If they wanted to use a recent hit for a pinball, I think Toy Story 3 has huge potential.
 
Using an LCD is not a simple hardware switch over. It would be expensive and a major undertaking.

Anyways I'm pretty discouraged by the disembowlment that Stern is giving these new machines. Crappy software can break an otherwise good machine but good software can't save an otherwise crappy machine. FTR I haven;t played it. Like most others I've watched the youtube videos. What I do know is what I want/need out of a machine to have fun and this game is reeeeeaaaalllly lacking in the fun components for me. The toys are cheap and being interactive is next to nill. Lame stand up targets and a few pops ... woo hoo! Bah ... this seriosuly sucks because I was really looking forward to buying this. Ironman puts this to shame and even that pin doesn;t trip my trigger but it's most definently better than Avaturd. My personal opinion of course.

I don't think driving an LCD would be that hard unless you want to force it's integration beyond what is needed. Just sticking an LCD with a media engine in there with an SD card that contains all of the content would be the extent needed for the hardware. Then use a simple protocol communicating scores and other game state as well as all of the media triggers, etc...

Maybe we will get an update to the paradigm by 2020.
 
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I don't think driving an LCD would be that hard unless you want to force it's integration beyond what is needed. Just sticking an LCD with a media engine in there with an SD card that contains all of the content would be the extent needed for the hardware. Then use a simple protocol communicating scores and other game state as well as all of the media triggers, etc...

Maybe we will get an update to the paradigm by 2020.


LCD would be dangerously close to a video hybrid ala pinball 2000. And we all know how great pinball 2000 was.
 
Stern has and always will be the red-head stepchild of game companies. It's unfortunate that they're the last manufacturer of pins.

The pin looks like 3d poo.
 
Hey, I see that some people are bashing the Avatar pin, just be grateful that there's ANY pinball machines being made... and we forget that these are meant, for the most part, to be put in a public place to draw attention and earn money.. and this one fits that bill for sure. I don't think they're catering to the home collectors as much... Even though that's probably decent (10% perhaps?) percentage of their sales.
 
Hey, I see that some people are bashing the Avatar pin, just be grateful that there's ANY pinball machines being made... and we forget that these are meant, for the most part, to be put in a public place to draw attention and earn money.. and this one fits that bill for sure. I don't think they're catering to the home collectors as much... Even though that's probably decent (10% perhaps?) percentage of their sales.

Once you start feeling grateful for crap, crap is all you're ever going to get.

C'mon, thats all garbage. Stern is doing the same movie/TV license thing over and over with lame playfields and some pretty sorry tie-ins. CSI and Shrek are cringeworthy as pinball themes.
 
LCD would be dangerously close to a video hybrid ala pinball 2000. And we all know how great pinball 2000 was.

They don't have to put any gameplay up there, just update the outdated DMD. I guess my problem is that I never liked the DMD displays and here we are in 2010. Yawn... :)
 
Would it hurt Stern to spend time and R&D funds (if any are available) to make a pinball that has a playfield unlike any other game? I don't think we'll ever get away from pins falling into the movie/tv/sports franchises but they could at least give a damn about the overall design.

Maybe people don't care, maybe too many rams,toys, moving parts just cost more and would be costly to fix? Seems unlikely, but I have no idea what the actual costs are for designing pins. Perhaps they barely break even?!

Stern still lacks regardless if they're the last frontier with pins.
 
Fact - Gary Stern has admitted that he no longer caters to the pinheads. His two sole objectives are to generate new pin blood and reduce cost.

Avaturd is sadly not going to become a member of my household. I'm not a brand snob, but there are much better older titles to be had for the same or less. The other night I found a business that sells Ironman NIB for $3600.00. Geez louis I think it's sad to see IM already starting to lose its value.
 
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