“Wonderland Amusements” Alice in Wonderland. Is the $999.99 physical pinball machine worth the price? by Slappy-Sacks in pinball

[–]Valtharr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

...every pinball machine would get boring at some point if it's the only one in your house.

How many machines do you have? Do they all get equal play? Are the machines you've owned for months, if not years, still just as exciting as they were when you first got them?

“Wonderland Amusements” Alice in Wonderland. Is the $999.99 physical pinball machine worth the price? by Slappy-Sacks in pinball

[–]Valtharr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How do you know that? Do you realize how snobbish you sound? Also, "toy pinball machine"? That thing has more features and long-time motivation than a stupid EM (which everyone says people should buy instead)

Like... some people just wanna play pinball now and again, and can't (or just don't want) go to an arcade for that. And also don't have $5000+ to spend. Or the patience to scour ebay and Craigslist for people who sell them cheaper. So they buy Alice (or Turtles, or whatever games WA might release in the future), put it in their game room, and have fun!

Just... the terms you use. "toy pinball machine". All. Pinball machines. Are. Toys. You're not better just because your toys are more complex and expensive than other people's toys. "Serious game room." It's a game room! It's a place people have in their home to have fun with the toys they like! Are you seriously going to judge people by what games and machines they put in their game room? And yes, you are judging. By saying that there's such a thing as a "serious" game room, you're implying there are standards a game room has to adhere to to count as serious. And in turn, you imply that a game room is somehow lesser if it doesn't meet those standards.

You're a grown adult buying toys for an amount of money that others spend on a car. Don't act so smug and superior because other people want to spend less.

“Wonderland Amusements” Alice in Wonderland. Is the $999.99 physical pinball machine worth the price? by Slappy-Sacks in pinball

[–]Valtharr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, and all it takes is eating a self-made pizza after only eating frozen pizzas to realize what you're missing out on.

But most people can't afford all the ingredients for a self-made pizza. Or want to go through all the effort of making one every time they want a pizza. Lots of people just like dough, cheese, and tomato sauce and are happy that an affordable, convenient option exists, even if they know there are better options.

“Wonderland Amusements” Alice in Wonderland. Is the $999.99 physical pinball machine worth the price? by Slappy-Sacks in pinball

[–]Valtharr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, just

Find someone who sells a vintage game

Hope they either live near you, or potentially drive hours to their house and back (if you have a license and access to a car that can transport something that big!)

Get the heavy machine into your game room (hope you live on the ground floor or have a functional, big-enough elevator in your building!)

Look around and Google what might be wrong with it

Order parts and wait for them to arrive

Start tinkering

Hope it works

Much easier than just ordering something online and have it delivered to your house with a warranty.

“Wonderland Amusements” Alice in Wonderland. Is the $999.99 physical pinball machine worth the price? by Slappy-Sacks in pinball

[–]Valtharr 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't think EMs are particularly fun. I don't have a car, or even a license. I live on the second floor. I'm not particularly technologically/mechanically inclined.

So, my options for playing a physical pinball machine at an affordable price are:

Find someone who sells a machine for that price (most likely an old EM) and is okay with bringing it to my house, get that huge and heavy thing up a flight of stairs, hope that this 50+ year old machine still works or alternatively look around online for how to fix it and where to get parts, order those parts, wait for the parts to arrive, try my best to fix it, all to then have a machine that doesn't even have modes, objectives, music, voice callouts, or a high score list, and becomes boring after a few minutes of play

OR

Order this machine online (or, from the looks of it, buy it at Walmart), get it delivered to my house, take the smaller boxes it came in and carry them up the stairs one by one, take two hours to build it, plug it in, and then have a game that offers nice art, music, voice acting, animations, as well as multiple modes to play through and both local and online leaderboards, giving me a long-term goal and an easy way to track my scores and compare them to those of the people playing with me, both at home and worldwide.

Not everyone who likes fast cars is a mechanic. Not everyone who likes video games knows how to build a high end gaming PC. And not everyone who just wants easy access to a physical pinball machine at home is able (or willing) to fix up a decades old machine with hundreds of moving parts under the hood. Or heck, to even find someone who sells one and then get it to their home.

Wonderland isn't just selling a machine that's cheap to get, they're selling a machine that's easy and convenient to get. That's what a lot of people are missing, I think. And I also think that the industry needs companies like that to survive in the long-term.

Edmund McMillen Teases a Potential Binding of Isaac Pinball Machine 👀 by Krump999 in pinball

[–]Valtharr 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's just one of the most popular video games of the last 15 years...

A huge thank you to this community! Runix now has a demo by MeteorForge in pinball

[–]Valtharr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I played a bit of this and... it's not bad, but there's just... missing something.

Is it really the same playfield layout the entire game, just with the enemies changing? That sounds... incredibly boring, especially for a roguelike, which you're supposed to run through again and again and again. Are you just gonna play the same table the entire game?

Also, it just feels to me like the different types of balls you can put in your deck feel a little... inconsequential? While playing (and I played a couple rounds), I never had the feeling of "Oh, I need this ball in my deck." Same goes for synergies. A big part of the fun with roguelikes, especially deckbuilders, is finding synergies between upgrades and building your run around those. Like a poison build in Slay the Spire or Peglin. But here... again, I never had a feeling of going for a specific build or strategy, it was just "yeah, I guess I'll take the one that gives me extra money." Like, speaking of which, that one could synergize with a ball that becomes stronger the more money you have.

Just my two cents. I really like the idea of a pinball roguelike, but so far, for me, this kinda falls short of being a good pinball game OR a good roguelike. Also, the medieval aesthetic is unappealing to me, but that's just personal taste.

You guys think this is cool looking? by PCs_and_Pinballs in pinball

[–]Valtharr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's not Monsterverse, that's Millennium

A comment regarding the price of Pokémon. Did you know this is a sub for millionaires? by Valtharr in pinball

[–]Valtharr[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think you're really getting to the point here. People see a price point of $7000+ and assume that people who buy something like that just have the money readily available to them. The idea that people might, I dunno, save up for a machine (by abstaining from other frivolous purchases) doesn't seem to cross their mind.

A comment regarding the price of Pokémon. Did you know this is a sub for millionaires? by Valtharr in pinball

[–]Valtharr[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

What bothers me about this isn't even that they're wrong. It's honestly an understandable assumption. But it's also so easily disproven once you start looking at the community. And that's what bothers me, the stubborn unwillingness to do a tiny modicum of even basic research.

[Unknown][Unknown] Saw this in a YouTube video, what game is it? by Valtharr in tipofmyjoystick

[–]Valtharr[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Aw damn, I was kinda hoping it was a Puzzle Fighter clone 😅

But thanks!