The waves are gone, Levi, but the beach is still there.

And FYI to everybody else. Gary Stern figured out the licenced vs unlicensed, 30 something years ago.

There is some truth to this, but the problem is that the expectation for “great callouts” on a 90s game was MAYBE 100 lines, whereas today games are expected to have 1000s of lines, which requires way more writing, acting, recording, and creative talent. Same really applies for music and animations: the amount of material you had to create for a 90s unlicensed game was 1/100th of what games have today.

30 years ago?

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Would a parody pin work, basically essentially what movies like Scary Movie and Spaceballs are.

No American Pinball couldn't pull it off, since they are incable of being genuinely funny.

Honestly most of these nice ideas all go to crap when you think about what you would put on a lcd screen.

The jokes would likely get very old very fast. There are not that many funny people in pinball. The funniest recent pin was Deadpool, which had a game script written by one of its main comic book writers who also happens to be an accomplished comedian (Brian Posehn) and voiced by a very talented voice actor (Nolan North).

Don't do comedy pins if you aren't getting serious comedic talent to do that work

I would say Deadpool is a great game with reasonable attempts at humor. But I agree with the getting great comedic talent is a must.

I want to say there's some high concept, user submitted content pin idea that would work. With multi-player elements. Maybe an idea best left for a platform like p3.

Unexpected laughter... and unlicensed titles.

That is what makes great pinball... comedy. But comedy is just comedy, and with out timing, you have nothing. But timing is everything in comedy... the witty one liner needs to be said when it is the funniest, and that was what they were getting right in the 90's.

The funniest thing in recent pinball memory? "King of the Restarts"

GTF went after this and wow did it fly wide of the mark initially. Seems some actual gameplay has gotten more to enjoy shooting GTF, but it works best in dimmly lit, high noise environment where the cringe factor is less a thing since you miss most of the bad dialog.

I think we should start rooting for the homebrew machines, where there is little risk on theme selection... this should be the incubator for unlicensed titles, and manuafactureres could possibly score a coup by picking up a popular homebrew title once it has been debuted for either contract manufacture, or buy the license and do a short run. Would make more sense than betting the farm each time like AP has.

I understand and agree that unlicensed themes won’t be a commercial success in this era (Danesi’s original themes aside - both TNA and Final Resistance are amazing games BTW). I just personally don’t understand the theme whore mentality.

There are a few pinball themes I love, and a few I hate. But almost everything resides in the middle for me. I love GNR as a band/theme, but had zero interest in the game until they fixed the flippers. I hate Iron Maiden as a band, but I own and love the game. I don’t give a shit about Jurassic Park as a theme, but love the game and prefer the stock code over the movie version. Almost every licensed game I own does nothing for me as a theme alone.

Back in the 90s, Johnny Mnemonic and The Shadow were dog shit movies, but the games are still awesome. I just don’t get why people are SO hung up on theme that they’ll buy crap games if they like the theme, and won’t buy amazing games if they don’t like the theme.

I understand and realize it is today's reality, I just don’t get it as a pinball player. Fun is fun and in most cases, the theme is just a veneer on top of a game that is or isn’t fun to play.

The beauty of the Deadpool pin is it comes across *exactly* how you'd expect Deadpool himself to design it.

Ninja Eclipse, in turning itself around over the course of the last year, is fast becoming the game Legends Of Valhalla wanted to be; a community darling the same way Scott Danesi began and letting us come aboard for the ride. Both NE and LoV (and for that matter Dialed In) have a lot of lore and worldbuilding behind them that translates into a lot of gameplay, but at first look the playfields are a visual infodump, with no discernible starting point and an endgoal that's hard to determine. You have to play and examine such a game thoroughly to see how good it is, and for LoV that means plunking your money down first. Ninja Eclipse has sidestepped this pitfall by explaining itself as the project goes along and more people get invested in following it. This won't automatically translate into sales, but like TNA, by the time it's a fully realised product we'll all know exactly what to expect, what we're getting, and whether we want it or not.

For a bunch of reasons (theme, gameplay, market climate, competition, etc.) I’d be *shocked* if NE sold anywhere close to TNA, or resonated nearly as much with the pinball community.

Feedback has been great compared to what the game was at expo and versus the other current non-licensed theme (BBQ), but let’s see if that translates into any meaningful sales. I suspect it won’t. Not hating…just sayin.

Again, stop referencing the 90s as if things work the same way today. They don't. Johnny Mnemonic and Shadow were supposed to be giant blockbusters and turned out to be duds. That was back when companies were getting early access to movies and whatnot and the release was at the same time of the movie debut. After flops like that, you see why companies stopped gambling so much on what was "supposed" to be a success and instead focused on what was/is a success. If a game has an original theme it has to wow people on every level, but it can be harder to do because everything is so broad. A theme gives people something to expect, and somewhat of a blueprint to follow. I don't know what a good "insert random thing here" game is like, but I at least can have some expectations when I see (for example) Spiderman.

I think most people can play an old classic and get past the theme. I think many people aren't "theme whores", moreso they just want something that they can have some sort of expectations met.

Seems like Dutch is going for the public domain unlicensed theme route

They’re betting on there being 500 Jpop fanatics left who still want the “ultimate Jpop game” even though he’s not involved. We’ll see if that ends up being a pro or a con. For me, it’s 2 cons. Jpop & Dutch merged into a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of pinball. No thanks.

Yes I probably wouldn't be hanging my hat on this proving a thesis.

Having said that Houdini is the only pin AP went that route in, and it was their biggest hit.