It’s here! I know I haven’t done a very good job about keeping this a secret within my posts but what can you say, I’m not very good with secrets! Ever since I got into the pinball hobby 8 or so years ago I always wanted a Transformers themed pinball machine. First, lets start with a little history. Over the years every once and a while someone on the Rec.Games.Pinball newsgroup would post a thread asking everyone what their dream pinball theme is and, of course, my reply was Transformers. Eventually the unthinkable happened, rumors started circulating that Stern might make a Transformers pinball. Many speculated whether Stern would go with the cartoon or the movies for inspiration. My favorite incarnation of the robots in disguise is definitely the 80′s cartoon and movie, but since Stern likes to release games based on recent licenses it wouldn’t be a surprise if they went with the new movies for inspiration. All in all that would be fine with me, after all, Transformers in pinball form would rock!
In August of 2011 Stern released a Transformers promotional video. Was I dreaming? It not only confirmed Transformers as a title but it showcased some of Stern’s new marketing tactics. Up to this point Stern’s marketing was pretty much non-existent but no longer. It was a nice change of pace and what theme would transform their image better than Transformers?
In September 2011 the first official pictures were posted! I knew that I wanted this to be my very first brand new game, after 13 years in the arcade game hobby it was about time to take the plunge and go where I have never gone before. The downside to the timing of the announcement was I didn’t have the cash to pay for it unless I made a lot of sacrifices. I just bought Creature from the Black Lagoon which I really loved but in the end it had to go so I could gather the funds necessary to buy Transformers along with my Centipede, Joust, Ms Pacman and other unrelated objects I have collected over the years.
Those not in the know might be asking why I didn’t just save money and buy one down the road. Stern’s current policies have forced collectors into a buy it now or don’t buy it at all/buy it at a super inflated price position. I will expand on this in a later post but for now let’s just say I saved a ton of cash pre-ordering the game versus waiting and at the same time guaranteed myself a game. Normally I wouldn’t have fallen into this trap but this title is one I knew I had to have brand new. It is important to note that even though the limited edition games are run at once and never again the Pro version of Stern’s games can be re-run as the demand arises. Stern is only making 500 Limited Edition models and 125 Special Limited Edition models. The special edition LEs are minor art differences only, not enough to fork over another $600.
Once I got my cash together and chose a distributor the wait was on. I sent payment for my game back on November the 1st and proceeded to wait until Stern was done finishing up the details of the limited edition games. Up until this point all I saw were pictures of the stripped down pro version of the game so this was truly a blind purchase. Luckily for me in the end I am *mostly* satisfied with what the final game turned out to be. I will expand on this later on in this post.
After what seemed like forever I finally got my tracking number after being told to call Stern directly by my distributor. My game was to arrive on December the 12th! The time drew closer and I hadn’t heard from Estes Express, the shipping company, until the morning of the 12th. I followed the game over the weekend noticing that it arrived in Richmond on Sunday the 11th, I knew I would have my game soon! Alas it wasn’t to be, I was told that the earliest I could get my game would be on the 13th. Whats one more day right? YES, an ETERNITY! 
The 13th arrived and I waited for the call. I was off that day so it made it that much harder to wait. Eventually I got a call from the shipping company at 4:00pm with a delivery window, my game would arrive between 4:30 and 5:20pm! YAY!
I kept myself busy for a while and 5:20pm came with no truck in sight. I called Estes and was quickly put on hold for a minute then the operator came back and said “I have heard about that shipment, let me get with the driver and get him to call you.” Time to wait again. By this time it was getting dark. I was hoping the game would arrive in the daylight so I could inspect the box for damage but at this point I just wanted my game. Finally the truck driver called me at 6:30pm stating he was lost and Mapquest wasn’t giving him accurate directions. After a few minutes of explaining how to get to my house he was on his way. 6:45pm the truck rolls up with my game! It appeared that my game was the last delivery of the day; the truck trailer appeared empty minus a pallet of laser printers and my game all the way in the back.
Now keep in mind I paid an extra $25 so that Stern would pallet the game to protect from forklift damage and boy am I glad I paid for the pallet. As the driver wheeled the game closer to me I noticed that the box appeared to be bashed in. Oh no was all I could think but I held in my anxiety and waited until it was closer. The box wasn’t ripped but the bottom of the box was most definitely bashed in. Whenever you receive an item like this from a freight company it is imperative that you inspect the contents for damage before signing off. If you don’t the shipping company will argue that they didn’t damage the game and refuse to pay any insurance claims. I wheeled the game into my basement’s unfinished area so that I could visually inspect the game for damage. It just barely made it in, I didn’t know the box would be as wide as it was! I was hoping to leave the game in the box so that when my friends arrived we could open it together but that was no longer a possibility. Luckily after cutting the top of the box the game was not damaged! Crisis averted.
I left the game partially in the box until my friends arrived and we setup the game for the first time. Buying a brand new game is an awesome experience, one I hope to have again someday in the future. Overall I am very happy with my game, everything works, the cabinet isn’t all bashed up and the playfield is in great shape with no printing issues or clearcoat problems. I knew going in that the software would not be complete and that is fine, I know Stern will update it over time. The biggest positive of all is it is fun to play! Stern has placed sound bytes from the old cartoons in many places in the code which is a huge positive for me. Enough talking, here are pictures of my game!
I received number 194 out of 500 Limited Edition Transformers pinball machines. I am very glad I opted for this version. The special edition LEs are Autobot or Decepticon themed games. The Autobot edition has both sides of the cabinet covered in Autobot art and the Decepticon edition covered in Decepticon art. They also had faction specific translites, a signature from the designer George Gomez and a metal plated supposedly signed by each Faction’s leader in Cybertronian text. Transformers is about both factions so for that reason alone I opted for what Stern calls the Combo LE. It looks the best too, check out these promotional pictures from Stern:
Stern did an excellent job with the basecoat/clearcoat paint applied to the lockdown bar, side rails and legs. The Autobot side features a candy metallic red color and the Decepticon looks spectacular with the dark purple trim. I love the color combination. On the lockdown bar the two colors meet and that union is covered with a huge “TF” decal. Apparently this was provided by Hasbro as they would not allow a split Autobot/Decepticon insignia instead. Its a shame really but who knows someone in the aftermarket may provide a replacement! Mods are a huge part of pinball nowadays so I would not be surprised to see something come up in the years to come.
So I now have my first NIB game and I am overall very happy. Now I want to expand on what I said earlier about being *mostly* satisfied with my purchase. I had two issues that that warrant explanation; one with the buying experience and another with the product I received.
First regarding the buying experience. To put it bluntly I was not happy with the distributor I chose and how they reacted to my inquiries regarding my game as the delivery date neared. I won’t go into great detail here but I have learned who not to deal with in the future if that says anything. If any distributors happen upon this post please remember that customer service is extremely important. Stern is also partly to blame as well. They need to look closely at how they sell their machines, they still do not acknowledge that a lot of people buy these to put right into their personal collections. With only 500 limited edition games being produced I would bet most of these go to collectors.
The second issue was with the quality of the game itself, specifically the cabinet art and application of the cabinet decals. This is Stern’s first foray into cabinet decals and it shows. Although the majority of the cabinet looks nice there are many areas in which they could approve. In the past Stern cabinets were screen printed. The majority of pinball machines from the 1990s up until this game were screen printed with the exception of a few games like Monster Bash and Cactus Canyon to name a few, which both used cabinet decals for the majority of their runs. When Stern decided to go the decal route their offering differentiates from the Bally/Williams games I mentioned earlier in many ways. First, the decal material Stern uses is much thinner material. Some people have already reported tearing of the decals at the point where the cabinet legs attach. The art itself does look pretty nice overall but there are areas where certain characters in the image were sampled from lower resolution images as they tend to be blurry compared to other objects in the art. Based on my years of experience with Photoshop and web design I would say a lower resolution image was used and then stretched to make it fit the cabinet which anytime you upscale an image from a lower quality sample you will always get blurriness in the image. I have recently confirmed Stern does upscale digital images since this same issue appears with the image they used for Megatron in the translite.
The art quality issue really is a digital art 101 lesson (you should never upscale art, only downscale). The biggest issue of all in my eyes is the cutouts Stern has employed in the decal itself. As you can see in the picture below the areas where the shooter, start button and tournament button appear on the cabinet have huge cutouts. The start button and tournament button areas are not the worst offenders though, that title goes to the shooter cutout area. It is much larger than the shooter housing itself. When you take a close look you can see the underlying black cabinet.
Click for a larger picture
I contacted Stern prior to the release of the game and I was told this area is cutout larger on purpose so that when the shooter is installed it will not touch the decal. During the final assembly of the game the line workers will align the shooter housing and Stern feared it would tear the decal during the alignment process. This is an interesting position because the games I mentioned previously, Monster Bash and Cactus Canyon did not have this issue. Their decals were installed so that the shooter housing was directly on top of the cabinet decal. My opinion is Stern was worried about this because of the quality of the decal itself. Either that or they do not trust their line workers to assemble the games without damaging them. Either way it is a lack of quality that didn’t exist when Stern screen printed their cabinets.
Another issue with the cabinet decals is how they wrapped them around the edges of the cabinet on top of each other. First let me show you the back of the machine:
Decal is wrapped around the back of the cabinet.
You can see the decal wrapped around the back of the game. The decal is also wrapped around the front of the game and when the front decal is applied it is installed on top of the wrapped over decal. This creates a bulge underneath the front decal and is noticeable upon close inspection. Will I be staring at the cabinet constantly? No. Is it an issue that could have been avoided? YES. Line workers install Stern’s cabinet decals and in order to avoid the overlap they would have to cut the decals. I can see this being a situation where Stern wouldn’t want this line workers cutting decals because it requires a high level of skill and most important of all it takes more time. I won’t kid myself, Stern is in the business to make money not to create collector quality machines.
The ultimate question is: Does this damper my enthusiasm about the game? I can safely say no, it doesn’t, I am still happy with the game overall. The side effect of these issues ultimately will stop me from buying another new game from Stern until they have changed their manufacturing process. I suspect I am not the only one that feels this way.
To end on a more positive note I am enjoying playing this game. It is a ton of fun, is very fast and will only get better with time. I have already started making modifications to my game and I have also been putting up gameplay videos in my YouTube Channel. Watch for them!
