All LE’s and Premiums I’ve seen appear to have the same flipper size. I did notice in videos that Stern posted that the test games at the factory had the slightly longer Bally flippers on them.
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Heh. No problem. My incredulousness was based on my having played quite a bit of both premium and pro GBs, and I’d like to think I have enough awareness to have noticed that.
I’ve had it with GB, i really tried to like it. I was playing an LE today and it finally dawned on me that it’s an awful machine.
At the risk of sounding like a ranty old pinside man. Here are the following reasons why it sucks. (LE)
Shallow flippers and wide thigh gap.
Steep left and right ramp that u can only go halfway up half the time.
Scoop that shoots sdtm unless u contantly tune it up. (Doesnt happen on location)
Low rails.
Clumsy unrewarding code that tells no story.
Uneven scoring where u have a good game when u get lucky.
Magna slings that make u die even if u try to do everything perfect.
Pls don’t tell Gary (i like most Stern games, especially GoT)
P.S. Can someone tell me how to get the cat in the ecto goggles.
Editing my rant to also include scoleri bros, who unlike all the other drop targets in the world don’t drop when u hit the. Also I was playing yesterday (because I’m an idiot) and I was making PKE shots feeling like a boss when the ball came back down through the habitrail and instead of feeding into the inlane, bounced off the rail dividing the two lanes and went down the outlane. Absolule bullcrap.
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Fwiw, I, too, have had it. And I own one. Not for long. To add to your list: the air balls are out of control. Especially off the 2x and 3x targets. It’s super dangerous for the life of the machine. I’ve already had one take a chip out of a spotlight, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before one breaks the ecto goggles glass.
Oh, also. Shitty multiballs. SFM (flail hard), WCWS (trap up on left, spam left ramp), MHMB (flail harder).
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This is my biggest beef with the game. Everything else you mentioned is valid, but I can live with it and it doesn’t take away from the fun for me.
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My biggest gripe is that GB is a bit like rolling dice. There doesn’t seem to be a strong connection between skill and score, or between ball time and score. In our league, the standing joke when it comes to GB is “we may as well draw straws”.
Michi.
You absolutely have to play with some control when playing GB. The layout punishes on the fly play. The low and wide flippers make ball control harder, but not impossible. Back handing the left ramp and right orbit from a cradle are easy and important shots. Post passes are important too. If you’re getting frustrated with the game, try slowing things down. Keep the ball under control in single ball play. Mode timers pause anyway. No hurry.
My best move is recovering from a missed shot and getting the ball back under control. Which turns out to be a pretty good strategy for GB. My tourney strat isn’t much different than my playing for fun strat. Right ladder all the way, only mostly ignore the multipliers (left standups and captive ball). Finishing spook central gets you close to 100M with no multipliers.
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I actually think the modes play into each other story/progression-wise much better than most games. Each column has a direct story progression going from bottom to top and He Slimed Me setting the SJ value plays very nicely rules-wise into the 3 SJ’s offered by Ballroom. Granted, I’d like to see even more rules like that which allow performance in earlier modes to affect modes later in the ladder.
My biggest gripe in league/tournament play is that it often boils down to ‘who can hit the most video mode skillshots’. 60M for a perfect video mode is a bit high for something that is accessible via skillshot IMO.
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Especially considering the other option for video mode, you’re lucky if you can get it as high as 16 million! There’s no contest when it comes to choosing which video mode you want. Maybe if they make you play negative reinforcement first, that could help curb down that issue. Alternatively, making the video mode off the skillshot worth less would be acceptable.
Ditto! More than activating We Came We Saw, I want a tree I’m working on to have positive effects outside of score that make it worth going for. Even little things like raising spinner levels or spotting a lock would be a nice adjustment.
Besides the fact that, more often than not there’s something wrong with it that makes it virtually unplayable on location (left scoop), this is my biggest gripe. It’s just a slipshod, haphazard collection of Youtube clips turned into uncreative modes that are strung together to vaguely resemble a plot. It’s a mess.
The left scoop’s power can be adjusted. On default, it can send it straight down the middle, but that depends on how it’s standing. Anyways, if you see one doing that always bug your operator. It is literally just button presses to adjust it to feed to the left flipper.
For sure. Adjusted the power all the way up and tweaked the scoop a little to the right and after 10,000 plays it still reliably dead passes off the right flipper to the left flipper
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It’s not just the kickout that is the problem. The left saucer will sometimes not award what it should. EB and add a ball are the most glaring examples. And it doesn’t appear to be just a problem with the switch. The game acknowledges the shot right away, kickout sound plays, flasher goes off, ball kicks out, no EB or add a ball awarded. Often it also won’t award the skill shot to start a mode. It kicks out, turns off the skill shot and makes you shoot the ghost target to start a mode.
I told my op about it and he said the switch tested fine. Sure seems like software is at least part of it.
All that said, I think it’s an awesome game. Theme doesn’t really matter to me. I’d play it if it was a whitewood.
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i gotta disagree. each ladder progresses through a plot thread from the first movie. for example the left ramp ladder:
- We Got One: Ghostbusters get their first client. steer the Ecto-1 to the hotel Slimer is haunting.
- He Slimed Me: chase Slimer into the ballroom by shooting various shots
- The Ballroom: draw out, subdue, and capture Slimer.
the right ladder is similar – the Terror dogs appear and take over Louis and Dana (them hooking up is what allows Gozer to enter this world), the Ghostbusters realize this and convince the mayor to allow them to go to the apartment complex to prevent it, then they confront Gozer, who eventually takes the form of Mr. Stay Puft.
i guess “we’re ready to believe you” doesn’t have much “story” to it, but what do you want? it’s a pinball machine, not an RPG. 
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The new code (1.13) has a decent number of nice improvements/fixes; here are the changes with the largest impact IMO:
- Shooting a completed mode ladder when mode start is lit no longer turns of the mode start shots (thank god~)
- You no longer have to go all the way around the right orbit to start a mode (not sure if I actually like this or not; I enjoyed finishing spooked librarian with a weak right orbit shot to avoid starting WBTD)
- The multipliers in Stay Puft now apply to every shot in the mode instead of just the final shot. This is pretty major as it allows for looping the left ramp for massive points during that mode (first time I got there on the new code I got a 2X puft multiplier on top of 6X playfield and was looping the left ramp for 600M a pop)
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If you start PKE by collecting your 80th ghost through a shot that also completes a mode does the mode not start? I know you can run modes simultaneously with PKE so wasn’t sure it was a bug or not.
I own a pro and 1.13 seems pretty stable, don’t love not having to complete the orbit to start next SP ladder mode. I use to backhand that shot so I could pick a different ladder.
It’s been my recollection that you’ve never been able to start a new mode during PKE or Loopin’. PKE is much better stacked with a multiball anyway.
For argument purposes, Loopin’ and PKE are not considered “modes”.
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I have encountered one serious bug since upgrading to 1.13, but it’s unclear as to whether it was introduced by the patch or not. Basically, the machine completely soft locked during WRTBY and even after taking the glass off and playing around I was forced to power cycle the game to fix it (goodbye 13B point game 
).
Details:
I hit 60 ghosts pretty early on during WRTBY which started loopin’ supers. I then also locked a ball in the scoop and the saucer which activated the secondary loopin’ supers mode (no idea if those supers actualy stack or not~). At this point it ejected my locked balls and I knocked one back into the left scoop while all the other balls drained (drained like 4 balls at once lol). After draining the machine presumably should have returned to single ball play and ejected the lone remaining ball from the left scoop; instead, the machine continued to countdown the timer for the WRTBY loopin’ supers mode while occasionally performing ball searches. Interestingly, the ball searches did not fire the left scoop and thus the locked ball remained stuck in there. When the supers timer finally ran out it just returned to the idle WRTBY animation and continued ball searching. Finally I took off the glass and removed the ball from the scoop and put it in the tray; no effect. I then tilted out but the machine remained stuck on the tilt screen despite all the balls being in the tray. Power cycled at this point and everything was fine, so I think it has to be a weird code issue.
What do you mean by the secondary loopin’ supers mode? I’m not clear on what you’re talking about.
WRTBY contains its own version of loopin’ supers (unrelated to ghost progression) that begins once you hit a few shots then ‘lock’ balls in both the left scoop and the right saucer. The logic for these oddball physical locks is likely the root cause of the bug.
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