Venom Premium Pinball Advantages

There are two major advantages of the premium on Venom. The first is the Spider-Man Doppelganger 3-bank of roll-under targets. This is basically a bank of hanging targets that swing out on the right side where the ball passes under them, kind of like a one way gate. This is something that’s never been done before, so it’s a very unique. The video below shows it in action.

The other thing that’s unique to Venom is the rotating ramp in the middle of the playfield that rotates to make it return to different places or to lock balls. This also hasn’t been done before, though the concept of returning the ball to different places is not new. It is usually done via divertors. So while cool, it’s also a little overengineered to a degree.

What’s crazy is that the premium is so much cheaper than the LE. The LE version is $13k now, which is ridiculous to have it be $3500 more expensive than the premium.

Venon Pro Pinball Advantages

The biggest advantage the pro has is that it features the same ball locking mechanisms that the premium and LE feature. By far the biggest feature on the machine, it’s a cool feature that returns the ball very quickly and stores them for multiball. It’s called the Symbiote containment system, and each side holds 3 balls.

It’s also significantly cheaper at $2500 less than the premium.

Should you buy Venon Pro or Premium pinball?

With Venom, I think that the clear answer is to lean towards the pro. With the premium features not being that overwhelmingly good like some other premiums, you might as well save the money towards other things.

Plus with pinball prices falling currently, the less money you have into the game the better. You can always upgrade to the premium later if you decide you really like the game, and chances are the difference will be less than $2500 considering the initial reception of the game.

Foo Fighters Premium Pinball Machine Advantages

Probably the thing that gets the most attention is the new ball saver, the Overdrive post, also nicknamed the Deadpost. While not fancy, it’s something that’s never been seen in a pinball machine before. The video below shows it:

Basically, it saves the ball by bouncing it up to the right flipper.

The next feature the premium has is the Area 51 upper playfield. Like most upper playfields, it’s not super game changing, but still a nice addition. Luckily it doesn’t get overused because the shot to get it up there is fairly difficult. You also get an extra flipper with the playfield which is nice.

The last major difference is you get a custom sculpted Overload plastic toy. You can get some good visuals of it from this video:

Obviously doesn’t normally have the legs but you get the picture. You can see the upper playfield pretty well too.

There’s also the Foo Fighters van and an Overlord magnet with the premium. Neither are major features but still nice to have.

Foo Fighter Pro Pinball Advantages

Obviously the biggest advantage is price. At $2500 cheaper, it’s a significant savings. The game also plays faster without the upper playfield. It’s a good way to play the game without having to break the bank. Some games it’s obvious to go with the premium (like AC/DC) but others like Foo Fighters, there’s not a huge disadvantage going with the pro. I think with Godzilla there was a more pronounced difference between the games.

Should I buy Foo Fighters Pro or Premium?

I think with Godzilla pro vs premium, I recommended to go with the premium if you have the extra money or are limited on space. I think with Foo Fighters I would lean more towards the pro just because I don’t think the extra money buys you as much fun as it did in Godzilla.

There is a secondary option though that wasn’t available with Godzilla, the used market. The market was so constrained during Godzilla production that used machines were going for more than new in most cases. However right now you can pick up used Foo Fighter premium machines for $500 to $1000 off list off the used market. That might be the best way to go if you have one locally, that way the price premium isn’t so high. Also, just know if you buy a new premium, you’re probably going to lose $500 to $1k right off the bat once you open the box, whereas Godzilla you could just play without taking a hit automatically. The pro will also take a hit but not as big, plus there aren’t as many used pros for sale at the moment.

Total War Warhammer 3 memory issue

The primary issue we were having is that the game was crashing to desktop upon loading. If we lowered the graphical settings, it would happen less frequently, but once the battles got larger the issue would come back. What made the issue even more puzzling is that the game worked perfectly fine for a long time until we upgraded his D: drive from an older spinning type to a solid state drive. It didn’t make any sense, upgrading should have made things much better but it didn’t. So I also tried:

• Upgrading the Nvidia RTX 3060 TI video card drivers
• Switching out the Nvidia card with an ATI card
• cleaning off the C: drive for more storage space (this should have helped, but didn’t…I will explain more below)
• reinstalling the game on the C: drive and D: drive
• clearing off the game user data and starting over
• lowering the detail settings

Nothing worked. Some of it helped it happen slightly less frequently but the problem always came back when the battles got larger or the campaign turns increased.

Total War Warhammer 3 crashing solution

Here’s what actually worked for fixing our problem. The problem with the crash is that it gives you basically no feedback on what is actually wrong. It just kicks you right out with no warning.

The core problem is that the game is running out of virtual memory. Why this problem didn’t happen until we replaced my son’s D drive is that the virtual memory page file was on the D: drive and when I replaced it the page file just went away. I show the menus below to check:

This is off my laptop but it’s the same on every windows machine. If your page file isn’t large enough, doesn’t exist, or if your storage drive has too little free space it can cause Total War Warhammer 3 to run out of virtual memory.

The event viewer can also give you a heads up if this is happening on your pc. That was what initially clued me into what might be happening, there was a warning about virtual memory in there.

Hopefully this helps some of you fix this ongoing issue. I’m not sure why there isn’t better error handing for this in Warhammer, but at least this might shed a clue to what’s happening. I hadn’t seen this solution posted by anyone else, but I’m guessing that this is responsible for a large part of the crashes.

Dayton Audio SA1000 Subwoofer Amplifier

When I contacted Buttkicker about repairing the amp, I was told they don’t repair any amps anymore. And when I asked about buying a replacement, the BKA1000-P, they said they were out of stock and wouldn’t be receiving any for a while. They suggested the Dayton Audio SA1000 Subwoofer Amplifier. I looked it up, and honestly it had a lot better features than the Buttkicker model, so I decided to order it and give it a shot.

How is it? Honestly, it’s a lot better than the Buttkicker version for the most part because of all the adjustments it has. While my BKA1000 only had frequency and volume adjustments, this has those 2 plus 4 other adjustments where you can modify things to your liking.

A few people in reviews have mentioned how they don’t like the bright blue LED for power, I agree that it is bright but since my cabinet is to the side of my theater it doesn’t really bother me too much.

I’m currently using the Dayton SA1000 to drive 3 Buttkicker LFE‘s, same as my old setup. One thing I did wish it had was a remote, not so much for every day use, but when you’re initially setting it up there’s a lot of trial and error to get the volume just right (as there is with the BKA1000 too).

Buttkicker BKA1000 repair?

I looked into this quite a bit after the manufacturer refused to repair it. The general gist of it was:

• what usually fails is one of the capacitors
• causes the amp to smoke usually
• some people have had success repairing them on their own, but it’s not something that an average person should attempt due to the nature of the amp
• there used to a place or two that serviced them a long time ago but they’ve discontinued their services

In the end, it’s probably not worth saving the older BKA1000 models as the newer units appear to have better redundancy as does the Dayton SA1000 from what I’ve read.

Godzilla Premium Pinball Machine Advantages

So what advantages does the premium offer? The biggest thing is probably the collapsing building. Rather than just a stationary building, the premium has a building where you can can lock the balls on top and it can raise and collapse to release the balls for multiball. It’s a really cool effect and having played both of them, it’s the #1 one thing I would look at as an advantage.

The second biggest thing is probably the bridge. On the pro, the bridge is just stationary. On the premium, the bridge can collapse, which is a cool effect. Not as impressive as the building but still a great addition.

The last big thing is the MechaGodzilla. It has a magnet on it that is used to start multiball which is pretty awesome. It also has rotating targets to hit along with it. Both of these are superior to pro.

What else does the premium have? Most of the other changes are aesthetic in nature. The video below goes into pretty good detail:

Godzilla Pro Pinball Machine Advantages

So what advantages does the pro offer? Mainly, it comes down to price as it’s $3000 cheaper than the premium. The rest of it really comes down to what it does as well as the premium. It shoots as well as the premium, and the ruleset is identical. So if you’re actually playing the game, you won’t really notice the differences that much after you’ve played a bunch of games.

Having played both a decent amount, this would be my advice. Basically, if you have limited room and the extra $3k sitting in a pinball machine won’t hurt your finances, then going with the premium isn’t a bad idea. It’s a very popular machine and longer term it will probably continue to be desirable.

Should I buy a Godzilla Pro or Premium Pinball Machine?

If you have a lot of room for pinball machines or have a limited budget, going with the pro so you can buy more games or save money is probably the right call. I typically go for the pro version of games unless there’s some overwhelming reason to buy the premium. For example, I’ve bought AC/DC Premium but Avenger Infinity War Pro and Iron Maiden Pro. In all those cases, I just felt that AC/DC was the only one that offered the compelling reason to upgrade (moving bell, multicolor leds, drop targets, lower playfield, etc). I don’t think that the Godzilla premium has a huge advantage over the pro so if I were to buy one I’d probably go pro unless I got a good deal on premium.

The New Wood Base

Obviously the big difference between the normal Super Chexx Pro and the Super Chexx Premium is the wood base featuring hockey sticks. The bases come in 6 different colors shown below:

White Wash, Espresso, Golden Maple, Clear Maple, Cherry Wine, and Ebony are the current color options. I personally think that the dark colors are the best looking of the 6, the lighter colors don’t give off the same ‘luxury’ appearance.

On top of the base, the outside of the rink is also covered in the same wood. That wood matches the base perfectly. The video below shows the base pretty well:

Moving the Game

I’m sure one of the thoughts you might have is, how do I move this thing if the base is all wood and there’s no give for getting it out of doorways? Luckily ICE thought about all of this, and the game splits into 3 parts, the base platform, the hockey stick legs, and then the base game with the bubble on top.

This allows the game to fit through any doorway 28.5″ or wider. The game weighs 250 pounds as well, which is a 60 pounds than the standard version.

Is Super Chexx Premium worth the extra money?

This is a tough question, and only you can make the decision how much aesthetics are worth to you. Frankly, if you have the money and want to own this long term, putting in the extra money towards this probably wouldn’t be a bad investment as these games hold their value over time and you’d probably eventually get your money back out of it.

Playing it, there’s no difference from the regular base versions, so there is no additional fun to be gained from the upgrade, only visual appeal. But it’s not that much different from pinball machines, where people spend $3k to $4k more just for different artwork. In this case though, at least you can see where all the extra money is going, wood is expensive and crafting this can’t be easy.

You can order Super Chexx Premium via the link below:

Super Chexx Premium

Good luck with whatever you choose. Super Chexx is a great game to have at home.

MM vs AFM Playfield

On the surface, it looks like MM wins this hands down. I think I would kind of agree that Medieval Madness is more loaded on the playfield overall. I’m not quite sure though that MM shoots quite as well as AFM, the shots are a little steeper and don’t flow quite as well, plus the trolls in the middle are more annoying than fun most of the time.

Basically, the castle is a better toy than the saucer, and the catapult/tower are better than anything else Attack From Mars has, but the combos you can do on AFM are superior to the ones you can do on Medieval Madness. I think the art is overall better on MM.

MM vs AFM Rules

Straight away, Medieval Madness has a deeper ruleset than AFM, no question. However, that doesn’t necessarily make it better as I think Attack from Mars is a lot less wood choppy. Why do I say that?

• Castle scores more points than anything else whereas AFM is more balanced scoring wise
• You have to hit each shot 9 times instead of 3 which would seem like an improvement in difficulty, but some of the things to do multiple times (like trolls) are not that much fun
• MM is essentially hit every shot 9 times and destroy the castles 5 times, where as AFM has better variety of objectives to get to the wizard mode (5 way combo, super jackpot, total annihilation, etc)

Basically, even though MM should be a lot harder just looking at it on paper, in reality it doesn’t play out that way because you can stack multiballs to continually castles in Medieval Madness whereas in Attack From Mars you can only destroy the current saucer. That plus the fact that AFM has a wider variety of goals means it’s actually easier to get to Battle For The Kingdom than Rule the Universe.

Which is better for home use?

This one is kind of a toss up. Like I mentioned above, MM has better toys and a more extensive ruleset, but AFM is slightly harder and smoother to play. I don’t think you can go wrong with either of them honestly, both of them have the same drawback for good players in that they’re too easy for long term play.

I would just go with whatever theme you like the best of the two and whichever one you can afford. AFM is the cheaper game by a slight amount though if more Medieval Madness remakes are made it’s possible that it will be cheaper.

Attack From Mars is probably a little bit easier for the novice player to get into. While hitting the castle is pretty straight forward in MM, the rest of the game isn’t as clear.

Why isn’t there a Harry Potter Pinball Machine?

While nobody knows for sure, the rumor has been for 10+ years that JK Rowling associates pinball with gambling and doesn’t want to license it. Whether that is true or not, nobody knows for sure, most of the time the real reason is that the license is too expensive or doesn’t come with enough assets to make it worth it.

Like when Stern did their first Avengers Pinball, none of the voices of the actors were used due to cost. And the original Back to the Future game didn’t use Michael J Fox on the backglass because of the cost. So it may be as simple as the license is too expensive for everything.

Who is rumored to be making a Harry Potter Pinball Machine?

At first, a long time ago, Jersey Jack Pinball was rumored to be making Harry Potter pinball. That rumor though has turned out to be false (at least so far). More recently though, in the past year or two, Stern has been rumored to be making it in connection with Kapow games (who specializes in rare unique licenses). When or if that happens though remains to be seen. For sure it’s not coming out in 2023, Stern’s lineup is already packed with games this year.

There is a virtual game shown below though that shows what might be done if one were to come to market, it’s pretty awesome.

The Dragon

The Dragon head comes in 6 or 7 different colors, I choose black because in most video games the black dragon is the most powerful (plus I thought it looked the best).  I took a video of it below:

You can see it really does produce an awesome effect.  It looks heavy, right?  Actually the dragon head is just made of foam, so it’s really light.  You wouldn’t want your cat or dog to get ahold of it, they might rip it to shreds.  Inside the dragon head there’s a mount for both the head and the fog machine which produces the light and the smoke for the dragon.

 One thing to note with the fog machine, when you assemble the dragon head you’re going to probably turn on the fog machine permanently, which means you have to unplug the head after every use pretty much.  This wasn’t immediately clear to me the first time (like I thought I was turning it on by remote) but it stays on as long as it’s plugged in.  

The remote (pictured below) can do a large variety of colors and effects.  I mostly like the red light, but the strobing effect is pretty cool too.  
The setup comes with a small amount of fog juice.  I don’t know how fast it goes through it as I’m still on my first amount, but I’m guessing that having some on hand would be good.   I’ll probably buy some off Amazon.
My teenage son thinks it’s the coolest thing ever, so I feel that’s a good metric to determine how cool it really is.  Impresses teenagers?  Must be good, lol.

Conclusion

Is it worth $500?  If you don’t have other stuff in your game room to play already, then probably not.  If you’ve got a ton of money already invested in your basement, then most definitely it’s a cool item to have for parties.  You’re almost guaranteed that nobody has seen anything like it before, and thing in itself makes it very cool.

Legends Ultimate Hardware

The machine itself is pretty tall, I would say not quite as tall as your larger arcade machines but bigger than the smaller ones.  It comes with a control panel that has a trackball in the middle, two joysticks, two spinners, and 6 buttons for each player.  You can pretty much play all normal games out there with this setup, only a few games that have specialized controls (think spy hunter and other driving games) will have issues.

The screen is nice and bright.  Since most games are vertical, a lot of the screen is taken up by filler background a lot of the time.    Only games that have a wider view use most of the screen.

There’s actually wifi built into the unit so you can download updates and buy new games.  I thought that was pretty cool that they got that all going.

Legends Ultimate Games

The games that come with the unit are overall kind of ‘meh’.  There are some really good ones like Operation Wolf and Centipede, but the majority of the games are pretty obscure.   I would say like around 20 of the games are pretty good.  There are 300 games that come with it, with some being arcade and actually quite a few coming from consoles.   Super Star Wars is probably the most well known console game of the group, although I don’t think it’s very good (or maybe it didn’t age well, I didn’t play it as a kid, lol).
There are options to purchase new game packs and new pinball tables as well.  Pinball seems to be the majority of the offerings, there are actually some legit good pinball machines simulated in their packs available for purchase like Rescue 911.

CoinopsX

For those of you interested in additional games and have the license, there’s also an additional option called CoinopsX.  Basically, it will run games emulated kind of like Mame used to.  It’s a good option for those games which aren’t available to purchase directly from Legends.   People have made up preconfigured drives to make it easier to do, if you check Etsy there’s a bunch of them with the USB drive already setup so you don’t have to spend hours configuring it.  There’s also a nice topper on there for sale and some cup holders.  Someone even makes a stand which makes it taller to play with, which is nice.  I might actually buy the stand since I’m so tall.

Control Panel

The standard control panel comes with two joysticks, two spinners, 6 buttons per player, and a trackball.  The joysticks are 8 way joysticks so great for some games but not for others like Dig Dug, Pac Man, etc.  The trackball is pretty nice honestly, and the spinners are good two.  Overall it feels like a real quality control panel.

There’s also a 4 player panel which I’ve recently purchased but haven’t installed yet.  It removes the spinners and trackball but adds 2 more players to the game so you can have proper 4 player battles.  It’s kind of expensive at $299 but if you play many 4 player games it would be worth it.  The one drawback is that you have to take out screws to switch the panels, so it’s not a 30 second swap or anything.

Marquee

The marquee is one of the coolest parts of the whole setup.  While the included marquee isn’t anything special, the BitLCD and BitPixel add ons are pretty awesome.  Basically, instead of there being a static image for the marquee, the marquee will change to show the original artwork for the game you’re playing.  It’s just a huge upgrade and cool feature that I’ve never seen before on these games.

They’re not the cheapest addons at $350 and $200, but worth it if you’re going to be using it very much.  Really completes the entire package.

Speakers and Sound

The sound can get pretty loud from the machine, there are volume buttons on the right side.  Probably about the same as the sound would have been back in the day at the arcade.  The one thing that does seem to be missing is bass, there’s just no bass from the speakers at all.  But back in the original arcades, there wasn’t any bass either, it’s more of a feature of more recent pinball machines than anything else.

Display

The LCD screen is nice and bright.  You can select to have scan lines or not, which is a nice addition.  Probably the biggest issue is that the games come in both horizontal and vertical formats, so the vertical format games you end up not using like 1/2 the screen unfortunately.  A more square screen would have allowed for better overall use, but who makes a square screen?  Nobody really, so I understand the limitations here.

Bitpixel vs Bitlcd

Both of these are offered as display options for Legends Ultimate, I went with the BitLCD. It’s a really nice screen and looks really cool. The Bitpixel gives you a nice retro look but in my opinion doesn’t compare to BitLCD. I have a video below showing it in action after I installed in place of the marquee. There are rumors that the Bitpixel is being discontinued, possibly due to licensing. In any case, the BitLCD is the way to go if you have the funds.

Conclusion

Is the Legends Ultimate Arcade worth it?  Compared to the other options out there, it’s a great value.  What could make it better?  It needs:

• More available games for sale
• More pinball tables available from the Bally/Williams Era
• Speaker add on capability, or at least more bass.

The base price is a good deal, and you can make it a lot fancier with the additional 4 player panel and BitLCD.  This is really the first commercial arcade machine that really checks all the boxes, previously these things all had some major drawback (price, size, lack of control options, etc).