Earthshaker's sinking building.

[leannaray]

As you know, when Earthshaker was first released, it featured a sinking building. There were about 200 of these made, but then this feature was made stationary because of costs. Here's a video of the building sinking during gameplay.

http://vimeo.com/8018914

Also as you know, Farsight buy a real-life table, then copy every part of it exactly. Perhaps they couldn't find one of the original table with the sinking building. But it should be easy for them to adapt a standard one. Then they could make copies which work better. See

http://www.basementarcade.com/arcade/4sale/Earthshaker/index.html

 

[shutyertrap]

These days, with as many Earthshakers that have been modded, finding one without the sinking building is probably rarer! Anyway, as far as Williams (and therefore FarSight) is concerned, the sinking building was a prototype. That means it won't go in the game, unless they get Josh Sharpe to sign off on it.

 

[heberts811]

They said they couldn't do a prototype feature in their release.

Gary

 

[Espy]

Yeah, they have to make it as it comes out of the factory. Which will be a real shame when they decide to make Judge Dredd, because that had an awesome prototype feature that was cut because of nervous operators.

 

[Reagan Dow]

Really? What was it? Any original video?

Edit. Found it. The ring having three ball catchers. Found a kit someone is selling. Bummer they can't add it in TPA if/when it comes out

 

[Espy]

Really? What was it? Any original video?

Edit. Found it. The ring having three ball catchers. Found a kit someone is selling. Bummer they can't add it in TPA if/when it comes out

Yeah, the ring was awesome. But operators didn't like the idea of the balls getting trapped on the ring because it required a magnet crane to lift them off. So the final version had the saucers cut open so that the ball just rolled off.

I played one with the mod, it looked amazing.

 

[Reagan Dow]

Ahhhhh. I was wondering how the balls came out. I assumed it spun or something. Thanks for that tid-bit. I spent an afternoon trying to find prototype stuff that never made it into pinball games. Never found that one though. D'oh!

 

[Espy]

Ahhhhh. I was wondering how the balls came out. I assumed it spun or something. Thanks for that tid-bit. I spent an afternoon trying to find prototype stuff that never made it into pinball games. Never found that one though. D'oh!

The annoying thing was that it was apparently changed purely thanks to pressure from operators, and from a design standpoint it was sound. From John Trudeau on IPDB:

The original ring and [software] program were only used on the prototypes and sample games. Nothing ever failed and all the games worked flawlessly, throughout their stays at their test locations. Even the sample games sent to Europe worked well.

The problem was with the German distributor. He said he saw a potential for failure with the ball crane. In other words, he just didn't like it. I don't know why. And I never actually heard what he threatened Williams with, but it was enough pressure to have the game changed. I fought the good fight for keeping it the way it was, but I didn't have big enough clout to outweigh the potential loss of sales. So I swallowed what pride I had left and changed it. It wasn't as cool as having the balls in orbit, but there was a lot of game still there to have fun with.

The same potential "failure lock-up" point is at ANY ball popper or even the outhole. It just never made any sense to me.

The prototype games were all retrofitted with a new ring and program. The distributors were all sent conversion kits to refit their sample games to the modified play. Whether these kits ever actually found their way onto the sample games was up to the distributors. The incentive for the distributors to do the conversion was the fact that any subsequent software updates would have the "new" ring in mind. The "old" ring would only work with that original software release. I would expect that everyone would eventually do the mod.

 

[Reagan Dow]

That's crap!! They should of had the mod for Germany ONLY!!!

 

[Bowflex]

Sounds rather conflicting. 200 units produced goes beyond prototype. Sounds more like it was indeed a standard feature that was pulled rather than something that didn't make it into the final build.

 

[Reagan Dow]

Sounds rather conflicting. 200 units produced goes beyond prototype. Sounds more like it was indeed a standard feature that was pulled rather than something that didn't make it into the final build.

We were just talking about Judge Dredd but as far as Earth Shaker goes perhaps those were the original "test" models that they sent to distributors all over the world?? Who knows? I'd be curios to find out though

 

[Bowflex]

We were just talking about Judge Dredd but as far as Earth Shaker goes perhaps those were the original "test" models that they sent to distributors all over the world?? Who knows? I'd be curios to find out though

Yeah, for Judge Dredd, Theater of Magic and several others, I can understand not including features that are after-market mods. However there are a lot of features (Tiger Saw spinning and the ones mentioned in here) that were designed into the game, produced in prototypes and not reflective of something not intended by the designer/company. I don't see any problems with the prototype features or design features that were later cut being included as long as they were part of what was originally planned. Its not like there are new tables being sold or the ideas weren't created by WMS in the first place. Just seems overly paranoid.

 

[Reagan Dow]

Didn't know that about theatre of magic. Do you know of any others that were significant?

 

[Reagan Dow]

There are so,e original pro type photos for TOM before when I guess it was supposed to be The Majic of David Copperfield
http://www.pinballnews.com/shows/expo2011/index4.html

 

[Worf]

Sounds rather conflicting. 200 units produced goes beyond prototype. Sounds more like it was indeed a standard feature that was pulled rather than something that didn't make it into the final build.

Well, for Earthshaker the problem was cost. Perhaps the mechanism added another $250 to the cost of the pin and operators objected to that. Or perhaps Williams felt they weren't making enough money on it and decided to cut it to improve margins.

 

[Fungi]

What I find most interesting about the video is watching the table actually shake. When playing it IRL, I always thought I was just feeling the rumble, like a game controller. I didn't realize one could see actual shaking. So in that case, TPA's neat rumble effect is fairly accurate.