Jersey Jack's Wizard of Oz!

Well this was a surprise for me. On Saturday I went into the city to play some pinball over at Reciprocal Skateboards since I was unable to get a press pass and normal passes to the New York Comic Con. While I was playing some Starship Troopers I got a call from my friends Eric and Sharon telling me they were "Comic-Conned Out" because it was just too much and asked me if I wanted to meet up with them and get their passes. So naturally I did and I made a b-line right to the very small Jersey Jack booth set up at the back of the hall.

The video above was shot on my iPod Touch, I'm using that for now because I can get that out quicker. I have video of it on the good camera so I want to get more footage of it being played with that so I can have a much better video of it.

Here's my first impressions of the game. The game itself is not complete. The actual cab isn't even a production one and the playfield is a prototype version. So what you see is not what you're going to get if you're buying it. (I was told the cab was an old Red and Ted's Roadshow) The code for the game isn't finished yet, a couple of people kept asking why the game gave them points for pressing start. Pretty much you can keep shooting the middle ramp to try to start out multiball and that's about it. The game is also only set up for one player with two balls, so just to let you know the videos of the game are going to be short in advance.

The game itself feels very sold, like a Williams games. The flippers had enough juice on them to make the shots. The one video I posted from Pinball News showed the ball coming back off the middle ramp but it looks like it's more of an accuracy issue and not on fault of the flippers. I was able to make the shots enough times to lock the ball. The one flipper that felt under-powered was the left mini-playfield. You could bounce it twice but not enough to make it open the door. The right mini-playflield took some time to get used to but I was able to get a couple of good spins on it. Not as many times as the kid playing at the beginning of the video, but I was able to get the shot down on a few tries.

I can say right now, pictures and videos, HD or not do not do the game justice. It looks that nice. The way the outside of the cab looks, to all of the toys and the lighting the game just looks pretty. The thing with me is I hate LED's in most games. I like how it can brighten up a game and I do like it that they last longer, give you richer color and run a lot cooler then normal lights. In some games they just don't work right. You always get a faint glow regardless of the light is on or not. Even today I was playing the games at Jon's shop and a game like Starship Troopers the ball saver light looks like it's always on. Even though the lights aren't final on WOZ they all turn on and shut off and there's no background glow to them. I also like how one bulb can do multiple colors so the team is going to have a lot to play around with.

Be sure to check back in for more updates from Comic Con. Namco/Bandai also has an arcade set up with classics and their bringing back BravoMan as a new game and cartoon! I even bumped into the voice actor Rob Paulsen when I was waiting on line to play a game. I had a brain fart the moment I looked at him and I didn't say hello, but hopefully he'll be back at the booth doing autographs tomorrow.