Stern's Metallica Premium (Nov 2013)

Hey folks, well it's time to finish off our two part preview of Stern's Metallica. Tonight we're taking a look at the Dirty Donny Premium Edition of the game that you can play at the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. I was very surprised to find that they offered the game when I first walked into the place. A lot of people I've been talking too where becoming very unhappy with the way a lot of Stern's games have been coming out. When I spoke to Tim Arnold last year he told me that after the amount of problems he had with AC/DC he wouldn't get another new inbox Stern game. Well, Metallica was announced and after seeing it in action one of the major helpers Sal told Tim point blank, if he didn't get Metallica he wouldn't work there! Thankfully Tim caved in and they've got it! (They also got a Premium Edition of Star Trek three weeks ago!)

The biggest differences in the Premium's then in the Pro is the LED lighting. It really makes the artwork from Dirty Donny shine. If you go back and look at the video I took at Pioneers in NYC you can see the difference with the lights on Metallica to the LED's on the new Star Trek. It really makes the game bright and it shows. They even have some other cool effects. If you see towards the end of the video when I make it up to "Seek and Destroy" the whole machine glows red when the mode begins. Sucks I lost the ball at the end and couldn't show off the rest of the mode.

The other changes are mostly cosmetic. There's a really nice custom molded hammer of the band that's used for the Coffin Multiball. In the Pro model there's three lights where the coffin is, when all three are lit the mode begins. The mode works the same in the Premium version but it instead has a magnet which holds the ball and then the hammer knocks the ball through the playfield, like in Tales of The Arabian Nights. The Grave Marker is a motorized target where in the Pro it's a static target. I've seen some people get balls lodged behind the maker when it's down but I didn't have that problem playing it.

The biggest change to the game is the Snake Multiball Scoop. In the Pro model the snake is a scoop shot. If the light is lit behind the snake's head and you shoot the scoop you get a letter in SNAKE to start the Snake Multiball mode. However in the LE's and Premium's the snake has a lower jaw that you need to hit in order for the ball to go inside. The jaw also has another feature. During any multiball mode if the snake's jaw is down and you shoot the scoop the snake will hold the ball for 20 seconds. During that 20 seconds all scores are doubled. So top that off with the double scoring Fuel Mode and you can collect a ton of points really fast.

As always whenever Stern releases updated code we'll be sure to show off what they've added in! Be sure to tune in next week! I finally got the Wizard of Oz unboxing finished so be sure to come back and check it out!