The Earl-Bowl Lanes is a stone’s throw away from the Pinball Parlour and using the pinball locator site, I saw that they had some newer pins in their arcade. The NBAFB was shut off, the TSPP unplayable, the RBION kept spitting out pinballs randomly, the LOTR had super weak flippers, I didn’t try the POTC, but I did get to put some quality time on 2 machines.

The only Stern Batman I ever saw before was at Jilly’s and it wasn’t working, so I was excited to have the opportunity to check this machine out. Looking at the machine, it’s not very pretty. Gaudy photoshopped playfield artwork, a totally cluttered backglass, but the machine plays better than it looks. The Batman at Earl Lanes played great, nice and fast. The layout is decent and the “Scarecrow” moving crane is a very cool toy. It is similar to the junkyard crane, but when activated it moves around the playfield. Very fun to shoot for. The objective is to hit a different number of shots a different number of times to light the batman characters (Alfred is one shot, Lucius Fox is about 50. I’m not exaggerating, you have to hit that center ramp over and over). The Joker “can” is a waste and blocks the playfield, the batmobile stops the flow. The artwork should have been done in the graphic novel style and it would have made a world of difference. The audio of the different characters is pretty awful. I actually would have preferred that they clip it from the movies. Batman sounds the worst. Even with all of the negatives, it played pretty well and I’d like to play it some more to get to the wizard mode. I wouldn’t want to own it, but I wouldn’t mind a friend of mine having it at their house. GRADE: B

If you took a poll and asked 100 pinheads what the best game of the past 10 years was (not including AC/DC), I believe that the majority would answer Spiderman. When I got into the hobby last year, everyone raved about this game. I played it a couple of times at my buddy’s and I was unimpressed. I played it a few more times at Jilly’s and thought, “not bad.” I played it some more throughout last year and I started to see what everyone was talking about. After my session at Earl Lanes, I am converted. Spiderman is a good game. A really good game. Not a big fan of the photoshopped artwork (see above), but the layout and gameplay is really tight. Love the 3 ramp layout. The gameplay is super fast. Any time there’s a shot in the center, I’m drawn to it, so I beat up the sandman a ton. This is a game that makes you make all the shot on the playfield multiple times to advance towards the wizard mode. The audio is clipped from the movie and JK Simmons was nice enough to add some custom callouts which are a nice touch. The more I play, the deeper I get, the better it is. New Stern’s best game? GRADE: A-