So the Brits formed a posse and skipped the school buses - David Blake was kind enough to give me, Neil and Mandy a lift to the Stern factory in Lunt Avenue. Amazingly noone has bothered to make the obvious alteration to the Lunt Avenue sign.
Stern had set up a big stage with a Spider Man background with a Mellony Melon figure on one side and a Gary Stern one on the other
So naturally that called for a photo op with Mellony
and Whoa Nellie's artist Greg Freres
who is a diamond bloke. He ended up being the tour guide for our group,but sadly no photos were allowed on the tour. We saw plenty of MMr being made, lots of GB, a few Batman 66 cabinets in evidence, and even a WWE, bizarrely.
There's been some talk of Stern doing a Jaws game, so it was Quite Interesting to see some schematics with the code name Jaws on them. Turns out Jaws is the codename for Batman 66. Ghostbusters code name is Harold.
Anyway, the factory tour was great as usual, but with a final twist.
Right at the end was George Gomez who told us we could take our cameras out and take as many pictures as we wanted of the new Batman 66 - SLE, LE and Premium.
I have to say the SLE is an absolute beauty. Special proprietary metallic mirrored decals, lots of toys including a TV on the playfield, and a cool topper which projects the bat sign on to the ceiling or wall near the machine - you can alter the direction and focus the beam.
Here's the metallic decal
and you can see the metallic trim speccled with silver
Looks better in real life than in the photo.
Here's the bat sign projected onto the wall of the factory from the topper:
Goerge Gomez looks very pleased with the colour screen on the machine
But the playfield was hard to photograph with so many people and the glass on. Here is a new part at the top left of the playfield - a Gilligans Island or Addams bookcase style rotating disk with a batmobile on top
And you can just about see the TV on the playfield
The rest of the photos of the playfield are rubbish but I think Stern has some on the Facebook page. Still, overall impression of the SLE is that it is amazing. Not seen it flipping though.
Seven and a half hours till the big JJP reveal...