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So what was the problem with the MM remakes?

johnwhitfield

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John Whitfield
Seeing how the MM on ebay has now already passed the 7k barrier I was thinking about the OZ remake.

What exactly did go wrong? Why did it prove impossible to clone an old machine? Was it the parts or boards? Was it that they ran out of money halfway through production? I've always been a bit surprised that there was never playfields released for MM and CC as a way of generating funds (I know the whitewoods were for sale....just not sure why you would want one). I would have thought that the playfield would have been one of the easier things to recreate.

Given the attempts to convert Congo etc to MM I'd be really surprised if it wasn't commercially viable to get a contractor in China to reproduce a run of 1000 boards. Was it the R&D costs for Croc hunter that killed it? Were there not enough pre-orders to pay the costs?

Not having a pop at Wayne here.:boink: When I bought a few bits off him last year he was straightforward to deal with and the stuff turned up quickly. Just wondering what the main issue was?
 
I think he just seriously underestimated everything that is involved .He was quick enough to take peoples money , talked it up , and then I believe it slowly dawned on him that he had neither the money or oganisational skills to pull it off - end result is he dragged his heels for as long as possible trying to work out how to extricate himself from the whole train crash.

There was never ever any real sign of it going into production. All you ever saw was piles of parts in a warehouse where clearly no assembly was happening, he waffled on about having a production facility but it clearly didnt exist.

I for one was never particularly excited about more MMs in the world. Would far rather have seen CH or another new game.
 
There is talk of it still going ahead but this time funded and run by Planetary Pinball.
The Blunder from down under is still going to be in on it as he has loads of parts for it. Left over from the first time it was going ahead.
 
How many MM's did Wayne think he could sell? A hundred? five hundred? a thousand?
I think the tooling costs alone would be astronomical. If you went to a Chinese manufacturer and said "I need 500 of these, or a 1000 of these" he would laugh you out the door. Viable minimum runs of any special part needs to be a lot higher to make it financially viable. You would need a huge team behind you too, ordering, assembly, testing, checking part quality, sales, transportation, plus traveling to manufacturers, dealing with finances etc. Look at how hard the WOZ journey has been for JJ, and he knows what he's doing. Wayne was naive, and didn't do his homework. I will have a bet here now that a mass-produced MM will never happen.
 
Given the hype over the machine I'd suspect selling 1000 might have been viable over time. The CC remake seemed a lot riskier in my opinion as the only real reason people seemed to want it was the small production run.

Would I have paid 4 grand for a new version? Maybe. Would I pay 7k+ for a 20 year old one? Can't ever see me going down that route.
 
Given the hype over the machine I'd suspect selling 1000 might have been viable over time. The CC remake seemed a lot riskier in my opinion as the only real reason people seemed to want it was the small production run.

Would I have paid 4 grand for a new version? Maybe. Would I pay 7k+ for a 20 year old one? Can't ever see me going down that route.

Make your own, Quite a few people are.
 
Gene managed to make 100 BBBs on his own. It can be done

Yes it can be done if you have almost all the parts to hand as Gene did. Don't forget, Capcom were about to go into production with BBB, so I imagine the vast majority of parts were ready and available.
Williams had no intention of producing more MM's so the only parts stock was what they produced as service replacement and I think this is what we've been living off ever since.
 
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