Hot Death Star action

There has been a nagging problem for owners of Stern Pinball's Fall Of The Empire. The Death Star has been extremely difficult to score on. It consists of a steep ramp and internally a tunnel that bends down through the playfield. The idea is that when you lock three balls in there, it starts up a multi-ball experience for lots of points.

But the frame at the front of the toy, which also guides the door, is too narrow. What mostly happens is that the ball bangs around in there, then comes out. It turns out that I was a little too confident about my "fix" that I made last month, better aligning the ramp and the gate. I managed to score three balls right after I messed with it, so I thought it was good. But as time has gone on, and hundreds of games have been played, I haven't been able to do it again. So Stern shipped out a fix that has a wider gate. In pulling out the old one, I could see that the sides of the frame were starting to wear from ball contact.

After dropping screws and washers into and through the playfield, I eventually got the new frame installed. You have to remove the layers of plastics on both sides to get to it. I left that washer under the one side of the ramp, because I couldn't otherwise get the alignment right. Some folks have had success loosening all of the things and wiggling them around until it aligned, but I couldn't do it without the washer slightly propping up the one side.

We fired up the game, and I scored Death Star multi-ball on my second try. Diana, who has also played hundreds of times, got it within six games. Simon had similar results. So I would say that the fix not only works, it changes the nature of the game. Everyone in the house is more regularly scoring over 100 million, and not just because we've all had a lot of practice.

Good on Stern for sending out the fix, even though it seems like something that should have been caught before they started mass-producing the machines. I don't know how many games they shipped, but I'm sure it's in the hundreds. What a weird thing though, that Stern makes a product intended for commercial use, but a huge portion of their business is for home use. Their support has been pretty good overall, but I've read on the Internet that it isn't consistent. As much as their system architecture has improved to use less wiring, there's still a lot of complexity in there. I imagine though that the people who can afford the machines but don't have the expertise to maintain them can afford to hire experts.

Meanwhile, they keep releasing new software versions, mostly tweaking stuff, but often including new content. We've had three updates in two months. This is another situation where I wish they would have it nailed down before they ship, like the old days, but the changes tend to be incremental improvements. Most of the game is "there" from the start.