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TIP Multimorphic releases Portal

MrMikeman

Super Member
Nov 25, 2019
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Looks pretty cool. Whiners about an "empty" lower playfield will probably still find a way to complain but haters will hate lol.

A reminder that in case anyone is interested in the machine, they can get 1000$ off if referred by a P3 owner. I can refer you. Full disclosure: I would also get $1000 off my next purchase. It's a win-win for both the referrer and the referred.


 

MrMikeman

Super Member
Nov 25, 2019
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Ottawa
What’s the price of the pin?

You can check multimorphic.com but here’s a quick look.

Prices in USD:
Module: $3900
Extended kit: $1600
External cabinet artwork is extra if buying just the module. Buy what you need/want. Personally I never change the art. There is also an optional $750 interactive topper.
Full machine with base model Portal: $11,620
Full machine with Portal Extended: $12,500 - yes the extender kit is half-price if bought with a new machine.
Full artwork of your choice comes with a full machine purchase.

It’s expensive for the first game. However the value comes into effect once you start buying other modules.
 

MrMikeman

Super Member
Nov 25, 2019
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Are upper/lower flippers now triggered by a single button?

Also, still no mention of cake. Starting to think it's a lie.
They can be set up that way. There's a button box sold by Pinball Life that has that ability with a toggle switch. You can select independant buttons or staged upper flippers like other games. The staged thing is good for newbs or people with limited coordination TBH. It impedes the gameplay too much.

Once you play with independent buttons for more than 1-2 games you "get it" and then never look back.

I still don't understand how pinheads managed to understand Haunted House in 1980 with it's independent buttons lol. Even 45 years later it seems way too complicated for most.
 

Smokezz

Active Member
Apr 29, 2019
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I still don't understand how pinheads managed to understand Haunted House in 1980 with it's independent buttons lol. Even 45 years later it seems way too complicated for most.
It's going back and forth between normal machines and this type of setup. It's not fun at all.

Haunted House was also a one off game from Gottleib with multiple buttons for different flippers... they didn't do it for Black Hole. Likely an experiment to see how it would work - games back then had lots of unique features - and it wasn't well received.
 
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MrMikeman

Super Member
Nov 25, 2019
1,087
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Ottawa
It's going back and forth between normal machines and this type of setup. It's not fun at all.

Haunted House was also a one off game from Gottleib with multiple buttons for different flippers... they didn't do it for Black Hole. Likely an experiment to see how it would work - games back then had lots of unique features - and it wasn't well received.

For HH,iIt was likely a consequence of having 8 flippers (4/side). Too many on 1 circuit. They had to separate them on pairs of buttons/side.

In any case I have a P3 and I can assure you that your brain will figure it out. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to. That’s the cool part :)

For the P3 the upper flippers can sometimes be in the way of important shots, especially in MB, hence the separate control.
 
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Chris Bardon

Well-Known Member
Nov 15, 2012
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Mississauga, ON
I'm really glad they managed to score this theme-it's got the potential to be really good. Given that we're never getting a Portal 3, the next best thing we have is that Valve keeps letting other people play in the sandbox. There could be some interesting features on this if it used the scoops to portal the ball from one location to another (kind of like the fast locks on Venom), but I'm not sure how much you can do there. It's also cool to see the ramps extending out to the lower part of the PF, although I'm not really sure why this is an optional thing. Is the concern that a p3 owner wouldn't want to store something larger, or have more to install/remove on a swap, or was there a fixed price point for new modules?

This could turn out to be the best p3 module. Really looking forward to checking it out.
 

MrMikeman

Super Member
Nov 25, 2019
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Ottawa
I think the extended kit is more about BOM. Forcing people to buy a 5500$ module or nothing would not be a good thing. Now they give an option similar to Stern with basic (Pro) and extended (Premium) and both are coded a little different to compensate.
 

Chris Bardon

Well-Known Member
Nov 15, 2012
1,426
255
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Mississauga, ON
So I got a chance to play this last night at Nick's place, and I'm pretty impressed. Good first impression, and the extended kit really makes a difference. The ball paths keep you guessing, and from what I could hear, there's some good Glados speech in it. I did notice that the right ramp on the extended module makes hitting some of the shots at the back a lot harder, but I only got a couple of games in on it, so it was hard to tell how critical those were.

I'm starting to think that getting a p3 might not be that far fetched after all. I did dig into the tech side of it a little bit though, and I have questions:
- On the portal module, it looks like a ball got stuck on the faith plate. From what I could see, it's supposed to be slightly recessed at the front (i.e. the flap isn't flush with the PF)? Ball rolled back there and didn't seem to get ball searched out.
- Digging into the system a little, there doesn't seem to be a switch/coil test like on a Stern/wpc/jjp etc. There are settings for the mechs, but no way to even say "test the coil that activates the faith plate" or "show me the state of all active switches on the game". Is that just something I'm missing?

I was going to check out some of the docs on the multimorphic website this morning to see what else I could find out, but you have to register to get in there, and a-you need to give them a street address for this, and b-Canada apparently only has US states, so a form validation failure there :) Anyway, I'll probably spend a little more time looking into it on the weekend. If I'm going to jump into this ecosystem, I want to know what I'm getting into.
 
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