As many of you are no doubt aware, Jersey Jack Pinball is working hard on their forthcoming The Hobbit pinball machine – and one of the latest revelations is updated playfield artwork. Although complaints about the original artwork were honestly quite minimal, the updated artwork is in a league of its own.

Here’s a direct side-by-side comparison, with the new artwork (and playfield plastics) on the left, and the original artwork on the right.

As Keanu would say... whoa! Click on the photo for a larger version. More updates after the break.

Sorry that I’ve been so remiss in posting here lately – but between life and enjoying the amazing new WOZ software version 3.0 released not too long ago, I haven’t had much time to film videos or write up tutorials. However, I do have something new for you today: I’ve taken a bit of footage filmed earlier this month and created a quick video testing tutorial to address an issue with the Winged Monkey that’s recently cropped up with some JJP Wizard of Oz owners.

You’ll find the video embedded below (be sure to click on 1080p!)... and after the video, a detailed write-up of exactly what’s going on!

Shortly after WOZ version 3.0 software came out, quite a few owners – including myself – noticed strange behavior in the gameplay behavior of their Winged Monkey. One such symptom is that the monkey initially refuses to pick up the ball: the magnet grabs it, the monkey starts moving down, but before it’s halfway there it suddenly reverses and returns home... and the magnet releases the ball.

After three or four tries, it appears to start working normally again... but don’t be fooled, because it’s not!

Jersey Jack Pinball has just released a new software update for their The Wizard of Oz pinball machine, upgrading the former (and slightly buggy) v1.23 up to v1.24. No, it doesn't sound like much, but as usual there's a ton of new stuff packed into a .01 increment - including the mini-wizard mode, Battle the Witch!

This is a "Full" update, meaning you'll have to download a 3.6 gigabyte ISO file and copy it onto a minimum 8gb bootable USB stick, which will then automatically image its contents to the game's SSD. You can download the update here (make sure it's 3,872,329,728 bytes in size), and since the process is rather more involved than a "Delta" update, check out the official instructions on how to prepare everything here. If there's a need for it, I could prepare a tutorial on how to perform a Full update, much as I did for Delta updates.

Update December 23, 2013: JJP has published a delta patch update to version 1.25, fixing a few bugs! The changelog for both versions is included below:

Okay, seriously... when I got my Wizard of Oz last July, I couldn’t for the life of me find the keys to unlock the backbox. You see, on my three new Stern pinballs, both sets of keys were zip-tied to the shooter rod on the outside of the game – and with my WOZ, that’s exactly where I found the coin door keys. Since unlike a Stern there’s nothing of significance in the backbox that would need separate protecting, perhaps to be efficient JJP decided to use one set of keys for both locks – and so, I tried the coin door keys in the backbox... and presto, they fit!

But, they wouldn’t turn. On my Sterns, the wrong key doesn’t even fit into the other lock, so I concluded that JJP had indeed decided to use one lock, but someone had mistakenly installed the wrong one in my game. What a huge problem!

And that’s when I made a phone call to Jersey Jack Pinball technical support (namely the ever-helpful Lloyd), who calmly described the actual location of the backbox keys on a little hook inside the coin door. Apparently, where Williams/Bally had always put them.

After ending the call with face glowing red, I humbly unlocked the coin door and – sure enough – there they were. Mocking me. I’d been in and out of the coin door numerous times, using the buttons mere inches below, had even photographed the entire area – and yet, I’d somehow never once taken notice of a dangling set of keys.

In my defense, I’ve never owned a Williams/Bally game before... and it could be that from my angle the shiny keys merely blended into the similarly shiny portion of the coin mechanism... and I’m sure that if the coin door keys hadn’t fit into the backbox keyhole, I would’ve looked harder. But whatever the reason, I did miss them – and although this all happened months ago, from comments it would appear that I’m not the only new WOZ owner who has experienced this “moment of inattentiveness”, which is why I’m now providing the photos above.

The backbox keys are right there – seriously!

As promised, here is today’s second gameplay video for JJP’s Wizard of Oz pinball running new software version 1.22, this time featuring Reverse Flippers mode! The production quality’s definitely better on this one than the last – I think I’m finally starting to get some of these settings tweaked...

Enjoy, and be sure to leave a comment!