Lions & Tigers & Bears!

Big Buck Hunter HD Reloaded Mini – first impressions

I’m not a “video” guy. I played Centipede in college (and was good enough to compete in tournaments). I played ColecoVision Dragster when it first came out. Heck I remember playing an Olympics style game on my buddy’s parents Apple computer around 1980 or so – monochrome screen and stick figures! Even though I own a modern gaming console – I just have ZERO desire to play it. It’s so bad that I bought a Nintendo Switch, but despite also purchasing a half dozen games for it, I ONLY play Pinball on it and ONLY when I’m travelling (OK, so that means roughly never).

I look at my “barely broken in” Switch and wonder “what’s wrong with me?” I thought that at this point I was hopeless when it came to playing any vids – until recently. About a month ago, I stumbled across the BBH (Big Buck Hunter) video/arcade thread on Pinside. That’s it! I was sure of it. I had finally found something I liked in a video format! I had played it extensively at the local “Main Event” family entertainment center. I really, really enjoyed it. Why not! It’s got guns – another love of mine.

So, in typical fashion, it was off to the races to learn as much about these games as I could. Could you buy them new? Were they available on the used market? How did you get games on them? Where were all the dealers? What kind of variety existed in cabinets/games?

It didn’t take long to get all the answers. They could be purchased new AND due to the COVID outbreak, the company that makes them (Raw Thrills) had ventured deeply into the home arcade market. You could by a more compact version of the ones you see in bars and FECs. Their new offering was called “Big Buck Hunter Reloaded – Mini”. The BBHR mini came in a dedicated cabinet with a built in 42″ monitor and 2 stacked backlit headers. The T-molding on the edges of the cabinet were backlit as well – a first in the industry and an eye catcher in a bar for sure.

I discovered that Kingpin Games was the most frequent poster on the subject of BBH on the Pinside website. They were knowledgeable, friendly and had an assortment of used games as well. Convinced that I wanted one, I reached out to the owner (thanks Christopher!) via Pinside mail. Through a series of conversations that went from “send me a used one” all the way to “changed my mind, how much is new again …?” I finally settled on buying a new Mini from Kingpin Games and having it shipped in the “online” ready condition.

So how does it all work? Once in place, the content management is seamless. Getting it all working properly is not. This is the NOT an issue on the Kingpin side – it’s all on the Raw Thrills side of the equation and we will cover that later. No matter, Christopher helped me through it like all great distributors do. Raw Thrills is just a little new at the home market and the instructions, owners manual, Coin-up website, Big Buck website ALL leave a lot to be desired in presenting a seamless onboarding UI/UX for the end consumer. The good news? The product is simply fantastic! I’ve owned it exactly one day and these are my early takes on it.

I’ll keep the function/content management explanation simple. If you own a functioning cabinet – new or used, there are a base set of games installed that you get to keep “forever”. Don’t need to be online to play, don’t need to pay for them ever again. These are the base games on the new BBH HD Mini

• Whitetail Deer
• Moose
• Elk
• Kudu
• Wildebeest

If you want to permanently own ANY OTHER content, you will need to buy it outright. And, it’s not cheap. One add-on pack can be $1,300 per pack. By the time you buy the base game and all the add-on packs, your total outlay will be around $10K. That’s not THAT big of a deal seeing that a new limited production Pinball is around the same price. See the following list for exactly how much per add-on pack they currently cost (approx):

• Wild Pack 1 (3 animals) $750
• Wild Pack 2 (Buckzilla and Zombie Deer) $750
• Duck Dynasty $650
• Zombie – Doe of the Dead $1300
• Monster Island – $1,300
• Terminator Salvation $1,300

Now, say you don’t want to spend all that money up front to “own” the game packs … BUT you do want to play this additional premium content. No problem, just take your system “on-line” for the price of $39.99 per month and you get access to ALL of it, Terminator, Zombies, Duck Dynasty, Extra Animal packs, Bonus stuff – all of it. Again, seems like a steep price but with the difference between a base “Mini” game and all the add-on packs being around $4K … that adds up to almost 10 YEARS of subscription fees! In other words it takes around 10 years to “break even” if you buy all the incremental game packs vs subscribing monthly. In this scenario, it makes sense for more reasons than just financial. Why not “rent” all that premium content at just $39.99 a month and then decide what games you actually love? If, after a year, you find yourself playing that particular game often – buy it outright, or buy several. Then you can (if you wish) turn off the monthly subscription.

So to summarize, a new Big Buck Hunter Reloaded – Mini will run you around $6K for the cabinet loaded with the base games. You MUST however, subscribe for at least 12 months after purchasing the unit (doesn’t even need to be 12 consecutive months). During that 12 month subscription period, you will have access to ALL of the BBH premium content! Terminator, Zombies, Extra Animals, all will be available to play – as often and as many times as you like – all for $39.99 month. Note that one of the only things you can’t do is to participate in online tournaments. These are exclusive to operating locations only – not home use machines. AFTER that minimum 12 months subscription requirement has been met, you can move your machine to an “off-line” status, stop paying the $39.99 per month and simply keep the base games that ship with the unit.

So what’s it like to own one of these? Cool. Very, very cool. And fun too. Very, very fun! BBH seems to have a HUGE crossover appeal. Both men and women are drawn to it’s simple, challenging, easy to understand and hard to master gameplay. It’s even got some humor baked in too- corny but in a good way. I finally got mine into position in the Loft and booted up to a playable screen and I literally could not get my wife to stop playing. She rarely plays anything in the Loft. She claims ownership of 3 or 4 of the 40+ Pinball machines in there but hardly ever plays them. To see her connect so quickly with this game was interesting.

I’m not going to go into gameplay because, there are tons of videos on YouTube to watch or you can just drive down to almost any local bar and try it for yourself. I will, however, share some thoughts on the content and a few ideas (small) for improvement. Let’s start with the user experience. The game is first and foremost a money making entertainment machine – built for use in bars, barcades, family entertainment centers, etc. The legacy of that design and its rapid move to the home environment brings with it a few areas for improvement:

• Pause. There is none. There needs to be. When playing a game I might get a call, need to use the restroom, etc. Home users need to be able to pause the game and/or quit the game gracefully.
• Sleep. There is no setting that I could find to take the game from full “on”, attract mode, etc. to a sleep mode (Monitor off, attract lights/sounds off, but PC running in low power). The cabinet fans on these sound like the props from a King Air – if the game could drop to low power, the fans could lower velocity accordingly

Buying this unit for home use starts with a homeowner looking to add some fun to their gameroom. They likely already know the gameplay. They also come to this moment with some expectations. I buy the game, it gets delivered (holy cow it’s huge), I plug it in, it works great – all my family has fun that night playing it. Well … that not exactly how it goes for most buyers and this is the section where I’ll point out what is likely obvious to the RT team and things that probably exist in their backlog of features to fix/add.

Before I start, and you read that I’m being hyper critical, understand this: I bought one, I love it and I think it’s a great entertainment value! This is feedback and it’s free … just about what it’s worth 🙂

First the things that Raw Thrills can’t control (but I can)

• It’s awkward just to receive it. I volunteered to go pick mine up at a trucking depot. HUGE mistake. Holy Toledo – it towered over my F150 sitting in the bed. My straps were barely long enough to go from one side of the truck to the other as they crossed over the top of the outer box. You also can ONLY lift it from the bottom pallet (read forklift). As I drove home on I40, never exceeding 40MPH because I feared it would blow out/over, I realized that I did not own a forklift. How the heck was I going to get this thing off my truck? Note to self – never pick up a game like this again. Once on the ground, getting it off the base pallet would be challenging enough, but when it sits 3 feet in the air in the bed of a truck, it become nearly impossible
• It IS huge. In a way that is more awkward that just “big” it is over 41″ at it’s widest point. This means MANY folks will struggle just getting it IN the house! I did. Sure you can turn it sideways to fit through a 36″ door, but be careful of the gun wires – they extend even further. This option was out for me because I had to make a hallway turn immediately after entering the door. Now what?

Now to the things that Raw Thrills could improve

• Instructions for removing the Monitor and ad header. My solution to getting it in the house was simple – I had to remove the Monitor and the “reloaded” header. No choice. First was the hallway turn, then the fact that although I have a wide staircase, it was only 1″ wider than the 42″ presented by the BBH mini. Even using my Escalera, it would be impossible to get it up the stairs without destroying it. Having instructions taped to the monitor on how to remove those 2 pieces would have been a lifesaver. They are VERY easy to remove (just 4 bolts each!), once you know how. After removing the bolts each item has just 2 plugs to unplug. I removed BOTH of them in under 10 minutes.
• Home Use “Start Here” button. Just like the Staples “easy” button. Whatever steps you want me to perform to get this up and running need to start in ONE spot. The good folks at Stern Pinball have recently added a “guided start” process to getting your new Pinball game up and running for home use. The analogy is close. It’s a commercial machine but now it’s in my home, so what do I do. Stern Pinball provides both a written and display based instruction set to get you up to speed quickly. I understand that they don’t (as of yet) have to deal with connectivity issues like RT does, but the process call out remains the same. The “start here” button should take you all the way to setting up a Coin-up account, swiping your credit card, to going into the “online” settings to request to “update software” – to a screen that asks you to power cycle the game. There were “bits and pieces” of this process baked in, but not the entire thing end to end.
• Home use FAQ website, sub-domain. Carve out a branded and specifically targeted area for your new home users. The onboarding and user experience is different enough that it’s needed. No worries about fracturing your brand impact – in fact you may expand it. The RT and BBH website is so operator focused today that it offers me almost nothing in the way or information or service.
  • Show me how to get my machine online, show me the pricing for purchasing add-on game packs.
  • Demonstrate how the home user can run local or on-site tournaments (can they?).
  • Show me the game packs that ship as native to the game (base games) vs the premium “online only” content
  • Share with me what I will need to do at the highest level to prepare for “getting online” day (the day the machine arrives for most folks). Name, address, credit card to swipe “right on the machine” (this was foreign to me but very cool), Wifi connectivity
  • Explain to folks “how” the connectivity works – weather it’s Wi-Fi, Ethernet or Cellular. How often does it connect? How much data transfers? Do games “stream”? Some folks have fragile internet infrastructure and are curious about these things
  • A heavy dose of detective work is needed to find this info today. Too many emails, texts for information that today is “known” by the RT team and is fairly static so no risk in publishing it
• Specs. Or, in long form “specifications”. Get them documented. Details, details and more details. This is a HUGE machine (yes, even the mini) that was originally designed for a commercial market – now going into a home that is probably averaging 2,800 square feet. A home is also much more chopped up than a commercial space. I had a dozen questions about the size of the machine that could only be answered by other owners. One day at RT spent with a technical writer and an engineer and you would have a great set of engineering drawings that could be posted to the website as downloadable PDFs. (if you’re a potential buyer, see my measures)
• Fans. Or, as I affectionately call them – turboprops. Good lord they are LOUD and I mean noisy loud. In a bar, you are never going to hear them. In my gameroom, they scream above the low hum of my Pinball machines and are very noticeable. I’m not sure if thermal management is built into the cabs or not, but if it is, there are no user adjustable settings that I could find and I never hear the fan spin down (see sleep function above)
• Words matter. Brand this home experience. Go all in.
  • BBH @Home
  • Home Hunter
  • MY BBH
  • Big Buck Basements
    • Pick a name/tag line to brand the Home User experience as unique from the Operator experience, then …
• Scour the Home Use machines that you are sending out (force the identification of use type at point of purchase) for any verbiage AFTER the “start here” button that refers to an “Operator”. Take it out. I am a home owner. Home user. Homeboy (sorry – carried away). It felt very odd to have the congratulations screen pop up that said “Congratulations, your Operator ID # is 1234
• Forward/Cancel button. Just like a double flipper move during bonus calculation in the Pinball world. RT should provide a small target at the ending of gameplay segments – shoot it and the screen moves to the next segment. If you don’t want to see your score pop up, shoot the little target and move on. Don’t want to see the next game explained or hear the “humor intro” – just shoot that little target and skip it. This would allow home users to move a little faster through gameplay.

It’s fun. It’s addictive. It’s Big Buck Hunter HD!

OK, enough feedback. Let’s talk fun factors!

• Games are pretty “time predictable” – nice change vs a Pinball game that can be insanely long (45 mins) to absurdly short (2 mins). BBH has a fairly predictable amount of time that it takes to get through a hunt/game and when time is something all of us are desperate to manage better, this is a nice feature vs Pinball
• Graphics = engagement. Unlike Pinball, the screen on BBH is something designed as the main feature to LOOK AT. The assets are rendered beautifully. Just stunning work. Lifelike animations and natural animal movement make it feel more “real” than it obviously is. There is also a level of engagement that steps it up a notch vs “most” of my games (with a few exceptions like Stern Star Trek, Jurassic Park, JJP Wizard of Oz). You really feel like you’ve been transported to a different world, if even for just a few minutes. All that animation in HD – close to your face is pretty engaging – and always blood pumping exciting.
• Approachability. I can’t tell you how many folks have visited the Pinball Loft and seen 40 games in one spot, then encouraged by me to play some – just back away in trepidation. Afraid of not knowing what to do. Maybe worried they will embarrass themselves. Not sure but I DON’T see that with BBH. Most everyone has played it and would love to play it more. My wife, case in point.
• Sound is well done, well executed. The sounds on BBH although subtle, are delivered well, never annoying and “fit” the scenes well. The new mini has a top mounted speaker that sounds great and a few subs buried in the base of the cabinet. Great sounds adds to a great experience
• Lighting is killer. Maybe retina killer but killer nonetheless! I’ve never seen anyone attempt to light up T-molding but the RT team has pulled it off. I’m sure that this helps a ton in a bar environment to attract players but it has a valuable purpose in home arcade as well. It demonstrates how many players are playing and who turn is up. I went into the menus and reduced the output of the LEDs to 75% to lower the amount of light scatter hitting my face when I’m trying to shoot. Still … I like them, a lot.
• Cabinet art “works”. What a challenge the team had to put: Terminator, Zombies, Duck Dynasty and Animals all on the same cabinet art package. To be fair, they “cheated” by having 2 backlit headers, but hey, it actually looks fantastic, in a step right up, guess your weight at the carnival sort of way – I kid … it’s better than that and I really could not offer advice on how to improve it. Coming from a Fine Art grad, that’s saying something!
• More realistic = better. There have been some real positive cosmetic changes to make the game appear more realistic as well. A simple example are the guns. They now have some wood grain on them. The goal will never be to “make them look like guns” – given today’s climate I’m surprised they are not shaped like pillows, but when the guns used to be solid colors (orange and green plastic), they just made the game look cheap. Not any more. This game says “quality”
• Space in place. Once you pick a “spot” for your mini – it works. I know I’ve gone on and on about the shear size/weight of it but that is more about loading, unloading, moving it into position. Once “there”, it’s not too bad at all. It’s less than 3 feet deep (much shallower than a Pinball game) and with the secondary BBH header on top it reaches around 90″. I get it that for some basements, that may be too tall. You can remove the top header and bring the OAH down to just around 77″ a much more ceiling friendly height.

This is where my (current) experience ends. Although I could speculate or pontificate more on BBH, I think I’ll just go play some more! Bottom line for me is that I’m very pleased with my purchase, I’m super excited to play more and discover all the game has to offer. I also think the game is a value as it’s priced. The initial cabinet cost is reasonable – even though I had the same negative reaction as others did when I saw the $39.99 monthly subscription price point, I now think it’s not only fair, but a great way to be introduced to all of the premium content in the MOST inexpensive way. To be honest, if I dislike it I can simply buy all of the add-ons and STILL be under the price of several of my Pinball games. I love the variety that Big Buck Hunter brings to my gameroom AND the instant brand recognition as well. For my non-Pinball friends it will be a welcome way to add some fun to their visits. Buy one from Christopher at Kingpin Games – I did!

Collected Measurements:

• Monitor width 39 15/16”
• Reloaded header width 41 3/8”
• Big Buck header width 40 3/16” at widest 
• Total height all components 89 5/8” (measured above buck horn, from floor with casters installed)
• Height to just the Reloaded header 76 13/16” (Measured from floor with casters installed)
• Cabinet width 25 1/8”
• Cabinet depth at deepest 30 3/4”
• Cabinet height from floor (casters installed) 75 7/8”
• Cabinet height to bottom of monitor (casters installed) 42 3/4”
• Casters add 1 7/8” to OAH

Man oh man … I couldn’t just leave it at that! We spent the evening playing the game and just had a ball! What fun to watch my wife and daughter play. Getting too close to the screen. Not really aiming. Not pumping to reload. Crowding each others space. Then – each realizing over a few games how to get better and be more accurate. Haven’t laughed like that in a while. Chris and I played through the entire Terminator Delta series and were exhausted when we finished. Great game but it will wear you out!

Figured I would add a few more “gameplay” comments and some pictures to show just how much fun the game is. Here is my off-the-cuff general gameplay commentary:

• For sure the home use version needs a “pause” button! We had 3 or 4 occasions last night to use it. (needed a drink, restroom break, etc.)
• The game is not meant to be “easy” – throughout all the various content I found that as you progressed the shots got more challenging and demanded more accuracy and speed – good for keeping the game challenging in a home environment long term
• The animal movements are not as “natural” as I first noticed, but …who cares? It’s “real enough” and although I thought I’d mention it, there is no negative impact to gameplay
• I enjoyed the bonus material more than I thought. It tends to get a bad rap on the discussion sites but I like it – Beavers in Duck Dynasty especially!
• Would be awesome to add MORE mini-gun capability to the Terminator game – especially for home environment. My arms are sore today!
• Pacing between games, scoring screens is pretty good. I’m impatient so would appreciate a little faster transitions, but I did not get frustrated as I finished a session, got my score and moved to another. An idea that would help would be similar to what happens in Pinball – the double flipper “cancel/forward” function. Raw Thrills could provide a small on-screen target that when clicked, cycled the screen forward to the next one.