This Is What Awesome Looks Like: Deadpool Enters (And Leaves) The Barncade

In my "Rush Premium enters the Barncade" post, I mentioned that another game entered hot on the heels of Rush. That game was a used Deadpool Premium!

Deadpool was the second machine added to the collection since Godzilla in 2022, and only the third since Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle in November 2019. This pushed the current collection total back up to 13. The game had some cool mods already installed, including mirror blades and a topper. When this game popped up locally, I thought it would be a great addition to the collection because I had done well on it at the Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show, though in my first competitive pinball tournament at Ground Kontrol in Portland, I had came in third on Deadpool, which booted me from the tourney. This would be a good opportunity to learn the shots and rules in case I ever faced it in another tourney. The game was at the time #7 on Pinside's top 100 and was highly regarded by many people I had talked to. It seemed like a win to score this machine.

The first few flips were fun enough, but I soon became disenchanted with the game. The shots felt clunky, a far cry from my other recent games Godzilla and Rush. The Katana shot in particular rattled like crazy and balls rarely made it up the ramp to get locked. Other shots also felt really clunky. I didn't really like the layout, either. Designed by George Gomez, it felt inferior to his recent game, James Bond. Bond has much smoother shots and a far more interesting shot layout...in my opinion Bond is the better game.

Even worse was the implementation of the theme. I understand the fact that it is based on a comic book. I liked comic books - when I was 10 years old. The cartoony 8 bit style video and Little Deadpool wore on me pretty quickly. I questioned why I owned a game that seemed like it was designed for a 10 year old. Not a bad thing for a 10 year old (or a family with kids), but to me it just felt too juvenile. The topper was also meh.

I loved Zombie Yeti's artwork, and the callouts by Nolan North were hilarious, but couldn't save the game for me. I couldn't help feeling that had this been based on the movie license with Ryan Reynolds, featuring callouts and video from the movies (Deadpool 1&2), that it would have seemed more adult, and I probably could have forgiven the clunk and layout. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Sometimes games click with people, and sometimes games just don't click at all. As I played it less and less, I determined that I needed to move it on. Fortunately, after 6 months, a perfect trade came my way, and Deadpool exited into the hands of a happy new owner. The game I received in the trade will be the subject of another post, but the quick take is I absolutely love the new game and am enjoying it immensely, so despite some initial disappointment, I feel pretty good about the ultimate outcome that resulted from the original purchase of Deadpool.

That sums up the arrival, and subsequent departure, of Deadpool Premium. In my next post, I'll talk about the game that replaced it, and how my lineup continues to change...