A New Star War

Going for a slightly different pick for Song of the Week, following a week spent in the woods and drafting off the energy of a new pinball announcement.

New York City’s Fcukers (pronounced like you think) are dance electronic music born from indie rock roots (two of the original members of the group, Jackson Walker Lewis and Ben Scharf, formed Fcukers after leaving indie rock outfit Spud Cannon).

Play Me has been described as early-2000s British house/drum and bass, but infused with a uniquely American, Gen Z party sleaze, and I’m here for it, as I’ve had it on loop all week while tracking the latest Star Wars developments.

It’s worth noting that this release sees Fcukers teaming up with Kenny Beats on production. Beats, while prolific in his own right (working with artists like Vince Staples, Remi Wolf, and JPEGMafia), is notable here for having elevated the work of one of our favorite releases of 2024, IDLES TANGK. We featured their song Dancer, here early in 2024.

It occurs to me that some readers may not understand the reference used in this week’s header image and issue title, so here’s the source clip.

On Tuesday of this week, we saw the first teaser trailer for Stern’s heavily rumored new Star Wars cornerstone release, designed by John Borg.

It didn’t give us a whole lot to work with, other than confirming that it would be a Star Wars game and that it has its own non-movie-based subtitle, Fall of the Empire. Other pieces that you may or may not notice are that the trailer does not use any John Williams music (at least, the more iconic bits, as the trailer for 2017’s Star Wars release did), and the logo is styled after those used mostly in conjunction with licensed Star Wars toys.

Since then, Stern’s Jack Danger (Dead Flip) has been streaming older Star Wars games. First, it was the 1992 Data East version (also designed by John Borg), then the 1997 Sega Star Wars Trilogy game, designed by Joe Balcer and Joe Kaminkow.

In both streams, toys from the upcoming game were teased, a Jaba the Hut figure and a Millennium Falcon.

In April of this year, we speculated in our King Kong review that, given recent trends in Stern projects, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Stern explore “original-ish storytelling” within a familiar IP universe like Star Wars, rather than rehashing original trilogy content that was already mined for the 2017 game, and really, all the ones before that one (except for The Mandalorian).

The game was once rumored to be a straight episode 4-6 based game, and while this could wind up being true, I still think we’ll wind up in a place where it’s maybe 75% original trilogy content focused most heavily on episodes 5 and 6, and then 25% new content that either extends beyond episode 6 or goes deeper on some moments from 5 and 6 that aren’t covered the same way in the films.

Besides recent history (Jurassic Park, Dungeons & Dragons, King Kong), where Stern explores similar concepts, I’m not sure from a licensing and branding standpoint why you’d go through the trouble of giving the game its own name beyond Star Wars, unless it were also going to be differentiated in some way from a strictly film-based product. Adding to the speculation, Jack Danger commented on one of the recent live streams, where he noted that there were “pockets of stories to tell” in these existing stories.

Regardless, we’ll know a lot more next week, and Media Day is scheduled for September 10th, where I plan to get some hands-on time with the game.

One of the many rumors circulating this week, which I found both interesting and equally confusing, was that the new Star Wars game would not be made available to European distributors, at least initially. Speculation for motive ranged from Spike 3 electronics certification in the EU to budgetary challenges and tariff-fueled market disruptions.

After checking in with official reps from Stern Pinball, I learned that licensing challenges are, in fact, the primary complication with this release. The licenseholders, Lucasfilm and Disney, have changed their approach to handling licensing agreements, allowing individual regions and territories, such as Europe, to have more input on products made available to their markets. While most global regions have opted into this particular opportunity, some have opted out for the moment due to a combination of factors, including economic considerations and alignment with region-specific business goals.

Stern says they are continuing to work on distribution expansion, with the presumed goal of eventually including markets like Europe in this release.

For customers who may be affected, I encourage you to contact your local distributor to express your interest in the game.

Paid supporters received a new update this week to our Moving Units series, which tracks the sales and distribution progress of the 2024 and 2025 game releases, and where I get to put on my market analyst hat and read the tea leaves of what the numbers are telling us about the state of the market and progress of individual manufacturers. This edition both confirms and counters some of the dominant community narratives regarding game traction, painting a picture of a challenging environment in 2025.

Ryan and Scott from Pinball Map run a regular series that highlights one new or interesting pinball location each week. This week, Ryan writes about Camping Capfun.

I have not been camping in many years. But that’s not for lack of buying. Every REI sale is a chance to expand my collection of camping gear. I have a decent collection now, all in pristine condition. I have driveable spots tagged on a map, and I have lots of flashlights, and I have fairly rich fantasies about sleeping nearly under the stars. So what’s stopping me? As another camp-less summer passes (and a labor day sale looms), there may be opportunities for you (though not me) to pitch one final tent. Will it be along a back country trail deep in the Angeles National Forest, or perhaps nestled up to Rock Creek Lake in the Sequoias? Luckily you don’t need to decide. You just need to shut up and listen. Pinball Map tracks campgrounds. Campgrounds with pinball machines. There are 124 of them on the map right now (and none of them have more than two machines!). Looking for the perfect place to rough it? Well, this isn’t it. Because campgrounds with pinball machines are, by definition, not too rough. They have cabins and pools and rec rooms.

There are many alluring campgrounds with pinball throughout the U.S. But you’re reading the Location of the Week, which has incredibly high standards, and to select the best we must head to Europe, which apparently has a thing called 4-star campgrounds. The campgrounds in Europe are off the richter. There’s one in Czechia, called Autocamp Na Kopci, that has a full Mad Max play structure and stage (complete with stacks of speakers). France has 17 campgrounds with pinball machines. For the most part they all look gorgeous, tucked along rivers and lakes and oceans, with views of rolling hills dotted with forests. But la crème is perhaps Camping Capfun - Lac de Ribou, just outside the city of Cholet.

Camping Capfun has at least 4 pools, tons of humongous water slides, play structures that look like mini medieval villages, food service, games, performances, and some more. It’s basically an amusement park surrounded by cabins and places to park your RV. The two machines here are Aerosmith and Metallica (the older one). Realistically I don’t think I will ever make it here, and even if I did it might not technically break my camping dry spell, because I was talking about tent camping earlier. But this place looks amazing, and I think more places in the world should look like this.

Camping Capfun
All. Léon Mandin, Cholet 49300
Website

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