Counter Narratives

Taking a break from our normal cadence to highlight a submission that came to us from Stemage (you may remember him as the audio/music guy for Jersey Jack's Avatar: The Battle for Pandora). It's a recording of one of his bands (The Arkadian) doing an 80s metal rendition of the theme to Banzai Run at MAGFest 2026, and it's arguably the best version of the song I've ever heard. Stemage leads on guitar, and he wails.

They're looking for other songs to cover (they've also done Monster Bash and Swords of Fury) in hopes of putting together a full set one day. If you have a classic pinball song you'd like to see done up in 80s metal fashion, send me a note, and I'll pass it along!

And if you want a more traditional Song of the Week pick — here's Silversun Pickups, "The Wreckage", another I've had on repeat for a few weeks (and scope the Jack Black cameo), but that I don't know if I'll get to feature here.

Last week, we published our piece on the possibility of a Dungeon Crawler Carl pinball machine, and since then, the pinball community seems to have caught DCC fever. People are discovering the books (and audiobooks), connecting over existing fandom, and getting genuinely excited about a DCC pin. Even outside of pinball fan communities, I see people fired up about this one.

And it's a rare kind of excitement. This isn't Pokémon fans learning how much a modern pinball machine costs and backing off. This is book nerds who know what a pin costs and want one anyway, because it's a theme that speaks to them. I don't know if I've ever seen this kind of nearly universal positive reaction to a rumored pinball IP. I've also seen a lot of people expressing real purchase intent — not the "I'd buy that" passing internet comment kind, but the "how do I get on a list for this" and "I just contacted my distributor" kind. I even put myself on an interest list with Mad Pinball, just in case.

Whoever has this IP, every signal I can see (our own website traffic included) says it has a ton of potential.

Most people seem to agree it feels like a Barrels of Fun pick. Lending some fuel to the fire are multiple photos of Barrels game designer Karl DeAngelo dressed up as the main character from the books for Halloween. I do want to stress that there's been no confirmation that Barrels has the IP. In fact, I received an anonymous tip that DCC is not Barrels — but the tipster didn't respond when I tried to get more information.

What's most exciting to me about a DCC pin (besides genuinely enjoying my read of the first book) is that it challenges the predominant story of what makes good pinball IP. DCC isn't a nostalgia property. It doesn't have a movie or a TV show (yet). In the grand scheme of licensable franchise entertainment, it's barely a blip on the radar. But if the pinball community can get this excited about a theme like this, what else would they get excited about that we're not even considering — because our collective frame of reference is so narrow? Between DCC and the early success of Pokémon, what this tells me is there's room in pinball for new ideas and non-traditional buyers. We don't have to live in the nostalgia cycle forever.

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Buried in the latest Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PinCast was a detailed look at Dutch Pinball's decision to part ways with Melvin Williams and wind down the DPX entity.

As the podcast hosts put it, the split was mostly driven by Dutch Pinball's new investors. After meeting with Melvin, they weren't interested in producing RAZA — nor in splitting profits with him under existing agreements. The tariff situation on US-bound games added further uncertainty. Melvin was given an ultimatum: accept new terms or leave. So he left.

In conversations with the PinCast team, Melvin said he was "blindsided" by how it happened. He'd known about the new investors and welcomed the capital injection, but the new terms were so unfavorable, he couldn't accept them. He said he'd "never forgive the way he was forced out." The DPX brand, which Melvin and Barry created together, appears to be finished — Melvin said he wouldn't allow another game to be produced under it.

The American Pinball offer came fast. Brian Vincent reached out just 16 minutes after Melvin posted his departure announcement. Melvin was keen to stress he didn't leave DPX because of American Pinball — the offer came after. As creative director, he'll oversee all game designs (his own and from other designers), working mostly remotely but traveling to the Palatine, Illinois, factory as needed. He and Brian plan to do a seminar at the Texas Pinball Festival to talk about the new American Pinball.

Meanwhile, Dutch Pinball says existing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland machines will continue shipping, though toppers face an additional delay of up to three months due to a supplier issue with the display board used for the Cheshire Cat's eyes.

Multimorphic has established a bit of a pattern for announcing new releases at the Texas Pinball Festival. Not this year, according to their latest official update:

They're plenty busy otherwise — batch 4 of Portal game kits is underway, and a new code update (v1.2.3.0) brings enhanced multiball and jackpot mechanics, adjusted scoring, and bug fixes. They'll have a more relaxed TPF presence this year, showcasing existing P3 games and taking pre-orders for their PinGlass+ anti-reflective glass.

Speaking of counter-narratives — remember all the people who said Pokémon wouldn't work? That it's just a kids theme? Seems like it's working just fine.

The game is rumored to be sold through well into later this year, with Stern already committed to multiple production runs. Pros are starting to hit locations now (I'm already seeing four in our location tracker), and we've seen a noisy spike in secondary market prices for the LE, with talk of prices hitting $30,000+ for a single game.

About those secondary LE prices — it's really hard to tell what's real and what's podcaster/distributor hype. I see a lot of people talking about crazy numbers, but I don't see a ton of receipts. The closest I've found is a confirmed eBay sale for $20,102.01. On Pinside, the median asking price for an LE has already dropped from a high of $32,000 to $15,500 (not far above MSRP), and there's been only one confirmed sale — the seller was asking about $21,000 OBO, but the final amount wasn't disclosed.

With the exception of a few one-offs in the Pokémon collector space, I have a hard time seeing LE secondary prices reaching the heights of some early predictions. Maybe for very specific numbered machines tied to very specific characters (after all, it only takes one buyer to make a market). Otherwise, it seems a bit suspect.

One of our original writers, Brian Saa, is back with a fun one — a ranking of music videos that prominently feature pinball machines. Brian scores each video arcade-style and crowns a Grand Champion (spoiler: it's Plastilina Mosh's "Human Disco Ball," a video about the emotional bond between a player and their favorite pin). Along the way he surfaces some surprising picks, including a Blackstreet video that's somehow tied for the 29th most expensive music video of all time, and a Yello video that gets disqualified for committing crimes against a Williams machine. A perfect rabbit hole for your Friday.

Congrats to Daniele Acciari for his fifth major championship win at INDISC, and to Jason Zahler for taking the 2025-26 North American Pinball Championship. Big kudos to our own Noah Crable, who seemingly came from nowhere to finish second at NAPC, knocking out the vaunted Eric Stone in the semifinals. We'll have more complete write-ups from Matt Owen soon.

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