Flooding the Zone with ABBA

It’s TPF week, so we have a lot to cover. Subscribe for free to see all the good stuff.

Also, note that we have a giveaway this week: two Sunday tickets to the Midwest Gaming Classic in April.

• Song of the Week

• Pinball News of the Week

  • American’s BBQ Pinball

  • Pinball Brothers Teaser

  • Ninja Eclipse Updates

  • New Rush Tutorial

  • Foo Fighters Accessories

  • TiltBob Road Trip Teaser

• MGC Ticket Giveaway

• Creator Highlights of the Week

• Product(s) of the Week

• Topper of the Week

• Poll of the Week

Song of the Week

I was going to go for the obvious pick with ABBA, but then Slash appeared at the Oscars for a rendition of “I’m Just Ken” from the Barbie movie, which feels like a sign that Jersey Jack needs to make a Barbie pin.

Pinball News of the Week

American Pinball Launches Barry O’s Barbecue Challenge

The big news of the week, which transpired just after we published our last issue of TWIP, was the launch of American Pinball’s new game, Barry O’s Barbecue Challenge. It’s a polarizing release for many folks in the community (BBQ? Barry O? Huh?). But kudos to the AP team for bringing another release to the market and getting games out to locations within a few days of the announcement.

Early buzz on gameplay has largely seemed positive. There was an IE Pinball stream of the game last night, which might be the highest-quality video of the game to date.

The business strategy of the release (unlicensed game, focus on an obscure pinball designer) is admittedly weird, but I’m looking forward to getting some flips on it at some point soon.

Our roundup post includes more details about the game, including photos, design credits, and early gameplay footage.

Pinball Brothers Tease New Pin; is it ABBA?

The next Pinball Brothers release has long been rumored to be a “famous European band.” Over the weekend, they teased on Facebook that their next game would be announced on April 24th. Read our speculative guess for more details, but all signs point to an ABBA pin.

Since then, the Pinball Brothers have effectively “flooded the zone” with all sorts of content that is not stylistically aligned with what one would think of as synonymous with the band ABBA. For example, a Stranger Things-inspired website with questionable use of AI art. Or a short video clip of what may be a mech in the upcoming game with the caption “In the pipe, 5 by 5,” a line from the movie Aliens.

So, who knows? I still think an ABBA pin would be fun, though.

Turner Pinball Introduces New Version of Ninja Eclipse

Turner Pinball is back with an updated version of their first game, Ninja Eclipse. The company made some major changes to the game after receiving feedback from the pinball community at Pinball Expo last fall. Notable changes include moving away from the slimline cabinet to a traditional full-size cabinet, complete with a coin door. They also lowered the price from $9,777 to $6,994 for copies of their First Edition, which is limited to 100 units. The game is expected to start shipping in the Fall of 2024 and will be playable at the Texas Pinball Festival.

Another note of interest - Jon Norris consulted on the rules design, who I believe has not had a public game credit since 2001’s High Roller Casino. That’s cool!

New Rush Tutorial

We published a new game tutorial on Kineticist from rules maven Noah Crable, covering Stern’s 2022 release, Rush. It cleared up a lot about how to approach the game for myself, specifically around the various song modes, combos, and multiballs. I now understand what the different colored records mean and how everything combines to generate some monster point totals.

Foo Fighters Accessories Announced

Stern announced their full line of Foo Fighters pinball accessories, including topper, shooter rod, expression lights, side armor, and art blades.

The topper comes in at a cool $1,999, and that point seemed to drive most of the community discussions on release. I thought it integrated well with the game’s art, and the animatronic FooBot head is fun, executed similarly to the Black Knight: Sword of Rage topper from a few years ago.

They also pushed the game's 1.0 code, which includes two new multiballs (Combotron Multiball and Toy Time Multiball), a new song, and new callouts.

New Teaser Footage From TiltBob Pinball

TiltBob Pinball released a new teaser video of their upcoming first game, Road Trip. The company is the brainchild of Bob Nies, who is known for producing a custom game based on the movie Elf.

They don’t show everything in the game, notably mechs from the upper portion of the playfield, however the pop bumper nest looks to be on some sort of rotating platter.

There’s a ton going on in this game. It’s a widebody; the shot paths are unique, and there are pop-up cows. While highly creative, some of these things do give me pause for a new boutique manufacturer at this scale. I wonder if the game couldn’t benefit from some editing prior to final production. That said, there are similarities to some of the choices made in Elf, and by all accounts, that game played well.

I wish them luck with the build and look forward to trying it soon.

Product(s) of the Week

Barrels of Fun Bring Back Pinball Armor

Barrels of Fun has brought back Pinball Armor, a neat product for protecting your game during transportation or storage. Some of you may be familiar with an earlier version of this product that was sold on Pinside and elsewhere years ago. From my understanding, BoF purchased the trademarks from the former manufacturer and made a bunch of improvements in this iteration.

They are basically padded slip covers offered in various configurations. I certainly could have used the machine wrap when moving my copy of Labyrinth the other week.

Pinball Kids Book

Pinball Enthusiast and STEM teacher Tanner Walters is pulling together a Kickstarter for an interactive STEM sliding board book for kids about pinball physics, mechanisms, and having fun with the game. He’s looking to raise $3,250 and has already hit that goal with just over 20 days to go in the campaign.

Topper of the Week

Don’s Pinball Podcast is morphing into a boutique topper maker before our very eyes. He recently released a prototype JAWS topper and it looks pretty darn impressive. He said he “built it in Bambu Slicer and Tinkercad with some modified files I found online plus ones I created.” It’s underlit with LED lights, and he’s going to be adding interactive lights for the JAWS logo, which will be tied into the game’s GI. It will install exactly like a Stern OEM topper.

Don is currently making these to order. It sounds like pricing will be $500 for initial orders, but contact him for exact pricing ([email protected]).

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