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This week it's zzzahara — "Speedracer." I've been bopping my head to it for a few weeks now, and frankly, it felt right for this issue. The reasons will click later on. I like the video, too — a sort of DIY bootleg Speed Racer cartoon. The song's off zzzahara's latest album, Distant Lands, which, coincidentally, is also out today.

A few weeks back, Australian maker Daniel McKenzie went surprisingly viral after posting a video of his work-in-progress, custom-built Space Cadet pinball project. Ars Technica and The Verge both covered it (thanks to Ars for linking an old TWIP write-up of ours), and for a bit, it was everywhere. Chris Krentz seized the opportunity and reached out to Dan for an interview about the project, even getting his thoughts on the old deeproot whitewood for a Space Cadet–inspired pin. The full interview is on Kineticist. Best of luck with the project, Dan!

The latest entry in Michael Swanson's Nutter's Pinball Restoration Spotlight series is an interview with Sam, aka Rush Fan Pinball — another prolific pinball restorer and YouTuber. Learn how Sam got into pinball restoration, why he started his channel, and some of the lessons he's learned along the way in this excellent interview.

Well, we said we might do it after taking a controversial look at the worst video modes, and we followed through. solar_espeon looks at the other end of the spectrum with a ranking of the best video modes of the 1990s. This one was controversial too — but that's what makes subjective lists fun, right?

The new Kineticist has been live for a few weeks, and one of the features we shipped in the rebuild is ad-free browsing for paid TWIP subscribers. Every article, every page, no ads.

If you've been paying for TWIP, you already earned this. Here's how to turn it on:

Not a paid member yet? TWIP is free to read but not free to write — a paid subscription starts at $25/year, unlocks ad-free Kineticist, exclusive content, our Discord, and helps keep an independent pinball publication running. Most people join at $60/year.

Like most of pinball, we're officially on Sonic watch — the supposed upcoming release from Jersey Jack Pinball. I say "supposed" only because nothing official or public has confirmed the title, even if it's been hinted at and leaked ad nauseam. A few interesting things have happened since our last update, and I'm basically pulling these from the notes we'd put in our eventual launch article.

First, the playfield leaked. There's still a chance it's very well-done AI, but it's probably legit — and it confirms two of the bigger rumors: the fan layout, and that this is a game-focused Sonic, not a movie tie-in.

Second, Jersey Jack has a sense of humor. Their site serves up two different 404 pages: the normal one, and a custom version living at /pages/new-game-2026 that just reads "TILT — NICE TRY DETECTIVE." I cracked up when I found it. It's dumb, sure, but it's the kind of small touch you only bother with if you're paying attention — a playful wink aimed at the people who crawl manufacturer websites for clues (which, yes, includes me) and occasionally turn something up when a page slips through.

Third, word is that a bunch of creators double-dipped at the recent Transformers media day and walked down the street to JJP to playtest Sonic under NDA. To be clear, none of that is unusual; quiet NDA playtesting is a normal part of how these games come together. The interesting part is the lockdown around it — either Jersey Jack has one heck of a launch campaign loading, or there's a licensing hangup keeping things quiet — like, say, not being cleared to put the name in any public marketing yet.

This one went out to paid subscribers last night: an update on World Pinball's upcoming Resident Evil game. I'd actually been chasing it for a few weeks, and it ties a bow on some confusing rumors that came out of a YouTuber's floor walk at the 2026 Licensing Expo (more on that next — it's genuinely interesting stuff). What I learned was surprising, though probably not that unusual for pinball. That's all I'll say here. Paid subscribers have the full story.

The 2026 Licensing Expo hit Las Vegas in late May, and the most useful floor report came from a source I did not have on my bingo card. Hauntworld is mostly a haunted-attraction channel that usually only pops up in my feed for the occasional Stern rant — but this time, he turned up with a full walkthrough of the Licensing Expo, a show that's long been on my radar to attend for this very reason. Over the 46-minute walk, he name-drops a lot of interesting rumors, some of which the broader community already knew about, and others that are brand new. He's no pinball reporter, so take it all with a grain of salt — but a few track with crumbs we've already verified (like Resident Evil), so that's a plus for him.

On the film and TV side, he came away with: Terminator 1 & 2 and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure; Rocky Horror Picture Show in negotiations; and Legendary's Monsterverse — Godzilla, King Kong and company — licensed to an unnamed manufacturer. The Terminator thread isn't new to us — we covered it for paid subscribers back in April.

Then there's Speed Racer, which I'll admit is on my mind this week. The rights holder reportedly told him they'd already talked to Barrels of Fun about it, and he spent a while making the case for it as a perfect small-batch theme. Go, Speed Racer.

On the music side, the headline is a new AC/DC with "new songs," attributed to Stern, with KISS in the mix too. He also heard Grateful Dead is licensed — another one we covered for subscribers back in January. The more interesting read was on which acts actually want a machine: Pink Floyd, Mötley Crüe, and Def Leppard are all reportedly into it, while Green Day was approached and passed.

(He also stopped at Capcom to ask about that Resident Evil machine — see the block above for what we found there.)

It's been a while since our last Moving Units update, and if you're a paid subscriber looking for the next one, know that it's on my radar. One of the problems, honestly, is that pinball in 2026 has been kind of boring — at least from the perspective of a sales-tracker series. It's mostly been dominated by one new release (Pokémon) and holdovers from 2025 (Harry Potter). Maybe I'll dust off some production estimates I've been working on instead. Stay tuned.

Meme of the Week has been dead and buried for a while, but I'm digging it up for one issue: I made this, and people seemed to get a kick out of it.

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