Objectively Subjective

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This Week in Pinball has news and opinion galore!

This Week’s Pinball Agenda:

• Song of the Week

• Sponsor of the Week

• Pinball News of the Week

  • Stern Announces 70th Anniversary Godzilla

  • Abe Flips Kickstarter

  • New John Wick Tutorial

  • Odds & Ends (Stern Rush, Haggis WTF, Greg Freres, BoF Updates)

• Product of the Week

• Links of the Week

• Poll of the Week

Song of the Week

What is good?

Is good an objective metric or a subjective one?

You know what’s good.

I know what’s good.

But objectively, our subjective understanding of good may not always align.

And I’m not getting into whether that understanding of good is correct, which is an entirely different matter and may not actually matter at all.

What matters realistically is whether the thing that makes you evaluate the idea of good in the first place makes you happy, which is a very subjective concept.

Take RATATATA, a recent collaboration between Japan’s BABYMETAL and Germany’s Electric Callboy. When I try to look at this song through a critically objective lens, I know it’s not good. In the same way that I know the 1996 blockbuster film Twister isn’t good.

But much like watching Twister, listening to RATATATA makes me happy. Again and again and again. So, the song meets my subjective criteria for good even though it runs counter to what my objective view of good should be.

With RATATATA there’s no pretense. No subtext. Nothing to analyze or dig into. I can simply enjoy it for what it is: a goofy commercial metal song that mixes screamo-headbanging with choreographed anime pop vocals.

Bun Bun!

Pinball News of the Week

Stern Announces Black & White 70th Anniversary Godzilla Pinball

You may have heard about Stern’s latest launch, a color-stripped Premium version of its best-selling machine (objectively, for modern pinball, it’s a runaway sales success). We did a quick write-up about it on Kineticist with initial thoughts. In the days since, I’ve seen polarized Internet reactions to the game. Half the people seem to dig it, and the other half hate it, which more or less confirms my opinion that it’s positioned precisely where it should be—an option for those who might be looking for a reason to buy their first copy of Godzilla, upgrade from a Pro trim or who simply prefer this art package. It’s not better or worse than what’s already on the market. It’s just different.

Abe Flips Launches New Kickstarter Campaign

In non-manufacturer news, Abe Flips launched a Kickstarter campaign this week for a feature-length pinball tutorial series and quickly blew past the initial goal of $8,000. As of writing, he’s received over $18,000 in backings, which puts him past all his documented stretch goals for additions like slow-mo footage, classic games, and tournament coverage. I’ve backed it myself and look forward to seeing the finished product! Way to go Abe!

New John Wick Pinball Tutorial

Thanks to regular contributor Noah Crable, we have our first take at a John Wick pinball tutorial based on the most recent significant code update (0.83). Admittedly, it’s still early days for the code, but we wanted to get something out for folks to follow along with at launch parties and in pursuit of Insider Connected badges. I found it helpful when chasing the 2nd limited contract (score 10,000,000 in Excommunicado Multiball).

Misc Odds & Ends

Since we’ve taken a couple of summer breaks recently, catching up on a few smaller items.

Stern brought back Rush!

Which is cool, but between this, Black Knight: Sword of Rage, other recent production moves and rumors, plus my own analysis/observations of the market, I can’t say I fully understand the business play from my position.

I have speculative theories that would not be in Stern’s best interest to confirm or deny, but it sure does feel like they might be in the midst of an evolution where their product availability starts to look more like an evergreen portfolio of titles. This would align with what I see in other entertainment industries (movies, games) more than a more traditional time-bound production run that pinball enthusiasts are accustomed to.

WTF is going on at Haggis?

I’ve mostly avoided commenting on the Haggis pinball situation with the Centaur and Fathom remakes. I feel like I have an incomplete picture until owner Damian Hartin goes on record somewhere, responding to community questions and concerns. Still, I feel obligated to at least flag that, like many others, I find the whole thing strange. Much like still having dummy blog content on their live website, it’s all a very bad look for the company. It’s something I’m watching to see how it continues to develop.

Greg Freres Retires

The lede of Stern’s press release on the subject is buried but congrats to artist Greg Freres on his retirement. I think we use the word “legendary” too much as a community, but that would be an appropriate way to describe Freres and his contributions to the game! If pushed to choose a favorite art package done by him, it’d have to be Hardbody, but I’m a sucker for cheese.

Barrels of Fun Labyrinth Updates

BoF sent out a note over the 4th of July week stating they had reached 822 orders of their 1,100 unit production run of Labyrinth. Truly fantastic news and love seeing the numbers!

Product of the Week

It’s the PinSnake! Who knew there could be fun innovation in the world of pinball cleaning products? This clever new release from Anthony Pepe and PFXPinMods combines a cleaning cloth with a flexible plastic wand, enabling you to clean hard-to-reach pinball places easily. You can order now on their website, as well as check out a bunch of demonstration videos.

Links of the Week

• Thanks to Derek Karamanian for flagging this cool pinball easter egg contained in a footage dump from the Insert Coin documentary showing a day in the life at Midway Games in the 1990s. It’s mostly focused on video arcades but we do get to see some Theatre of Magic artwork in development, where we also learn that the two faces on the side of the cabinet are modeled after artist Linda Deal and her husband.

• Enjoyed this frank discussion of the use of generative AI in an indie pinball game from Ian Harrower (Blood Bank Billiards). It’s a reasoned and logical take that I don’t see made too often in my corners of the Internet, even as I find myself becoming more and more of an AI skeptic as we get further into the lifecycle of the tech.

• Erika’s Pinball Journey interviewed Matt Christiano about his latest album, essentially a concept piece entirely about pinball! He may have dropped a hint about an upcoming remake game from Planetary Pinball buried in the lyrics of one of his songs (I think it might be Joust).

• Another interesting conversation by Wormhole Pinball with Coe from Quarter Drop Arcade who has an insane Instagram following that I was not previously aware of!

• We also updated our JAWS tutorial for code version 0.92.

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

How many plays do you need on a game before you can tell if it's good?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1-3 (14)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 4-7 (48)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 8-12 (40)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 13-20 (13)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 21+ (21)

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