This Week in Pinball, we're thinking about a life lived in coin-op.
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Song of the Week
I wasn't sure what I was going to pick in a week where we saw an AC/DC reveal, considering I have no desire to feature AC/DC music here. Then I came across a recent Thundercat collaboration with Button Masher, "Moving at Light Speed." The two made it for Sonic's 35th anniversary and put it out October 7 on Brainfeeder, two days before a one-night Sonic celebration in Brooklyn where Thundercat performed. It's funky, fun, and appropriately features Sonic, which turns out to be Steve Ritchie's final game.
Pinball News of the Week
Steve Ritchie Retires
Steve Ritchie closed Jersey Jack Pinball's Expo seminar on October 16 by announcing that Sonic the Hedgehog is his last coin-op pinball machine. He's 76, he's moving to Nevada, and he's been designing games since the 1970s. In his words, "I deserve it."
Regular contributor solar_espeon went back through his career, from his first game, Atari's Airborne Avenger, through Firepower, the Black Knight games, High Speed and the dot-matrix years, to Stern and JJP.
Build a Better Pinball Business With Pinventory
Pinventory is business software for your pinball and arcade business — the games, the venues, the money, and the paperwork.
Log collections, split revenue with your locations, and email a branded payout statement when you settle up. Payback %, payoff date, and total return for every game, so you know which titles are really earning. Every repair, part, and audit is tracked per game and available on reports.
Players scan a QR code on the cabinet to report a broken game — no app, no login. It lands in Pinventory, sends an alert, and can be assigned right to a tech.
Free forever. Pro is $19/month if you want more. Built by Ed Giardina, creator of the IFPA Companion App.
Grading the Expo Games
Derek Karamanian went to his third Pinball Expo and played every new game he could get his hands on: Fallout, Cirqus Voltaire, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Yukon Yeti, Multimorphic's Dungeon Crawler Carl and Ender's Game, Bon Jovi and Sonic. Then he graded them. Two got an A, and one got a C.
If you couldn't make it, Pinball News has posted the seminars, including the Hall of Fame presentations.
Stern Launches AC/DC Remastered
Stern launched AC/DC Remastered on October 15, as Pinball Expo got going. It's Stern's third remaster, and the first where John Borg reworks someone else's game (Steve Ritchie's 2012 original). It comes as a Premium ($10,199) and a 500-game LE ($13,499), with no Pro. The biggest change is a redesigned lower playfield, plus eight new songs.
Both prices are $500 above where Metallica Remastered and The Walking Dead Remastered launched, and $500 under Fallout. Our launch post has all the details.
As we covered at the time, it's been a turbulent release that's stayed rocky. More than a week later, the teaser is still the only AC/DC video public on Stern's YouTube channel (the features video and the game trailer from launch day are both unlisted, after being live for a period of time).
Pinball's Video Game Era, Before Pokémon
Pokémon, Sonic and Fallout all landed this year, but pinball has been borrowing from video games since 1980. solar_espeon went back through the ones that came first: a Space Invaders that looked a lot more like Alien, Bally's two Pac-Man games, Q*bert, Gottlieb's Nintendo partnership, and a Zelda game that turned into Gladiators. There are a lot of photos from our archive, too.
Pulp Fiction Gets Scorbit
Pulp Fiction owners can finally get their games online in November. Code v1.03 adds Scorbit, and a $99.99 Online Upgrade Kit brings the hardware (plus a T-shirt). Online play was on the feature matrix back when Chicago Gaming revealed the game in March 2023, so it's been a long wait.
Spooky Adds Player Profiles to Beetlejuice
Spooky's new Beetlejuice code adds player profiles, which it's calling Spooky Specters. Bug says players have been asking Spooky for this for a long time. You sign in when you start a game, the machine keeps your stats from one game to the next, and your high scores show up with your avatar next to them.
Most of the update is unlockables. There are around 170 achievements, from hitting the right ramp 500 times to letting the end-of-ball bonus run for a full minute, and they unlock new avatars and frames for your profile. You can put a password on it, too, so other players on location can't mess with it. Bug walks through the whole thing in Spooky's deep dive, and the code is due out today.
Pinball FX Is Going Into Arcades
A Bump machine running Pinball FX Arcade. (Bump)
Zen Studios announced Pinball FX Arcade earlier this month. It's a business-to-business platform that lets other manufacturers build virtual pinball machines for arcades, barcades and family entertainment centers, running Zen's tables. The launch library includes Williams and Bally classics plus Zen's own originals.
The first manufacturer on board is Bump, a French company that already sells a home virtual pinball machine with 140 Pinball FX tables. Its arcade version is built for commercial use (OLED screen, on-site service), and operators get earnings and fleet data in one dashboard. Bump machines start showing up in venues in France and the rest of Europe late this year, and in the US in early 2027.
Alice's Toppers Are Done
The last batch of Alice toppers. (Dutch Pinball)
Dutch Pinball says all the remaining Alice's Adventures in Wonderland toppers are finished, and it apologized for the long wait. The last batch was headed to CoinTaker by air freight, and CoinTaker said it would start shipping them to owners after Expo. (When we covered Back to the Future earlier this month, the toppers had slipped again this spring.)
Links of the Week
Pinball Anatomy — I went down a rabbit hole the other day and wound up building 3-D recreations of Eight Ball Deluxe, Centaur and Firepower that you can take apart, explore inside, and trace the wiring from the schematics. Think of it as a glorified tech demo, so I'm sure there are a ton of small issues. My favorites are the x-ray viewer, the bench view and "take it apart."
The Pinball Primer hits 1,000 — Congrats to our own solar_espeon, whose tutorial site, The Pinball Primer, just passed 1,000 tutorials.
Wedgehead Pinball Podcast #129: Best Game Ever: Eight Ball Deluxe — Wedgehead's Best Game Ever series takes on Eight Ball Deluxe, one of the three machines in Pinball Anatomy.
BASH Pinball Podcast S3E1: The Fire — Friends of the newsletter Matt and Don are back after a long break, with the story of where they went (there was a fire).
Pinball Profile Ep. 444: Pinventory with Ed Giardina — Speaking of our sponsor, Pinventory's Ed Giardina on the app for tracking a pinball fleet or a home collection.
The Spinner Is Lit Ep. 93 — Dan and Mark go through Ritchie's career, his best sellers and their favorites.
Pinball Minority Report Ep. 12: Elizabeth Gieske — Erika and Manu talk with Stern's lead software developer on Transformers.
American Pinball: Re-Voicing Cirqus Voltaire 29 Years Later — AP brought back Cathy Schenkelberg, the original voice of Cirqus Voltaire, to re-record her callouts and some new lines with sound designer Alex Gerst at Empire Sound Studio. There's a shorter write-up and a new game trailer too.
Poll of the Week
Which era of Steve Ritchie games is your favorite?
Last Week’s Results
“Black to the future deserved better than Dutch (jjp for ex)”
“They build quality is not there yet and theme integration is hit and miss”
“Too old hat to be of any real interest, but I would happily play it, if I came across one in the wild.”
“Personally don't trust the company or this unlicensed product. Plus the theme is just not interesting enough for me to purchase.”
“I own a Lebowski, but wouldn’t buy another Dutch machine after what we went through to get it. ”
“Hopefully we can play it this decade.”
“It’s a lot of money to put down on a machine we know nothing about. Even if the deposit is refundable. I’d like to play it first, and then count on the fact that the machine is sold out by the time I do that.”
“If I could afford it I’d definitely put down a deposit; BttF is one of my fav movie series (Michael J. Fox my beloved~). But I’ll settle for on location, I can hardly afford a secondhand EM never mind a freshly released machine 😭”
“I knew that this was an anticipated title for years. I was excited when it was officially announced on Friday, but that buzz was quickly muted when I caught a glimpse of the leaked playfield. Hopin' for the best...”
“Hopefully it's better than the whitewood that was shown. That looks like a snoozefest out of the late 80s. But they make pretty games, so hopefully they won't screw it up! ”
“Ugh, I wanted someone to make this but probably not Dutch Pinball. It most likely won't be at many public locations to play and it's not the manufacturer I'm going to take a flyer on. Hope it's super amazing, but I'm a skeptic”
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