Sold Out

I don’t really have time to do my usual crate digging this week, so I’m dipping into my playlist of 2025 finds — basically the one I save everything remotely interesting to before figuring out what makes the cut for this column — to see if there’s anything fun to come back to.

When I flagged Turnstile’s Seeing Stars back in June, I was struck by the uncanny echoes to 80s bands like The Police (big fan) and how much it made me want to dance. Then I started reading about Turnstile’s evolution from a crunchy hardcore band to something with more popular aspirations. Frankly, by the time I got to them, I dismissed it as being too mainstream to share with you. But this track, a combo of Seein’ Stars and Birds, off the most recent album, Never Enough, I keep returning to. I think it displays the range of Turnstile’s capabilities — nostalgic arena pop rock in one half, high-energy mosh fest on the other.

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We told you something might be coming last week! Barrels of Fun followed up with a full reveal of game number three, Winchester Mystery House, at the 13th hour of the 13th day. The big surprises were an extremely obscure license (read all about The Winchester Mystery House), designed by the renowned Karl DeAngelo, and with newcomer Jeff Dodson on sound (reupping our interview for a fresh look), plus a total volume of only 525 units.

It promptly sold out (or sold through, for the nerds) within about 24+ hours. It’s more than likely sold out now, though.

I haven’t played it yet, but I hope to at Expo today. What’s interesting is that both David Van Es and Karl DeAneglo are big theme park guys, and Winchester Mystery House was one of the inspirations for Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride. That attraction shows up often enough in our Hype Index to see there’s demand for a game with that IP, so I ask the question: Is Winchester Mystery House a backdoor Haunted Mansion pin? Disney licensing is notoriously difficult, so this has to be the next best thing.

A few more pieces of content worth exploring if you’re interested in the Winchester story:

Enjoyed chatting with the team at Scorbit and writing about their startup journey that’s led them to the current moment, where they are rolling out a massive new update to their platform to enable a slew of new features (digital payments, NFC tap pads, pinball tournaments where you can win money) and more. I’m very excited about these changes and hope they catch on, because if they do, it could be really good for pinball.

I’m a little bit light on time today after our Pinball Media Mixer event last night. I flew into Chicago at 2 pm and was at the venue for setup with the Scorbit crew by 3 pm, so I haven’t had time to walk the show floor or talk to many people yet. But I’ve kept up on a few of the major developments so far.

Stern launched King Kong accessories and rolled out home leaderboards through a revamped premium membership tier of Insider Connected (called All Access). I don’t have strong feelings about either at the moment, although my immediate reaction to All Access is that Stern isn’t delivering enough customer value for the current price point ($99.99/yr).

I guess the big news here is that Melvin Williams, owner of Dutch Pinball Exclusive (DPX), finally announced the long-rumored RAZA (Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland) remake as the next title in the queue for the company. They are targeting 333 units for the game, with a May/June 2026 launch. He says his focus is still on finishing up their run of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which is scheduled to be completed in March of 2026. Importantly, because DPX offered customers refunds if their pre-ordered Alice game didn’t ship by January 2026, this takes us to the next announcement.

In order to keep pre-order customers engaged and minimize the impact of refund requests, Melvin also announced a scheme where customers who took delivery of their pre-order would get first dibs on the next Dutch Pinball release.

Now, I’m sure this is perfectly well-intentioned, but man, it's giving me some Haggis vibes. The cynical take is that DPX is essentially incentivizing the current game that they can’t hit deadlines on, for a chance at a game made by a sister company, which hasn’t been announced and will be released at an unspecified future date (to his credit Melvin did throw out Expo-time 2026 for that release but we know how these things go in pinball). I guess if it works, more power to them, but it rubs me the wrong way.

France’s HEXA Pinball has a larger presence at Expo this year, mostly showing off more copies of their 2023 release, Space Hunt. They also used the opportunity to announce their next licensed title, The Three Musketeers, due to release at the Texas Pinball Festival in March 2026. While not exactly an A-tier theme that pinball enthusiasts might be clamoring for, this makes all the sense in the world for an upstart French pinball manufacturer, and I’m excited to see what they do with it.

Ryan and Scott from Pinball Map run a regular series that highlights one new or interesting pinball location each week. This week, Scott writes about Neon Moon.

In his 1974 masterpiece, Working, the great Studs Terkel wrote: "Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” The work of brain barfing a location of the week without reprieve for the last 89 fortnights or whatever can often be described as a sort of life. Maybe I’m sad about my circumstances and I get to project that onto a lonely airport with a single broken pinball machine. Maybe hunger gets the better of me and now my corner of Colin’s newsletter is devoted to the history of Arby’s and the pleasing fact that one of them includes pinball. In these moments, my day is filled with meaning and I am astonished. However, there can be a torpor (what is torpor?) when locations of note show up that provide clear value to the community (e.g. house many pinball machines), but lack the hooks I need to transform these articles into a sort of therapy for myself. How can I process my own feelings against a blank slate of immaculately maintained modern Sterns? This week I am here to tell you about a brand new pinball mega location with 60+ machines. It is called Neon Moon.

Neon Moon is located in Johnson City Tennessee, the true birthplace of Mountain Dew and a town that looks like it would be comfortable having ZZ Top show up to play songs for Marty McFly. Fans of pinball will find Neon Moon a perfect place to press well-worn buttons with confidence and denial. People will fall in love at Neon Moon. People will use its bathroom under duress. People will receive phone calls here that change the trajectory of their lives. Neon Moon will become a daily elsewhere for the local population, providing a neutral spot to politely end a relationship, or simply a dry, air-conditioned room to practice stacking multiballs.

At present, Neon Moon has 55 machines listed on Pinball Map, though the lineup will expand past 60 at launch, featuring the full Stern Insider Connected roster (plenty of LEs) and a few aging marvels like Varkon. They will have tournaments. I’m guessing there will be canned soda and a breaded section of chicken that you can purchase. You know this type of place. I can’t help but picture some kid in Johnson City stepping into Neon Moon and seeing more pinball than they knew existed. They’re about to start the same obsession the rest of us once did, and for that alone, Neon Moon deserves to be celebrated.

Neon Moon is located at 1805 North Roan Street in Johnson City, Tennessee. They are officially open to the public on 10/30. So, get extra wear out of your Halloween costume and show up in full garb. People will applaud your effort.

Neon Moon
1805 North Roan Street in Johnson City, Tennessee
Website

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