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THIS WEEK IN PINBALL – 7/19/21: Gary Stern Tease, Interviews with Spooky, Ben Heck, Dwight Sullivan, & Spiderman Tutorial

THIS WEEK IN PINBALL – 7/19/21: Gary Stern Tease, Interviews with Spooky, Ben Heck, Dwight Sullivan, & Spiderman Tutorial

July 19, 2021 • Time to Read: 16 minutes

Gary Stern Ask Me Anything

Last week Stern Pinball released an “Ask Me Anything” with Gary Stern for Stern Insiders! Gary covered many different topics, and included this very interesting tease about what is coming up for Stern Pinball:

Question: What will be the driving trend in pinball for the next 10 years?

Gary Stern: I could answer that, but I’m not going to. We have a development that is world changing. Stay tuned for that.

This comes on the heels of George Gomez a few weeks ago stating “you never know what is going to happen in the next few months. I think that in September – in the vicinity of September – you may see some amazing super cool stuff for a bunch of your games…we’re both collaborating on some amazing stuff that you’re going to see in September, stuff that is going to impact on a lot of games on the line”.

We’ll keep you updated as we hear more about these exciting Stern developments!

To become a Stern Insider (it’s free), click here!

Collect All Monsters: Interview with Spooky Pinball

Last week, Charlie and Corwin Emery from Spooky Pinball joined Matt Frank on Collect All Monsters! Here are just a couple highlights:

On the Ultraman license:

Spooky: “…it was the same licensing expo that we landed the deal with Rick and Morty that really helped the company grow and expand and open up to a different type of game and different type of audience. And when we were there, we’re walking around and I see back in the corner there is this small booth of Tsuburaya Productions and we had to go over and talk to them and that really started the conversation. It was a very quick meeting…of course we starting talking about licensing rights…we felt very strongly that this was a license that was extremely special to us…”

On Ultraman and the Japanese audience:

Spooky: “…a wonderful Japanese American lady came in [to do the callouts]…we wanted to be so respectful to the Japanese audience…she does a lot of the lines in English and Japanese, so as far as we know this is the first pinball machine that has Japanese language speech in it, and there are even some hidden messages and stuff that she put in there specifically for the Japanese audience and I hope we can get even more over [to Japan] to show our love for everything Ultraman…she’ll say it in English, and she’ll say it in Japanese…it is beautiful.”

They also discuss:

the sellout of Ultraman
more about the licensing expo in 2018
their trip to Japan
working with Tsuburaya as a licensor and how great they’ve been
their excitement about sending games to Japan
the importance of the upgraded machines having cosmetic differences but not gameplay differences
they’re favorite parts of the machine

Check out the full interview below!!

The Pinball Show: Interview with Spooky Pinball

The Spooky Pinball guys also joined The Pinball Show last week! Here are just a couple highlights:

On modes being stackable:

Spooky: “One important thing in the game is that the modes are stackable. And an idea we [have] is if I stack two Laurie modes on top of each other there needs to be more bonuses than if I have a Michael and Laurie mode stacked on top of each other.”

On if Spooky will do another significant horror franchise:

Spooky: “We’re sure there will be. [they laugh] We’re also looking to cater to everyone too though, we’re not just going to do all horror. We’re looking at a lot of really great titles, a lot of titles that people want.”

They also discuss:

production and increasing production numbers
the launch and website issues
that parts are in for the first run of games
that it will be several weeks before they start shipping
they will build both Ultraman and Halloween on the line right away and ship both at the same time
possible ball staging in the future for the games
an exciting pinball moment in the wizard mode of the game
they have permission to use the Halloween movie clips
they’re not sure if there will be a family mode on Halloween (right now it is all adult mode)
the topper
that the name of the game is on the topper and not on the backglass if the game has a topper, if the game does not have a topper (Standard and Blood Sucker Editions) then it is on the backglass
Spooky’s history and Spooky today
the new boards in these games
their thoughts on wifi updates and online connectivity

Check out the full podcast here!

Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast: Interview with Ben Heck

Ben Heck joined Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast last week! Here are just a couple highlights:

On American Pinball’s next title:

Ben Heck: “It’s Legends of Valhalla, that is what I heard…This is what I heard – it is Legends of Valhalla, but they renamed it to Rampage: ______ Vikings…it is like a Viking game, and then it is called Rampage or Rampage Quest for Valhalla or something.”

On his next game:

Ben Heck: “It is in the engineering stages right now…Pete Piotrowski who worked on Champion’s Pub, is the mechanical engineer and is also working on the playfield. He is doing a fantastic job, I’m really excited for you to see it. All I’ll say is when you talk about games where there is not enough magic on playfield, this one has all the magic on the playfield.

…it is probably a ways off [from release]…

…obviously all hands are on deck right now for Cactus Canyon…

…[Ben’s game] will be a really mechanically satisfying game. There is one mech in it that has never been seen before, and as soon as people see it they will probably copy it…so fingers crossed nobody else does it first [laughs].”

He also discusses:

the Ultraman license
a little bit about how the Halloween and Ultraman layout shoots
Spooky streamlining the production and ways they did that
that Robert Mueller of deeproot Pinball had tried to acquire Spooky Pinball, and that he would tell the full story later
Stern Pinball, deeproot Pinball, American Pinball, Chicago Gaming Company

Check out the full podcast here!

Homepin Teases Licensed Game

Free Play Pinball Podcast: Interview with Dwight Sullivan

Dwight Sullivan joined the Free Play Pinball Podcast last week! He discusses:

how he got in to pinball
a hypothetical Harry Potter pinball
that Munsters sold well
light shows
working on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Terminator 2, The Mandalorian, and Ghostbusters

Check out the full podcast here!

High Quality Pinball Apparel!

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— Cool and Crazy Stuff —

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