A Look at Jersey Jack Sonic the Hedgehog on the Production Line; No Matrix or Top Gun Pinball & More
By knapparcade
Whew, we're coming off of our third new game reveal in as many weeks. I'm actually hoping to get a chance to play the game that was revealed yesterday, Jersey Jack's Sonic the Hedgehog, tonight. I also will see it at this weekend's launch party at the Under The Glass Pinball Speakeasy in Red Bank, NJ. In the meantime, I have a tiny look at the game in action courtesy of On Tilt Pinball from Ayce Gogi in Southern California and pictures of the game on the production line courtesy of the great launch video that Retro Ralph put up on his YouTube channel yesterday. I'll include those below. Yesterday, I also stumbled across a surprise video interview with Jersey Jack Pinball's founder, Jack Guarnieri from a YouTube channel that I wasn't familiar with - the Delta Fringe Podcast. I will embed the full video below. Here are my notes: Sonic — development, production, and pipeline - Long development runway. Jack said he began working on the Sonic license in 2022. That tracks with the roughly two-year concept-to-production-line timeline he gives for JJP titles, and with his licensing work reaching out to 2029, 2030, and 2031. - Dual assembly lines — Jack said that the week of this recording he saw Sonic the Hedgehog on one assembly line and Harry Potter on the second — something he'd wanted to see for years. - Three teams, three games. JJP currently has three machines in development across three design teams. After Sonic, the next title lands "sometime next year," and a third in "the fall of next year." Jack said he had to extend the Sonic license because Harry Potter stayed on the line longer than expected — "sometimes these licenses crash into each other." - No artificial scarcity. He said that JJP wants to build several thousand units of a title rather than a capped run of several hundred, arguing that limiting sales leaves money that funds future game development on the table. - Reveal video. JJP spent six figures producing the Sonic reveal video, on the reasoning that you get one chance at a first impression and that a noisy show-floor debut undersells a game. Licensing — what JJP has chased, landed, and lost - Wizard of Oz (the company's first game) came after he'd wanted the license for the Three Stooges, which was unavailable due to a film in progress. He spotted Oz on a Warner Bros. title list and chose it specifically to appeal to women and girls rather than a "testosterone-based" theme. Warner initially balked because JJP wasn't five years old; they relented after he told them to Google him. - Harry Potter took ten years of repeated asking to land. Jack said the widely repeated claim that J.K. Rowling opposed pinball over gambling associations was a rumor started by someone who couldn't land the license. The breakthrough came when Rowling's IP representatives were playing JJP's Hobbit machine, loved it, and asked to work with the company that made it. - Willy Wonka required navigating two estates — Roald Dahl's and Gene Wilder's — including a weeks-long negotiation just to use a photo of Wilder with his arms outstretched (the estate first wanted a different image used). - Beetlejuice — JJP actually had the license, but it was non-exclusive and the licensor also granted it to another company. Jack walked away rather than make competing games, comparing it to two bakeries making jelly donuts across the street from each other. (Spooky Pinball's current game is Beetlejuice). - The Matrix — he had the license but called it essentially empty: a logo and a single image, no Keanu Reeves likeness, nothing to build a game from. A cautionary example of how an "empty license" can be worthless. - Top Gun — is a dead end across the entire industry, per Jack, because of Tom Cruise. He said many different pinball companies have tried for years and Cruise has rejected everything; Jack has stopped pursuing it ("even a train stops once in a while"). - Themes that don't fit pinball. He gets license-holder inquiries about once a month for properties that don't make good games. His rule of thumb is that a theme needs a story to tell — Elton John works, but he cites Billy Joel as an example that he loves but couldn't translate into a machine. The new Jersey Jack official "First Look" video:Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Download the video instead.
Sonic on the floor at Ayce Gogi:
Earlier this week, we got a look at the completely redesigned color dot matrix display art for Pedretti Gaming's Tales of the Arabian Nights remake. The new art certainly is impressive. Below are the comparisons of the new art to the original: "✨ 𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐜𝐞. 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜. ✨ The original Tales of the Arabian Nights display animations were already a true masterpiece — iconic, recognizable, and full of charm. For our remake, we started from that legacy with respect, study, and passion, working to enhance the experience with new colorized animations, richer details, and a fresh visual presentation designed to bring even more life to the game. This side-by-side comparison shows the spirit of what we are trying to achieve: preserving the magic of the original while adding a new level of quality, atmosphere, and immersion. 🧞♂️ 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝. 🧞♂️"
Last up we have a replay of a recent live gameplay stream of Stern Pinball's new Transformers: More than Meets the Eye pinball machine by Jamie Burchell from the Eureka Heights brewery in Houston, Texas.