Barrels of Fun Factory Tour & Q&A; Dungeon Crawler Carl & Fallout Pinball at Rocky Mountain Show; New Neo Geo Console Delayed for A Year
By knapparcade
It's funny, the two weeks that I went away this summer, we had new pinball machines revealed practically every day lol. Now that I am back at Knapp Arcade HQ it's been completely quiet. Never fear, I've been saving up a bunch of news items to talk about. Moments ago, Barrels of Fun's CEO David Van Es live streamed a factory tour and live Question & Answer session from the company's Houston, Texas factory. First and foremost, enough of the nonsense about not showing pictures of the employees at the factory. The place was full of Barrels employees building games. Barrels has tons of machines boxed up and ready to ship and lots of people building Winchester Mystery Houses and Bon Jovi on its two production lines. Below are my notes from the video: - Bon Jovi as of today has sold out directly from Barrels of Fun. The game is now only available through distributors. Some distributors still have games. - 120 Winchester Games left to make. Production ending soon. They are pushing to finish all of the Winchesters by the end of October. - He hopes that Bon Jovi production will be done by March. - No announcement yet, but Company is adding new programmers to team - Dune topper coming along well, but there is a couple of small changes that he wants to be done. Will ship "in the fall." Will only be one run. Not taking future orders. - Barrels Reserve collector's Ducks are in process. Will arrive at the end of this year. Before Christmas. - Alternate backglass for Winchester is currently shipping. - They just saw a bunch of the Winchester topper prototypes and they are "coming along quite nicely" - Will have Barrels Reserve meet-ups at the Houston Pinball Show and Chicago Pinball Expo. - Alternate Bon Jovi backglass is coming. Didn't know if it would be ready in time for Chicago Pinball Expo. Most likely not. - There is multiple games in process. Karl DeAngelo is working on his next game for Barrels. So is David. - Allowed to build 280 more Dunes. Asked viewers how many more he thought they could sell. - Barrels has 15 Labyrinth machines left in inventory
Next up we have coverage of the Rocky Mountain Pinball And Gameroom Expo. I actually was just in Denver two weeks ago, so I just missed what looks like was a great event. A couple of brand new new games made appearances at the show. First up was Multimorphic's new P3 modules, Dungeon Crawler Carl and Ender's Game. The lines looked to be pretty long for them. Also, Stern Pinball sent Keith Elwin's brand new Fallout to the event. A Premium game was on the floor. That game is going to show up on location soon at a 1Up Arcade in the area. I'll share all the details of that when I get them. Below are pictures of the aforementioned games and other images from the event.
Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Download the video instead.
Last up we have news about the NEOGEO AES+ - remake of the iconic, expensive video game console. The company producing the new console, PLAION REPLAI, announced that it has pushed back its shipment date by nearly a year! That's right, from an original estimated ship date of November 2026 to September 16, 2027. Whoa. That's a little concerning. The company says demand outran its projections and points to component shortages — memory chips in particular — as the reason a November release with limited stock became impractical. The extra time goes toward higher manufacturing capacity and a wider game lineup beyond the 10 announced launch titles. Existing pre-orders keep their place in the queue, and PLAION says there's no price increase tied to the delay. Launch-run consoles include a Founding Supporter Bonus: a free gamepad with Standard and Anniversary editions, or a 30% game voucher with the Ultimate Edition. The system's next showcase is Tokyo Game Show 2026.
