Next Stern Game is SPIKE 3 - Details; More Costco Home Edition Plus Games Coming; The Most Expensive Neighborhood for an Arcade Ever?
By knapparcade
Oh boy, we've got some good stuff to talk about today. Let's kick things off with a great interview that the Loserkid Pinball Podcast just released. They had an hour plus long talk with Stern Pinball's Executive Vice-President and Chief Creative Officer George Gomez. We got a lot of details on two main topics in this discussion, Stern's upcoming new board system for its pinball machines, SPIKE 3 and the Company's recent release of a new Home Edition pinball machine at Costco. Let's talk about the big one first, SPIKE 3. Below are my notes on that subject: - Originally announced at Expo 2021, we will finally see SPIKE 3 in the next Stern game. - Spike 3 games will have a much improved sound system on the higher trim levels. Pro-level games will be easily upgradable to the improved sound system. - We've been seeing bits and pieces of Spike 3 implemented over the last several releases, like the new quiet power supply. - Some cabinet improvements because of the improved sound system and improved display will be available on the first SPIKE 3 machine. More cabinet improvements are coming after that on the second SPIKE 3 release. - The processor in SPIKE 3 is substantially more powerful than the one in Spike 2. The additional power will allow for things like wireless headphones to be used with games. - A new, much more impressive generation of expression lights will launch not the next game but the game after. Next up, we have information on Stern Pinball's new Costco pinball machine. Here's my notes on that: - The first Costco pin, the Jurassic Park Home Edition Plus, was a limited experiment. The release of the Costco Star Wars Home Edition Plus is more widespread in terms of the Costco locations that it is available at. - Stern has tried many different versions of Home Edition games over the past decade. They are intended to be a gateway into the pinball hobby for consumers. In its design, there was a strong emphasis on ease of use and reliability. Put balls in the game without taking the glass off, QR codes to explain setup, Menu system designed for Spike 3 is in the game. - The Star Wars Home Edition Plus has a bigger screen than the Jurassic Park Home Edition did. - Next fall there will be another Home Edition Plus game at Costco. It will be a new theme, not a Home Pin that Stern has done before. The Costco games will use large broad-appeal, family-themed licenses. George could see a theme like Dungeons and Dragons ending up at Costco. They like to leverage whatever they can from existing Cornerstone games to make the creation of Home Editions more efficient. - The Costco games were not necessarily created to keep the lines moving at Stern. They don't provide significant enough volume for that. Other interesting odds and ends from the interview that I picked up on include that Stern's sales volume today is less than it was during COVID, but still better than it was before the Pandemic. D&D and JAWS have sold very well. Stern has 500 people working on the factory floor at Stern today and it had 500 people on the floor there six months ago. A Remastered game is still 3/4 of the work of designing a new game from scratch. It needs new art, improved mechs, new modes, new video assets, etc... Stern is still working on getting accessories for games released closer to game launch. X-Men accessories will be out before the end of the year. Kong "sooner." "You may be disappointed that you've had to wait so long for the X-Men topper, but you won't be disappointed when you see it." Stern is going to release the less expensive Expression Lighting Toppers for more games. Possibly Deadpool, Jurassic Park. Stern uses the data that it collects from Insider Connected to perfect code on games before it hits 1.0. That's part of the reason that games aren't shipping at that level of code. A lot of licenses these days have clauses in their contracts that specifically prohibit the use of AI in the development of products. Whew, that's a lot of info. Kudos to Josh and Scott from Loserkid for the great interview! I have embedded it below for everyone to watch.
Next up I'm going to talk about another podcast, Don's Pinball Podcast. Don recently released a real banger of an episode in which he discusses the rumored next six pinball machines from Stern. I have already written about four of the six here over the past year or so, a John Borg Star Wars Cornerstone, a Remastered Walking Dead, a Pokemon Cornerstone game and a Cornerstone based on the Amazon Prime television series Fallout. The other two though, I don't think that I've mentioned before. Don said that he heard Stern is working on another Transformers pinball machine. I say "another" because Stern already released a Transformers pin back in 2011. It was designed by the aforementioned George Gomez. I'm not sure what to think about this one. Stern certainly isn't shy about using themes that it has already done in the past, but does the World really need another Transformers pinball machine? If Stern does make another one, I sure hope that it is based upon the old school cartoon / comic series. I usually don't bash stuff too badly, but the Transformers live action movies are absolutely terrible...all of them, at least in my humble opinion. They did make a lot of money in the theater though, so who knows. I haven't personally heard anything specific about the other game that he said was rumored to be in the works either, a Remaster of Stern's 2012 pinball machine AC/DC, but Stern redoing it with Live concert footage like they did with Metallica Remastered makes a lot of sense to me. The only thing that makes me wonder is that the original AC/DC machine was designed by Steve Ritchie, who is no longer at Stern (he's working on Jersey Jack Pinball's next game). Here's a link to the episode for anyone who wants to check it out: DPP #199 "Star Wars? Again?! Spooky update"
Next I have an exclusive Sneak Peek at the yet to open newest Barcade location, Barcade FiDi, which I had the pleasure of visiting last weekend. Located in the old Century 21 Flagship Store building in the Financial District of Manhattan, a block or so from the World Trade Center. This may be the most expensive real estate for an arcade in history! This HUGE arcade includes 21 pinball machines, tons of classic arcade games with CRTs (none of that flat screen stuff), the latest and greatest arcade games (none of that redemption stuff) and tons of cool imported Japanese arcade games. #arcade #barcade #pinball #manhattan
Game of the Day Here’s a super rare game, or at least a trim level of a game, that I have never seen on location before and I likely will never see again. 2016 Stern Pinball Batman 66 Super Limited Edition pinball machine. 80 units produced. Designed by George Gomez with art by Christopher Franchi and code by Lyman Sheats. When the game was released, Stern was originally going to only produce 30 SLEs. That number was subsequently increased to 80. Consumers had to send videos to Stern to apply to get one of the games, which included the buyer’s name called out in the code by the original Batman television show actor Adam West and a special VIP Meet and Greet with him. The MSRP of this game when new was $14,999, which was unheard of at the time. As seen at Sunshine Laundromat in Brooklyn, NY. #batman #dccomics #batman66 #adamwest #pinball #sternpinball #arcade
