RUMORS: No Star Wars From Stern Pinball This Week? Ghostbusters Vault Coming? Tales of the Arabian Nights Coming to Pinball Expo? Another Harry Potter?
By knapparcade
Let's start off the week with some rumors that I've been sitting on. These are all a bunch of quick hitters. - Rumor has it that Pedretti Gaming's next Bally Williams remake is based on the 1996 Williams John Popadiuk classic Tales of the Arabian Nights (TOTAN). Buyers will supposedly have a choice between the game's original art and new art by artist Brian Allen. He has already done an officially licensed alternate translite for the game and has it for sale on his website. I've been told that the game will make its official public debut at the Chicago Pinball Expo, which takes place from October 15th through the 18th at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center Hotel. The game and timing should be considered rumors at this point, especially since release dates are always subject to change. The rumored remake after TOTAN is the 1995 Bally pinball machine Theatre of Magic. A few other surprise names have been whispered as potential remakes, so it will be interesting to see if this one is true. https://www.flylanddesigns.com/product/tales-of-the-arabian-nights-alternate-translite/
The next rumors are a little lower confidence than the ones that I normally share, but they are from real people who are knowledgeable. I never, ever just make stuff up. A couple of them will likely end up being true and they're fun to talk about, so here we go. - Stern Pinball's The Walking Dead Remastered, rumored to be coming this Fall, will feature clips from the 2010 AMC television show, new art and new callouts. - Stern Pinball is going to create a 60th Anniversary version of its 2016 game Batman 66 next year. - Speaking of new Stern Pinball machines, sorry to those of you who were hoping for this week but I personally don't think that we will get to see its upcoming rumored John Borg Star Wars cornerstone pinball machine until September. - Pokemon is the last game that Jack Danger is designing at Stern. Keith Elwin is helping him finish it (hence the Elwin Pokemon rumor). George Gomez is helping finish the game as well. - After holding the line on prices for several years in a massively inflationary environment, there's been a lot of talk about a potential price increase on Stern pinball machines. The latest that I have heard on the subject is that the price increase will happen after Pinball Expo and that it will be $800. Do I know if either of these things are true? No. I could easily see the increase coming sooner and being less, but this came from a fairly knowledgeable source. - I heard again recently that Stern Pinball is working on a Vault of its 2016 pinball machine Ghostbusters. Given the negative publicity surrounding the game's original designer John Trudeau and the way too big (in my humble opinion) flipper gap, I've always personally been kind of skeptical of this rumor. I would say that I am 50-50 on whether a Ghostbusters Vault will actually happen, but the smoke continues to be out there. - I have heard some talk that Jersey Jack Pinball may do another version of Harry Potter that has different artwork, sort of like the different versions that JJP made of The Wizard of Oz. There won't be any changes to the game itself, just new art for the Wizard Edition. I have no idea if this is true, but it's interesting to think about and makes some sense given the controversy surrounding the original art (which seems to have calmed down though).
