Sneak Preview of Transformers Pinball Topper & Other Cool Stuff From the Northwest Pinball & Arcade Show
By knapparcade
Weekend Update! So much pinball and arcade stuff happened this weekend that I had to get the ball rollin' with some articles. The first will talk about this weekend's Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show. I'll have a random stuff article with the rest early next week. I'm on the East Coast, about as far as possible from the Northwest Show, but I was able to see how amazing it was from the great coverage by GeekGamerTV on Twitch and the show's Facebook page. The show had the first public appearance of Stern Pinball's brand new cornerstone pinball machine TRANSFORMERS: More Than Meets the Eye. Not only was the game there for the public to play, but the design team gave a presentation on the making of the game. The presenters included the game's designer - Elliot Eismin, lead coder - Elizabeth Gieske, lead mechanical engineer - Rob Blakeman, LCD artist and animator Tom Kyzivat, coder and subject matter expert Mike Kyzivat and lead sound designer Jerry Thompson. Design for the new Transformers pin too a whopping 16 months, starting in January 2025. This game took three to three-and-a-half whitewoods before it was finished. Elliott and Elizabeth actually started researching the game's theme back in October 2024 by watching Seasons 1 and 2 of the show and researching the theme. Stern even gave a surprise showing of a prototype of the upcoming Transformers topper. The topper is the upper torso of Optimus Prime, featuring a moving head and callouts from Optimus' legendary voice actor Peter Cullen. Below is a link to all of the presentations from the Northwest show. Kudos to GeekGamerTV for streaming them for everyone! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2790236251 https://www.nwpinballshow.com/Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video. Download the video instead.
Beyond the Transformers presentation the Northwest show looked amazing. The homebrew section was huge. Below I have included a ton of pictures of the rest of the show courtesy of its Facebook page:
