Update on American Pinball; Yukon Yeti at Pintastic New England; Tons of Stern Games at or Approaching 1.0
By knapparcade
Davey of Stumblor pinball mods and Rob Rath from The Electric Playground and now American Pinball just published Episode 33 of their regular "In Before the Lock" pinball podcast. In it we got a little new information about American Pinball. As previously announced, Rob and his fellow Electric Playground person Nick Neitzel have officially joined the American Pinball team, working with new owner Bryan Vincent. The partnership actually originated last year when Bryan saw The Electric Playground's Circus Voltaire topper at Amusement Expo. After seeing it, he reached out to Rob and Nick to talk about his impending acquisition of American from Aimtron. In their new roles with the company, Rob is handling project management, go-to-market strategy, and team building. Nick is already designing a new game for American — it's a license Bryan had previously acquired (not the whitewood they were working on independently). On a related note, though not from this podcast, I have heard that one of the licenses that AP has acquired is based on a movie and the other is a band - it's actually been a while since we've had a new music pin so that should be interesting. They are based about four hours from American's facility in Palatine, IL (near Stern), visiting a couple times a month. Rob noted the existing American Pinball team was more robust than people assumed — they're currently building Houdinis, Galactic Tank Force, and a new Hot Wheels edition. The Circus Voltaire "reimagined" edition is coming later this year, with the Electric Playground topper included. Rob will be at Pintastic this week representing American. I can't embed the video here, so below is a link for anyone who wants to listen to the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fjLuxgpKc8&t=246sSpeaking of the Pintastic New England pinball show, I will be there on Friday and Saturday of this week. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone there. As I mentioned previously, we will get our first look at the new Cardona Pinball 2.0 Kit at the show. We also will see the first East Coast appearance of Turner Pinball's newest game, the Dennis Nordman designed Yukon Yeti at the event. I will continue to provide updates on the show throughout with lots of pictures and videos.
On to Stern Pinball... First up I have a cool look at Pokémon pinball on the production line at Stern's Elk Grove Village factory, courtesy of the news outlet Nintendo Wire.
Speaking of Stern, the company's coders have been hard at work, with both Dungeons and Dragons and John Wick now hitting code version 1.0 and Star Wars: Fall of the Empire (V 0.92), The Walking Dead Remastered (V 0.90) and King Kong: Myth of Terror Island (V 0.96) all almost at 1.0.
As an owner of the game, I personally was particularly excited to see Dungeons and Dragons hit 1.0. According to designer Brian Eddy, this update is the second of three major code updates planned for the game, so there's even more to come. This latest code introduces a new Challenge Mode to the game. It's essentially the dungeon crawl but you play until your party dies or you drain. The layout resets weekly.
Stern has streamed the latest versions of code for all of these games over the past couple of weeks. I have included them below:
Last up, I have another factory tour for everyone. This one isn't for a pinball manufacturer though, it's for the arcade game manufacturer Alan-1. Ever wondered where Alan-1 games come to life? From concept to cabinet — this is where the magic happens. 👾 Every game counts.
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