Quick Look: Stern Pinball Arcade

I'm happy that David Stern is finally getting some recognition on this site.

Last Action Hero is pretty great you guys.

Dude Last Action Hero is my one my favorite guilty pleasures!!

@jeff The Balls of Steel table was sold separately as Balls of Steel (still got the GT Interactive Replay version for Windows 95) and included four other tables.

Seems to install from the CD and run fine in Windows 10 with the 1.3 patch and win95/98 compatibility mode.

Fun fact: The AC/DC table was made by Steve Ritchie who was also the voice of Shao Khan in Mortal Kombat. He also does the booming commentary voice-overs you hear when playing AC/DC.

wish this was on PC

Edgar Winter Group's Frankenstein playing over the Frankenstein table is the best.

That shout/grunt from the Frankenstein table sounds like the same sample from Smash TV.

That mustang table doesn't seem to have the capability to crash leaving cars and coffee, so I wouldn't call it accurate.

@misterlobo: that fact... is actually fun. Did not know!

I wish it was easier to know why thI value proposition is when they repackage existing tables like this. Are there exclusives here? I'm a Pinball FX man so I am clueless about the virtual-real-tables.

Wait.....all of these are in pinball arcade..whats the point?

edit: Oops acdc is new I guess

edit2: The startrek one is different huh.

edit3: Omg whats wrong with me, mustang is new as well

The main difference for Premium on that AC / DC table is that the lesser "Pro" version doesn't have that lower playfield. There's usually a couple of gameplay elements like toys that are extra on the Premium too, plus different backglass art.

All versions of the game have the real music thank god

That "Frankenstein" MIDI...

Living in rural Norway has left my life utterly pinball-less. I think I have played two maybe three tables my whole life.

The AC/DC drummer was involved in some weird shit a couple of years ago.

We live in a world where Jeff can no longer lament the lack of emulated Tomcat F-14 in a Pinball quick look, and it is a lesser world for it.

@jeff I thought you might dig this Stern factory tour given by George Gomez. It begins around the 5:00 mark and has some really interesting info in it.

Stern is still the #1 big dog. Ghost Busters was their last DMD game. From here on it will all be HD displays with video clips and stuff. Batman 66 is the first with that coming soon.

Jersey Jack is 2 and released The Hobbit as well.

Then you have Heighway out of Wales that made Full Throttle and now Alien.

Spooky Pinball that made America's Most Haunted and Rob Zombie.

Deutch Pinball made the Big Lebowski table.

I'd say that LAH is one of the best movies that Arnold is in besides True Lies and the Terminator series.

I think he is more on point here than in Conan, which only had great music and atmosphere going for.

Happy that Ghostbusters is getting the Farsight treatment. That table is a blast.

Funny story: At the arcade I worked at, we got that table on day one. Owner's pride and joy. Hell, we were all excited. Well... the fucker was LOUD. Like "yelling to talk to customers" loud. And of course it played segments of the GB theme almost constantly. This went on for almost a month.

Owner: "Nah, there's no volume setting on it, I checked."

I come in two days later, and the arcade is peacefully quiet (well, "quiet") again. Turned out that a coworker got sick of it, opened the table, and immediately found the volume controls. In hindsight, I think the owner was hoping that the table would draw people in, so he blared it on purpose to show it off. (spoilies: it just drove people away because holy fuck the loudness)

would not have thought that jeff was the kind of guy to play the guitar, even if it was only for a bit. cool :]

Not sure why Brad think Star Trek Into Darkness was not well received. The movie was in fact very well received. Reviewed great and did great in the box office. Maybe I am confused.

My dad is 67 and when I was a preteen playing mortal kombat in the arcades he would always stick around to play the "who" table while I sipped on an orange Julius . To this day he has never played another video game except for that pinball machine every now and then at our local arcade.

Arcades were cool it surprises me Jeff can't find a pinball arcade in California of all places and has to go to north Hampshire for that

My only gripe with these titles is that the The Pinball Arcade folks have always had pretty bad UI, and it's only gotten worse over time with each revision they put out. (edit: It looks like the overall UI is a bit better with this title, but as Jeff mentioned the font work is not great and the goal indicators coming up in the middle of the screen are distracting and not very attractive)

@brad@jeff star trek is at lucky 13 on church and market in SF. i work at the alamo drafthouse SF and we just got three machines: johnny mnemonic, indiana jones, and the rare big lebowski machine, which is the only one in california, one of eight in america, and plays scenes from the movie on an awesome lcd screen. we'll be hosting some tournaments soon.

@spindini:

Every time Into Darkness is mentioned on the internet, it's surrounded by people hating on it. I enjoyed it, but I've never met anyone else online or offline who actually liked it. This was honestly the first time I'd heard someone say anything remotely positive about it. Nice to know there are others who didn't hate the experience.

Theater of Magic is the best pinball table ever made IMO. I was really close to buying one, but I don't know how to do maintenance and that seemed like a pretty big/annoying thing.

It is pretty terrible. I'd like to have Zen Pinball's (Pinball FX 2's) UI & "trimmings", with Pinball Arcade's tables. Best of both worlds :)

I just learned from a co-worker that that Ghostbusters machine is in the "barcade" located almost directly below our workplace. We're gonna go try it out next week.

EDIT: Unfortunately, the only "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" TV that has made its way officially to DVD is the Dean Cain-hosted revival from the late '90s/early '00s, and even then only in the form of a "Best of..." compilation.

To expand on the Quicklook discussion a bit, Ripley's Believe it or Not continued on into the 1990's with Dean Cain replacing Jack Palance and was still a pretty good show, I think. Though clearly we know how Jeff feels about that replacement, as he refused to even mention the DC hosted one, lol. Here, judge for yourselves...

@shagge some pinball menus are weird and you have to enable a setting to lower the volume past a certain minimum with the volume buttons

@jakelshark: Yeah, this one was straightforward, though, as I tried it myself afterwards. (full disclosure, the owner has a history of not being great at the whole "competence" thing)

Imagine if NASA were the ones who requested the Apollo 13 table.

@kevin_cogneto: Charles Dance is so good.

@sirbotting said:

It will be.

Anyway, I'm glad there's a place to play pinball around here, though most of the good games are a buck a play, which seems a little ridiculous.

wish this was Pinbot

All of these look way better than the pinball arcade ones and I have to guess that's because of the lighting. Something always looks off about the lighting in pinball arcade and it makes the tables look fake? idk

It wasn't that the second Star Trek movie was a retelling of an older movie, it was that it was flat, boring, contained no space exploration and was pretty much an allegory for 9/11 conspirators which makes it even more nauseating.

Does anyone know if this is coming to Europe? Can't find it on the PS Store but I need that AC/DC table in my life...

See, this is why you guys need to hit PAX South again. During it or afterward, you can hit either Buda or Austin for Pinballz. C'mon, you know you need some Baby Pac-Man in your life.

I had a look at that Wizard of Oz machine.

£8295, but with free shipping.

@wildali: I enjoyed the newer ones as well, have never seen any of the original ones.

I thought Star Trek Beyond was pretty sweet! Step in the right direction for those films.

I am showing this shit to my dad when I'm back home for Christmas. Apollo 13 has 13 multi-balls AND there's a pinball table dedicated to Mustangs and popular 70's songs? What's that? Someone refers to music as tunes? Yep, he's hearing about this video.

@itsalita said:

I haven't really played any of the other pinball games out there, but I found the lighting of the tables in this game to be pretty flat. Perhaps a really nice monitor and proper color balance could make the lighting pop, but personally they don't seem even close to the intensity of the real thing. Maybe I'm just expecting more clacking noises from the game...

Duke Nukem is really into Mustangs.

I can't even remember the last time I saw a pinball machine.

@sirbotting: There's a PC game with these tables. It's on Steam.

@dannyhibiki: No wonder the normal version seemed so lame, I really didn't like that table. The lower field might've saved it.

The lack of light effects is bugging me here. Looks like a Vita game. Star Trek looks amazing IRL, especially the premium with color changing playfield lights.

Is there a franchise with more misunderstandings about the source material than Frankenstein?

Almost everyone;s (myself included) knowledge comes from the movies that changed MASSIVE swaths from the book.

where is Wrestlemania?