Rumor Friday: A Pinball Machine That Almost Was…Big Trouble in Little China

Good morning everyone. Happy Friday! Things have been a little quiet on the arcade and pinball news front since JAWS came out, so I figured why not declare today a good old rumor day? I’ve got a couple of them that I’ve been saving up for y’all.

First up, let’s talk about a pinball machine that was coming…until it wasn’t. Back in early 2024 (really early - January), I wrote an article here about how Barrels of Fun, who at the time was making Labyrinth pinball, had a 10-year business plan with three licenses already locked up for pinball machines and early plans for two more beyond that.

One of those machines ended up being the company’s current game - Dune. It’s pretty widely accepted at this point that Dune was rushed to market too early. It’s a really cool game, super immersive with great art, cool mechs, cool shots but it could have used at east another six months of development time and the intense secrecy that surrounded its development severely hampered pre-launch testing.

The folks at Barrels continue to improve upon the shaky launch of Dune. Code updates have been coming steadily and on July 2nd they announced that the 100th Dune machine rolled off of their production line in Texas. I personally think that Dune has the makings of a great game so I’m glad to see them righting the ship with it.

That is one of the five future titles that was mentioned, title two is the next game up after Dune. With 1,000 Dunes to be made if they sell them all and a slow rollout it could be a while before we see the next new Barrels of Fun pin. That next game isn’t a Blockbuster theme like Dune, it is much more of a niche theme, sort of like Labyrinth was. They have been talking about the game with people who they have gotten to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements. I do not have an NDA with Barrels.

It’s the title after that that I want to talk about here. I am going to call this a “Rumor” because I obviously wasn’t at the company and don’t have firsthand knowledge about this. However, I am pretty sure that this is true. I have been told by people that another one of those five themes, probably game number four, was slated to be the 1986 John Carpenter action-comedy film Big Trouble in Little China!

The cult cult classic film stars Kurt Russell as Jack Burton a “truck driver who gets caught up in a supernatural conflict in San Francisco’s Chinatown.” It’s a cool movie and a theme that almost jokingly has been talked about as a potential pinball theme in the hobby for years. It’s a little niche, but I think that it would work very well as a pinball machine. Unfortunately, I have been told that while Barrels of Fun had that license locked in at one point, they no longer have the license to Big Trouble. I was told that they “lost it” but that it’s possible that they might get it back at some point.

As with all articles like this that I write here, please keep in mind that this is just a fun Rumor until proven otherwise. I strongly believe it to be true, and contrary to the opinion of some I think that my track record with rumors has been pretty solid, but not all of them end up being true and even when they are when you’re talking about things that haven’t happened yet things can change.

Everyone who already signed up for the new and improved Knapp Arcade website at KnappArcade.com got free early access to this article. My sons and I are hoping to officially switch over the the new website sometime next week. If you haven’t checked it out yet, make sure to hop on over there and take it for a spin. I will continue to post articles there first until the changeover.