At the time I said, "How can that be? that's way too narrow a focus for a game." Well, that statement proved to be right. Even though The Battle of Hoth is my personal favorite scene in all of Star Wars, man AT-ATs are so cool, it was indeed too narrow so Stern Pinball pivoted from basing the game on Hoth to including it in an upcoming game based on the original Star Wars Trilogy, episodes 4 through 6. This is my Final Answer for what game is coming next from Stern. I'm locking it in.
Darth Vader will be heavily featured in the game, hence the Vader pin rumors, but all signs point to this being an original Trilogy game again. That makes sense in a way, Stern Pinball just placed Steve Ritchie's 2017 Star Wars pinball machine, which it sold a TON of into its proverbial Vault. Supposedly, distributors are clamoring for a Star Wars pin to sell. This would fill that void.
It's been pretty widely known for a while now that the new Stern Star Wars pinball machine is being designed by John Borg. What a lot of people forget is that, Borg already designed a Star Wars Pinball machine back in 1992 for Data East Pinball. Borg's Data East Star Wars pin sold a whopping 10,400 units at the time, which is interesting because I personally really don't see it on location very often these days.
So there you have it. Barring any unforeseen delays, we will get to see the new Stern Star Wars pinball machine this month. Look for a late-August reveal.
You know what's interesting? I just went through my thousands upon thousands of arcade photos and I had to dig really deep to find any pictures of a Data East Star Wars pin. And I have pictures of everything. I need to be on the lookout for one to get some good new pics of.
Flyer courtesy of IPDB
