Yesterday a YouTuber named Biggie's Tavern shared a great video that showed off the inside of Stern Pinball's new Costco Home Edition Plus pinball machine. At one point he removed two screws from the game's head and took off the backglass, or in this case translite and cover, to reveal the game's board. Lo and behold, it didn't contain the old Stern Spike 2 board but something different. The label on the board is a little difficult to read (I enhanced the pic as much as I could), but it sure looks like it says "Spike 3" to me.
I have included a picture of the new board as well as a picture of Stern's Spike 2 board below for the sake of comparison. I'll allow the people who are much more tech savvy than myself to micro-analyze the differences, which appear to include a new amplifier with heat sink in the bottom left, two HDMI ports and an EDP port and possibly on-board WiFi. So analyze away, what differences to you see?
We don't have official images of the new Spike 3 boards from Stern Pinball or confirmation from them that this is Spike 3 yet. The Home Edition game boards may have differences from the final boards that Stern uses in commercial-grade machines. Still, this is interesting to get a look at.
An image of the new board that I captured from the video
A picture of Stern's Spike 2 board from its web store ($640).
A look at the underside of the Staw Wars Home Edition Plus playfield
