Right now, Jack Danger is streaming that very game on Stern’s YouTube channel with John Borg himself.
During the stream, John said that the new game has a different playfield than the 1992 game. They talked about how there’s little avenues and pockets of stories within the Star Wars stories that can be looked into more closely.
Even better, John showed off a sculpt from the new Star Wars game...Jabba the Hutt! This gives us an idea of the timeline that the new game takes place in. Jabba the Hutt was mentioned in the first of the original Star Wars trilogy films, Episode 4 "A New Hope" and he made his first appearance on screen in Star Wars Episode 6 "Return of the Jedi."
They shared an interesting story from the design of the Data East Star Wars. That layout was originally supposed to be for a Dinosaur game. Data East secured the license for Jurassic Park while John was working on his Dino game. Joe Kaminkow really wanted to do Data East Jurassic Park so he asked John to change his game into Star Wars. Borg replaced the dinosaur in his game with the Death Star, added R2D2 and it became Star Wars.
Data East play tested a prototype Star Wars pinball machine that used a painted whiffle ball as R2D2’s head at Rock and Roll McDonalds. In quarter play the game pulled in $500 to $600 per week back in 1991!
The Speeder Mode in the DE Star Wars was originally supposed to be a video mode that the player used the lever on the front of the cabinet to make the speeder bike go up and down. Unfortunately, Data East was being sued by another pinball manufacturer that was trying to prevent them from using video modes in games so they just made that a cut scene and a bonus. They ended up keeping the lever mech in the game.
Data East Pinball eventually became Stern Pinball. They sold 10,400 units of DE Star Wars. It held the record for the best selling Stern (and ancestors) game until it was broken by Godzilla. So now we have confirmation that Stern’s Godzilla has sold well over 10,000 units.
I love pinball history like that.
https://www.youtube.com/live/iGW_W6qxZvM?si=94Ok-kO_mKBrcBs5
