This afternoon I am going to talk about a great Pinball Road Trip that someone else recently took. YouTuber Cary Hardy recently visited all three of the Texas-based pinball manufacturers and shared great videos of them. I am going to start off by talking about his visit to Turner Pinball because I have been wondering how production on their second game, the Jon Norris-designed Merlin's Arcade is coming. I really liked what I saw of the game when I played it at Allentown Pinfest.
According to Cary's interview with Chris Turner, Merlins are scheduled to begin shipping this week. Specifically, they are shipping out the first 8 machines. Adding those to the two initial prototype games that exist makes ten total. After the initial batch of machines ships, Turner estimates that they will be able to produce and ship 4 to 6 games per week.
For those of you who haven't had a chance to play Merlin's Arcade, you will be able to check it out at the upcoming Chicago Pinball Expo, which takes place in Schaumburg, Illinois from October 15th through the 18th. Turner Pinball will have a booth at the event, complete with three Merlin's Arcade machines and one Ninja Eclipse machine.
Speaking of Ninja Eclipse, Turner Pinball has a software update for the game that will be released very soon. This update must be installed via USB, however all future updates for Turner Pinball machines will be able to be done via WiFi.
The code on Merlin's Arcade on the games that are shipping this weel is Version 0.81. That basically represents the percentage complete that the code is. That's much further along than Ninja Eclipse was when it made its debut at the Texas Pinball Festival a couple of years ago and when it began shipping.
In the videos below, Turner talks a lot about Merlin's Arcade, including a cool segment on their new patent-pending pop bumper design.
