I wrote yesterday about how Sonic the Hedgehog is definitely next from Jersey Jack Pinball. I also mentioned that the game after that is now rumored to be a music pin by Mark Seiden. The question is: what band or artist will it be based upon? For years, JJP has been rumored to have the rights to or at least be interested in making a pinball machine based on the iconic hip-hop group The Beastie Boys. I have no idea if this rumor is true, but it's been around forever...so long that I didn't think it was going to happen. That seems to be the most likely candidate for JJP's second new game of 2026 or first game of 2027, depending upon timing. If you've heard about any other potential bands, let me know.
Stern Pinball's next several games have been talked about many times here and elsewhere; a cartoon Transformers game by Elliot Eisman is next, followed by Keith Elwin's Fallout and a remastered version of either AC/DC or KISS (probably both at some point). But what's after those? There has been chatter for a while now that it will be an unlicensed theme by Brian Eddy. Now, "unlicensed" does not necessarily mean an unknown or original theme. According to a relatively new rumor from the JBS Pinball Roundtable's Cale Hernandez, the theme for Eddy's game may be from the public domain... Dracula. I wonder what that would be like? Scary like Williams' 1992 game Bram Stoker's Dracula, or campy like the fantastic Dracula lines from Williams' 1998 game Monster Bash? The callouts from Monster Bash are some of my favorite in any pin ever, so something like that could work if it was done right.
Beyond Dracula, the Roundtable folks mentioned the 1989 comedy film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure as a rumored future Stern theme.
The Roundtable folks speculated that future American Pinball remakes beyond those three may include Theatre of Magic and Tales of the Arabian Nights. Last I heard through the rumor mill, the rights to remake both TOTAN and TOM had been obtained by Pedretti Gaming, maker of the Funhouse remake. Unless something has changed with that, I don't think AP can make either of those. What other Bally/Williams games do you folks think would make good "reimagined" pins?
American also has at least two other licensed titles, one of which is a music pin. I don't know exactly what they are though.
On to Spooky Pinball. It's fairly widely known at this point that Spooky's 2027 game after Beetlejuice will be based on the 1985 film The Goonies. Spooky typically only builds one game per year, so anything beyond that takes us into 2028 and beyond (man, that sounds like the future, doesn't it?). Other rumored titles in the Spooky queue include the 1984 film Gremlins and the television show South Park.
Last up, let's talk about Barrels of Fun. These guys sure are good at keeping a secret. The rumor that they may be working on a pin based on the 1984 film The NeverEnding Story seems to have cooled off. That Dungeon Crawler Carl rumor is still out there, though. Beyond that, they've got me stumped. Anyone have any ideas?
I have embedded the latest episode of the JBS Roundtable below:
