By Todd Russell
Every week on Wednesdays, besides celebrating getting over the hump of the week — getting closer to the weekend — we look around at what’s happening in pinball and report back here.
Elwin’s primary team will be at NW Pinball & Arcade Show Speaking on Panel with their new game! (King Kong SPIKE 3?)
I heard they announced this on the NW Pinball & Arcade Show 2025 Facebook group page and did not verify that, but you can see the news about Elwin and his team on the speakers page here: https://www.nwpinballshow.com/speakers
Although what new game this is hasn’t been officially announced, most in the pinball world are saying it’s some kind of King Kong game.
Assuming it is King Kong, there are plenty of unanswered questions and warning, the following bullet points are highly speculative, we don’t know anything:
- Will this be Stern’s first game on the new SPIKE 3 system?
- Will Kong be more than a bash toy? Please, Keith, do not make Kong a bash toy. Have him throw the ball, eat the ball, something interactive
- Will this game, especially if SPIKE 3, include some kind of price increase?
- If YES, then if Stern are wise, they won’t take the premium past $10,000 nor the pro past $7,500. Whatever they increase the LE, whether it be $14,000 or $15,000, those are limited editions, so that seems to be the wisest place to take a hike.
- Stern could also just leave the pro at $7,000 and jump the premium and the LE pricing … although my guess is all three will be getting some kind of price increase
As for when this new game will be annnounced? In 2024, John Wick was announced on May 7, 2024. My guess, how educated I don’t know, is that somewhere in the next 4-6 weeks Stern will announce King Kong, or whatever their next game is. If it’s not the Elwin King Kong game, this would be a major surprise, as, again, most think this is exactly what Stern will be announcing. Stay tuned.
Next Level Pinball Increasing Admission to $23 starting May 1, 2025
This past week we learned that PGM favorite arcade Next Level (see: Next Level Pinball, Voted the Best Arcade In the World 3 Years in a Row, Expands with 7,000 Square Feet More Gaming) is raising admission price by $1 starting May 1, 2025 from $22 to $23 (still priced at $20 on Thursday admissions for loyalty members):
Tried out Pinsnake — and like it!
Gave Pinsnake (https://www.pinsnake.com/) a demo this past week — not on stream — on two of our three games and it really got to those hard to reach places well. There will be a future article in more detail coming, but my mini review is I like it.
Slow Moving Stern Pinball Games?
Some time ago Stern Pinball finished producing the remainder of the 1,964 Beatles machines they had been planning to produce. I’ve been watching the inventory on a local distro, Nitro Pinball and have noticed slow change on the inventory numbers, suggesting little to no sales. Here’s a screenshot taken 3/28/2025 showing 4 left in their inventory.
While this is only one distributor and a very unscientific method to gauge overall sales, it’s my understanding that there were only 100 or so these games produced by Stern. If Nitro took say 5 of them and still have 4 of them left, it makes one wonder how many of the other 100 are still sitting in distros waiting to be sold?
I checked with Next Level Pinball and they sold through whatever his allotment was of Beatles. The fact that several months later these can still be bought NIB say something, but I’m not sure exactly what.
Staying on this track, Nitro also still has for sale several different LE machines like … Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye, 740 Limited Editions produced and announced January 3, 2025:
The Uncanny X-Men first announced September 4, 2024:
There were 700 produced of The Uncanny X-Men LE. The 500 Metallica: Remastered LE sold out right away, btw. Jaws LE sold out fairly quickly. Not seeing any of the John Wick LEs, but am seeing a Venom LE still listed.
Venom was first announced on July 18, 2023 … and you can still buy a NIB Venom Limited Edition, of which 1,000 were produced, in April 2025.
Zaccaria Pinball with Skullbox686
On Sunday’s Score Chasing Recap Show, Skullbox stopped by to announce this week’s featured game: Moon Flight (EM).
Come and score chase Moon Flight EM with us.
Tim Sexton, lead software developer on John Wick is no longer employed with Stern
Not sure what this means for John Wick, but the lead software developer, Tim Sexton on that game, has left Stern. Other coders work on the games besides the lead, as we learned from our recent interview with Elizabeth Gieske. She mentioned someone I’d never heard of as doing “a lot” of code on Godzilla, so presumably Stern will continue to work on and complete John Wick.
Sexton is now working, via his own public post on LinkedIN,, at Play Mechanix
For those not familiar with Play Mechanix, this is part of Eugene Jarvis’ Raw Thrills:
Not going to speculate here on why Sexton left Stern, but am curious if he will keep his “Pinball Software Engineer” title or change to something else. It’s no secret that Play Mechanix does work on pinball machines:
Could Sexton be tasked in the future to work on some other collaboration with Chicago Gaming Company? Time will tell.
Your Pinworld
What was new in your pinworld this past week? What sort of pinball plans do you have over the next week now that we’re over the hump?