It’s time for another Humpday Wednesday, to catch up on the world of pinball and get us over the hump of the week!
First up, Stern jumped into their Stern Insider Connected database and compiled the 2024 stats. You can find yours here: https://insider.sternpinball.com/insider/2024-year-in-review in a slide right menu.
Here’s a bunch of screenshots with my IC stats for 2024:
Good to know, I play pinball the most in the afternoon and March, interestingly enough, was my most active pinball month of the year. I play alone 71% of the time and with others 29% and it only makes sense the three games we own were the highlighted ones, even though two of them weren’t purchased until toward the end of the year.
I played and ranked all 26 Stern Spike 2 games here: 2024 Ranking All 26 Spike 2 Stern Pinball Machines, and these stats reflect that all were played. I’ve amassed 13,607 Stern XP, which comes from the 837 total achievements, of which 794 of them have been on location, so proud of that as well. Despite owning games, most achievements still have been scored on location. Oh, and I’ve played with 7 of 12 IC followers. Yes, you can follow other IC friends. I haven’t done nearly enough of this, but for those reading, feel free to add me, I’m todd_russell on IC.
These last two IC stats slides show how much pinball was played and where ranked within each stat, as well as the average IC person and how you compare. I’m in the top 5% for all four categories: Stern XP, Days Played, Quests Played In and Games Played.
The latter one for the entire year, 115 games is the average number played by the IC Community as well as 18 of the 365 days for the year. I would think this average will go up in 2025, but I don’t think I’ll log as many days (233 in 2024) in 2025. I’d be happy with 1/3rd of the days, really (121 games) or about half the number of days played in 2024. It’s not that I’m losing interest in pinball or anything, but just think I won’t be playing and focusing quite as much in 2025 as played in 2024. We’ll see what happens when the year is over, however, you just never know!
Compared to 2023 IC pinball stats (see: Stern Pinball 2023 Insider Connected Player Stats Now Available), it was a very active year overall. Looking forward to seeing how 2025 shakes out, we’re just getting started! How active was your Stern Insider Connected pinball year? Let us know in the comments.
It was a shorter stream yesterday morning, Tuesday, but we covered some of this fun interview with legendary pinball designer George Gomez at last weekend’s Pinball At The Beach (https://pinballatthebeach.com/) in Florida:
George talks a fair amount about the evolution of the SPIKE pinball system, including a little bit about what we might expect coming in the Stern Spike 3 system. The one tidbit I sort of assumed, but George confirms, is that Spike 3 will run Spike 2 games, so this makes me think they will continue run some Spike 2 games like Godzilla once Spike 3 is released. George doesn’t say when the first Spike 3 pinball game from Stern will be released, but my guess is at some point in 2025.
Perhaps with Elwin’s next game? That’s the other thing I keep reading in a variety of places, from a variety of speculation: King Kong by Elwin could be next! Possibly announced in/around May 2025? Purely rumor, nothing confirmed, but something tells me this is inaccurate and that Stern will wait a bit longer on releasing this game. Perhaps releasing later in the year at the next Pinball Expo? Hope I’m wrong, but feels like this would be the game to launch Spike 3, also, so maybe it is next. I just get the sense from George Gomez’ interview, that Spike 3 is close, but still needs a little more time in the oven.
Also, if 2024 is any guide, they did announce a second cornerstone — John Wick, it was — last year around that time, to follow Jaws, so that might be the release schedule Stern is setting sights on in 2025 as well. I’m just not sure the next game will be Kong and maybe will be a curve ball of some sort, something different than another Elwin, but I’m always looking forward to playing another Elwin, so bring it on. What do you think will be Stern’s next game? It seems way too early to be talking about their next game when I haven’t even played their newest game.
And speaking of that … on the Dungeons & Dragons front (The Dragon in the room that is Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye from Stern Pinball), you’ve probably heard by now, but if you haven’t, then there was a cabling issue during production (cabling too tight) and the dragon was literally starting on fire. Stern have addressed and fixed the issue and all D&D Premiums and the rest of the LEs produced will have the fix. Looking forward to flipping this for the first time next month at the Texas Pinball Festival, if not sooner.
PGM member Skullbox686 is still featuring a different Zaccaria pinball every day, posted to the PGM Discord. Here’s where the list of games featured for everybody to score chase is at through yesterday 2/11/2025:
Today will be the 20th different game (UPDATE 5:01am PST – It’s Farfalla).
Think there are like 40 of the Retro games total.
Zaccaria also released an update this past week, adding the new Future World Deluxe (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3439370/Zaccaria_Pinball__Future_World_Deluxe_Pinball_Table/) which at the time of this writing is on sale.
I bought the Steam Platinum Pack (https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/3672/Zaccaria_Pinball__Platinum_Pack/) some time ago, so adding this game was under $2. Good deal, if you’re planning on playing all the Zaccaria virtual pinball games and you’ll get all new tables released at 50% off with this plan. You might want to wait for one of the bigger Steam sales to pick that up, however, as that runs around $100 USD for all the games when it’s on sale.
I installed Zaccaria Pinball on my Steam Deck so I could play there as well as on the virtual cabinet and desktop. I changed the default layout on the Steam Deck so the default nudge is not the left trackpad. I found it way too easy to accidentally trigger the nudge there and was tilting out too often. I changed to the D-PAD instead.
What else is happening in pinball? What have you been up to with pinball this past week? Share in the comments. Keep flipping!