By Todd Russell
This past weekend most of our family spent several days at the Northwest Pinball & Arcade show playing pinball, arcade games, chatting it up with homebrew pin makers, other pinfolks and arcade gamers. Got to see and play Barrels of Fun’s new Dune pin, and published a writeup on Monday at PGM: Dune [Barrels of Fun 2025] Detailed First Thoughts After Flipping on Location.
Going to keep it just pinball in this post and on the Humpday Wednesday show, because the highlight of the show for us was being able to see a panel on the making of King Kong from Team Elwin. This includes Keith Elwin and his lead software guy, Rick Naegele. The sound guy, Jerry Thompson is a local in the area. Harrison Drake is the mechanical engineer on the team and put together that Keith said he “hadn’t seen yet.” It seems like maybe they were winging this presentation, and it came off as loose and fun.
Last, and certainly not least, was Rick Zieff (https://www.rickzieff.com/), and it was his first show with the team.
Zieff has done callouts for several Team Elwin games, including the voice of The Beast in Iron Maiden. He did the announcer voice callouts on King Kong.
The presentation timing was good because last Thursday another one of our son’s got the call that his King Kong premium was ready to be picked up … and paid for after the deposit of $500. Here’s what the other $9,000 in cash looks like (four stacks of $2,000 + $500 in twenties and $500 in more hundred dollar bills):
I drove down Thursday afternoon and returned at 11pm with King Kong in the back of the truck.
Setup in the family pinhouse went smoothly with the unboxing and setup taking around 30 minutes or so.
We re-arranged the other pins with the three Elwins lined up chronologically by release (Iron Maiden on far left, then Jaws and now King Kong: Myth of Terror Island). Three of the seven Team Elwin pins in one place together (pictured at top of this article).
King Kong did not come with any QC plays. It was zeroed out. This is a first of the four NIB purchased. Iron Maiden and Jaws came with 1 play, James Bond had 2 plays.
We had one very minor issue out of the box. The action button on Kong needed to be adjusted as it wasn’t triggering the switch. Just bent it back into place for a better connection and all was well.
At the show we had a chance to play the King Kong pro and premiums for the first time. We had previously played the LE down at Next Level Pinball Museum.
FWIW, I favor the Kong premium or LE over the pro. My son that owns Jaws says he prefers the non-gong on the pro over the hit back gong of the premium, but I like the premium gong much more. Also, like the spider over the magnet area on the premium vs. just the magnet which seems to throw the ball in more wild and unpredictable directions on the premium. Then there’s the train lock on the premium and Kong dumping the balls in a rage. The rest of the game is the same in the pro, but the code is early v0.82 and more might be added that leans mode-wise in favor of premium/LE vs. pro, so if you’re on the fence on buying one model over the other, time will tell as the code progresses further.
I’ve played 10 games on the King Kong at home and the other 29 games on location:
I drew a red line through my highest score pictured above (380+ million) because that’s inaccurate. This score was made on one of the games at the show and the spider pit switch was broken. We told the pin medic and it was fixed after we realized it was trigging the switch when something wasn’t even touching it. My best legit Kong score in 39 games is around 150 million. That will be improved in time, perhaps even on today’s Humpday Wednesday stream. My initial goal is to get past that bogus top score that’s listed and, as with the other games we have, to score over a billion and someday beat all the final wizard mode.
JJP Game Changer Trademarked Handicapping on the fly + Still no IC-like feature
Am puzzled at times who Jersey Jack Pinball is targeting with some of their development. They have this new trademarked feature that seems like a cool idea, yes, where players can scan a QR code and make the game play at a harder difficulty level. Knapp compared this to a handicap in golf and also mentioned he “wished” this feature was some kind of Insider Connected system.
That ship seems to have sailed for JJP, remember when they gutted what they had working a couple years ago.
One of these days I’m going to write an article about how JJP just seems like they are targeting some rich, snobby elitist pinball collective. Maybe it’s a misperception on this author’s part — and it’s purely opinion, not fact — but why are most pinfolks always complaining about their games being too expensive and they just keep pricing them higher than anybody else?
Yes, Stern’s LEs are north of $13,000 and they, too, are overpriced (their toppers are way overpriced). But they are LE’s. You can price limited editions whatever you want and if people want to spend that much, they surely can. Stern still sells the lowest price commercial pinball machine that is widely available — their pro model at $7,000 — and players love playing them. Jersey Jack is releasing an “Arcade Edition” with Harry Potter a little above Stern’s premium game price at just under $10,000. Would have been nice to see that JJP arcade edition go head to head with a Stern pro for pricing at $7,000.
Alas, this higher than everybody else pricing continues to be the silver bullet for the werewolf of pinball, JJP. Maybe it’s just me, and I would like to want to buy a JJP pinball, especially if they added back some sort of connected pinball. The only game to date that teases my wallet is Elton John, but I always go back to their price. I’m thinking somebody in our house will buy a Spooky Pinball before JJP, as we almost bought Halloween last year.
Of the Stern competitors only Turner Pinball currently seems to care about some sort of connected pinball. I’d think Spooky would be all on board with something connected, as they are very player-oriented and run by people that are passionate about pinball. The problem with Spooky is most of their games just come off like some sort of professional homebrew operation. Evil Dead, their newest game, really is the closest they’ve come to making something Stern-like.
Jason Knapp asked around and says he confirmed Jaws 50th Anniversary is coming June or July
Knapp’s sources are right more often than they are wrong, but he’s reporting on a rumor that he “asked around” about a Jaws 50th Anniversary edition and “yes [he’s] sure” its coming. (source: KnappArcade)
Screenshot above from: KnappArcade
I’ve been saying for weeks now on the stream, in our PGM Discord and elsewhere that I, too, believe there will be some sort of Jaws 50th Anniversary edition, similar to what they did with Godzilla 70th makes sense and plays into what Stern said they would do instead of making new LE’s and pissing off their LE buyers.
So, if this is true, which multiple folks are saying, “yes, it is” then my guesses are it will be something like this:
- An alternate premium version of Jaws at the same price $9,699
- Playfield likely to have different art design: perhaps a bloodier edition
- It will not be black and white — Jaws was always a color movie, but again, expect a ton of blood in the water
- Different translite and side art, again, probably bloodier (think Evil Dead-like, only water with lots of blood)
- Stern will only do a few production runs of this 50th Anniversary edition, meaning it’s not technically a “limited edition” but it will be limited in production, just like they did with Godzilla 70th
- Expect another mode in addition to the final 1.0 code mode and existing Jaws premium/LE version will get this mode for free. This would also explain why it’s been over six months since the last code update (also, Team Elwin was getting the King Kong launch out the door).
- Gameplay will not be altered from the existing Jaws layout and design, it will all be cosmetic and, maybe, see above, an additional Jaws Bloody Jaws mode or something. Jaws already has more great modes than most other Stern games, so this will make an already amazing mode game even more compelling to play/buy/owh
- The price of the existing Jaws premium will not be hurt significantly by this alternate skinned version, again, similar to Godzilla 70th
Yes, this seems pretty soon, timing-wise to me, but Jaws is such a great game it makes sense for Stern to cash in on this celebration. Lots of Jaws 50th Anniversary celebration going on over the summer of 2025. For those that don’t already own this great game, it’s recommended. It’s this author’s favorite pinball game of all time.
As for the next question: what about buying one for those that already own the premium or LE? Will existing owners consider buying another one just to get a different art/skinned game, if the game is exactly the same otherwise? It could be a situation where trading up if it’s the better looking Jaws game, but it’s a wait an dsee. Some might value the OG more, so this is all very speculative at this point. The 50th Anniversary Edition will probably appeal most to folks like Knapp that don’t already own a Jaws in their collection, not folks that already own one.
Skullbox Zaccaria Pinball Score Chasing: Top Hand EM
PGM Tournament Game: Homeworld – Pinball FX
SEARCH ID# Qq5qm60qm4
What’s Happening in Your last week of Pinball?
Your turn. What have you been up to the last week with pinball — real, virtual, whatever pinball you’re playing? Move your games around? Turned on the AC? It’s getting hotter with summer upon us. What games are you currently playing the most? What do you want to play that feel you’ve neglected, if anything? What pinnews has happened that turned you on … or off? The comments await on anything pinball-related mentioned here or not.
And please stop by for our first PGM stream of King Kong: Myth of Terror Island! Should be a fun time, as always!
BONUS: PlayGamesMoredotcom on Twitch has been approved for 2K streaming, so we’re going to be streaming — hopefully — in 2K for today’s Humpday Wednesday show also for the first time (other than the brief test stream we did last night)