The Dragon in the room that is Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye from Stern Pinball

For those not living under a pinball rock, yesterday, Friday 1/3/2025 Stern Pinball shared more of the details on their first cornerstone of 2025: Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye (https://sternpinball.com/game/dungeons-dragons/). Here’s George Gomez and a little bit of the designer Brian Eddy giving a six-sided die, er minutes, of rundown via this game launch trailer:

We’ll get to some thoughts on the game. It’s so hard to judge any game from teaser release videos, because we don’t know how it plays. In fact, I don’t think much of anything can be judged about the play part, the most important thing btw, from videos and totally biased company people pitching it to us.

That said, I think there’s some interesting and enlightening things to draw from this video. Stay with us, but first want to travel far back in D&D time to share my personal experience with the franchise.

Yes, I’m one of those D&D nerds. The old nerd, as it seems, that played a few years after it first came out and then into the 80s.

The first time I played Dungeons & Dragons was the late 70s and fell in hard for the game. It’s not surprising, really, because it’s a game of imagination and wonder. It has dragons, dice and you are only limited in the game by your imagination. I liked how a game was more about the imagination than traditional board games. Our group literally played in a basement, which is a D&D stereotype but that’s truly where we played — and it was good fun.

This is the Monster Manual I owned — not literally — it’s a picture of the book I vividly remember, a hardcover manual:

Then something happened: I grew older, the group disbanded, we moved and stopped playing the game. The game has continued on, of course, and plenty of adults play it all these years later, but I left playing the original D&D behind when I got into high school and beyond. I’ve played various online games that reminded me more of D&D like Everquest and basically most MMORPG. Of course I played the D&D MMORPG as well. Haven’t played Balder’s Gate.

So, any of my feedback isn’t from the D&D that exists today. I don’t know much about the game today, only what I fondly remember playing it in the late 70s through the mid 80s — and nothing, literally no gameplay since.

That aside, I think the game is one of the greatest multiplayer games ever made. It’s creative, innovative, immersive and is critical to be played in groups of people. Yes, it can be played with a DM and one player, but it’s best with a DM and a party of players, say 2-4+. You go on an adventure together, fight and slay the monsters and share (hopefully) the loot. Then back to the town, upgrade gear and off to another grand adventure.

Yeah, there are no other games quite like D&D — or rather, there weren’t when it was released. It ushered in a vast genre of role playing games (RPG) and that’s a glorious thing for gaming.

But, yeah it’s not a game I kept playing past those younger years. And I feel like I missed out on it. Anyway, that’s what you need to know about my history with D&D for this article and thoughts on the Stern pinball for backstory.

We have a category devoted to D&D here at PGM (https://playgamesmore.com/category/dungeons-dragons/) which should say how much we think the game is in a category of gaming by itself. It’s a huge franchise and that brings us to some news in the world of pinball.

Now, there was one Dungeons & Dragons pinball that came out from Bally in 1987. I have seen it before, but never have played it. Pinside listing: https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/dungeons-and-dragons

From what I’ve heard from other pinball people that have played the experience is mixed to negative. The Pinside rating as of this writing is 7.42 which would be considered about average on their scale.

There were 2,000 of these machines produced and there are 20 locations to play at as of January 2025, including not far from us here in Seattle at the Raygun lounge. I would like to play this D&D game to be able to compare it to the newest announced Stern pinball D&D. Naturally, the Stern game will be much better.

I don’t even have to play it to say that. Modern games can’t really be fairly compared to 80s games. I know some people try, but it’s just a different time, technology and place. That’s not saying there aren’t great pinball games from the 80s, of course there are, but I don’t think comparing eras of pinball games is very easy or wise to do.

In fact, at PGM we don’t, we keep the Stern Spike 2 rankings as one category, see: 2024 Ranking All 26 Spike 2 Stern Pinball Machines

Pinside tries to get away from this with their rankings by separating EM from SS (Solid State) games and then all the rest. I think they might just have to start filtering by decade at some point because the newest pinball machines at some point will take yet another leap of technology, beyond what we know today as “modern.”

And speaking of Stern, they will almost certainly be showing this game off at CES 2025, so gamers can and will play it in person there, similar to what happened with Jaws in 2024. The best feedback comes from real players that aren’t on Stern’s payroll playing the game and giving their feedback. And of course playing it ourselves. These videos, teasers, even articles like this one you’re reading right now don’t give any game justice of simply playing it yourself.

So, on Friday, 1/3/2025, Stern revealed the playfield for Dungeons & Dragons and more details on the game. If you watched the video toward the start of this piece — or elsewhere already — you caught Worf (Michael Dorn from Star Trek The Next Generation) doing some voice overs, along with D&D co-creator Gary Gygax’s son Luke Gygax and others.

This game has some sizzle, no doubt, but is it for more than D&D fans?

My detailed thoughts after flipping D&D on location somewhere will be coming in the future, so what follows here are just some preliminary observations on the game based purely on these videos and pictures. They really are more questions, unfortunately, than answers, but am curious if you, friendly readers, have some of these similar musings.

Here are some things I like:

• The dungeon being regenerated every Sunday with a new adventure. Yes!! This means it won’t be a completely static, repeating same play game. This is cool and something we haven’t quite seen before. Of course this leads to other questions like: how many Sundays does this change? How far into the future? Is it just for a set period of Sundays? Or is it something that will be programmed into the code so that — forever — D&D will have a new dungeon generated every Sunday. I need to know more, but like this concept.
• The dragon that spits out (fire) balls. The dragon reminds me a little of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, and it looks like it moves quite a bit over targets and spits out balls for multiplier. Again, tell me more.
• The artwork is good, am digging it. Think I prefer the LE and the Pro over the Premium, just from the look, but all three look impressive. The LE powder coat red reminds me of Iron Maiden LE, only it looks much, much better on D&D than it did on Iron Maiden (the premium is the best art IMO for Maiden).
• The top two-thirds of the game seem to have a lot going on and look interesting to shoot. No idea of flow, of course, that remains to be seen, but I like the upper 2/3rd from purely looks.
• Gelatanous cube!!!! Love that cube already. It stuck out at me right away.
• I like the voice actors lined up, especially Michael Dorn and Luke Gygax. Worf’s voice in a D&D game is amazing … yeah, I know he’s not literally doing Worf, but it’s freaking Worf!
• That dungeon video mode … ooo, yes! Regular readers here know I’m a fan of video modes and launching with one is an immediate win! Especially if it turns out to be a fun to play one like Shark Hunter on Jaws last year. Beyond that, there weren’t any other video modes on other games in 2024. A huge miss for Wick, X-Men and Metallica: Remastered, IMO.

Now, here is what I don’t know enough yet, am not liking or excited about (yet), and/or need more details on after playing more:

• The bottom third, the traditional boring Italian bottom is just that: boring. I like what Jack Danger did with his bottom third layout in X-Men, but this is yet another underwhelming, overly familiar bottom third. Couldn’t we get something different down there? Imagine if there had been some kind of capture the ball, go into the store, buy and sell stuff? It’s cool, as mentioned above, that we have a store, but why not some store interaction when you “store” the ball. Perhaps a game that we play to roll the dice and decide our fate on draining (?) — you know, a save dice like from the game? Nope, we get more of what so many other games are like down there and no D&D. It was brought up in chat the layout is similar to Black Rose.
• Let me say that again: where are the dice rolls?!?! Where is the dice in this game? D&D needs dice, did I miss the dice rolls somewhere? Please don’t say the only place we see dice is in the match screen during game over? I hope there are more dice in this game. I realize randomization is a problem for competitive play, but give us the dice already. Hopefully, the dice are there.

UPDATE 1/4/2025 @ 8:34am PST: PGM member Skullbox686 (https://playgamesmore.com/author/skullbox686/) intrepidly spotted a dice symbol on the spinner. Thank you for pointing that out!

That would make sense when the spinner is ripped a dice roll is made.

• The leveling system seems is too vague in the video. It looks like it could be cool, but we need to know much, much more than a scattered few seconds on video can tell. It does seem more in depth than Venom, but will any of the four characters chosen die and lose their experience and level? We know from the video that you can take your progress from game to game, or start anew every game if you like, but can your character die and lose all your stuff? When you beat the game, what happens? Does it reset your character level like in Venom? I would *not* be a fan of that, if that happens. One of the things I liked about D&D is that you could actually die. There was risk in losing your character … literally losing it. Will there be similar risk in this D&D pinball game?
• I’m worried about the launch code not being 1.0 for this game. That deserves a lot more discussion below.

Put all this together and it’s not a situation where I’m instantly clamoring to buy this game for home. In fairness, I’d rarely do that with any new pinball game — we just don’t have the space for too many games and I’m going to be super, super picky about what games get bought — and the #1 reason, in this author’s opinion, for home gamers not to buy right away comes down to one word:

Code.

Yes, the code at launch is the #1 reason not to buy any Stern Pinball game when it first comes out. Will everything we see teased in this launch video work 100% at launch? Will this be 1.0 code or more like 0.85 or .90 code and stuff will be missing that make the game complete? Where you can’t actually finish the adventure? This puts me off to buying anything immediately at launch from Stern. I’m not going to say “never” but it’s a major turnoff once we get past the launch hype cycle. Even if I love the game and it’s a dream theme, this lack of launching with finished code bothers me. I bought two games last year that both had finished code, so am confident Stern will finish the code, that’s not the issue, it’s how long will it take? And will I like the game as much when it’s finished? Odds are yes, I will, but playing on location seems to be the wisest strategy for those that want to wait and see how the 1.0 code makes or breaks the game. And what if you beat the game on location, you level up every character? What will be left to do beyond that?

Aye, there’s the rub.

Jaws is still not 1.0 code a year later. I’m sure we’ll get that final 1.0 code at some point in 2025, but that’s a problem. A serious problem that Stern apologists might forgive, but not me. My wallet is like 95% closed to this sort of game launch.

So, the answer is no. It’s not a “no, never buy” it’s a no, right now. I don’t have a FOMO weakness for new stuff like some pinfolks do. Yes, this almost certainly leaves me out on one of the 740 LEs (will they sell this many? I think they might, but we’ll see), but there is a tiny percentage of LEs I’d ever buy for $13,000 and D&D is not one of them. Kong isn’t either, and I keep hearing that is a possibility for the future.

I am very excited to play this game, but then I am excited to play all new games, all themes, it doesn’t really matter.

When the code is done on D&D — and if it’s at launch with 1.0 — which they never tell us, btw, we find out when someone gets their eyes on the opening screen and/or Stern updates on their download code section. Then we’ll know if this is 1.0 code.

Metallica: Remastered, a game that was made over a dozen years ago, relaunched from the vault and not even that game has 1.0 code. Yes, I know it’s technically an update, but how does this work for these remastered games that even that code can’t be finished at launch?

These pinball machines are luxury game purchases. A true luxury would be sold to us finished at launch, not missing gameplay. Not waiting for gameplay to be worked out using customers as beta testers. I don’t like being used as a customer. If others do, so be it.

We need as pinconsumers to not kiss the ring, but demand 1.0 code in these games at launch and stop letting Stern get away with the, “hey, we’ll get to finishing it when we get to finishing it” code completion strategy. Hire more coders, Stern. Release less games and launch with finished code. If you think this is some kind of good business strategy, hey, more power to you, but I think this strategy is BS.

And just to sweeten the pot, I’m a fan of paying for DLC beyond 1.0 code. Few others in the pinball space will say that. I want Stern to make money and keep making amazing games. I like the company and most of what they do. A game like D&D should have more adventures, more cool ways to play the game beyond the game it launches with, but will Stern be brave and do paid DLC someday for some game? Time will tell. I’m in favor of this, but most pinheads are not. In fact, me just writing this puts me in the crosshairs of plenty of folks that despise this idea. D&D is the perfect game to have some kind of future DLC route, it’s a game literally built on expansions and additional adventures and quests … the game just never ends. I would love for the pinball to have this same future .. will it?

Anyway, I really, really like the IP and theme, something I’ve read some criticism about. I’m more excited about D&D as a theme than many others I’ve heard mentioned in the pipeline. There are other themes, like Kong, especially if team Elwin is leading, that I’d be more excited about initially, but D&D is a great theme, really. It’s better than John Wick, Uncanny X-Men and Metallica: Remastered to me. I prefer D&D, purely from a theme standpoint, to Jaws.

The thing about D&D is the depth and variety of the game. You can do so much with D&D content. I mean the sky is the limit and creatively that could lead so many different places. I’m excited about those possibilities so much that this game is definitely on my radar to play ASAP. I won’t be at CES this year to play and, really, it’s the same story as 2024 (see: Didn’t Go? It’s OK, Here’s Why I Stopped Following and Covering CES), but I know Stern’s D&D will be on location within a couple months to play somewhere nearby. It will certainly be at the Texas Pinball Festival, and I’m going to be there one of the days to play. Hoping to be able to play it sooner than that, but I’m like 99% certain it will be there.

This is yet another reason to be excited about modern pinball, at least in our area. I realize in some areas pinball is not as readily available, but we have it in locations all over the place around here. Nobody has to buy any of the popular new games, especially the Sterns, because they will be out there on location to play very soon after being released. And that is good for pinball, too, to play these games on location and give that $$$ to the businesses. It’s not a loss for Stern when we play pinball on location. They will sell machines to the businesses that want our business. It’s all good.

I think back 15-20 years ago, this was not the case. New pinball games came out in the early 2000s and you didn’t see them make it on location around here very much. Within the last 10 years, especially the last 5, pinball has come back and it’s great to see.

Those that aren’t excited about D&D as a theme, don’t worry, you still have plenty of great modern pinball games to play. This D&D has some serious potential. I’m cautiously optimistic for this game. Will have much more to say about it after playing.

Your turn in the comments. What do you think so far on this game? Are you as excited about playing it as me? Do you have any concerns about the launch code? The comments area awaits.