Song of the Week

I've been looping Czarface and Frankie Pulitzer's "Mad Technology" (feat. Method Man) ever since it first graced my ears a few weeks ago. We don't feature a ton of hip hop here, but Czarface has ties to Wu-Tang and MF DOOM, so it's steeped in that old-school hip hop vibe, which I love.

A funny note: as I was digging into the group, I learned that Frankie Pulitzer, the one in the mask in the video, is none other than Tom Hardy.

Pinball News of the Week

"I'm Like a Cover Band": Paul Melio Talks With Brian Allen

Brian Allen Interview: Remaking TOTAN and Cirqus Voltaire

www.kineticist.com

Brian Allen drew the new art for two John Popadiuk remakes at the same time this year: Pedretti Gaming's Tales of the Arabian Nights and American Pinball's Cirqus Voltaire. Paul Melio talked with him for our latest interview, and Brian gets into why he treats a remake like a cover song ("There are a lot of bad covers out there that just play the song exactly the same"), working with a licensor's own art director, and why he thinks AI art is cheating.

It might be our first real article-and-podcast hybrid. Read the Q&A or listen to the conversation in our new audio player. Every question in the text has a play button that jumps the audio to that spot, so you can skip around.

Build a Better Pinball Business With Pinventory

Pinventory is business software for your pinball and arcade business — the games, the venues, the money, and the paperwork.

Log collections, split revenue with your locations, and email a branded payout statement when you settle up. Payback %, payoff date, and total return for every game, so you know which titles are really earning. Every repair, part, and audit is tracked per game and available on reports.

Players scan a QR code on the cabinet to report a broken game — no app, no login. It lands in Pinventory, sends an alert, and can be assigned right to a tech.

Free forever. Pro is $19/month if you want more. Built by Ed Giardina, creator of the IFPA Companion App.

Moving Units #8: Pokémon Cools Off, Transformers Carries the Summer

Moving Units: Pinball Sales Tracker (#8)

twip.kineticist.com

The eighth Moving Units tracker went out to paid subscribers on Thursday. Nothing this summer moved like Pokémon did in the spring. Transformers led the season at less than half that pace, and Fallout has only just arrived.

The paid sections cover the Harry Potter and King Kong race for the top 2025 release, Fallout's first weeks and the rest of 2026.

Two New Tutorials From solar_espeon: Laser War and Cirqus Voltaire

Data East Laser War Pinball Tutorial, Rules & Strategy Guide

www.kineticist.com

solar_espeon has two new tutorials up. Laser War was Data East's first pinball machine (1987), and her guide walks through lighting the locks, the 2- and 3-ball multiballs, the Ion Jackpot and the numbered Base saucer awards.

Bally Cirqus Voltaire Pinball Tutorial, Rules & Strategy Guide

www.kineticist.com

Cirqus Voltaire goes with this week's lead. Brian Allen drew the new art for American Pinball's remake, which starts shipping in October. The tutorial covers the nine Marvels, the Ringmaster multiballs and the Join the Cirqus wizard mode, plus the 2.0 code that Cameron Silver, the game's original software designer, released anonymously in 2002. It's expected to be playable on the remake.

Exploring EMs: Ted Zale's Decade at Bally

Ted Zale: The Bally Designer Who Invented Zipper Flippers

www.kineticist.com

Ted Zale designed for Bally from 1963 to 1973, and he's the subject of solar_espeon's latest Exploring EMs column. She goes through eight of his machines and what each one introduced, from lock-and-release multiball on Star-Jet to the Balligator on Nip-It.

The Score Card 18: Two Stern Pro Circuit Stops

The Score Card #18: District 82 SPC and NW Pinball Championships

www.kineticist.com

Matt Owen's Score Card 18 covers August's two Stern Pro Circuit stops: the District 82 Summer Pinball Classic and the Northwest Pinball Championships in Lynnwood. One came down to the last shot of a White Water game, and the other had its defending champion back to try again.

Pokémon 0.86 Turns On Insider Connected

Stern released Pokémon code 0.86.0 for the Pro, Premium and LE on September 15. It's the update owners have wanted for a while: Insider Connected is finally on. Log in and the Pokémon you catch go into a collection you can view in the Insider Connected app, and there are Achievements to earn. Play the Forest Battle once while logged in and you also unlock Travel, which lets you start a game in one of the other areas (the game calls them biomes).

It adds 31 Pokémon and four new modes:

• Pikachu vs Mimikyu, a multiball that follows Pikachu vs Raichu

• Bulbasaur 2, where the flipper buttons move two shot arrows, and lining them up pays triple awards

• Squirtle 2, where you put out five shots that are on fire, then finish at the captive ball

• Charmander 2, a ramp combo mode

Story Mode progression changed to match. The first-round modes qualify one of the two Pikachu mini-wizard modes (vs Lucario or vs Charizard), and the new second-round modes qualify the other. George Gomez talked through the update on Flip N Out before it dropped (it's in Links).

Sonic 0.940 Adds the Master Emerald Mission

Sonic's new code, 0.940, adds the Master Emerald Mission, a feature mode where Knuckles needs the shards of the Master Emerald back. To start it, complete 5 lab targets, 25 lab spins, 5 lab ramps and 5 lab orbits on the upper playfield, then shoot the center ramp.

It also turns on the Chaos Emerald powers. There are seven, one per color, and each changes a different part of the game (Cyan doubles your Chao Garden time; Blue bumps a completed level's rank up a letter). The rest of the highlights:

• Find Froggy has 40+ new awards, including higher badnik values, extra ball save time, and all checkpoint shots lit

• Boss battle awards are now customizable

• New "tournament" settings for the center drop target and for Sonic Heroes Multiball qualifying

• An improved Eggmobile motor driver, with better position tracking and less chance of the belt skipping teeth

• An easier start: more lit shots and shortcuts in the first three levels, and the first boss can now be beaten with the badnik targets

• New Micro-LED ring animations and lamp effects

• Fixes for a crash after beating a boss with the "NONE" award selected, and for a left slingshot that wasn't firing when it should

Jersey Jack released it on Tuesday, September 22, and games on Wi-Fi can download it directly.

Stern Adds D&D and King Kong Accessories

Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's Eye got its accessory line on September 22. The headliner is the $1,799.99 Treasure Chest Topper, a motorized chest that opens on either loot or a Mimic. Topper owners get game content, too: a Mimic Mania mode, and Rowan Freewander, a new playable Fighter with an Add-A-Ball ability and speech by Brendon Small. The rest of the line is a D20 shooter knob ($199.99), side armor ($349.99), speaker lighting for the Pro and Premium ($199.99), and art blades ($99.99).

King Kong got two new pieces the day before: a $79.99 dust cover for the glass, and a limited shadow box by Artovision ($279.99, pre-order, shipping around November). The shadow box is Zombie Yeti's art in layered acrylic, framed for the wall, numbered to 300, and signed by Keith Elwin and Zombie Yeti.

The IFPA Sets WPPR v6.3 for 2027

The IFPA announced WPPR v6.3 on September 21. It takes effect January 1, 2027, and most of it tightens the rules for Certified tournaments:

• An event running several tournaments over several days gets one Certified tournament, and the tournament director picks which (restricted divisions like women's events are exempt)

• Direct-play events that split games into groups, usually by era, have to do it in both qualifying and finals

• 4-player Match Play Qualifying goes from a 20-game minimum to 24

• Pin-Golf becomes a Certified format if it matches IFPA Pin-Masters (18 holes, same stroke scoring) and meets minimum scoring averages

• HYBRID Best Game events no longer need exactly 4X as many entries as titles. The minimum is now the greater of 3X the titles or 4X the scores that count

The multi-tournament rule and Pin-Golf were both proposed in the IFPA's Quarter Drop, which we linked on 9/4. The IFPA says details could change before launch.

Mountain Dew Adds $25,000 to the Stern Pro Circuit Championship

Mountain Dew is putting an additional $25,000 into the prize pool for the Stern Pro Circuit Championship on October 14. The Pinball Capital in Stone Park, Illinois, is hosting, and it streams on Stern's YouTube and Twitch. It's invitation-only for the circuit's top 32 players, with no entry fee. For scale, last year's championship posted a prize pool of about $22,000 in cash, plus a new Stern Pro and the belt for the winner.

Links of the Week

• Toys "R" Us is opening 120 new stores as grownup collectors fuel toy sales — NBC reads the Toys "R" Us comeback as a story about who buys toys now. Circana says adult-only households account for 55% of toy spending, a similar trend to what drives many pinball purchases.

• Both Elvira tables come to Pinball FX Midnight and Judge Dredd comes to Pinball FX — Both on October 22. Midnight is the renamed Pinball M, and Judge Dredd is Bally's 1993 table.

• John Wick goes into the Stern Vault — Stern moved it into the Vault on September 18. New units had slowed to a trickle by then, so the demand just isn't there anymore. Moving Units #8 has what its last months looked like.

• Obsidian Entertainment is officially moving under Bethesda as it works on its new Fallout game — More Fallout is on the way for fans who want it. Matt Booty, Microsoft's chief content officer, announced the move, and remasters of Fallout 3 and New Vegas and Fallout 5 are in the pipeline too.

• Wedgehead Pinball Podcast: Pinball Composer II and The Music of Dan Forden — Speaking of Matt Booty: long before Xbox (and before he ran Midway), he managed the Williams sound department and co-designed DCS, the sound system Dan Forden composed on for games like Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wedgehead did two episodes with Forden, one on how he approaches pinball sound and one that goes game by game through his scores, including the Black Knight 2000 guitar sound he says he reused in just about every game after.

• Dirty Pool Podcast: Tasker Smith, A Quest for Pinball Mastery — Tasker on writing Pinball: A Quest for Mastery, which he calls the first how-to-play pinball book in about 50 years. (We talked with him in July, too.)

• Dirty Pool Podcast: Keith Elwin, Amateur Pinball Player — Elwin on designing mechs first, the shark-eats-the-ball mech that got cut from JAWS, and why Fallout was so much fun to work on.

• Flip N Out: Inside Pinball with George Gomez — Gomez on the Pokémon Insider Connected update, getting approvals from The Pokémon Company, why the transforming toy came off Transformers, and X-Men code updates before the end of the year.

• Jared August wins PAPA 23 — His first Major, which makes him the 37th player ever to win one. He qualified 11th, won the first two games of the final, and had clinched it before his turn in Game 3.

• Punk Rock Pinball Podcast: 46,000 Points?! Our PAPA World Championships Recap — PAPA from the competitor's side: zero ball save, bouncy slings, steep pitch, and a 46,000 on Star Wars they figure might be a record low.

• Wild Dog Arcade: Are You Cleaning Your Pinball Machine Wrong? — A home owner's cleaning routine for the playfield, rubbers, plastics and glass. Go easy: clear coat is thin, so skip anything with grit, and keep ammonia cleaners off anti-glare glass.

Poll of the Week

Last Issue’s Results

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Song of the Week

The obvious picks for Fallout week were Marty Robbins' "Big Iron" or The Ink Spots' "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire," and I probably should have gone with one of them. But the only song actually on my mind this week was Neon Indian's "Fallout," from 2011's Era Extraña, and since I do listen to our Song of the Week playlist from time to time, I didn't want to pop either of those into it. (They're here and here if you want the wasteland mood.)

The other reason is that I've been reading Chris DeVille's excellent Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion, and this song was very much part of that era for me.

Pinball News of the Week

Stern Reveals Fallout, and Raises the Price to Go With It

Fallout Pinball: Stern Reveals Pricing, Features & Details

www.kineticist.com

Stern officially revealed Fallout on Thursday: Keith Elwin's new game, in Pro, Premium, and LE (no SLE materialized, despite rumors), built around both the Bethesda games and the Prime Video series.

We've got all the key details in our usual launch post, but a few highlights: a lower playfield featuring a new Magna-Flip mech, Fat Man launcher, inverted flipper, and a bottle-cap spinner. And a price increase. The Pro is $7,299, the Premium $10,699, and the LE $13,999. George Gomez said at media day that no other game's price will go up "this year." 770 LEs this release, but word is most of those are spoken for already.

Based on what I've seen so far in community discussions, the reception to this release seems overwhelmingly positive. If you're in Seattle this weekend, PAX West has the first public games.

Build a Better Pinball Business With Pinventory

Pinventory is business software for your pinball and arcade business — the games, the venues, the money, and the paperwork.

Log collections, split revenue with your locations, and email a branded payout statement when you settle up. Payback %, payoff date, and total return for every game, so you know which titles are really earning. Every repair, part, and audit is tracked per game and available on reports.

Players scan a QR code on the cabinet to report a broken game — no app, no login. It lands in Pinventory, sends an alert, and can be assigned right to a tech.

Free forever. Pro is $19/month if you want more. Built by Ed Giardina, creator of the IFPA Companion App.

James Fremont's Hands-On From Media Day

Fallout Pinball Hands-On: Stern Media Day Impressions

www.kineticist.com

James Fremont covered media day for us on Wednesday in Elk Grove Village and filed his hands-on review. Among Elwin games, it shoots most like Godzilla; the lower playfield reminded him of Twilight Zone's Powerfield, and the one pop bumper in the left outlane area (Elwin says Paragon was the inspiration) drained him at least twice. There's also a shop you can rob, though you're likely to get caught. He got the hang of the game faster on the Pro.

solar_espeon Remembers Dolly Parton, and the Backglass Her Team Sent Back

Remembering Dolly Parton and Bally’s 1979 Pinball Machine

www.kineticist.com

Dolly Parton died on August 25 at 80. We noted it last week; solar_espeon has now returned to the 1979 Bally game that carried her name. The fun historical story is in the art. Dave Christensen drew her in denim with a guitar and roses, Dolly approved it, and her publicists rejected it anyway: "that's not who Dolly is." What Bally shipped a year later is a compromise you can still see on the machine, and Christensen's colleagues thought it would cost sales. The back half includes a Pinball Primer-style rundown of the rules.

IFPA Women's Championship Weekend Heads to Chicago

The IFPA has set the dates and venue for its Women's Championship Weekend: the Women's North American Championship on Friday, April 9, 2027, and the Women's World Championship on April 10 and 11, both at The Pinball Capital in Stone Park, Illinois. It's the fourth WNACS and the tenth Women's Worlds, and it moves from Lyons Classic Pinball in Colorado, where this year's was played in March. Each winner gets a new-in-box Stern Pro, the prize pool has picked up $900 in donations ($500 of it from TPC owner Francis Wisniewski), and Fox Cities Pinball will stream it.

Barrels of Fun Takes the Dune Line Down

Barrels of Fun posted "THE LINE IS DOWN!" this week: the Dune run is finished. Dune was announced in April 2025 as a single $11,600 trim capped at 1,000 units. It didn't go that way. The launch was early and rocky. It landed on top of Stern's King Kong and just ahead of Harry Potter, but it eventually picked up steam and made it to about 720 total units sold.

I liked the game when I reviewed it, and I've said in Moving Units more than once that people who play it tend to agree. Barrels signed off with "May thy knife chip and shatter."

Links of the Week

• LoserKid Pinball Podcast: Fallout by Stern Pinball Reveal Podcast — Keith Elwin, Harrison Drake and Rick Naegele on how Fallout got built. Elwin says Bethesda's Todd Howard insisted on the Fat Man over the Junk Jet, and 770 LEs is a nod to 2077, the year the bombs drop. Also as video.

• Fox Cities Pinball at Stern media day — Keith Elwin’s game demo from Stern’s HQ.

• Pinball NERDS Podcast: Fallout, Top 5 Rad + 1 Bad — the usual release format from Orbital Albert.

• Cooltoy: Is the New Stern Pinball Worth the Hype? — a review, plus separate gameplay videos of the Pro, Premium and LE.

• IFPA Quarter Drop, 2026 3Q — the IFPA's quarterly look behind the rankings: three new staff, 29 incident rulings, and proposals for a Certified+ tier and certified Pin-Golf, both slated for WPPR v6.3 in January. They want feedback on the proposals.

• WPPR v6.3 sneak peek — Josh Sharpe's July preview of the same rules changes, and the last one Tilt Forums hosted before the site went into archive mode.

• Silverball Chronicles: Zaccaria of Bologna, Italy — deep dive on the Italian manufacturer, from Marino Zaccaria's first machine in his own bar in 1964 to the gambling rules that shaped what Italian games were allowed to do.

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

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• We have a Pinball Memes group on Facebook.

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Weekly Feedback

Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!

Song of the Week

This week I'm going with the latest release from Edinburgh's Barry Can't Swim, called "Dance Dance Dance!" Very Daft Punk / Justice coded if you're into that kind of thing. It's even got its own genre, French Touch, as I understand it. Perfect end-of-summer earworm for your final poolside or beach days.

But for this pick, the video is what I love. A sentient robot tasked with menial work discovers itself through the power of dance and goes on a self-discovery journey, and I wonder if there will be a day in the future where my AI robot gives me the metaphorical finger and blossoms into a dancing machine.

Speaking of robots, have you seen the latest release from Hugging Face's robotics arm? They just opened pre-orders for this open-source programmable AI robot duck. $399 (plus shipping and tariffs, boo). I'm gonna get one and teach it to dance dance dance.

Pinball News of the Week

American Pinball Officially Announces Its Cirqus Voltaire Remake

Cirqus Voltaire Pinball Returns: Classic and Ringmaster Editions by American Pinball

www.kineticist.com

American Pinball announced Cirqus Voltaire on Tuesday in two trims: a Classic at $9,989, built to demand with no cap, and a Ringmaster at $12,589, limited to 772 numbered units (a nod to the 1772 founding of "Troupe Le Voltaire"). Both run the same code and the same ruleset options, both get AP's new QuickFlip flipper board, and shipping starts in October.

It's the first of the seven Williams and Bally remakes AP licensed from Planetary Pinball back in January.

Paul Melio went through the release for us: Melvin Williams on creative direction and all six sculpts, Brian Allen on the Ringmaster art package, an optional two-year extended warranty, and the first AP title to ship with Wi-Fi updates.

Two details I keep coming back to. The first is the code. Both editions will have the 2.0 rules Cameron Silver, the game's programmer, created anonymously and posted through a proxy to rec.games.pinball back in 2002.

The second is a monkey. In the new playfield art it's sitting at a lever box marked LUDICROUS SPEED / HIGH / LOW / OFF (it's the Spaceballs line), which is a very specific phrase to pick by accident. Nobody has said anything official of course, but it makes you go hmmmm.

Gerry Stellenberg on Picking Licenses Nobody Sees Coming

Gerry Stellenberg Interview: Licensing at Multimorphic

www.kineticist.com

Part three of Paul Melio's licensing series for us, after George Gomez and J Bryan Vincent. Weird Al, Portal, Princess Bride, Ender's Game, Dungeon Crawler Carl. Multimorphic is good at keeping things quiet. Many of these landed with more surprise than most releases, or at least with little connection to Multimorphic at the rumor stage.

Stellenberg's answer is that predicting the community is a losing game. Huge titles fall flat, surprising ones succeed, so they build around IP they love and hope it resonates. He's also direct about walking away from a license when a rights holder's restrictions would make a worse game. On the P³'s playfield screen, he calls it "a canvas just as any undecorated pinball playfield is a canvas": traditional pinball asks you to shoot the flashing shot, and the P³ can ask you to shoot the staircase that just appeared.

PinAccess Relaunches as Its Own Company, and It's Selling Games Now

Chris Turner has relaunched PinAccess, the connected-play platform that has been in private beta since May, and the relaunch includes a distribution arm that feels unique in pinball.

PinAccess FrontLine takes an exclusive allocation of early-production machines from manufacturers that integrate with the platform and sells them directly to PinAccess account holders ahead of standard production orders. The first FrontLine title is the Cirqus Voltaire Ringmaster Edition. FrontLine's page explains the process.

The corporate structure is an interesting note. In an email to us, Chris Turner said: "PinAccess and Turner Pinball are separate companies. I own both, but they should be represented as distinct businesses—particularly now that PinAccess will distribute games from multiple participating manufacturers." Fair enough. Turner Logic, LLC appears to be the corporate entity that houses both the Turner Pinball and PinAccess brands. Legally, they might be separate, but they're owned by the same person, and since both are rather small companies, the legal technicality feels less important.

It's interesting positioning. Game data has real value. Stern has been building Insider Connected for years on exactly that premise, and PinAccess is asking manufacturers to plug into a platform that also distributes their games and shares an owner with one of their competitors. American Pinball is comfortable with it. I'd be curious who else is. I've asked.

Pinball Brothers' US Support Slow to Respond; Draws Speculation

There's been some chatter in various social media groups about slow response times from Pinball Brothers' support teams, leading some to speculate about the company's long-term health. I reached out to CEO Daniel Jansson this week to check in, and he told me, "Shawn [US Customer Support] moved the warehouse in the US during the summer, so there has been some disruptions, but things should run fine now." Hopefully they get caught up on the support work soon.

Stern's Fallout Is Days Away

Stern's media day for their next cornerstone release is scheduled for Wednesday, September 2 at their Elk Grove Village factory HQ. The last few major releases have been pretty consistent: dealers/distributors get an in-person look the day before media day, and the game is typically more or less revealed by the time media sees it.

Which puts us in line with rumored designer Keith Elwin's teasing. On August 18, Elwin changed his Facebook profile photo to the "two weeks" scene from Total Recall, which puts us at a Tuesday release. Interestingly, on August 4, Stern filed a trademark application for MAGNA-FLIP. Not exactly a subtle name, so it could point to an upcoming feature in the next release (rumors say that it’s for a flipperless lower playfield). All rumor mill signals point towards Fallout as the IP, but as of publishing, nothing has been officially confirmed by Stern. This close to a release, though, the rumor mill is usually right.

We'll have a couple of our regular contributors at media day next week to bring you more coverage of the release.

Clearing Out the Notebook

Once again, we've had more activity on the mainline site than this newsletter, but if you missed a post or two, here's what we've been covering since the last newsletter.

Joe Ciaravino's epic list of 150 pinball firsts

From an 1871 bagatelle patent to the largest homebrew ever built, every entry is a first of some kind, so the list doubles as a compressed history of the medium. The biggest, most heavily researched thing we've published this year.

Wayne Neyens shipped a lot of firsts

Neyens was heavily represented in that list, and we went a bit deeper on his career. The first multiplayer flipper game, the disc roto-target, the wedge head, add-a-ball — all out of one Gottlieb designer. solar_espeon walks through them one at a time, from his first production game in 1949 to the head-to-head oddity he patented in 1970 that sold 110 copies. Neyens died in 2022, a day after his 104th birthday.

Three app developers on a very big year for pinball apps

Ben Plotkin and I asked Conor Wilson, Ed Giardina and Will Oetting what's driving the boom. The piece ties into broader trends of AI adoption this year, particularly on the coding front.

We interviewed the owner of Toys From The Attic in New Hampshire

Arcade Hunters went to see Don Berrios in Somersworth: his Sterns, how he handles maintenance, and how he got into any of this in the first place.

Stern quietly released Pokémon Home Edition through their Costco relationship

It just turned up on sales floors in mid-August, and it's the closest one of these has come to an actual Pro. We went through what's on it. There's still been no formal word from Stern about the release, and rumors of tech issues have cropped up online.

Dutch Pinball released The Big Lebowski: Jesus Edition

300 numbered units, billed as the last edition before their next release. We have the details.

Zahler won Pinburgh for the third year running

Matt Owen is back with Score Card 17, which also has Stacey Moritz sweeping the Women's International Pinball Tournament and Jack Slovacek taking his first Stern Pro Circuit win at The BEAST.

Tasker Smith brought a 1974 Strato-Flite to his own book launch

Andrew Quemere filed from the room at the Center for the Arts in Natick, which kicked off Tasker's multi-state book tour.

RIP Dolly Parton, Tim Curry and Peter Cullen

All three passed away this week, and each had various ties to pinball machines.

Canada's counter-tariffs land September 8, and pinball is on the list

Canada's counter-tariff list takes effect on September 8, and tariff item 9504.50.00, the line that names "pintables," carries a 50% surtax on US-origin goods.

Links of the Week

• Kevin Williams: The True Business of Pinball

• Pinball News reviews Pinball: A Quest for Mastery

• Punk Rock Pinball Podcast: Is Pinball Expensive?

• Cooltoy: Pinball Machine Tools You Need To Help You Survive

• Microsoft explains why Pinball vanished from Windows

• The Pinball Capital wants to build a pinball hall of fame

• LoserKid Pinball Podcast: The Pinball Market in 5 Minutes, August 2026

• Eclectic Gamers Podcast #278: Mom, We Have Pokémon at Home

• Dirty Pool Podcast #38: Joel & Jared Engelberth of Flip N Out Pinball

• Nudge Magazine imagines a first date with each pinball backglass hottie

Poll of the Week

Last Issue’s Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

• We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and sometimes YouTube.

• We have a Pinball Memes group on Facebook.

• We have regularly updated Song of the Week playlists on Spotify and YouTube.

Weekly Feedback

Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!

Song of the Week

No new song this week. Not much has grabbed me lately, so I'm going with something obvious and obscure at the same time. "Justice in the Barrel" is off Jon Bon Jovi's first solo album, 1990's Blaze of Glory, which collects songs from and inspired by Young Guns II. That video is a fan edit, but it gets the point across. In January someone sent me modified lyrics from this song, and I came away convinced Barrels of Fun was making a Young Guns machine, a backdoor Jovi pin the way Labyrinth is a backdoor Bowie pin. Turns out I was off by a degree or two. Flamed out.

Pinball News of the Week

Barrels Reveals Bon Jovi Pinball; Thoughts on a Tough Launch

Bon Jovi Pinball Machine by Barrels of Fun Revealed

www.kineticist.com

Bon Jovi Pinball is Barrels of Fun's fourth machine and its first music license. We covered the reveal in full. I have every confidence that people will enjoy playing it and come away impressed with the technical execution. One of my favorite things to do in my seat, though, is look at the play-by-play and diagnose why some things land and others don't. I haven't played it yet, so I'm looking at the lead-up, the launch, and the reaction, which has been rough. And I don't think it's only about the band (although that's part of it too).

One big piece, I think, is by design. Barrels doesn't tease much. The mystery drop is how the company works, and to be fair, it has worked. Labyrinth arrived when Barrels was brand new, and the surprise was the fun of it. Winchester Mystery House had a new designer and no baggage on the theme. Dune took a minute, but people came around, and though some questioned the theme choice, it was kind of a clean slate on its own. This time there was nowhere really soft to land after the initial surprise of the reveal. Bon Jovi, as a theme, had a few things going against it from the get-go. It was never in the rumor mill, so nobody got to warm up to the idea. Pinball enthusiasts were not asking for it at all. And the things people were hoping for, Dungeon Crawler Carl, The NeverEnding Story, Big Trouble in Little China, weren't what got revealed. Big Trouble and DCC both score 92 on our Hype Index. Bon Jovi scores 64.

When the theme leaked the week before, people went to real lengths in the forums to talk themselves out of it. It's misdirection. Barrels is too secretive. It can't be Jovi. I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it.

I also wonder if these launch formulas are really working. And it's not just a Barrels problem. Everything comes out in pieces, across reveal videos, featurettes, official content, non-official content, and social posts, all in the same day or two. It counts on people wading through hours of it to pick up the nuances and the details that actually matter.

To be clear, Multimorphic did a lot of these same things this week, too (sprawling launch content), but, to their credit, they completely nailed the communications around it, and a lot of little tactical things that made it easier for people to process everything and come along for the ride, while still keeping a bit of secrecy in the process. Their official rollout ran over weeks: the people involved in the projects, the new distributors, a published launch schedule. Hell, to the point of warming people up to a theme, look at the arc of Dungeon Crawler Carl this year. Whether it was intentional or not, the idea of a DCC pin leaked to the pinball community with enough time for people to get interested and invested in the theme. We asked readers about it three weeks ago: of 72 votes, 32 came out of the lead-up more interested than when they first heard the rumor, and 21 less. Barrels put up one teaser photo at 10:31 the morning of launch, saying its next game premiered at 1 PM Central, then dropped the rest a couple of hours later. No theme, no title, no rumors along the way. No one's brought along for the ride.

It probably didn't help that people didn't like the art at first glance. I feel bad about that one. Looking closer, part of the problem is that Bon Jovi's pose on the translite is just a bit goofy looking, so if you're already predisposed to not like the music or the theme generally, it's again not going to prime you for a positive reaction.

What I keep coming back to is that Young Guns version I talked myself into back in January. Maybe it wouldn't have been realistic. But I think that's the version of this pin people could get quietly excited about. At least I would have. Instead it's another dad rock pin, a genre that's been done to death. It could be the best shooting and sounding pinball machine of all time, and you're still starting in a hole.

Two things I'm watching. The first machines are at Southern-Fried this weekend, and perception will probably flip once hands are on it. Barrels builds games that are a blast to play with killer atmospherics (Labyrinth scores a 98 with us), and that should carry. The other is the Reserve trigger. Sell out inside seven days and club members get another seven-day window. An announcement early next week that it sold out would juice a second wave, and then nobody's talking about the negative reactions anymore.

Pinball Machine Management for Operators and Collectors

Pinventory keeps everything about your machines in one place.

Operators track collections, revenue, and audits across their locations, including public QR codes that link to online issue reporting with no app needed.

Collectors catalog their whole lineup with full maintenance history, parts, and manuals on hand.

Every machine, repair, and number lives in one place instead of scattered notes and spreadsheets.

Your data stays private and secure, visible only to you and the people you invite.

Built by Ed Giardina, creator of the IFPA Companion App. Free to use.

Multimorphic Launches Ender's Game & DCC

Multimorphic Launches Dungeon Crawler Carl & Ender's Game Pinball

www.kineticist.com

With all that said, Multimorphic had a hell of a week. We covered the nuts and bolts in our launch article, and we've been following the DCC developments all year, so I won't rehash it here. The short version: two new games up on the same morning, Dungeon Crawler Carl and Ender's Game, both three-flipper designs sharing the same new 360-degree disk mech.

I think it's a really strong release for them. About the only question I have is whether they should have hedged with Ender's Game at all instead of going all in on DCC. There's little doubt DCC is the stronger seller right now. But the dual release plays to the strengths of their whole value proposition, so maybe that's not a bad thing.

American Pinball Has a New GTF Edition

American Pinball Launches New Victory Edition of Galactic Tank Force

www.kineticist.com

AP announced the Galactic Tank Force: Victory Edition Thursday morning, a final run of 100 numbered units, with a code update already live that finally delivers the Tank Zulu mini-wizard mode named on the 2023 feature list. Powder-coated armor, Franchi back for a new Captain Kyan topper, and a motorized interactive tank sculpt that's the first thing out of AP's new partnership with mod-maker Art of Pinball. Paul Melio has the full rundown.

Tasker Smith Wrote a Book on Playing Pinball; He's on Tour Through Aug 9

“I Had Started Writing the Book I Wanted to Read” — Tasker Smith on Pinball: A Quest for Mastery

www.kineticist.com

Tasker Smith's Pinball: A Quest for Mastery came out Tuesday from Schiffer Books, 256 pages on playfield layout, ball control, competition, and the mental side of the game. I asked him about the decade it took, the sports-science rabbit hole that got cut somewhere around the sensory deprivation tanks, and why he says pinball always comes down to playing against yourself. He's on the road with it through August 9, so go say hi if he's coming near you.

Catching Up

It's been a few weeks since I've sent one of these, but we've still been busy publishing new stuff on Kineticist. Here's what you may have missed if we only connect here:

• Paul Melio added a couple of entries to a new interview series on licensing in pinball. He talked to Stern's George Gomez about designing around licensor limitations, including 100% approvals and the deals they walked away from, and American Pinball's J Bryan Vincent about where he's taking the company: what makes a license worth chasing, which genres he's steering away from, and why some classic remakes are non-starters.

• solar_espeon gave us a detailed breakdown of IPDB's top 10 rated EM games, which also kicks off a new series called Exploring EMs, plus a full tutorial for Williams' Medieval Madness.

• Matt Owen ranked every major release of 1996.

• Benjamin Plotkin talked to comedian Matt O'Brien about how pinball got into the act, and how Stern ended up loaning him a machine.

Links of the Week

• The Skill Shot: Is The Shadow the Most Underrated 90s Pinball Machine? — pairs well with Matt Owen's rankings.

• LoserKid ran the launch interviews for all three new games — Bon Jovi with Barrels of Fun, then Dungeon Crawler Carl and Ender's Game with Multimorphic. If you want the makers talking about their own games this week, that's a good place to start.

• Tilt Forums is winding down — older news that's worth surfacing if you missed it. The important part: the site's rulesheets, one of the better free resources in pinball, have a new home at Pinball Rule Sheets.

• Pindigo is now Flippd — the score-tracking site has a new name and a new home. Alex Phelps lays out what happened; since 2015 it's taken in more than 750,000 scores from over 15,000 players.

• PINBOMB is a pinball roguelike — coming to Steam next year from developer GDR. You're stuck in a room with a machine that wants higher and higher scores, buying parts and building synergies to feed it, and there's a bomb strapped to the thing. Score big or go boom.

• Turner Pinball started shipping Yukon Yeti — the first set of machines got picked up and is on the way to buyers.

• Stern Pinball launched Transformers accessories — trailer's up, including an animated Optimus Prime topper.

• Stern Promotes Brian Whitfield to CFO — Whitfield steps up to chief financial officer after three-plus years as Controller.

• IFPA added another name to its leadership group — Tommy Vernieri, who ran the Southern-Fried tournaments for two years, joining on communications and admin.

• Spooky Pinball launched an LCD upgrade kit — the Scream Screen, $199.

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

• We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and sometimes YouTube.

• We have a Pinball Memes group on Facebook.

• We have regularly updated Song of the Week playlists on Spotify and YouTube.

Weekly Feedback

Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!

Song of the Week

"The Mud Never Dries", by London's TV Priest, is a true banger. One could say it really slaps. Both are words I gather we're not supposed to use in pinball anymore, but they were the first that came to mind hearing TV Priest's newest single, their first in four years.

While we're on words that should be retired in pinball, my personal pet peeve is "legendary." Everything in pinball is legendary. Work in the industry long enough, you're legendary. Anyone knows your name, you're legendary. It's lazy.

Four years is a long time and also no time at all. Four years is how long I've been plugging away at Kineticist. Four years is longer than my son has been alive. But four years also feels like only yesterday. When I started down this path I couldn't see more than six months in front of my face. I still can't. Are we legendary yet?

An old Pitchfork review of TV Priest's debut, Uppers, said they were "redefining dad-rock." As a dad who likes rock music, and this song, I guess it tracks. I wasn't a dad then. I am now. I grew into it. TV Priest, AC/DC, what's the difference, really. On a long enough timeline it's all dad rock. Even the bangers.

Pinball News of the Week

A Dungeon Crawler Carl Launch Feels Imminent

Coming to a safe room near you...
#dungeoncrawlercarl #dcc #pinball #litrpg #VoiceOver | Soundbooth Theater

www.facebook.com/reel/1047426177622280

We told you the Dungeon Crawler Carl license was real back when Matt Dinniman mentioned it on a recent stop on his book tour. What's happened since is arguably more interesting than the confirmation itself.

The post that got pinball fans' attention came from Luciano Fleitas, the artist behind the Dungeon Crawler Carl book covers, who also appears to be handling art for the machine. He shared an image captioned "This will look great on a pinball machine, won't it?" But he'd quietly been at it for months. On June 18 he posted an image captioned "wip Glurp! Glurp!", and the only tell that it was pinball-related was the Photoshop filename: "Back box left." Go back further, to May, and there's another image with the filename "Translite cover." That one showed basically nothing, apparently the result of a technical issue, so it would have been almost impossible to catch at the time.

Then the bigger names started showing up. On July 1, series author Matt Dinniman shared the cabinet art for the "about-to-be-announced Dungeon Crawler Carl pinball machine coming from redacted." The word "redacted" is his: he blanked out the maker in his own caption, then added an aside: "Y'all pinball folks are very…enthusiastic about this stuff. Please stop asking my family members and neighbors and editors who are making the machine. They don't know." Back when we first published the rumor, I saw people in chat groups and forums talking about how they play leagues and tournaments with people who know Dinniman, and that they'd try to dig for info. I'd like to think that behavior isn't unique to our community, but maybe it is.

On July 6, Soundbooth Theater, the audio production company founded by Jeff Hays, who narrates the DCC audiobooks, shared a reel that all but confirmed the machine, and by association, put Hays in the mix on the voices. It was also the first time we got a real title graphic: "Dungeon Crawler Carl Pinball," along with the line "The apocalypse will be played 2026."

That last part is the surprise. Based on our initial reporting, DCC pinball looked like an early-stage project we weren't likely to see before 2027. Now, a release feels imminent.

So who's making it? We still don't know for sure. Somewhere in the middle of all this, game designer Scott Danesi posted a photo of a coffee mug printed with a famous quote from a notable DCC character, signaling his involvement, then deleted it and reposted a version with the phrase blocked out. Danesi doesn't settle anything: he's designed games for Multimorphic and contributed to Barrels of Fun projects, and signals have pointed at both camps at different times.

The teasing itself has come almost entirely from the DCC side of the creative team, the cover artist, the author, the narrator, not the manufacturers or pinball influencers who'd normally break a reveal. Going after the book's core audience before the pinball crowd is a smart play. Pinball people will show up regardless.

We do know Multimorphic is gearing up for a launch, based on its last public update and community whispers of an event, and various pinball prognosticators insist it's definitely not Barrels. It also just brought on top modder Davey Price of Stumblor to add custom sculpts to its P3 games, and a theme like DCC would need those to be on point. Either way, we could get a reveal within the month, which is very exciting.

Pinball Machine Management for Operators and Collectors

Pinventory keeps everything about your machines in one place.

Operators track collections, revenue, and audits across their locations, including public QR codes that link to online issue reporting with no app needed.

Collectors catalog their whole lineup with full maintenance history, parts, and manuals on hand.

Every machine, repair, and number lives in one place instead of scattered notes and spreadsheets.

Your data stays private and secure, visible only to you and the people you invite.

Built by Ed Giardina, creator of the IFPA Companion App. Free to use.

Stern Hires Homebrewer Tanner Petch

Word is Stern Pinball has hired notable homebrewer Tanner Petch as their newest game designer. No official announcement, but based on updates to his LinkedIn profile and messages shared to his personal Instagram, it's a done deal. Tanner is probably best known for his artistic homebrew creations, like Trashland and House of Flesh and Blood, and as a sometime collaborator with Nudge Magazine.

As a bonus, here’s a previously “lost” (offline) interview with Tanner Petch from 2023 with Dan Rosenstein.

It's a very intriguing hire for Stern, who could stand to benefit from his creativity in a similar mold to Jack Danger, assuming he gets the right production support. Congrats to both!

'Creators Gotta Create': James Cardona on the Business of Pinball 2.0 Kits

'Creators Gotta Create': James Cardona on the Business of Pinball 2.0 Kits

https://www.kineticist.com/news/james-cardona-interview

James Cardona builds officially licensed 2.0 game kits: full new games coded into classic Bally/Williams machines like Fish Tales, with the original still playable underneath. I had a chance to chat with him on his background and the business of it all, which is fascinating. He touches on his licensing deals with Planetary Pinball, major music labels, how he thinks about story development in pinball, and plenty more.

The Score Card 16: Flipping Up North and a Super Showdown

The Score Card 16: Flipping Up North and a Super Showdown

https://www.kineticist.com/news/score-card-16

Matt Owen is back with Score Card 16, covering two Stern Pro Circuit stops. At YEGPin 2026 in Alberta (290-plus players), Escher Lefkoff ran away with the Open, taking walk-off wins in the first three grand-finals games (AC/DC, Eight Ball Deluxe, Foo Fighters), which was all it took to lock the title. Outside Chicago, Silverball Super Showdown 5 joined the circuit this year on a Target Match Play qualifying format, and Carlos DeLaSerda went back-to-back to win the A Division. Matt has the full cards.

The Full Story of Williams' Tales of the Arabian Nights Pinball

The Full Story of Williams’ Tales of the Arabian Nights Pinball

https://www.kineticist.com/news/tales-of-the-arabian-nights-tutorial

Pedretti's remake put the 1996 Williams original back in the conversation right as it hits its 30th anniversary, and solar_espeon took the moment for the full rundown: the history of Popadiuk's game plus a proper how-to-play, from the seven story modes to the Rescue the Princess wizard mode. There's even a likely bug "Harem-Genie stack" that spins up basically unlimited scoring, if you can pull it off.

Links of the Week

• Pinball At Sea — Barrels of Fun is billing this as the first-ever pinball cruise: around 20 machines and cash-prize tournaments aboard Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Seas, sailing out of Galveston June 27 to July 3, 2027, tied to its new Barrels Reserve fan club.

• I Design Real Pinball Machines: A LEGO Comparison — JJP mechanical engineer Dan Lachcik (lead mechanical on Harry Potter) stacks LEGO's Arcade Pinball Machine set against the real thing: what the toy nails, and where it cheats. A fun crossover read.

• Ryan McQuaid speedruns Total Nuclear Annihilation at SGDQ 2026 — all nine reactors down in 18:45, live at Summer Games Done Quick. Whoa.

• Tim Sexton: How to Get Better at Multiball — practical multiball coaching from Tim Sexton.

• Dirty Pool Podcast #35: Mike Vinikour on Designing Modern Pinball Rules — Jeff gets MXV talking about the road from arcade champion and Midway QA to becoming one of the most influential rules designers in modern Stern software.

• LoserKid Pinball Podcast: Your Wish Is Granted — Tales of the Arabian Nights — Speaking of TotAN, Pedretti's Andrea Pedretti walks through his new remake: what he modernized, what he kept, and why the two editions carry the price they do.

• Punk Rock Pinball Podcast #55: One Year In — the PRP crew mark their first year, from opening a physical HQ to building out the Punk Rock Pinball Association and its scene championships.

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

• We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and sometimes YouTube.

• We have a Pinball Memes group on Facebook.

• We have regularly updated Song of the Week playlists on Spotify and YouTube.

Weekly Feedback

Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!

Song of the Week

This week's pick should really be something from the Danny Go catalog, based on my recent listening habits, but I don't think there's much overlap here with aficionados of toddler music.

So in honor of Sonic week, I dug through my saves for something fast and fun. Portland's Buddy Wynkoop put out a great punk track, "Nouveau Riche," about a month ago, and parts of the video were filmed at Quarterworld Arcade in Portland (there may even be some pinball sounds mixed into the end), so it's doubly relevant. Plus, it's well under three minutes long. Fast, high energy. Something to stomp around the house to before heading out for pinball adventures this weekend.

Pinball News of the Week

JJP's Sonic the Hedgehog Is Here

Jersey Jack Launches Sonic the Hedgehog Pinball

https://www.kineticist.com/news/jjp-launches-sonic-the-hedgehog

After months of teasers, a leaked playfield, and a prior title confirmation, Jersey Jack officially launched Sonic the Hedgehog on Tuesday. We have all the details in our launch article: editions and pricing, photos, launch media, key storylines, and more.

One note on the rollout: as launches go, this one was fairly smooth (though we did catch one small slip-up). Their best material also came a little late: the "Complete First Look," out Thursday, was their more typical launch content, with a full walkthrough of the game, interviews with the production team, and more.

Personally, it’s always hard to tell from launch media alone, but so far I like what I see, and I’m looking forward to trying it for myself as soon as I can!

Pinball Machine Management for Operators and Collectors

Pinventory keeps everything about your machines in one place.

Operators track collections, revenue, and audits across their locations, including public QR codes that link to online issue reporting with no app needed.

Collectors catalog their whole lineup with full maintenance history, parts, and manuals on hand.

Every machine, repair, and number lives in one place instead of scattered notes and spreadsheets.

Your data stays private and secure, visible only to you and the people you invite.

Built by Ed Giardina, creator of the IFPA Companion App. Free to use.

Slash on Guitar (and in the HoF)

Slash Inducted Into the U.K. Pinball Hall of Fame

https://www.kineticist.com/news/slash-uk-pinball-hof

Speaking of Sonic: Slash returns for another Jersey Jack release, this time contributing guitar solo work to two of the songs on the Sonic soundtrack.

Relatedly, we teased his U.K. Pinball Hall of Fame induction last week, and the full piece is now up on Kineticist. Hall chairman Gary Flower, who presented the award, wrote it up for us, and it includes a quick video interview with Slash from the induction. Sounds like he might have some fresh ideas for a new game kicking around!

How to Actually Play Transformers

Stern Transformers More Than Meets the Eye Pinball Tutorial, Rules & Strategy Guide

https://www.kineticist.com/news/transformers-pinball-tutorial

Stern's latest, Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, is rolling out to locations everywhere, and our own Noah Crable already has a tutorial up. For an early-release game, the code is surprisingly deep, which tracks with everything we heard coming out of its launch. So if you're headed out to play it for the first (or second) time this weekend, be sure to pull up our guide to play your best.

Links of the Week

• LoserKid Pinball Podcast: Steve Ritchie breaks down Sonic — Ritchie walks through his latest release and drops a few new nuggets in LoserKid's regular launch podcast.

• Pinball Nerds Podcast #675: 5 Rad, 1 Bad on Sonic — A newsletter favorite is back, putting the new Sonic through their "5 rad, 1 bad" segment.

• Under the Glass: Sonic launch party with Steve Ritchie — For those of you in the NY/NJ region, there's a Sonic launch party at the new Under the Glass Pinball Speakeasy in Red Bank, featuring meet-and-greets with Steve Ritchie and Jack Guarnieri on Saturday (6/27).

• Delta Fringe Podcast: Jack Guarnieri of Jersey Jack Pinball — A good sit-down with the JJP founder, timely in the middle of Sonic launch week.

• Flip N Out Pinball: Transformers Pro stream with lead dev Elizabeth Gieske — Joel and Jared stream Transformers: More than Meets the Eye with lead programmer Elizabeth Gieske on video chat. Gieske says the code packs more content than Dungeons & Dragons and previews patches on the way.

• Purdue students built a working World Cup pinball machine — Five Purdue Polytechnic engineering students spent two semesters building a fully functional, soccer-themed pin (automated goalie included), with mechanical-engineering partners in Germany.

• Colorado's first arcade bar closes its original location — The 1up, Colorado's first arcade bar, shut its original LoDo location June 22 after 15 years. The chain still runs several other locations, though, and this fall it opens its biggest yet: 13,000 sq ft in Lakewood's Belmar, taking over the old Lucky Strike.

• AC/DC's Power Up tour is giving away a pinball machine — The band's pop-up shops (one per city, July 10 through September 29 across 18 North American stops) are dangling a full AC/DC pin as a sweepstakes prize. While this is an interesting note, it comes as rumors of an AC/DC remaster float about. Makes more sense for AC/DC to give away a refreshed package fitting the new tour branding versus the older model. Food for thought.

• Silverball Chronicles: The Complicated Legacy of John Trudeau — On a heavier note: Ron Hallett and Dave Dennis weigh one of pinball's most inventive designers against the charges that now define his name. The classic art-vs-artist question.

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

• We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and sometimes YouTube.

• We have a Pinball Memes group on Facebook.

• We have regularly updated Song of the Week playlists on Spotify and YouTube.

Weekly Feedback

Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!

Song of the Week

"Receive" by NYC's youbet, off their self-titled album from early May. This one's been stashed on my "maybe for TWIP" list for a while, and two things finally pushed it over: the record keeps turning up on best-of-2026-so-far lists — Stereogum put it at #11 — and its 90s-alt-rock streak feels right for a week when we're covering a bunch of 90s-era stuff like a remade Tales of the Arabian Nights (1996), World Cup Soccer (1994), and new Sonic the Hedgehog IP (1991). The video's simple but rewards repeat viewing.

Pinball News of the Week

Pedretti Reveals Its Tales of the Arabian Nights Remake

Tales of the Arabian Nights Remake: Editions & Pricing | Kineticist

https://www.kineticist.com/news/totan-remake-launch

Pedretti Gaming revealed its Tales of the Arabian Nights remake earlier this week, bringing back the 1996 Williams/John Popadiuk classic in two editions: a $10,999 Legacy (500 units, though really 500 in 2026, a soft cap rather than a hard one) and an $11,999 30th Anniversary with new Brian Allen artwork, capped at 399 worldwide. It's one of two announced 2026 remakes of Popadiuk games — Cirqus Voltaire, from a revamped American Pinball, is the other — and Pedretti's second swing at a remake after Funhouse.

There's already a fair amount of content out about it, including light gameplay footage with top-ranked Daniele Acciari. I'll admit some of the promo material gave me a real twinge of nostalgia for the original. You're waiting for the 'but' — it's just the obvious one: we'll see how it actually plays.

One small slip, though: the 30th Anniversary launch art appears to misspell the Lightning Lamp insert as "Lighting Lamp" — a missing n. Womp. Sometimes these early prototype games have mistakes that don't make it to production, so hopefully this gets fixed.

The insert reads "Lighting Lamp" — missing the n in Lightning.

Sonic the Hedgehog Is Finally Confirmed; More Next Week

It's confirmed: JJP's next game is Sonic the Hedgehog. The reveal came as a "staged" phone recording between Pinball Magazine and JJP founder Jack Guarnieri, locking in a batch of previously-rumored details — the Sonic title, that it's based on the video games rather than the movies, and that JJP now has two lines running (Harry Potter on one, Sonic on the other). The genuinely new-ish bit: games are already being built and shipping to distributors, the same playbook JJP ran for the Harry Potter launch. The full reveal lands Tuesday, June 23 — Sonic's birthday.

JJP's also been dropping micro-teasers all week. The most interesting arrived by email — a quick GIF that appears to confirm the leaked unpopulated playfield, with inline drops, what might be an upper playfield, and possibly a looping mechanism.

Barrels of Fun Launches a Collectors' Club

Barrels of Fun Launches Barrels Reserve Collectors' Club

https://www.kineticist.com/news/barrels-reserve-club

Barrels of Fun rolled out Barrels Reserve, a $75/year collectors' club, and the hook is interesting: if a machine sells out in its first week, members get a second window to order, and Barrels builds beyond the edition cap to fill them. Exclusive, but uncapped. I got the mechanics from CBO Brian Savage ahead of launch. There are other perks, too — access to special events, store discounts, and some to-be-announced custom merch I'm excited to see. I joined!

Pinball Machine Management for Operators and Collectors

Pinventory keeps everything about your machines in one place.

Operators track collections, revenue, and audits across their locations, including public QR codes that link to online issue reporting with no app needed.

Collectors catalog their whole lineup with full maintenance history, parts, and manuals on hand.

Every machine, repair, and number lives in one place instead of scattered notes and spreadsheets.

Your data stays private and secure, visible only to you and the people you invite.

Built by Ed Giardina, creator of the IFPA Companion App. Free to use.

The Score Card 15: IFPA21 World Championship

The Score Card 15: IFPA21 World Championship

https://www.kineticist.com/news/score-card-15

Matt Owen dropped in with a quick Score Card to cover the latest major: the IFPA21 World Championship and the 2026 Epstein Cup. Jason Zahler won his historic third straight world title, beating Daniele Acciari in the final of the 80-player field in Wisconsin, while Team Europe took the Cup.

Hilton Jones Built His Own Arcade Game

Hilton Jones on Pinball Design and Indie Arcade Games (Aliens of Destruction)

https://www.kineticist.com/news/hilton-jones-interview

Hilton Jones has done a bit of everything in pinball: competitive player, Madison operator running 40-plus machines, and rules designer on Spooky's Evil Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now he's built his own arcade game. Matt Owen, working overtime this issue, talked to him about Aliens of Destruction, his now award-winning (Best New Arcade Game at MGC '26) project — plus the four tenets he designs by and why he wanted a social bar game in the vein of Killer Queen.

Moving Units #7: A First Look at Our Production Estimates

Moving Units: Pinball Sales Tracker (#7)

https://twip.kineticist.com/p/moving-units-7

We promised paid subscribers a fresh Moving Units, and here it is — a big one. Moving Units has always been about how well recent games are actually selling. But #7 debuts a super-preview of something we've never shown publicly: our production-estimation model, which chases a completely different number: how many of each game were ever built. That's a figure few manufacturers print. It's Stern-only for now, with more makers to come. Where does JAWS land among modern Stern's biggest runs? How big is the Pokémon build, really? Has Godzilla surpassed The Addams Family yet?

Meet Bruce Sheldon, the Maker of the New Pinball Frenzine

Pinball Frenzine Is a Hand-Made Zine for Pinball Rules & More

https://www.kineticist.com/news/pinball-frenzine-interview

Benjamin Plotkin talked to Bruce Sheldon about Pinball Frenzine, the free, hand-made zine he makes to teach pinball rules one machine at a time. Physical copies, a half-letter format, only a few issues in. Here's what gets me: Sheldon's young — well past the era when zines were part of the culture — and when the default move is a TikTok or YouTube account, he's out here printing free paper zines. That's wild, but I love it.

Kick Off the Summer with Bally's World Cup Soccer Pinball

Bally World Cup Soccer Pinball Tutorial, Gameplay, Rules & Strategy Guide

https://www.kineticist.com/news/bally-world-cup-soccer-tutorial

With the World Cup back in North America this summer, it's the right moment to revisit a classic everybody knows: Bally's 1994 World Cup Soccer — "Dog Soccer," with mascot Striker and some memorable callouts from NBA Jam's Tim Kitzrow. solar_espeon's tutorial walks the Cities progression, multiball, and the road to the Final Match. It's also one of my all-time favorites — the machine in the tutorial photos is literally ours, and it used to live at the Sanctum. There's even a little easter egg hidden in those shots if you know where to look.

Stern Launches Its Pokémon Accessory Line

After a bit of a false start — a chunk of it leaked early this week in an unlisted YouTube video before getting pulled — we finally have official Pokémon accessories. Honestly, the Magikarp topper looks awesome, and if I were in the market for one, I'd definitely be considering it. It comes with an exclusive Magikarp Multiball.

Related: there's also a small code bump (up to 0.83), but it still misses Insider Connected integration and Pokédex tracking.

The 24-Hour Endurance Tournament Finds Two New Homes

Last issue we noted in our links section that the Sanctum's Final Battle — the brutal 24-hour endurance tournament that ran for a decade — was calling it quits, with the Sanctum stepping away from the considerable effort of running it. Turns out the format isn't going anywhere. At least two different groups are keeping it alive, albeit in different ways.

First, the direct heir: Final Battle 10x veterans, teaming with the New England Pinball League and Funspot, are reviving it as The Final Stand 24h Pinball Tournament — same format, same rules, new home. It runs 10 AM November 7 to 10 AM November 8 in Laconia, New Hampshire, with the American Classic Arcade Museum open between rounds. A hundred open spots, cash, and your name on the Swain Cup if you outlast everyone. Registration opens July 11 at 11 AM ET; full details on the NEPL site.

And a few months earlier, Steel Valley Pinball runs its own 24 HR Pinball-A-Thon — a full noon-to-noon haul on August 8–9 at Past Times Arcade in Girard, Ohio. Different organizers, different state, same appeal — if non-stop pinball and no sleep are your things. Tickets on Eventbrite.

Slash Enters the U.K. Pinball Hall of Fame

Slash with U.K. Pinball Hall of Fame Chairman Gary Flower

One last thing before you go. This past weekend, Slash — yes, that Slash — was inducted into the U.K. Pinball Hall of Fame, which is a little unusual for what amounts to a side hustle. But his pinball roots run deeper than most people realize: more than 30 years, going back to the original Data East Guns N' Roses and running through JJP's take on Guns N' Roses, The Godfather, and maybe more. Hall of Fame Chairman and friend of the newsletter Gary Flower presented Slash with the award, and we hope to have more from him soon.

Links of the Week

• Stern's latest Ask Jack Anything — Two bits worth flagging: the Dungeons & Dragons topper should ship by the end of Q2 (so, any day now), and Stern's kicking around evolution mechanics for a future Pokémon code update.

• LEGO reveals a working, buildable pinball machine — The LEGO pinball set we flagged a few issues back is now official.

• Multimorphic's June update — The P3 maker says its "next launch [is] coming soon" and is already ramping production for expected demand. No name yet, but a new P3 game looks close.

• The big makers are hiring — American Pinball is after a junior pinball designer, while Stern wants an events manager.

• Wedgehead Pinball Podcast — Pinball Economics 102 — The second entry in their pinball-economics series. Squarely the kind of business-side talk we're always interested in.

• Pinball Junk Drawer hits episode 100 — The crew celebrates their 100th show. A real milestone for any pinball podcast — congrats from all of us.

• Punk Rock Pinball on starting a collective — A whole episode talking about their experiences with starting a pinball collective. Worth a listen if the concept piques you.

• Pinball Minority Report — "Winchester Mystery Hoax" (Ep. 3) — The series hits its third episode, this time taking on a "Winchester Mystery Hoax." We'll let the title do the work on that one.

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

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Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!

Song of the Week

This week it's zzzahara — "Speedracer." I've been bopping my head to it for a few weeks now, and frankly, it felt right for this issue. The reasons will click later on. I like the video, too — a sort of DIY bootleg Speed Racer cartoon. The song's off zzzahara's latest album, Distant Lands, which, coincidentally, is also out today.

Pinball News of the Week

Aussie Goes Viral for Space Cadet Project; We Got the Interview

CNCDan Is Building Space Cadet Pinball in Real Life

https://www.kineticist.com/news/cncdan-space-cadet-interview

A few weeks back, Australian maker Daniel McKenzie went surprisingly viral after posting a video of his work-in-progress, custom-built Space Cadet pinball project. Ars Technica and The Verge both covered it (thanks to Ars for linking an old TWIP write-up of ours), and for a bit, it was everywhere. Chris Krentz seized the opportunity and reached out to Dan for an interview about the project, even getting his thoughts on the old deeproot whitewood for a Space Cadet–inspired pin. The full interview is on Kineticist. Best of luck with the project, Dan!

Interview with Rush Fan Pinball

Interview with Sam of Rush Fan Pinball about Pinball Repair and Restoration Projects

https://www.kineticist.com/news/rush-fan-interview

The latest entry in Michael Swanson's Nutter's Pinball Restoration Spotlight series is an interview with Sam, aka Rush Fan Pinball — another prolific pinball restorer and YouTuber. Learn how Sam got into pinball restoration, why he started his channel, and some of the lessons he's learned along the way in this excellent interview.

Top Ten BEST Video Modes of the 1990s

The Best Pinball Video Modes of the 1990s

https://www.kineticist.com/news/best-90s-video-modes

Well, we said we might do it after taking a controversial look at the worst video modes, and we followed through. solar_espeon looks at the other end of the spectrum with a ranking of the best video modes of the 1990s. This one was controversial too — but that's what makes subjective lists fun, right?

We Rebuilt Kineticist — And Paid TWIP Members Get Ad-Free Browsing

The new Kineticist has been live for a few weeks, and one of the features we shipped in the rebuild is ad-free browsing for paid TWIP subscribers. Every article, every page, no ads.

If you've been paying for TWIP, you already earned this. Here's how to turn it on:

1. Create a free account on kineticist.com

2. Link it to your TWIP subscription from your profile

3. Browse ad-free for as long as your subscription is active

Not a paid member yet? TWIP is free to read but not free to write — a paid subscription starts at $25/year, unlocks ad-free Kineticist, exclusive content, our Discord, and helps keep an independent pinball publication running. Most people join at $60/year.

Sonic Watch

Like most of pinball, we're officially on Sonic watch — the supposed upcoming release from Jersey Jack Pinball. I say "supposed" only because nothing official or public has confirmed the title, even if it's been hinted at and leaked ad nauseam. A few interesting things have happened since our last update, and I'm basically pulling these from the notes we'd put in our eventual launch article.

First, the playfield leaked. There's still a chance it's very well-done AI, but it's probably legit — and it confirms two of the bigger rumors: the fan layout, and that this is a game-focused Sonic, not a movie tie-in.

The leaked playfield, which has been circulating online.

Second, Jersey Jack has a sense of humor. Their site serves up two different 404 pages: the normal one, and a custom version living at /pages/new-game-2026 that just reads "TILT — NICE TRY DETECTIVE." I cracked up when I found it. It's dumb, sure, but it's the kind of small touch you only bother with if you're paying attention — a playful wink aimed at the people who crawl manufacturer websites for clues (which, yes, includes me) and occasionally turn something up when a page slips through.

The custom 404 at /pages/new-game-2026.

Their standard 404, for comparison.

Third, word is that a bunch of creators double-dipped at the recent Transformers media day and walked down the street to JJP to playtest Sonic under NDA. To be clear, none of that is unusual; quiet NDA playtesting is a normal part of how these games come together. The interesting part is the lockdown around it — either Jersey Jack has one heck of a launch campaign loading, or there's a licensing hangup keeping things quiet — like, say, not being cleared to put the name in any public marketing yet.

Surprise Update on Resident Evil Pinball

A Surprising Update on Resident Evil Pinball

https://twip.kineticist.com/p/resident-evil-surprise

This one went out to paid subscribers last night: an update on World Pinball's upcoming Resident Evil game. I'd actually been chasing it for a few weeks, and it ties a bow on some confusing rumors that came out of a YouTuber's floor walk at the 2026 Licensing Expo (more on that next — it's genuinely interesting stuff). What I learned was surprising, though probably not that unusual for pinball. That's all I'll say here. Paid subscribers have the full story.

Rumor Roundup: A Haunted-House Guy Walks the Licensing Expo

The 2026 Licensing Expo hit Las Vegas in late May, and the most useful floor report came from a source I did not have on my bingo card. Hauntworld is mostly a haunted-attraction channel that usually only pops up in my feed for the occasional Stern rant — but this time, he turned up with a full walkthrough of the Licensing Expo, a show that's long been on my radar to attend for this very reason. Over the 46-minute walk, he name-drops a lot of interesting rumors, some of which the broader community already knew about, and others that are brand new. He's no pinball reporter, so take it all with a grain of salt — but a few track with crumbs we've already verified (like Resident Evil), so that's a plus for him.

On the film and TV side, he came away with: Terminator 1 & 2 and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure; Rocky Horror Picture Show in negotiations; and Legendary's Monsterverse — Godzilla, King Kong and company — licensed to an unnamed manufacturer. The Terminator thread isn't new to us — we covered it for paid subscribers back in April.

Then there's Speed Racer, which I'll admit is on my mind this week. The rights holder reportedly told him they'd already talked to Barrels of Fun about it, and he spent a while making the case for it as a perfect small-batch theme. Go, Speed Racer.

On the music side, the headline is a new AC/DC with "new songs," attributed to Stern, with KISS in the mix too. He also heard Grateful Dead is licensed — another one we covered for subscribers back in January. The more interesting read was on which acts actually want a machine: Pink Floyd, Mötley Crüe, and Def Leppard are all reportedly into it, while Green Day was approached and passed.

(He also stopped at Capcom to ask about that Resident Evil machine — see the block above for what we found there.)

A Note on the Next Moving Units

It's been a while since our last Moving Units update, and if you're a paid subscriber looking for the next one, know that it's on my radar. One of the problems, honestly, is that pinball in 2026 has been kind of boring — at least from the perspective of a sales-tracker series. It's mostly been dominated by one new release (Pokémon) and holdovers from 2025 (Harry Potter). Maybe I'll dust off some production estimates I've been working on instead. Stay tuned.

Meme of the Week

Meme of the Week has been dead and buried for a while, but I'm digging it up for one issue: I made this, and people seemed to get a kick out of it.

Links of the Week

• IFPA Quarter Drop – 2026 2Q — The IFPA's second quarterly look behind the curtain. Mostly housekeeping but also: potential TGP reductions, a possible Hybrid rules tweak, and early talk of Women's Majors.

• Pinball Profile #439: Emily Reilhan — Speaking of the IFPA, the B.C. competitor who swept the women's circuit this year — Canadian, North American, and World titles — talks through the run, the mental game, and a hidden talent.

• IFPA21 World Championship — weekend stream schedule — Happening as you read this: Fox Cities Pinball is carrying the IFPA World Championship all weekend, starting at 10 am CT Friday.

• Dirty Pool Podcast #33: Steve Bowden — A two-hour-plus sit-down with one of the hobby's great ambassadors — tournament competitor, broadcaster, rules analyst, and a manufacturer alum.

• The 24 Hour Final Battle is retiring — After twelve years, The Sanctum is hanging up its 24-hour marathon.

• Pinball-playing police detective finds pleasure in the paddles — Headline of the week, no contest.

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

• We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and sometimes YouTube.

• We have a Pinball Memes group on Facebook.

• We have regularly updated Song of the Week playlists on Spotify and YouTube.

Weekly Feedback

Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!

Song of the Week

Keep an eye out for Melbourne-based Ecca Vandal, because she's on track to be a star. I've spent the last week going down an Ecca Vandal rabbit hole after being captivated by this week's Song of the Week pick, SORRY! CRASH! off her just-released sophomore album, Looking for People to Unfollow. Turns out, she's already been playing opening gigs for the likes of Deftones and Interpol, hitting the festival circuit, making appearances on late-night shows, and having tea with Flea.

Pinball News of the Week

Stern Launches Transformers: More than Meets the Eye

Stern Pinball Launches Transformers: More than Meets the Eye Pinball Machine

https://www.kineticist.com/news/stern-transformers-reveal

The big news this week… Stern's official reveal of Transformers: More than Meets the Eye. We've got all the details in our launch article, including key features, rules, storylines, and more. Full coverage on Kineticist.

A few follow-ups we're tracking since publishing:

• According to lead programmer Elizabeth Gieske, the game is tracking to launch with 0.85 code. Without the various challenge modes, she says she’d be launching at .97.

• Speaking of Gieske, pinball historians can correct me if I'm wrong, but she might be the first woman in pinball to be a lead programmer for a commercial machine.

• Is this the version of The Touch that will be in the game?

We Rebuilt Kineticist — And Paid TWIP Members Get Ad-Free Browsing

The new Kineticist has been live for a few weeks, and one of the features we shipped in the rebuild is ad-free browsing for paid TWIP subscribers. Every article, every page, no ads.

If you've been paying for TWIP, you already earned this. Here's how to turn it on:

1. Create a free account on kineticist.com

2. Link it to your TWIP subscription from your profile

3. Browse ad-free for as long as your subscription is active

Not a paid member yet? TWIP is free to read but not free to write — a paid subscription starts at $25/year, unlocks ad-free Kineticist, exclusive content, our Discord, and helps keep an independent pinball publication running. Most people join at $60/year.

Jersey Jack Teases Sonic the Hedgehog; Coming June

So technically, Jersey Jack has not confirmed the theme of their next game yet, due in just a few weeks, but they've been hinting heavily at it. Sonic the Hedgehog has long been rumored as JJP and Steve Ritchie's next game. The biggest open question at the moment is which Sonic IP will they use?

The first teaser image borrows heavily from the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog movie teaser poster, suggesting it's the film IP JJP has rights to. Which would make sense. How else are you going to supply all the content needed for callouts and screen assets? But scan any enthusiast conversation about the game, and you'll see that all anyone actually wants is the 1990s SEGA game IP. A supposedly leaked image from the game that made the rounds last week suggested a game-based adaptation, but it turned out to be a clever AI ruse (remember when I said this was going to keep being an issue?).

Another AI “leak”

So who knows at this point (other than the few people who've seen the game, of course). I wouldn't put it past JJP to secure assets from as many sources as possible — games, movies, cartoons, whatever.

The Transformers Conspiracy Everyone’s Talking About

This is probably my favorite story that I've been tracking this week — the growing conspiracy behind the non-transforming Optimus Prime toy in Stern's Transformers. Last week, we talked about the rumors that Optimus wouldn't transform, and to Stern's credit, they haven't been shy about confirming that they did try to get Optimus to transform, but eventually had to pull it when it didn't meet quality standards.

But how recently did they decide to pull the mech?

Hints of an Optimus in truck form turn up across various promo materials. One shot from George Gomez's overview video in particular looks like additional playfield blurring on the LE was added in post-production.

If I put my tinfoil hat on, transforming Optimus was a part of the mix until very recently (recent enough to shoot a bunch of promo material with it in place), and possibly as an LE-only feature.

New High Speed Tutorial

High Speed Pinball Tutorial, Rules & Gameplay Strategy Guide

https://www.kineticist.com/news/high-speed-tutorial

With a new Steve Ritchie game imminent, we figured we'd take a look at one of his all-time classics, High Speed, as it celebrates its 40th anniversary. solar_espeon walks us through the rules and why the game is historically interesting for modern pinball. Full tutorial on Kineticist.

On Location: Meet the Team Behind Capital Pinball in New Hampshire

On Location: Interview with Capital Pinball in New Hampshire

https://www.kineticist.com/news/capital-pinball-interview

Excited to welcome Gerard and Nick of The Arcade Hunters to the contributing team. Their first piece is an interview with Courtney and Jeremy, founders of Capital Pinball in New Hampshire — plus an overview of their own backgrounds and long-time work on The Arcade Hunters project.

This article kicks off a new series called On Location, where they'll highlight arcades that offer a positive pinball experience and the people behind them.

Links of the Week

• Cooltoy's Transformers gameplay from Media Day — All three editions filmed on reveal day. (Pro · Premium · LE)

• Also, this official Transformers gameplay stream from Stern

• LoserKid interviews Elliot Eisman and Elizabeth Gieske on Transformers

• "Star Wars is the best new Stern" — Ian Jacoby at Nudge makes the case for Fall of the Empire as the best new Stern. (I've enjoyed it from day one!)

• Chinese arcade makers are taking a swing at redemption pinball — From AAA 2026: HY Technology's Pinball Blast (comes in both ticket and prize redemption versions).

• Wonderland Amusements opens TMNT pre-orders — Battle in the Sewer, the sub-$1k home follow-up to Alice Goes to Wonderland. Mateus Santolouco art, projected Nov 2026 ship.

• Spinner is Lit interviews Spooky's Bug Emery on Beetlejuice — Long-form Q&A recorded at the Golden State Pinball Festival.

• Rumor: LEGO ICONS Pinball Machine — Per Brick Tap: 2,274 pieces, $200, projected July 1 release, Classic Space theme — and reportedly "fully playable."

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

• We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and sometimes YouTube.

• We have a Pinball Memes group on Facebook.

• We have regularly updated Song of the Week playlists on Spotify and YouTube.

Weekly Feedback

Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!

Song of the Week

I've been vibing on a few different tracks from Brighton's Lime Garden. First, it was 23, a song I found hilarious for being all about the timeless feeling of losing your edge as you get older. Now it's Cross My Heart, a hooky pop song about breakups. Both come from Lime Garden's second full-length album, Maybe Not Tonight, which was released a little over a month ago (April 10). Catch them on tour stateside in late 2026.

Pinball News of the Week

Stern Teases (and Promptly Leaks) Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye

On Wednesday, Stern officially confirmed the heavily rumored Transformers pinball machine with a (mostly) standard teaser trailer. Like typical Stern teasers, we don't learn a whole lot beyond the theme and a few nuggets — in this case, that the game is based on the early Transformers cartoon (I'm gonna say G1, though I'm admittedly not up to snuff on my Transformers lore), and that Peter Cullen seems to be attached.

Separately, the "Buy for your Home" and "Play on Location" calls to action at the end of the clip caught my eye. They appear to be new for Stern.

Then, photos of the game promptly leaked. Unlike past Stern leaks, this wasn't sourced back to a loose-lipped distributor or employee. No, this was 100% a Stern goof. Not even an hour after the trailer dropped, people noticed playfield and translite photos were live on the Insider Connected app. Oops.

It's kind of easy from where I sit to speculate on how this probably happened. Last time I looked into it, Stern was updating web content across no fewer than four different platforms (yikes): SternPinball.com (Wordpress), shop.sternpinball.com (Shopify), Insider Connected (custom app), and a new landing page system (Webflow, which we used to use!). I'm sure there's other stuff too, like whatever CMS powers their email list. That's a lot of spinning plates, and when you're updating all of them multiple times (teaser, then full reveal) with the need to preview staged assets before flipping the switch… it's kind of amazing this hasn't happened before.

A few things we know post-leak:

• Soundwave physical ball lock — balls launch from his cassette door for multiball

• Optical "Energon" spinner

• Megatron cannon that shoots balls into the catch basin on the left side of the playfield

• Optimus Prime, despite looking like it could/should transform, apparently does not

• Design: Elliot Eisman

• Lead Programmer: Elizabeth Gieske (her first as lead coder)

• Lead Mechanical: Rob Blakeman

• Audio: Jerry Thompson

• Code: Mike Kyzivat

• Lead LCD Artist: Tom Kyzivat

• Producer: John Blakely

• Code name: Cheddar

Expect to see more next week. Dealers and distributors head to Stern on the 19th, media on the 20th. We'll have our own coverage from Media Day.

We Rebuilt Kineticist — And Paid TWIP Members Get Ad-Free Browsing

The new Kineticist has been live for a few weeks, and one of the features we shipped in the rebuild is ad-free browsing for paid TWIP subscribers. Every article, every page, no ads.

If you've been paying for TWIP, you already earned this. Here's how to turn it on:

1. Create a free account on kineticist.com

2. Link it to your TWIP subscription from your profile

3. Browse ad-free for as long as your subscription is active

Not a paid member yet? TWIP is free to read but not free to write — a paid subscription starts at $25/year, unlocks ad-free Kineticist, exclusive content, our Discord, and helps keep an independent pinball publication running. Most people join at $60/year.

More Details Surface on World Pinball’s Resident Evil

A Cryptic New Teaser for Resident Evil Pinball Appears

Colin Alsheimer

Since sharing a new teaser for the upcoming Resident Evil game from upstart Swiss manufacturer World Pinball, we've learned a few new details.

The big one is pricing. A 100-unit Collector's Edition clocks in at $22,353.64 USD (or 17,475 CHF), and the 400-unit Limited Edition runs $21,164.12 (or 16,545 CHF). Both prices exclude Swiss VAT and add-ons.

Speaking of add-ons, we also got a few tidbits about the planned features and upgrades.

For example, take this.

What is it, you may ask? A platform that players stand on. And not just any old platform. This one hooks up to the machine and vibrates at key moments, like a triggered explosion or something similar.

The game will also have an option for what I'm dubbing haptic-feedback flipper buttons, where the flipper controls vibrate for things like left- or right-side zombie bites. All together, it’s supposed to simulate a 3D vibration effect.

Finally, it sounds like there will be a mini-playfield (reading between the translated lines, probably a lower playfield) with a special video mode that involves an on-playfield camera.

So while the game is quite expensive (and it's always risky taking a chance on an unproven pinball manufacturer), World Pinball does seem to be taking some interesting swings with this title. I'm keeping an open mind, at least.

Pedretti Teases Rumored Tales of the Arabian Nights Remake Following Dust-up with Team Pinball

Pedretti Confirms Tales of the Arabian Nights Remake

Colin Alsheimer

Boy, it feels good to be talking about new games! On Tuesday, Pedretti officially confirmed their long-rumored Tales of the Arabian Nights remake. We have all the details in our write-up, but expect to see the game in two trim levels and priced around $10,000–$11,000. There are also rumors of one or more copies showing up at the Golden State Pinball Festival this weekend.

An Update on Team Pinball v. Pedretti

Speaking of Pedretti, last week we briefly mentioned the public spat between Pedretti and their former software/engineering vendors, Team Pinball. I was hoping to have a more detailed article this week following conversations with representatives from both companies. After those conversations, though, I really don't have enough concrete information for a full piece — both parties mostly declined to elaborate further. All told, it sounds like a fairly routine business dispute (and, currently, a one-sided account at that).

Homebrew and You

Pinforge and the Homebrew to Pro Pinball Pipeline

Paul Melio

Excited to welcome Paul Melio to the Kineticist team with his first piece — a banger of a feature on the homebrew collective Pinforge and how it ties into the broader homebrew-to-pro pipeline in pinball. Paul talks with the Pinforge crew, plus Aaron Davis (FAST Pinball), J Bryan Vincent (American Pinball), and Mark Seiden (Jersey Jack Pinball).

Links of the Week

• Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 Needs Our Help — Following an unfortunate hack of their YouTube channel, MPT3k lost all of their followers and some archived content. If you've enjoyed Manu's content over the years, be sure to re-subscribe (or subscribe for the first time if you didn't previously).

• First Look at Bootleggers Playfield Art — Speaking of Pinforge, the homebrew collective just shared the first renderings of playfield artwork for the game.

• NudgeCast Interviews Actor Rich Sommer (Mad Men)

• Ryan Adams Is Auctioning Off Some of His Pinball Collection 

• Dirty Pool Interviews Gerry Stellenberg

• Pinball Roundtable Interviews Christopher Franchi 

• Nolan Bushnell joins the RePlay Podcast 

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

• We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and sometimes YouTube.

• We have a Pinball Memes group on Facebook.

• We have regularly updated Song of the Week playlists on Spotify and YouTube.

Weekly Feedback

Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!

Song of the Week

Telehealth's Things I've Killed, off their upcoming Sub Pop debut, Green World Image, is on the surface a very Millennial-coded track. The premise: the band lists things they've killed — like baseball and mayonnaise — which, according to recent interviews, was inspired by a Reddit thread listing all the things Millennials are responsible for killing. As a fellow Millennial who has always been amused by the generational discourse, it spoke to me. But go a couple of layers deeper, and Things I've Killed is also very Gen-X coded — echoes of early Devo, and lyrics that are a noted play on REM's "End of the World as We Know It."

Their album drops next week, May 15. For the first time in the history of this newsletter, I had the chance to both see the band live (at my local combination pinball parlor/music venue/brewery/record shop, Deep Cuts) AND sample a pre-release copy of their full album before writing this. And let me tell you, reader, I enjoyed both immensely. So if you like danceable post-punk in sort of a modern Devo mold, give Telehealth a listen.

Pinball News of the Week

To Flip and Tilt in LA — A Guide to Pinball in Los Angeles

Pinball in Los Angeles: A Local's Guide to the LA Scene

Benjamin Plotkin

Welcoming another new contributor to the Kineticist team! Benjamin Plotkin makes his debut with the most thorough guide to the Los Angeles pinball scene I've ever read. With an assist from Jeff Dodson and others on photos, Benjamin covers LA pinball past and present, and talks to a number of the people who help the scene thrive.

We Rebuilt Kineticist — And Paid TWIP Members Get Ad-Free Browsing

The new Kineticist has been live for a few weeks, and one of the features we shipped in the rebuild is ad-free browsing for paid TWIP subscribers. Every article, every page, no ads.

If you've been paying for TWIP, you already earned this. Here's how to turn it on:

1. Create a free account on kineticist.com

2. Link it to your TWIP subscription from your profile

3. Browse ad-free for as long as your subscription is active

Not a paid member yet? TWIP is free to read but not free to write — a paid subscription starts at $25/year, unlocks ad-free Kineticist, exclusive content, our Discord, and helps keep an independent pinball publication running. Most people join at $60/year.

Pokémon by Stern: A Pokéfessional's Take

Pokémon by Stern: A Pokéfessional's Take

Chris Krentz

Fellow newcomer Chris Krentz is a true Pokéfessional, having played every variation of the game and maintaining a living Pokédex. We rushed to publish his take on the current state of Pokémon's release code ahead of what we expected to be a substantial code update. Turns out we could have waited: Stern seemingly punted on major updates, releasing a marginal .01 step (0.81 to 0.82) focused on smaller items and polish over anything substantial (cough IC integration cough). We still recommend reading our piece, of course… Chris has some fun ideas and added an update with his thoughts on the new code.

Top Ten WORST Video Modes of the 1990s

Top Ten: Worst Pinball Video Modes of the 90s

solar_espeon

solar_espeon returns for her second piece with a look at the worst video modes of the 90s. Turns out some of her picks were controversial. Maybe next time we'll do a "best video modes" piece — but where's the fun in that?

Nutter's Pinball Restoration Spotlight: mrm_4

Nutter's Pinball Restoration Spotlight: Matt (mrm_4)

Michael Swanson

Michael Swanson puts the spotlight on prolific pinball restorer Matt (mrm_4) in the second edition of his restoration series. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone describe themselves as addicted to being overwhelmed like Matt does here, but it's pretty cool. Kind of interesting, too — for a guy who puts so much effort into publicly documenting his projects, just so others don't have to feel that way in theirs.

The Score Card 14: Europe's Champion and April Intensity

The Score Card 14: Europe's Champion and April Intensity

Matt Owen

Rounding out the past two weeks of Kineticist work: Matt Owen's latest entry in The Score Card series, covering major tournaments from Pintastic to the European Pinball Championship, plus a look at what's on the calendar ahead.

Team Pinball Goes Public on Pedretti Dispute

Late last night, Team Pinball published a lengthy Facebook post going public on a long-simmering dispute over a now-defunct Big Bang Bar remake project. In their telling: Team Pinball bought one of Melvin Williams' original BBB prototypes in October 2024 with Pedretti's knowledge, shipped it to Italy to be finished, and watched communication go dark. When they asked for the prototype back, Pedretti's answer shifted from "yes, if you cover the modifications" to "no, it's our property." Team Pinball estimates ~€90,000 in losses, won't pursue legal action, and is out of all future Pedretti-branded projects.

We won't have a more complete Kineticist writeup ready before this newsletter goes out — but we hope to publish one pending discussions with both Team Pinball and Pedretti.

PAPA 23 Returns September 10-13 — Tickets May 15

The PAPA 23 World Pinball Championships is set for September 10-13 at The Pinball Capital in Stone Park, Illinois. The event also serves as the 3rd annual Memorial for Suicide Awareness in memory of Lyman F. Sheats, Jr. Proceeds benefit mental health charities. Capacity is capped at 250 players. Tickets go on sale May 15 at noon Central — early buyers in the first week get a free raffle entry. Past memorials have raised nearly $100,000 for charity and given out over $80,000 in prizes.

IFPA Event Counts are Back on Trend

I've been tracking a few data points on the IFPA and the organization's health. After a few slower-than-normal months (Dec, Jan, Feb), a recovery seems to be unfolding. Looking at my numbers, that recovery started in earnest in March and continued through April, which had the highest number of IFPA events since October 2025. If the trends hold, 2026 will show YoY growth in the number of events held compared to 2025.

Related (maybe in more ways than one), the IFPA keeps adding to its leadership team — three additions this week: Leslie Ruckman, Stephanie Traub, and Claire Lickman.

Two Goodbyes

Saddened to learn of the passing of homebrew creator Robert Kieronski. We profiled Robert and his project, Create Life Pinball, back in 2024, after a showing at the 2023 Pinball Expo. Word is that some local friends are looking into preserving the game.

In venue news: Toronto's Antisocial Pinball, a 65-machine free-play spot that opened in late 2024, is set to close. Last day is June 14 — if you're local, plan accordingly.

Links of the Week

• Stern Announced the Spike 3 Speaker Lighting System — Stern dropped expression speaker lights for Spike 3 games. If I had a Star Wars FoTE, Walking Dead Remastered, or Pokémon by Stern, I'd want these. $199.

• Stemage on the History of Pinball Music (VGMCon 2026) — Pinball recording artist Stemage gave a talk on the history of pinball music.

• Dirty Pool Podcast: Kaite Martin on NYC Pinball and Stern’s Raymond Davidson — Back-to-back episodes from Dirty Pool worth your ears: Kaite on the NYC scene, Raymond on the move from competing to coding for Stern.

• The Pinball Minority Report, Ep 2: From Golden State to Reddit — Erika's Pinball Journey and Manu are back with episode two of their podcast.

• Dispatch from a Pinball Lover's Paradise in Massachusetts — Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism's recap of Pintastic New England. A very enjoyable read.

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Last Week’s Poll Results

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Song of the Week

Mountain Sized by Eaves Wilder, from North London. Her debut album Little Miss Sunshine came out April 17, and this is the second track off it that's caught my ear — the first was Everybody Talks a few months back.

It’s very early-to-mid '90s influenced. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, she talks about writing riffs on Pearl Jam and Mazzy Star songs, which shows. Anyway, I keep coming back to it. The chorus is straight addictive, and I love the parallelism between youthful malaise (I want a house but no one pays me) and confident optimism (in my mind, I'm taller than the highest mountain sides) in the lyrics.

Pinball News of the Week

A Peculiar Clue in Every Beetlejuice Release

Spooky Pinball's Beetlejuice Code Contains a Goonies Logo

Colin Alsheimer

A French Facebook post tipped us off to some peculiarities buried in Spooky's Beetlejuice code. Turns out there's been a potential clue in every code release since launch. We've since exchanged messages with the person who did the initial investigation; they are currently working with Spooky to address any potential security vulnerabilities found before publishing their findings on their blog, which I can’t wait to read.

We Rebuilt Kineticist — And Paid TWIP Members Get Ad-Free Browsing

The new Kineticist has been live for a few weeks, and one of the features we shipped in the rebuild is ad-free browsing for paid TWIP subscribers. Every article, every page, no ads.

If you've been paying for TWIP, you already earned this. Here's how to turn it on:

1. Create a free account on kineticist.com

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Rumor Flotsam

How do you know it's slow in pinball content land? All the creators turn to rumor roundups. These last few weeks were a veritable smorgasbord of rumors as everyone figures out what the hell to feed the content pipeline when 2026 has mostly been Pokémon with a side of Pokémon.

Smart readers already know most of these rumors thanks to our handy-dandy notebook… err, rumor tracker (updated regularly since 2022).

In no particular order, themes that got a name drop: Transformers, G.I. Joe, He-Man, AC/DC, Fallout, Van Halen, Sonic the Hedgehog, Dracula, Godzilla Gold, Goonies, Gremlins, KISS, Big Trouble in Little China, Dungeon Crawler Carl.

Of these, I'm probably most excited for Fallout, Sonic, Dracula (if it's truly unlicensed), and DCC. Everything else is kinda meh, but I'm not the target demographic for most of these themes either.

Oh, and speaking of word of mouth, I’m hearing new whispers of a “Summer surprise”.

Every Dennis Nordman Machine, Ranked

Dennis Nordman's Pinball Machines, Ranked Worst to Best

Chris Krentz

Chris Krentz joined the team and led with a big one: a definitive ranking of every Dennis Nordman machine. Judging by the Facebook comments, he made a few controversial decisions!

Chris Granner Returns to Pinball for Yukon Yeti

Speaking of Nordman, Turner Pinball announced that Chris Granner is leading sound design on Yukon Yeti, working alongside Adam Gubman. Granner worked on the original White Water too, which makes this hire especially fitting. The rest of his credits? Bangers. Addams Family, Twilight Zone, Lord of the Rings, among many others. He hasn't done pinball work since 2013. Nice get, Turner.

And speaking of Turner, founder Chris Turner spent some time chatting with the LoserKids on their latest.

New Tutorial for Theatre of Magic

Theatre of Magic Pinball Tutorial, Rules & Strategy Guide + 2.0 ROM Notes

solar_espeon

solar_espeon (The Pinball Primer) also joined the team with a complete tutorial for Bally's 1995 classic. While she was at it, she broke down Soren's 2.0 community code update, which, as far as I can tell, has never been covered like this elsewhere. If you've ever wondered what changes a community ROM update brings (or why you should care), this's a good entry point.

Full guide on Kineticist.

We Launched an API and Stuff

In the name of building cool things for fun and seeing if y'all use it, we launched an official API a few weeks ago, along with what could be pinball's first CLI and MCP server. Right now, it's mostly focused on our games database and some of the new features we've been working on, like play logs, lists, and collections. People are already using it to build fun projects, like Pinventory (a tool for operators by Ed Giardina) and Silverball Labs (an experimental platform by Will Oetting). The plan is to keep iterating on it as people use it (and share feedback!), so check it out.

Links of the Week

• Why Do We Learn Rules Like This? — Nudge talks about the unique way some pinball players learn game rules.

• Midwest Gaming Classic opens today — MGC's 25th anniversary, Baird Center in Milwaukee, April 24–26. 10,000+ playable games and 35,000+ attendees expected. If you're in driving range, go.

• Pinball Map app 5.4.0 is a big one — Zoom limits removed (you can now see the whole world), five new filters, score tracking revamp, global activity feed. Biggest release in a while.

• "Same Player Shoots Again" reviewed in the WSJ — Andreas Bernard's slim 112-page memoir on a Munich youth spent in arcades, framed as Proust-meets-pinball. I ordered a copy!

• World Cup Soccer '94 is leaving Pinball FX on April 30 — Apparently, Zen's license expired. Could that mean someone (AP?) has a remake in mind?

• The Shadow, turned into a real-time sound experiment — Really cool audio experiment by Dirty Pool.

• Pinball Profile sits down with David Morris of Phantom Amusement — Manitoba arcade owner, league/championship organizer, and, unexpectedly, a source of pinball machines for major movies.

• Triple Drain Pinball isn't dead — The hosts return after a two-month gap to talk Beetlejuice, Pokémon, and more.

• Dune's final wizard mode, in full — IE Pinball puts it on camera.

• Wedgehead on Pokémon from the operator's perspective — Hosts switch gears to talk Pokémon after its first weeks on location.

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Last Week’s Poll Results

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Song of the Week

Three years ago, New Constellations put a song called "Hot Blooded" on YouTube. It now sits at 21 million views and counting. "Dandelion" is their new single, off their upcoming debut album, It Comes in Waves, due May 15.

I'll let you in on a little secret. These days, in my wildly exciting old-man era, most Friday nights are reserved for catching up on music videos (or more honestly, straight binging them). Sometimes I'll even venture into archival real-time streams of MTV footage from the 90s. What I'd give for an MTV equivalent in 2026. In its absence, I create my own and play pretend VJ for a night. A lot of what ends up here started in one of those sessions.

Take "Dandelion." I've had it on rotation almost every Friday VJ session since its Feb 20 debut. Catchy, with hints of 80s synth-pop and 2010s indie, and lead singer Harlee Case can belt it with the best of them. A fresh voice for a week that's all about fresh voices.

Roger Sharpe Called His Shot Again

Pinball Capital Opens as Chicago's Largest Public Pinball Location

James Fremont

Fifty years after Roger Sharpe stood in a New York courtroom and made the shot that helped legalize pinball, he stood over a Bank Shot machine in Stone Park, Illinois, and got ready to do it again. The occasion: the grand opening of The Pinball Capital, Francis Wisniewski's new 131-game outside Chicago. James Fremont was there with a write-up and photos for his first Kineticist byline.

Read James's full writeup on Kineticist

We Rebuilt Kineticist — And Paid TWIP Members Get Ad-Free Browsing

The new Kineticist has been live for a few weeks, and one of the features we shipped in the rebuild is ad-free browsing for paid TWIP subscribers. Every article, every page, no ads.

If you've been paying for TWIP, you already earned this. Here's how to turn it on:

1. Create a free account on kineticist.com

2. Link it to your TWIP subscription from your profile

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Not a paid member yet? TWIP is free to read but not free to write — a paid subscription starts at $25/year, unlocks ad-free Kineticist, exclusive content, our Discord, and helps keep an independent pinball publication running. Most people join at $60/year.

Meet Leebo's Pinball

Nutter’s Pinball Restoration Spotlight: Leebo’s Pinball

Michael Swanson

Leebo is a mechanical engineer who's been quietly building one of the most useful pinball restoration channels on YouTube. Each machine he takes on gets broken into a series of task-specific videos — flipper rebuilds, cabinet stencils, connector swaps — with the exact tools named so you can replicate the work. Michael Swanson profiles him in his first Kineticist piece; he's on the restoration beat for us going forward.

Read Michael's full spotlight

The Score Card #13: A Historic Run

The Score Card #13: Women's Championships & March Tournament Recap

Matt Owen

Matt Owen's thirteenth Score Card catches up on one of the competitive season's great runs. Emily Reilhan stacked three Women's championships in two months (with a historic first tucked in there), plus Sterling Mitoska's first Stern Pro Circuit title at Steel Valley and the Texas Wizards results out of TPF.

Read The Score Card #13

Golden Girls Pinball?

Golden Girls Pinball?

This Week in Pinball • Colin Alsheimer

Maybe. A few new pinball domain registrations landed this month, and when I went back through the data, I found more I'd missed from a source whose hit rate is starting to look less like coincidence. Paid subscribers get the full rundown.

Read the full rumor roundup (paid subscribers)

Links of the Week

• Scorbit turned on real-money tournaments at 13 connected pinball and arcade locations across 9 states — $4K in inaugural jackpots through April 22, expanding to 30+ venues by month's end. We covered their relaunch last year; this is what that positioning was for.

• Pinball Brothers asked Facebook what they should make next. Predictable mix of wish lists and jokes, but current rumors point to The Thing, which makes the timing either a branding exercise or a genuine fishing trip. Comments are worth a scroll.

• HEXA dropped a longer gameplay video for The 3 Musketeers. The TPF reveal deserved more than a sizzle reel, and this is a proper look at the game.

• A new pinball podcast just launched: The Pinball Minority Report. Erika (Erika's Pinball Journey) and Manu (Mystery Pinball Theater 3k) are teaming up, and the teaser is live.

• Pinball Junk Drawer Episode 95. Craft Brew Sally and Foghorn Leghorn on TPF, Beetlejuice, and assorted pinball bits. Creeping toward episode 100 — and speaking of fresh ink, Foghorn might be filing for us before long.

• Weezer posted a reel with pinball in it and pinball social media lost its mind.

• The Nudgecast talked Python Anghelo with Joe Ciaravino. Stories about one of pinball's most eccentric designers.

• Pete Davidson is selling his North Salem house for $2.275M and the listing photos include a Sopranos pinball machine in the game room. No word on whether the machine comes with it.

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Last Week’s Poll Results

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Song of the Week

This week it's The Bobby Lees — "New Self." If you took the rage of Zach de la Rocha, ran it through therapy, and came out the other side with self-compassion and some very funny memories of a night with Shaun White, you'd land somewhere close to this track. Sam Quartin's vocals are jagged and huge, but the lyrics are unexpectedly tender — a diary entry set to late-90s nu-metal and garage punk.

The Bobby Lees are from Woodstock, NY. They went on indefinite hiatus in late 2023 after burning out on touring economics, and would've stayed gone if not for Jason Momoa, who funded the new record. New Self is their fourth studio album and their Epitaph Records debut, produced by Dave Sardy, out June 12.

Pinball News of the Week

One More Dollar: Inside Project Pinball with Daniel Spolar

One More Dollar, One More Game: Inside Project Pinball with Daniel Spolar

www.kineticist.com/news/project-pinball-interview

Every few months, someone in the pinball community pulls up Project Pinball's 990 filings, sees $600,000 in net assets and a 3-star Charity Navigator rating, and starts asking questions. Where does the money go? Why does the founder take a salary? Why no independent audit?

We sat down with Daniel Spolar for nearly three hours to get answers.

The conversation covered everything — the origin story, how the raffles actually work, what the $600,000 is made of, why he took zero salary for eight years, and the stories behind the placements that the public rarely hears.

There were no bombshells. No red flags. No moments where the math didn't add up. What there was, mostly, was a guy in a hotel room in Phoenix, bike wedged against the bed, somewhere between dedications, answering for a charity that's grown faster than the community's understanding of it.

Read the full piece — One More Dollar, One More Game.

Hey! Don’t Skip This!

The This Week in Pinball Friday newsletter is free for all to read — but that doesn’t mean it’s free to write.

We rely on just 120 paying members that make it possible to curate the best pinball content each week, do original reporting, produce regular columns, and more.

If you enjoy the work we do here, and you haven’t upgraded your subscription yet, it starts at $25/year, but most people join at $60/year. Get exclusive content, access to our Discord, ad-free viewing on Kineticist, and the self-satisfaction of supporting an independent pinball publication.

Turner Pinball Reveals Yukon Yeti

Yukon Yeti Pinball: Turner Pinball Reveals Pricing, Features, and More

www.kineticist.com/news/turner-reveals-yukon-yeti

Dennis Nordman's spiritual successor to White Water is real, and it had its public debut at the Texas Pinball Festival last weekend.

Klondike Gold Rush-themed, built around a 5-ball avalanche lock and four flippers. It's $9,999 for a single 500-unit run, and word is Turner has already sold at least half. Could take up to two years to produce all 500 — a reminder of what "small batch" actually means at this scale.

Audio took some heat at the show and Turner is bringing on more help to address it. Art has split opinion too. The audio is fixable. The art is what it is. Either way, there's a lot of mechanical ambition here. Full breakdown with rules, pricing, and design history on Kineticist.

HEXA's 3 Musketeers Reveal — Minus the Machine

Three Musketeers Pinball by HEXA Pinball Revealed

www.kineticist.com/news/hexa-3-musketeers-pinball

HEXA Pinball planned to unveil its second title, The 3 Musketeers, simultaneously in Bordeaux and at the Texas Pinball Festival. There was just one problem: customs held up the TPF demo units, so attendees couldn't actually play it.

Tough break for a French manufacturer trying to prove itself with unlicensed IP.

Designed by Luis Dos Santos, themed around Alexandre Dumas's classic novel (public domain — no licensing fees). Classic Edition runs €7,890, Elegance Edition €10,390. First shipments targeted for June. HEXA also announced AdaptiveFlip, an accessibility program they said was "quite easy to do on a technical point of view".

Full breakdown on Kineticist.

American Pinball at TPF: Houdini, Cirqus Voltaire, and an AI Flyer

American Pinball came to Texas with two announcements.

First, a Houdini 100th Anniversary Edition — new cabinet artwork by Christopher Franchi and a new topper. They had units on the floor at the fest. Second, and bigger: the Cirqus Voltaire remake is confirmed and scheduled for 2026. For anyone who caught our TPF preview a couple weeks ago, the rumor mill was right on this one.

There was also a small dust-up over a promotional flyer that was pretty clearly AI-generated — it still had the Gemini watermark on it. Similar vibes to the Harry Potter AI art situation from earlier this year. I don't think using AI for promo materials is inherently a problem, but you've gotta check the details before you send it out.

Rumor: CGC Considering Another Attack from Mars Remake Run

Word out of TPF is that Chicago Gaming Company may do another production run of the Attack from Mars Remake. About time — demand for AfM has consistently been strong. Like Medieval Madness, AfM is another game CGC could probably run in perpetuity.

The Score Card: Major Moves

The Score Card: Major Moves

www.kineticist.com/news/major-moves

The latest Score Card covers three major tournaments from competitive pinball's spring season.

Daniele Acciari won INDISC for his fifth lifetime major. Jason Zahler took the IFPA North American Pinball Championship with a 4-0 finals sweep. Keith Elwin won Pin-Masters at ORD Pinball, clinching it on NBA Fastbreak. And Dalton Ely quietly showed up in the top four at both NAPC and Pin-Masters — watch that name.

Noah Crable on His Surprise NAPC Run

Noah Crable on His Surprise Run to the 2026 IFPA National Championship Final

www.kineticist.com/news/noah-crable-interview

We also interviewed Noah Crable about his run to the NAPC finals. Noah writes rulesheet guides for us at Kineticist and isn't really on the national tournament circuit — he qualified through state competitions, knocked out Eric Stone in the semis, then ran into Jason Zahler in the final. Fun interview. He talks about learning games through location play, why he kept picking X-Men (short version: he knew it cold and everyone else didn't), and his VHS tape collecting hobby, which is somehow the perfect parallel to writing rulesheets.

Read the full interview — Noah Crable on His Surprise Run.

Moving Units #6 Is Live

Moving Units: Pinball Sales Tracker (#6)

twip.kineticist.com/p/moving-units-6

New Moving Units tracker is up for paid subscribers. JAWS crossed 3,000 units in market, Harry Potter hit a milestone, and Pokémon posted the fastest start we've ever tracked. Read Moving Units #6.

Kineticist Updates

A few things from our end.

The site got a ground-up rebuild. If you've visited kineticist.com recently, you may have noticed it's faster and works better. We rebuilt the entire site on a new custom stack, replacing the hodgepodge of subscription services we'd been using. Already live: game reviews, comments on articles, custom lists for games and locations, and the ability to save your game ratings and hype ratings to your profile. More features coming — we'll do a proper write-up once we're further along.

Your TWIP sub just got an upgrade. First feature we built on the new stack: paid TWIP subscribers can now browse kineticist.com completely ad-free. Create a Kineticist account, link your subscription, takes about a minute. Your sub now gets you ad-free browsing on top of Moving Units, subscriber-only articles, and everything else.

We're still looking for writers. The response to our call a couple weeks ago was way better than I expected — we're in talks with a bunch of potential new contributors and have some new things in the works. But it's an open call, and it stays open. If you're interested in covering pinball, arcade culture, or adjacent beats with a business lens, reach out anytime: colin@kineticist.com.

Links of the Week

• Stumblor CardBlaster — Automatic card dispenser for Pokémon Pinball machines. Dispenses a trading card when you hit a configurable in-game trigger. $327 and already sold out.

• Nudge Pinball: Free Photo Library for Tournament Directors — Tired of seeing AI slop on tournament flyers, Nudge put their money where their mouth is — six years of photos plus Canva templates, free for TDs to use. "Weird, sexy, fun stuff created by humans."

• Silverball Chronicles: Game Plan — Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em — Ron and Dave dig into Game Plan's 1970s cocktail pins, bad marketing decisions, and John Trudeau's entry into pinball manufacturing.

• Punk Rock Pinball: What Kind of Player Are You? — Mike and Stephanie discuss player archetypes and community reactions to AI art in pinball. Timely.

• Slam Tilt Podcast covers the TWIPYs — They didn't tear us to shreds, which we consider a win.

• Turner Pinball: Yukon Yeti Stream — Extended gameplay footage if you want to see the avalanche lock in action.

• MGC Homebrew Pinball 2K26 — The Midwest Gaming Classic turns 25, and Homebrew Pinball and Arcade Games 2K26 (presented by Flairrcade) is calling for submissions. April 24-26 at the Baird Center in Milwaukee. For submissions or more information, contact Christopher Wells Graham at homebrewpinballgames@gmail.com. Deadline is April 20.

Poll of the Week

Last Week’s Poll Results

Thank you for reading!

More ways to connect:

• We’re active on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and sometimes YouTube.

• We have a Pinball Memes group on Facebook.

• We have regularly updated Song of the Week playlists on Spotify and YouTube.

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Your feedback helps us improve our work. All notes are appreciated!