Lord Of The Rings Pinball Machine Announced

Thanks to Retrogames for pointing to the news that a Lord Of The Rings pinball machine has been announced, courtesy of sole remaining pinball manufacturer Stern Pinball Inc. There are no pictures yet, but the press release reveals features including "...a Balrog toy that pivots when hit by the ball, revealing the jump ramp that leads to The One Ring", and the fact that "...players can knock down Barad-dur, which also features the eye of Sauron." The game "will begin shipping in November, 2003", and follows recent Stern machines such as The Simpsons Pinball Party and Terminator 3.

Worst News Item Ever

[m_evanchik]

OK. You win. I am unselecting "LOTR" from my list of viewable topics. This is too trivial to justify.

Re:Worst News Item Ever

[mrshowtime]

Actually, this is big news for those people who love pinball. Pinball is a dying art, or to whom you ask, a dead art. For a pinball machine to be released in conjunction with such a big name movie gives pinball wizards hope. If the layout of the pin and ruleset is anything near as good as Stern's previous pin (Simpsons Party Pinball) then LOTR pinball will be a very collectible and sought after item. Medieval Madness, one of the last games made by Williams before they shuttered their pinball division, is similar in tone to what LOTR will be and MM pinball machines now sell for over SEVEN GRAND.

Re:Worst News Item Ever

[siobHan]

Absolutely true. And really, a lot more people love pinball than realize it. It's an indelible part of the American (and European) pop culture landscape yet it's in danger of totally coming to an end. Operators don't place or maintain machines anymore and the new generation doesn't even know what they are.

K

ps This will be a good pin, trust me.

Re:Worst News Item Ever

[DZign]

Keith J., is that you ?? :-)

Re:Worst News Item Ever

[bersl2]

Netcraft confirms it: Pinball is dying.

But seriously, pinball is the greatest arcade game: a well-made table can entertain forever. It is non-linear, unlike so many arcade games. It has a simple learning curve and is fairly intuitive, so anyone can play. It is also (almost?) always family-friendly so, once again, anyone can play.

There are a couple of things I don't like about current pinball trends: 1) most arcades charge more than they have been previously; of course, it's the same with everything in th

Oooh!

[daeley]

This would be especially cool if the pinballs were translucent crystal-looking and glowed like miniature palantiri. :)

Does the Balrog spin as fast as Tolkien's body is?

[Glytch]

'Cause I don't think it can.

Re:Does the Balrog spin as fast as Tolkien's body

[borg1238]

I've never understood why the Lord of the Rings series considered so sacred. Anyway, let's face it, the series [shoppingbrains.com] was [lord-rings...andise.com] "sold [lordoftheringsshop.com] out [amazon.com]" well before a pinball machine was created using its license.

Pinball is hardly dead

[ReyTFox]

Results 1 - 10 of about 940,000. [google.com]

Certainly it's not the staple game of arcades and pubs that it used to be - video games have mostly taken over there since they can offer a wider range of gameplay - but in and of itself it's a unique game with lots of variations and evolutions in table design that's settling down to a comfortable niche in the world of coin-operated games.

It's too bad...

[shadowcabbit]

I happen to really like pinball, but it's impossible to find machines in arcades anymore. I actually spoke with the manager of the arcade near me, and he says pinball went out of style because the machines were too hard to repair. What's more, the Stern-brand machines are pretty poor in quality-- they arrive broken, or so it seems (every time I've played a machine by Stern, there's been something wrong with it). I'm excited that there's a new machine announced, of course, and I'll play it if I find it, but part of me wishes Sega or even Midway had developed it instead of Stern.

Re:It's too bad...

[DZign]

Stern took over the pinball division from Sega..

Stern

[borg1238]

I, for one, actually consider this news. The creation of a brand new pinball machine when most arcades subsist on "sit down driving games" and "light gun games" is a fortunate thing indeed. Now if I could only find a place that has them. Oh wait [vpforums.com].

On the other hand, Stern is no Midway. A lot of their games have fairly uninspiring themes/designs IMHO (Roller Coaster Tycoon [sternpinball.com]). And while they've finally gotten better parts for their recent machines, they do have pretty shoddy quality control. My Simpsons Pinball Party [sternpinball.com] (TSPP) had such "powerful" flippers (Stern's older machine's were notorious for weak flippers) that they would shake when you held the flipper button down. This was due to a misalignment in the flipper coil. It came from the factory this way! Stern "tech support" gave the following suggestion to fix it: hit it (the flipper coil) with a hammer. Uh, yeah... I'm sure there won't be any more problems with the machine after I whack it with a blunt object a few times.

"What are you going to do with that hammer?"
"Mongo fixing pinball!"

Speaking of TSPP, they say in the article that the same designer is doing the Lord of the Rings pin. I hope they do a better job making it clear what the player has to do to score points then they did with TSPP. There's a fine line between a deep ruleset, and simply confusing the player. TSPP is a fine game for home use, because you get to take the time to learn its rules and idiosyncrasies. If I was playing it in an arcade, I doubt I would have taken the time to figure it all out.

That said, Stern is getting better and better with every new machine. It takes guts to stick in a market that everyone else has abandoned. I wish them the best of luck and hope they keep making new pins.

Re:Stern

[borg1238]

Self correction:

The article says "Excitingly, the game is supposed to have deep rules. That's certainly believable as Keith Johnson is responsible for them. He created the wonderfully complex rules for The Simpsons Pinball Party - widely praised amongst pinball aficionados."

But then says: "But perhaps most interesting of all is the one detail missing. Who's the designer? It's been generally believed that George Gomez would be in charge on this one, but there's no mention of the designer in the press rel

Re:Stern

[keefer]

Well, I've been brought out of my 2+ year shirking of /. because of this article. Hope you all are satisfied!

The "designer" the pinball news article is referring to is the PLAYFIELD designer. I'm not a mechanical guy, though there's really no reason that I couldn't draw a playfield some day as plenty of other programmers have gone that route.

I consider myself to be the game designer, or experience designer, or whatever, since I'm pretty much in charge of coordinating what's on the display, sounds, music, speech, writing the rules, etc. etc.

It just depends on who's working on the game who the designer is. With other teams, the playfield designer is also the rules designer, and the programmer is just a code monkey. I'd sooner quit before that happened to me though.

Re:Stern

[borg1238]

Well, I've been brought out of my 2+ year shirking of /. because of this article. Hope you all are satisfied!

Yes, yes, my evil plan is now finally coming to fruition. :)

Thanks for the info.

Stern should buy Williams tech

[Sodade]

Williams/Bally are the ONLY good pins ever made. Stern pins suck hard - they are just crappy Sega tech all over again. Why doesn't someone buy Williams stuff - you could probably make a mint on Medeval Madness alone...

Pinball2000

[emptybody]

I only wish that there were more pinball2000 systems coming out. Perhapse if they made a more servicable system - the operator of the gamroom could pop out a faulty flipper/bumper/whatever mechanism and pop-in a new one without the machine being out of order for a week...

Re:Pinball2000

[Look Sir, Droids!]

That is very unfortunate because, IIRC, they made a Star Wars pinball-2000 machine, right at the end, that I played like twice.

...Years later, I still dream of this machine, with its holograms, lightsabers, and plastic Jar Jar.

Re:Pinball2000

[emptybody]

I can still here JarJar...
"Player Two... You Su Uck!"