A review of Sterns new Elvis pinball machine

I wrote this back in 2004, just as the first few Elvis machines arrived in the UK. Gary Flower invited me to join him at Electrocoin to review the Elvis they had in the showroom. It was running early software at the time, but some photos were taken, a review written for Pingame Journal, but they misplaced it and it never got published. A friend suggested I post it here, so here it is.

-----------------

I used to play pinball as a child, but from then until 2 years ago I had hardly touched tables, so this review is coming from someone who is a newcomer to modern machines. I recently had the chance to go and see one of the early release Elvis machines at Electrocoin in London, and was pleased with what I found.

The first thing you'll notice when faced with an Elvis machine, is colour, and lots of it. From seeing various discussions I know the art isn't to everyone's tastes, but personally I actually like the colour scheme, it's bright without being garish and fits in with the rock 'n roll theme. The rest of the machine is equally attractive, there are various era Elvis pictures in the lower playfield, nice clear lane entry markings and insert text, and pretty ambient lighting. The are a few coloured lamps by the way, these are actually done with coloured bulbs instead of bulb covers which looks much nicer. Points of note include the gold ramps and wireforms – the ramps have musical notes and ELVIS cut into them along the edges, it was remarked that some covers under these might have looked nice, but I prefer the cut+bare light effect. Also worth mentioning is the Heartbreak Hotel which looks nice up on the mini playfield (which is as reports said, completely clear – I would have tinted it myself).

Now, just in front of the mini playfield is the now infamous dancing Elvis. Seriously folks, seeing a picture of him (the head has been much improved), and seeing him actually moving in time to the music are two very different things – the effect is really good and doesn't detract from the game in the slightest. As for the cabinet art and backbox, it's quite nice and reserved – dark and pretty tasteful looking. The DMD is used to good effect in this game, not over the top, not too basic – nice work on the animations. While not being played, this is also used to display Elvis trivia – and it seemed to have quite a bit programmed in.

While we're talking about the looks, it's worth mentioning the sound too. You might think Elvis is always dancing and swinging his hips, but this isn't the case. Elvis songs do play during modes, and whether you like his music or not – they've been well selected and sound just right in the game. When not in any particular mode, the game reverts to non vocal 'generic' rock n roll sounding music. It would have been nice for songs to play all the way through, but Stern don't seem to agree with me. The sound effects also fit in well, but didn't stand out and shout in my ears. It makes a huge change to hear some decent catchy music again on a pinball, and I'm happy they decided to license the songs – money well spent.

The playfield layout doesn't immediately remind me of any game in particular which is a good thing (now which Lawlor game was Ripley's anyway..?), but being a Steve Ritchie design has a few of his trademark shots. The outer orbit is brutally fast, and when fed from the left, the ball can be flipped off the upper right flipper into a smaller orbit – remind anyone of High Speed? Most of the shots on the table are long distance in fact bar the new and improved bank of 5 drop targets on the left. The left ramp is just to the side of the left orbit entrance, and this curves tightly at the top to drop the ball in front of the upper playfield flipper, for shots at the Heartbreak Hotel (missing this shot lets the ball run onto a wireform to the lower left flipper). To the right of the ramp is the Hound Dog – which works like a 'test your strength' bell ringing game from a funfair. Along from the dog is a central corridor, with the KING and TCB target banks at angles – these are very tricky to hit accurately and a certain amount of rebound is needed to hit all of them. To the right of this corridor is a ball saucer which counts ball locks – the pop bumper area above this can drop the ball into the lock too, but it isn't counted bar a few points. Next is the right ramp, which runs around behind the Heartbreak Hotel onto the mini playfield, but this is purely for show – the ball can only run straight off and onto the drain wireform which feeds the lower right flipper. Right at the back above all of this are the skill shot rollovers, and the Gift From Elvis saucer. While this saucer can be shot from the right orbit, it can also be hit for a special bonus skill shot when the ball enters play – a difficult bounce is needed and it's more luck than anything else. Below all of this is only really the bank of 5 drop targets on the left (most welcome), and the usual inlane, outlane and slingshot arrangement. Actually, call me crazy, but the layout of all those upper area lanes really reminds me of Fire!, I think it's those gold ramps and the vicious orbit doing it. A note of warning with regards to the ramps – make sure you hit them properly, as either is quite capable of resulting in a SDTM ball loss if you don't have a clean and fast enough shot on them.

The gameplay itself is as mentioned mostly ranged fast shots, however – Stern are aiming at a wider audience this time and compromises aimed at the less experienced player have been made. The game isn't drain heavy, the only real danger coming from rollbacks off the ramps. The ball has also been slowed down. Possibly this is also to avoid damage to the low placed drop targets, but I suspect the aim was to make the game more manageable. Checking underneath I found the coils are a weaker type than the ones on Ripleys.

Elvis lends itself to solid play rather than frantic ricochet action – it suits the game, but this is not to say it's easy by any means. There's definitely a lot to do on the table with several modes (the Hound Dog one is particularly amusing), the 'Gifts From Elvis', and climbing the charts to contend with (note middle of the playfield). Sadly I didn't have enough time to play it all day and discover the rules properly, so I'll have to summarise with the game feeling nice and friendly. The only shot which doesn't really feel very sure of itself is the mini orbit off the upper right flipper, everything else behaves as you would expect it to – no odd bounces, strange shots that fire the ball back at you with little hope of saving or any bouncing off wireforms. The only complaint I have with the ball flow really is the left spinner sometimes seemed to actually stop the ball dead. This is an early machine, and may just be an issue on the actual one tested.

A few times we did see 'SWITCH 56' or similar flash up on the display, but this machine wasn't running final ROMs. The only concern I had over the gameplay was that it wasn't always obvious what we should have been shooting at – bar looking for flashing inserts at times. Again this may be down to unfinished software. One mode I did find worth mentioning was the 'bemani' style video mode. Could this be one of the first actually good video modes? An Elvis song plays, and you need to match up the notes with flipper buttons presses, in perfect time. Good fun and very original in a pinball!

So how do I feel about this game overall? Well – the theme is great. I'm not and never have been, an Elvis fan – but I can appreciate good music and a good theme – this has character, and it's nice not to see yet another film license. Stern will have paid a lot to use the Elvis name, image, music and so on, I think anyone who plays the machine will warm to it too – especially the mainstream who are going to need to be playing this for pinball in general to continue. For example, outside of the USA, Ripleys is not very well known (apart from that line in a B-52s song) – but even children know who Elvis is, even if they haven't actually heard the music. I'm pleased that Stern concentrated on his prime years rather than the slightly mocking look at his later career that might have happened.

The artwork is tremendous to look at, it really does look great although there is some graininess to be seen in the playfield art. The Elvis doll is just plain cool, having taken a look at the mechanism underneath, it uses a motor for forwards and backwards movement, and a pair of miniature solenoids for the arm and hip movement. Very neat indeed, and very tidily constructed. For those curious, it does feel fairly lightly built, but it's very tidy under there, and the lack of airballs suggests the ball speed has been well tailored to the layout – time will tell. Initially the audio sounded fairly weak, but after nervously turning it up a bit (we didn't want to annoy the Electrocoin employees who were trying to work at the time) but sound system is nice and clear at the high and low ends of the scale – clear bass is essential for a game with musical leanings. As for the actual gameplay itself – I'll reserve final judgement until I play one on finished software, but it gets a general thumbs up from me.

This is a good machine. A very good machine, and if the goals in modes become clearer (and again remember this was unfinished software) it will be a great machine. Hopefully Stern will sell an awful lot of these, I'm going to try to play one on location in London before this review is published, to see if anything has changed from the prototype we played. I'd like to thank Electrocoin in London, UK for allowing us to get in the way, pilfer a large stack of flyers, and generally be a nuisance trying out this machine.