At the expo. Everyone just got booted from the room so they can set up the reveal.

Inside now and jack is being long-winded. Says if you love pinball there is no way you won't love Pat's next game.

New hobbit code being released tonight.

Black Arrow special edition art package for The Hobbit.

Pat on stage.

"I'm back."

Jack came to him and asked for an original theme.

"Wow did we cook the game."

New platform. No boards in the cabinet body. Allows for more depth of mechanisms in the playfield.

Game comes at 6.5 degrees out of the box with levelera all the way in.

Headphone jack moved from door to lower left of face of cabinet.

Can set volume to be adjustable from the outside.

Redid sound system. More midrange, matched sub to rest of system. More frequency range.

Boards are in the head, behind a hinged/floating monitor assembly.

Game based on an original comic book. Handing out copies.

image (resized).jpg

Hard to cover everything but they just showed where the cell phone in the game can take your picture - "selfie mode".

Connection point on the apron for your cell phone. Connects to your phone and when you get to multiball you can then get rhe game on your phone and it unlocks extra game features.

The phone actually drives the game flipper.

9k for LE

250 refundable deposit

Collector edition with unique toys, not limited except by date (end of year), 12,500.

Off to alien party. Quick reaction is I want to play it for sure but the cell things seem gimmicky and not sure they will bring in the money on location. Probably better for collector in that regard.

That's nice. Do you not realize I was reporting directly from the reveal as it happened? Even if some details were leaked prior it's not like I can go check everything before posting...

Back to the game: went back and played it after the Alien party. It actually seemed very fun. Only got one game in so it's tough to judge of course. But the playfied is loaded. Nice flowing game when you are hitting shots, though I didn't do a good job of it in my game. There's some magnets messing with the ball around the drone area. Hologram shot. Lots more to explore.

I see his as more of a collector game than a route game. I don't see the casual player spending the time to figure out the cell phone features, and the theme won't draw them in. Neither will the backglass screen animations, which were fairly low key. Plus they have never heard of Pat.

Didn't get to activate it in my game. I could see it clearly even off-axis when watching someone else though. Will try to get some more time on it today.

Played it again. Damn, it's fun. Really enjoy flipping this game. So conflicted because of the theme.

Yes it is fun and yes the name hurts it. If I buy the game it's to put on location. The name and art do not serve to draw in customers so that's a problem. Even as a collector the theme matters to most people.