You are looking for a game to “compliment your collection”? The newest game you have is LOTR…. Came out in 2003. There are 25+ years of games before 2003 that are fun and 18 years after…

You have all cookie cutter popular “collectable” pinball titles minus maybe Attack from Mars made between 1990 and 2003. Are you looking for the perfect “newer” cookie cutter game that you are still missing made after 2003?

What are you “missing” though? You probably think it’s a modern game like AFM (Stranger Things?) but you could be missing the point of pinball… You are missing so much more than a single perfect newer machine to finish your collection. You really don’t want opinions on Pinside telling you how to spend your money right? Pinball is so many different things now to so many that own games. For some it’s a business, for some it’s a collection, for some it’s a competition, for some it’s family fun time, for some it’s something to tinker with and repair, for some it’s none of those things and for others it’s all of those things.

It’s no longer fair to ask this question on this pinball forum because quite frankly, it’s not the right question. Cookie cutter collection games don’t really exist post 2003… pinball customers, locations, and companies changed enough after that and morphed into what we have now which is a sea of fantastic games where nothing stands out quite yet as a “classic” because they are all so similar that they all mesh together into good and great titles, with nothing standing out quite like the other machines you own that are 18 years old. and much older… after all LOTR is a legal adult now!

Fair enough. I would possibly look at the best SAM games and the best Stern Spike 2 games and pick one of those. (Iron Maiden Tron Metallica AC/DC Walking Dead Deadpool Jurassic Park AvengersIQ) A lot of fun Stern titles. JJP has a couple of fun overpriced titles but nothing epic. A lot of home pinball players are looking to own titles that they can never completely experience so they don’t see everything the game has to offer in a couple games. That’s cool but just not for me. I like those games every once in a while but I don’t want to play a 40 minute long game of pinball.

Most people in pinball could care less about the technical reasons why WhiteStar, SAM, and the Spike systems were all created and continue to be improved upon but I do know and I appreciate it. The technical advantages each system achieved are very valid for so many reasons. I respect and continue to enjoy nearly all Stern releases in the last 3-4 years. A really fun time right now with programmers and designers of the pinball.