As well as the fact that Adam West will be there for a VIP only meet and greet before the party. To get a VIP ticket from your distributor you need to pre-order a Batman pinball machine.

I was in the middle of making my own Batman 66 game when Stern announced they were making Batman 66.

I changed my retheme to Ash vs Evil Dead so it makes sense that it will be Sterns next pin (after Star Wars).

Whatever.the game is looks like Batman66 artist Chris Franchi did the art for it. He will be doing a seminar at Expo this year with Greg Feres. He says he will hopefully be revealing his new Stern game art at expo.

Let the speculation begin.

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Iron Maiden had been mentioned as an upcoming theme for a while. Franchi had done a lot of Kiss stuff in thge padt, so maybe Iron Maiden?

I agree it would be nice to see Greg Feres as the Elvira 3 artist but maybe it could be a joint project? Thats probably not likely though since their styles dont really look the same.

Some more clues via Chris Franchi. This confirms the next game is a John Borg design with art by Franchi. I hope the rumors of a Guardians of the Galaxy theme are true. I guess we'll find out when its revealed at his Expo seminar in a month.

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Its not. Those are for a retheme project in SA. I think it used 8 ball as the donor game.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/guardians-of-the-galxy-cabinets

Yeah they admit the software team is overworked and the global pinball market is growing. Why doesnt Stern just hire more coders? I guess they appear to be okay with the current status quo since they said nothing about how they were going to improve code development going forward.

And you'll definitely need pinstadiums since compared to Marvel themes, a Zack Snyder pin will be very "dark".

Custom callouts by Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as Joker would be great.

His primary function is to look cute and get people to put quaters in the game on location. From that perspective, he is perfect.

For home use I suspect the mod community will bring him to life.

If they use clips from the films I wonder which style they will go with. Godzilla's looks and size have evolved quite a bit over the years, even within the Toho films.

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I listened to that episode and at about the 70min mark when Franchi and Chris say they know what license Jack is talking about Franchi starts humming the James Bond theme (but then they also play the first few notes of jaws theme in rhe background). The theme Franchi was humming though was defintely Bond not Jaws.

So could the "just a movie poster worth of assets" refer to Bond instead of Jaws? I hope not cuz, I think Bond would translate to a pinball game much better than Jaws.

Franchi said in the recent SAPS podcast that he isn't doing art for any Stern games but did say might do stuff for Kapow.

If there is a a Kapow SLE of Bond maybe Franchi would do some if the art for it?

He also was a designer on the classic 1983 Bally arcade video game Spy Hunter which was clearly inspired by Bond.

I think all the callouts should be done by Odd Job.

That was the intended joke.

https://www.pinballnews.com/site/2017/11/16/the-history-of-street-level-pinballs/

The rumors were Keith Elvin was doing a Jaws pin. Could Jaws just ne be the codename for the Roger Moore based Bond game since Jaws was the most famous henchman from the Moore era Bond films ?

In the Gomez interview I think he said that if sales are good they might make a goldfinger version at a later date.

Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated multiball

Well for now you'll just have to settle for his father Bruce Glover as Mr Wint from Diamonds are Forever. Maybe we'll get this clip in the Bond game.

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Its's not just a matter of playing clips thiugh. I think it's easy to underestimate the level of work done to integrate the clips as well as create clips that are a hybrid of existing footage combined newly created content or 100% new content that matches the style of the game.

Even in a theme like Bond, Elvira, Godzilla, or Batman that has lots of available video clips to use, I bet they compromise less than half of the total content that ends up getting used on the screen.

In the latest Super Awesome Pinball Show podcast Franchi said he was working on a new project that wasn't coming out until 2025. He said the license was a big favorite of his. He said was so exited about it that he started work on it immediately and has already finished the cabinet and backbox art for it.