Here is an option to make it work...

You are able to enter each mode and if you beat it you acquire the weapon (identified by a lit playfield insert). Some weapons were more powerful against other bosses. In order to incorporate that you make some method of selecting weapons, I'd suggest a bank of targets, each one selects a different weapon. Hitting the boss target with the appropriate (more powerful) weapon selected counts as two or more hits.

Another option for weapon selection is a spinner that cycles through the options similar to the bonus spinner on Spy Hunter.

Geeze, most pinball companies can't even get a standard pinball game coded on time - can you imagine them trying to navigate that gauntlet!?

Half Life in 60 seconds:

I'll play both pins and games and recent playthrough, I'll throw out a pin based on Wolfenstein. Kind of has everything you need. Also like Kiss, there would be a separate German version

I would love a Mortal Kombat pin. This is a title that still sells.
With LCD screen in the back. Modes could be fights, the game could fight back based on your missed shots.
And of course fatalities!

Mortal Kombat would work really well.

I'd also like a resident evil based on the games.

I've been thinking about this subject matter off and on for more than a year...
I'm currently working some personal contacts for one of the Game-Of-The-Year franchises... BUT; won't say anything publicly until I know for sure I won't Skit-B the title.

Warcraft (not just world of warcraft) would be such an awesome theme. There's enough "basic" fantasy elements (Orcs, Humans, Elves, Magic, etc) that I think it would appeal to many people who haven't even played the games.

i saw what you did there

How about clash of clans?
A castle to bust (Medevil Madness)
Pop up bad guys to bust (hobbit)
Excellent adaptability to an lcd screen.
Piles of characters and content to choose.
Huge fan base of all ages.

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If the IP is hard to get I'd even take a games workshop warhammer pin (assuming they used to old lore and world and not the new one rumoured to be coming). Their IP is presumably cheap considering how many companies are knocking out video games/books using their IPs at the moment.

Yes, but it was released with the movie and based on the movie.
Lets not forget Mr & Ms Pacman.

Yes, or Magic the Gathering. There's some really amazing art there.

Was spy hunter not the best vid ever...???!!!......(the pinball...ehh...not so much)...............Joey

Give it an LCD and now you can really get creative. A nice mix of pin and platform scroller would def work. Kind of like video modes, but actually cool.

I don't think pinball and video games mix well. Video games are great as video games but don't translate into movies, cartoons, or other game platforms. Video game scenes and moments are largely created by the player. I suppose anything can be made into a fun pin if done right.

Personally I think Stern should recreate Berzerk/Frenzy into a pinball machine. It would be pretty cool seeing a classic videogame turned into a pinball machine. Not to mention Stern also created it when they dabbled in the videogame business.

Big Buck Hunter and Rollercoaster Tycoon were pretty bird-brained videogame IP choices in my opinion, and Space Invaders strayed so far from the source material that it might as well be unrelated.

I think only Nintendo IP would be viable in a modern videogame-themed pinball machine. Only Nintendo properties have that worldwide appeal and recognition/nostalgia across multiple generations, and there is so much content they could pull to easily fill out a table.

I’d love a Metroid or Zelda themed pinball machine, but I doubt they’d get a chance. I think if Nintendo were ever to allow another pinball machine, it would have to be Pokemon or Smash Bros themed.

The reason why is that Nintendo is crazy about hardware integration, and both Pokemon and Smash Bros. have means to easily allow it. For Smash Bros. they released Amiibo, which are little figurines with RF chips embedded in them that communicate with game systems through NFC. You set them on your 3DS or WiiU gamepad and the settings inside of it are transferred into the game, allowing you to “level up” your figure. Pokemon is an RPG with hundreds of monsters, so there are plenty of opportunities to transfer new monsters that you won from the pinball machine to your 3DS, or use the monsters on your 3DS to play in the pinball game and level up, etc. These are the kinds of things Nintendo loves and that would cause kids to keep coming back, even if the pinball game wasn’t too great.

But being Nintendo, the pinball game would have to be amazing. I imagine for a new Nintendo table, Nintendo would want to design the game themselves and then probably use Stern to manufacture the machines, like the arrangement Chicago Gaming/PPS have with them right now.

I have some pachinko machines, and I think that American pinball is still 5-10 years behind the Japanese in creating an enthralling multimedia experience in a pinball game. I can’t believe how exciting pachinko designers can make just holding a knob in one place. And the light shows on my pachinko games outclass everything I’ve seen in American pinball.

Check out the promo video for one of my pachinko games, Macross Fever:

RGB LEDs, cool articulated toys, several minutes of custom high resolution animation (not just footage from the show) with really clever lightshow integration, interactive video modes, etc., etc. Now consider that this game came out six years ago. It’s old already.

Our hypothetical Nintendo game would be just starting here as a baseline. A DMD is out of the question; I’m sure they would want to do Pin2K hologram animations. Just like in PinballFX tables where there are characters running around the playfield, fighting, whatever, Nintendo could do the same thing in holograms, and unlike actual Pin2K Bally/Williams, Nintendo has a really amazing pool of 3D animators and a huge library of already made character models and animations to pull from, and computer hardware is cheap and fast enough today that all the animations could be run dynamically in high resolution and in real time vs. all prerendered/low-res.

Gottlieb already did a little known version of Space Invaders, it's actually a really simple but fun pinball called Counterforce.

Steve

I agree that most vid modes really suck, but have you ever played the video modes on SMBMW? They are my favorite video modes of any pinball. The first mode is essentially any SMB vid side scroll world - Mario is walking to the right, while the screen scrolls. One button is for running and the other jumps. You maneuver Mario by jumping the crevices and the enemy to reach the end of the level. The second video mode is a Mario swim level, one button dives down and the other moves you up.

This is all done on a DMD. It could have been prettier with an LCD but I don't know how you could make it more interactive with the few buttons available on a pinball machine.

there's always Robopin 2014

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https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/borderlands-the-pinball
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Nintendo license arcade games that do really well in Japan. They work with Capcom, Namco, SEGA etc to make them. The latest one is a Luigi's Mansion arcade. So there is existing precedent for it. Furthermore they license their IP for all sorts of other games, such as Monopoly.

I don't know what their specific objection would be to a modern Nintendo-themed pinball machine. Perhaps they haven't been seriously approached by Stern. Or perhaps they can't be bothered with all the effort of working with an American company to make something that won't sell in big enough quantities to make the royalties worthwhile. Better to have their branding/merchandising/IP staff working on licensing deals that bring in more cash for less effort.

Maybe one of the new players can make a convincing pitch to Nintendo.

Jon Norris intended Gladiators to be LOZ - from his blog:

"The Legend of Zelda Pinball Machine
Posted on June 17, 2014 · 3 Comments
The Legend of Zelda Pinball Machine-

Back in the early 1990s, I had just completed the (full-sized) pinball Super Mario Bros, and was told that the Nintendo license for that game (and the smaller redemption game Mario Mushroom World that Ray Tanzer designed) also included one more game. I was asked to choose from Nintendo’s library and chose The Legend of Zelda as my next design.

Our management agreed and let me begin on the project. I spent many hours playing the video game on the Nintendo console and began to create a playfield and game rules for this theme. I was really excited and enthusiastic about making a great pinball game and put a lot of time and effort into the design.

We weren’t given a lot of time to design our games at Gottlieb, when compared to the other pinball companies. We usually got 12 to 15 weeks, while the other companies design teams usually got 12 to 15 months. This meant that we had to develop our games in parallel rather than serial. Many aspects were created simultaneously at the same time. For example, the artwork was done, while the software was being written, while the mechanical parts were being fabricated. Everything would come together at the end, and sometimes I didn’t see a completed game until the first day that the game was going down the line.

So in other words, we were forced to live with or modify mistakes with only what we had on hand. Also, once a game was shipped, no software updates were allowed, so if we found that the game rules were out of balance, we had to live with that rather than make a correction and release a software update. Many times, we weren’t given enough time to play the games enough to discover any player exploits until it was too late to make any changes. It was frustrating for me as a designer to see that the other companies would allow software updates while Gottlieb did not.

Now with that said, let’s get back to Zelda, keeping the Gottlieb development cycle in-mind. I was several weeks into the project, having completed the playfield layout and game rules. It was time to bring the development team and take things to the next step. Then suddenly, management called a meeting to inform us that they had just secured a new license for a new TV show, American Gladiators. The problem was that this license was had a short time window, and we had to come out with the game soon. The decision by management was made to change Zelda to American Gladiators.

I modified the game rules and kept the same playfield layout. Then, about 7 or 8 weeks into the project, another meeting was called and we were told that the American Gladiators license had fallen through and we needed to change the theme again, but we only had 4 weeks until the game was going into production. It was way too late to change the game back to Zelda, and we decided to keep the exact same game rules and change the art to Gladiators.

Gladiators is the game that should have been “The Legend of Zelda”. Maybe someday, I’ll finally be able to design that pinball machine."

I could really see this happening if the new World of Warcraft Movie does well. There are so many possibilities and potential modes for this game. You start the game by picking your Race and/or Horde of Alliance. You could connect two machines together for PVP mode, and the possible toys for this game would be endless.

Mordern pinball machines are just glorified video games now, so there ya go!