Friday, April 29, 2011

TRON The Pinball Machine


After months of teasing the idea of a Tron Pinball machine on their Facebook fan page and tons of rumors, yesterday Stern Pinball made it official that their next game will be Tron. From the announcement the game will be released in May with a special limited edition coming out the following month in June. Here's the full press release from Stern Pinball.


“Dear Ladies & Gentlemen

As I have told many of you when we have been together, Stern Pinball will begin production of its next model pinball machine, TRON: Legacy, at the beginning of May. You will receive TRON in time for your pre- summer season sales.

We have licensed this title from Disney, the maker of the $400 million grossing holiday season movie TRON: Legacy. 60% of the gross was outside the United States. This movie is an extension of the 1982 movie TRON and the famous video game of that time. Another TRON movie is being planned. We have had requests from gamers, and pinball players in particular, to make a TRON pinball machine. There is a pent up demand for this game, and many of you have heard this from your customers.

With TRON, we continue the design philosophy that you have told us has been successful, that of Iron Man, Avatar and The Rolling Stones. Our games are playing shorter and have more randomness. The great designer Harry Williams used to say, “The ball is wild.” Great players are challenged and causal players have fun. Operators are making money.

Our TRON pinball puts the players in the middle of TRON movie and video game action battles. This is a fast moving game. TRON has 3 flippers, including an upper flipper to shot one of the two fabulous fast action ramps. We have not utilized a 3rd flipper in a while, and players will enjoy it. In the center of the playfield, near the top, there is a motorized 3 bank target assembly the player must hit and lower, to gain access to the illuminated, motorized spinning disc, representing TRON’s Identity Disc. The spinning disc shoots the ball randomly across and around the playfield. Ramp shots take the player to an exciting Light Cycle multiball. The player shoots at the miniature TRON video game to start exciting features and collect big points.

TRON: Legacy is a visually exquisite 3D movie, and our pinball has captured the same exquisite visual, including its 3D backglass. Music is from movie and perfect for pinball.

This game is brought to you by the design team that gave you Iron Man and Avatar.

We have been playing TRON, and we are really having fun.

Because this is truly a collectors and enthusiasts dream title, we will make a TRON Limited Edition version in late June.

As soon as Disney approves the game photo, I will send you a picture for posting.

Best regards”


As Adam said over on Arcade Heroes, I'm also really surprised that they released both the cabinet and playfield pictures in the same day. From the looks of the machine I get a nice Attack From Mars vibe from it with the three bank drop target in the middle of the machine where the Recognizer is. Since the release says "Music is from the movie and is perfect for pinball" I really hope it's chock full of Daft Punk's amazing soundtrack. It should also be noted with the picture their using the usual plastic ramps, not ramps made out of blue EL Wires like they were teasing on their Facebook profile. Maybe the normal version will be using plastic with the Limited Edition with EL Wire? If so whenever they release pictures of the Limited Edition version, I'll be sure to post them here.

I want to say a big thank you to Adam over at Arcade Heroes for first breaking the news and the fine folks over in Austin Texas at Pinballz Arcade for releasing the pictures on their Twitter account. (Where you can see a much larger, higher quality picture. Sorry I had to shrink it down to fit!)



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1 comment:

  1. The fact is this game is boring. The plastic ramps and returns used as of late are a joke. How much more could it really cost to have metal ramps….maybe 100 bucks? There really isn’t much going on here. Guys…Jack is knocking on your door. Granted his first machine has already missed it’s mark. 6500.00 is to much money for the market to support. I have no doubt he will sell out his first batch to the die hards…but things will fade unless he can make a good machine in the 5k range. Back to Tron. Guys the dot matrix display has to go. You need a high def screen. It doesn’t have to be any bigger…just color and high def. You can license clips directly from the movie to keep programming down. Can you Imagine how cool that would be? Tron is junk. Rolling stones is junk. Remake Spider man with a color display, some mechanical aspects to the toys, a built in shaker motor, and a progressive drop target and you will have struck oil. The junk has to stop. I’ll bet Stern 50k in writing. I could make a better play field than there last three machines.
    Anyone can make junk….lets make some good machines. Dump the tired models and make one good machine.

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