It’s been quite a while – about 9 months now – since we’ve mentioned Pinball Brothers, a company that picked up the tattered pieces of the Heighway Pinball fiasco and have been working to make good on those promises. They’ve apparently been fulfilling orders on Alien, but none of the social media sites I follow them on saw fit to tell me about their latest posts, so it’s been one of those “out of sight, out of mind” kind of things. Still, my apologies that I had been missing out on sharing their milestone updates, so there is some catching up to do here.
Alien Pinball Updates
First off, it appears that Alien pinball is shipping and has been in production since this spring. Here’s a video showing off the game, from a collector’s perspective and experience:
The units are being produced in Italy; I haven’t seen a mention of where exactly, but if I were to guess I would say Tecnoplay, since they have manufacturing capacity and have been involved with pinball for many years, but if I’m wrong about that, feel free to correct me.
The other bit of news that came out just a few days ago is that the Limited Edition models are on their way. These will come with a bit more; Here’s the line from the official reveal:
Take the plunge into the Alien world, an experience now enhanced by limited artwork, custom cut Xeno head side armor and lit inner side blades and backboard. Fight through the legendary movies scenes with rotating interactive beacons adding to the experience.
IIRC, the rotating beacon lights were a part of the Heighway LE version too, but they’ve since changes appearance.
I’m not crazy about how the screens look on the backbox, something about them looks off compared to JJP or American (which also integrate artwork around the LCD, while Stern keeps theirs on a separate panel). But, I’d still love to play this if I ever come across it.
Queen Pinball Spotted In The UK
Here’s a scoop that Knapp Arcade found, thus leaking out Pinball Brothers’ next title, Queen. Queen was in development at Heighway Pinball by Barry Oursler, and would have been their 3rd game had Heighway not fallen apart. PB picked up the design and license for this, so are making it their next title. It’s a little surprising that someone like Stern hadn’t done so before Heighway had grabbed the license, although it might have just been one of those timing things. I also heard that Deeproot tried to buy the license from PB, so that was certainly a bullet dodged for the existence on this one.
Anyways, the machine is on display at a Queen pop-up store in London, but there isn’t a whole lot of information about it out there yet. It has some piano key drop targets, as well as some drop targets that block some paths in the game (hit the target, then make the shot again to access that path on the table). There is this video that shows it very briefly; But also keep in mind that this is still a prototype and not a production model, so there could be changes to it by the time it hits the production line sometime soon:
What are your thoughts on these games? I wonder what PB will do after the Heighway stuff is used up (I’m not sure if there were any other games beyond Alien and Queen that they picked up), but we’ll probably have to wait for a bit to find out. Discuss it on our Guilded Forums.
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About the author: arcadehero View all posts by arcadehero
I’m a lifelong fan of video games and I have been operating my own arcade, The Game Grid Arcade in West Valley City, Utah since 2008.