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Lord Of The Rings Pinball Machine Announced

Posted by simoniker on from the makes-perfect-sense dept.

Thanks to Retrogames for pointing to the news that a Lord Of The Rings pinball machine has been announced, courtesy of sole remaining pinball manufacturer Stern Pinball Inc. There are no pictures yet, but the press release reveals features including "...a Balrog toy that pivots when hit by the ball, revealing the jump ramp that leads to The One Ring", and the fact that "...players can knock down Barad-dur, which also features the eye of Sauron." The game "will begin shipping in November, 2003", and follows recent Stern machines such as The Simpsons Pinball Party and Terminator 3.

3 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Worst News Item Ever by siobHan · · Score: 2, Informative

    Absolutely true. And really, a lot more people love pinball than realize it. It's an indelible part of the American (and European) pop culture landscape yet it's in danger of totally coming to an end. Operators don't place or maintain machines anymore and the new generation doesn't even know what they are.

    K

    ps This will be a good pin, trust me.

  2. It's too bad... by shadowcabbit · · Score: 2, Informative

    I happen to really like pinball, but it's impossible to find machines in arcades anymore. I actually spoke with the manager of the arcade near me, and he says pinball went out of style because the machines were too hard to repair. What's more, the Stern-brand machines are pretty poor in quality-- they arrive broken, or so it seems (every time I've played a machine by Stern, there's been something wrong with it). I'm excited that there's a new machine announced, of course, and I'll play it if I find it, but part of me wishes Sega or even Midway had developed it instead of Stern.

    --
    "Why Subscribe?" Good question...
  3. Re:Stern by keefer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, I've been brought out of my 2+ year shirking of /. because of this article. Hope you all are satisfied!

    The "designer" the pinball news article is referring to is the PLAYFIELD designer. I'm not a mechanical guy, though there's really no reason that I couldn't draw a playfield some day as plenty of other programmers have gone that route.

    I consider myself to be the game designer, or experience designer, or whatever, since I'm pretty much in charge of coordinating what's on the display, sounds, music, speech, writing the rules, etc. etc.

    It just depends on who's working on the game who the designer is. With other teams, the playfield designer is also the rules designer, and the programmer is just a code monkey. I'd sooner quit before that happened to me though.