The Verge has a beautiful Photo Essay about Modern Pinball in NYC and the resurgence of the game including interviews with Co-Owners Steve Epstein and  Steve Zahler.

Go check it out! http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/3/5171092/shoot-again-pinball-bounces-back-in-new-york-city

It looks like the crew at Stern pinball is going to keep everyone guessing as they announce the release of yet another new version of AC/DC pinball with new hand drawn artwork. Apparently Stern got the message when pinball fans rejoiced over the hand drawn artwork of Metallica as they have responded with this new edition game.

More images and Stern Press Release after the break.

Stern Pinball announces the availability of their patent-pending Pinball Armor, a handcrafted cover that protects machines from everyday wear and tear as well as transportation and storage damage. 

In a move to try and stay ahead of the competition as "The world's leading manufacturer of real pinball games", Stern Pinball has licensed the new Pinball Armor line of pinball covers and placed their logo on them. Here's hoping for more innovation from them in the near future.

Read the press release after the break

Curly Weimer understands the appeal of pinball machines on young and old alike; those who relish the colorful lights and unexpected sounds all while being ready at any moment to press the flippers and launch a shiny ball up a jackpot-activating ramp.

“This is a great hobby,” said Weimer, 55, of Fruitland Park, who is one of four people in the U.S. trained to repair and restore old pinball machines.He also sells hard to find parts to pinball owners and collectors all over the world, and Weimer is a pinball distributor through his Little Shop of Games, where he does launching parties for collectors and travels to pinball expositions around the country.

Over the weekend, he hosted a pinball show in Chicago. His next big event will be Southern Pinball Festival Nov. 22-24 at the Crowne Plaza at Orlando Universal. Arcade businesses and collectors are among his top customers.

“I just sold and shipped a pinball machine to Karl Urban, who starred as Dr. McCoy on Star Trek, in the last two movies,” said Weimer, who noted one of the latest and most popular pinball machines is a limited edition Star Trek (priced $4,995), which is generating a lot of buzz. Only 799 of these were manufactured.

“Half of those go overseas and only 400 are in the U.S.,” Weimer said while showing the Star Trek pinball machine to one of his regular customers, Dario Compain of Tampa, who was impressed by the new game.

“I want this Star Trek. I really like it, I love the flow of it,” Compain said. “The ramps are very smooth, the shots are relatively easy, and as you get into it, it’s a little more challenging.”

Compain noted the new Star Trek is the first with LED lights. It will mark his 10th pinball machine to buy for his home.

Some customers prefer to invest in a new playfield for around $550, where Weimer will take an existing cabinet and install a new game.

“You can keep an eye on your kids, and for older people like myself, it provides great hand-and-eye coordination. It just keeps you going,” he said.

Weimer also noted pinball can be a monetary investment.

“This game here, The Family Guy, came out maybe four or five years ago, and that sold new for $3,695. Right now as a used machine it’s worth about $5,200,” Weimer said. “Pinball machines are better than the stock market right now. They go up in value and I attribute that to more people getting into the hobby.”

Whenever pinball repairs or restoration work is needed, Weimer picks up pinball machines from businesses or owners’ homes and does the work at his shop.

“ I don’t do house calls because you can’t carry all the parts that they need for them,” he said, recalling he began collecting pinball machines in 1992 and was spurred by encouragement from his son.

Weimer retired from construction when the housing market was at its peak.

“I got lucky,” he said. “I saw the verge of a bubble bursting; I saw it coming.”

He now keeps busy with doing restoration and repairs for pinball operators and private owners.

“We’ll do all new artwork on the sides and the front for the older machines. We’ll strip the cabinet down to the wood and put new artwork and everything on it. I make them look new again, and we’ll even change out and put brand new playfields,” he said.

Customers find him from all over the globe, via the Internet and for being a supplier of needed parts to work on Williams/Bally pinball machines.

“As far as parts that have sent to different countries, I think the only country I haven’t shipped to was China,” he said. “Right have I have packages going to Brazil, and I’ve shipped to Argentina, Austria, Germany, Belgium.”

Many new pinball games Weimer can supply are still in their original boxes.

Weimer shows his Dale Earnhardt Jr. pinball machines from back in the day when the NASCAR driver was known as No. 8.

“He’s now No. 88 when he changed teams and it sort of killed this machine,” he said.

via dailycommercial.com

Today Stern Pinball officially announces the new Star Trek line of pinball machines which include three version, Pro, Premium and Enterprise Edition machine.

Read the press release below:

Stern Pinball Announces STAR TREK™ Game

The World’s Leading Maker of Arcade Quality Pinball Set to Launch Star Trek Pinball Machine

MELROSE PARK, IL – September 12, 2013 – Stern Pinball, Inc., the world’s leading maker of real pinball games and the American Amusement Machine Association (“AAMA”) Manufacturer of the Year, proudly announced today the availability of Star Trek pinball. Inspired by Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness films, the newest Stern machine puts players in Captain James Kirk’s chair of the U.S.S. Enterprise, embarking on a journey to protect and defend the planets of the Federation. 

Stern’s Star Trek pinball machine features all the bells and whistles a Star Trek fan would desire. With adrenalin-filled battles, high-definition artwork, cosmic LED lighting and classic musical scores, the Star Trek game will evoke the sensation of flying through space at Warp Speed to rescue Spock and defeat the U.S.S. Vengeance.  The newest game from Stern includes an animated battleship, three lightning fast ramps, three flippers, resettable memory drop targets and much more.

“The Star Trek pinball machine celebrates the much loved sci-fi franchise by bringing fans a whole new adventure right at their fingertips,” said Gary Stern, Chairman and CEO of Stern Pinball, Inc. 

Star Trek is Stern’s first all-LED Pro Model. The playfield features eight multicolored LED paths that lead gamers on easy-to-understand color-coded routes. There are six missions for casual players matched by 18 complex treks to immerse enthusiast players deeper in the game. As players attack an oncoming threat with three action-centered flippers, the all-LED playfield will captivate onlookers and enhance the player experience with features like phaser flashes and photon torpedoes.

Players will instinctively know exactly what to do when they approach Star Trek pinball – destroy the U.S.S. Vengeance, a key action-packed feature on the playing field. From the very start, players will have the chance to unlock special opportunities, collect tantalizing bonus features and win a series of accolades called The Captain’s Chair. Star Trek aficionados can expect the classic battle between the heroic Enterprise team and the villainous Khan as well as run-ins with Nero, Klingons and the Narada.

The Star Trek game, under license by CBS Consumer Products, continues both the Stern Pinball and the Stern family tradition of producing quality pinball machines for young and old. The company traces its lineage to Philadelphia in the 1930s when Sam Stern entered the business of operating pinball games. Sam Stern subsequently became part owner and president of Williams Manufacturing, a pioneer in the pinball industry, and passed his lifelong enthusiasm for the game and the business of pinball to his son Gary Stern who founded Stern Pinball. Today pinball remains one of America’s favorite pastimes. 

™  CBS Studios Inc. © 2013 Paramount Pictures Corporation. STAR TREK and related marks and logos are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.


Pricing and Availability:

Star Trek pinball is available through authorized Stern distributors and dealers.

Pro Version:  $5,395
Premium Version: $7,495
Limited Edition Version: $8,795

To learn more about the Star Trek pinball machine and Stern Pinball, visit www.sternpinball.com. 

About Stern Pinball, Inc. 

Stern Pinball, Inc., headquartered just outside Chicago, Illinois, is the leading producer of pinball games in the world. Stern’s highly talented creative and technical teams design, engineer and manufacture popular arcade-quality pinball games.  Recent popular Stern titles include Metallica, Avengers, X-Men, AC/DC, Tron, Transformers, Avatar, Iron Man, Batman, Spiderman and many more. All of Stern’s pinball games are crafted by hand and assembled by Stern’s expert team. Both pinball enthusiasts and casual players around the globe enjoy Stern’s games. For more information, please visit www.sternpinball.com. 
###

All trademarks and product names are the property of their respective companies.

Without sight of a press release Stern pinball today leaked out a video for their new pinball machine based on the previous two Star Trek movies directed by JJ Abrhams that have been a huge commercial success. 

Designed by the legendary pinball designer Steve Ritchie who also designed the 1990's Williams Star Trek pinball this game has been a long anticipated title release. At this point there is no actual video gameplay footage of the game but rather still images cut into a pinball trailer. There is lots to be gleaned from the video so use the pause button frequently to see the details of the game.

You can also follow a thread on the pinside pinball forum if you desire more details and commentary.

Let us know what you think so far in the comments below.

Live long and prosper......

Our friends over at Pinballnews.com have a great article on the new P3-ROC board as well as news of custom games that will be shown at this years Pinball Expo.

Release: Sep. 7, 2013

The biggest hurdle any potential home pinball machine builder used to have to overcome was not finding a cool theme. Nor was it designing a killer playfield layout with interesting shots and ingenious toys. No, the hardest part - and this continues to affect commercial pinball manufacturers today too - used to be creating a control system to make everything work.

Getting flippers to flip and bumpers to bump may seem easy enough, but when you start adding complex lighting effects, display animations and deep rules, suddenly the task becomes far more complex. Complex enough to defeat many budding game builders.

But all that changed in 2009 when Pinball Controllers started selling the P-ROC board.

The P-ROC gave game developers a ready-made control system which provided the bridge between custom game designs and the sequence of instructions to drive them. Game builders could hook up their lamps, solenoids, displays and switches, sit down at a computer and tell the P-ROC what to do with them.

But if that wasn't exciting enough, the P-ROC could also take control of existing machines from Williams, Bally and Stern thanks to the multitude of connectors around the outer edges of the board.

Suddenly, everything other than the actual playfield layout was fair game for changing, because - let's face it - most games have room for improvement in one area or another.

So if you want better display animations, deeper rules, more interesting objectives, more balanced scoring, less-annoying quotes, funkier music, or even stereo sound, it was all possible by installing a P-ROC.

It still wasn't exactly a trivial task of course, since even rules or effects you wanted to keep from the original code had to be re-written for the P-ROC, and that's in addition to all the new features. But far more time could be spent developing the fun parts of the game, instead of working out how to design the basic framework of the underlying control system.

The pinball world really sat up and paid attention when Barry Driessen and Koen Heltzel revealed the work they had been doing to upgrade The Machine - Bride of Pinbot.

The most obvious feature was the addition of a dot matrix display to replace the original's alphanumeric variety, but below the surface they had completely rewritten the rules to make it less of a one-shot game, while adding amazing 3D animations to the display, numerous gameplay modes, and a brand new stereo soundtrack.

Several months later Dennis van de Pass began work on improving his Demolition Man, rectifying the deficiencies of the original rules by adding multiple modes, making the multiballs more varied, and adding a two-stage wizard mode.

Since then, many other game designers have either taken existing machines and re-themed them or built their own machines from scratch, using a P-ROC board to drive them.

To celebrate their achievements, this year's Pinball Expo will feature a special display of P-ROC-based games.

Gerry Stellenberg of Multimorphic (owner of Pinball Controllers) has arranged for eight custom games and their designers to come to Expo and display their machines on the Multimorphic stand alongside the company's P3 pinball platform which is also based on P-ROC technology.



Read the rest of the story here pinballnews.com

In yet another assault on the pinball senses Stern Pinball has released a new video from several events related to the launch of the Metallica pinball machine. From launch partied hosted throughout the country to footage from the Comic Con convention hosted last week there are lots of enthusiastic people that had a chance to play and enjoy the game. 

Johnny Beaver carries a piece of paper with his pinball high scores written on it. He uses it as motivation to top his previous score. It’s also a way to relive his best moments.

Beaver, 32, is part of a quietly growing the pinball scene in Corvallis. Pinball lovers are slowly expanding the availability of pinball machines in town. And they want bargoers who are focused more on beer instead of the game to join their community.

The Northwest far surpasses other regions in number of pinball locations, according to international machine tracker pinballmap.com. For example, Portland has 246 pinball locations, Seattle has 102 and Eugene is listed with 13, but insiders say there are far more.

Corvallis has five. Beaver and Brian Morrissette, the 18-year-old godfather of pinball in Corvallis, struggled to name even that many.

“(Pinball is) a growing renaissance in America, especially in the Northwest,” Morrissette said.

Contributing to the movement are men in their 30s and 40s who want to relive the game they grew up playing. In the past two years, Morrissette said, the number of collectors in town has at least doubled.

Jeff Obermann, 43, is one of them. He thought his grandparents having a pinball machine in their basement was the coolest thing in the world. He resolved that when he grew up, he would own pinball machines.


Play every pinball game Corvallis has to offer with this interactive Corvallis map. See what each location has to offer by viewing Corvallis pinball map in a larger map.

Now, at least 10 machines are practically stacked on top of each other in his kitchen.

Ben Metzger, 31, is hoping to provide people of all ages the same thrill he gets when he plays pinball. His restaurant and arcade, The Dam, is scheduled to open sometime this fall and will showcase at least a dozen 1970s and 80s era pinball machines, some rare.

Metzger is already building his collection with the help of Morrissette. Metzger keeps three in his future kitchen, where he plays his favorite machine -- Gottlieb’s 1981 Mars God of War -- because the dark basement workshop scares him.

He knows The Dam will make more money from beer sales than 25 cent pinball games, but games like the vintage Panthera 2 are converting guys like Beaver into a zealous community of pinballers.

-- Emiko Bledsoe, Parkrose High School sophomore

See the video here 

In a Business Insider article citing US Industrial production a reference to Stern pinball and their manufacturing highlights made in the USA production. While no company is specifically mentioned in the article it, Stern is referenced in the image and it is nice to see pinball inching ever closer to the forefront of awareness in the general public. 

U.S. industrial production grew 0.3% in June, which was right in line with expectations.

"For the second quarter as a whole, industrial production moved up at an annual rate of 0.6 percent," said the Fed.

"In June, manufacturing production rose 0.3 percent following an increase of 0.2 percent in May. The output at mines advanced 0.8 percent in June, while the output of utilities decreased 0.1 percent."

Capacity utilization ticked up to 77.8% from 77.6% a month ago.

From the Federal Reserve's G.17 report:

The production of consumer goods increased 0.5 percent in June following a decline of 0.3 percent in May. The output of durable consumer goods advanced 1.1 percent in June. Every major component of consumer durables either increased or was unchanged, with automotive products and home electronics posting the largest gains—1.4 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively. After having decreased 0.4 percent in both April and May, the output of nondurable consumer goods rose 0.3 percent in June. The index for non-energy nondurables stepped up 0.5 percent, driven by gains in the indexes for foods and tobacco and for paper products. The output of consumer energy products declined 0.3 percent, marking the third consecutive monthly decrease for this index. The index for total consumer goods moved up at an annual rate of 1.4 percent in the second quarter, a rate of expansion substantially below the increase of 5.6 percent in the first quarter but about the same as in the fourth quarter of 2012. The smaller increase in the second quarter reflected a deceleration in the output of both durables and non-energy nondurables.

The index for business equipment moved up 0.5 percent in June after having fallen 0.1 percent in May and 0.2 percent in April. The gain in June reflected increases of 0.5 percent for transit equipment and 1.1 percent for the industrial and other equipment category. Conversely, the production of information processing equipment dropped 1.0 percent. For the second quarter as a whole, the output of business equipment rose at an annual rate of 2.2 percent, about half of its rate of increase in the previous quarter. The indexes for information processing equipment and for industrial and other equipment recorded substantially slower gains in the second quarter than in the first quarter. By contrast, the index for transit equipment rose at an annual rate of 6.4 percent last quarter to more than reverse a decrease of 2.9 percent in the first quarter.

The output of defense and space equipment increased 0.1 percent in June, the first monthly gain for the index in 2013. The index decreased at an annual rate of about 3 1/2 percent in both the first and second quarters.

Among nonindustrial supplies, the production of construction supplies edged up in June after having edged down in May; output decreased more than 1 percent in both March and April. The index fell at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the second quarter after having jumped 14.3 percent in the first quarter and 7.2 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. The index for business supplies edged up 0.1 percent in June, its first increase since March; the index decreased at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the second quarter to reverse about half of its gain in the previous quarter.

The production of materials to be processed further in the industrial sector advanced 0.2 percent in June, the same rate of increase as in May. The output of durable materials gained 0.4 percent in June, led by an increase of 0.8 percent for equipment parts; the index for consumer parts moved down a little, and the index for other durable materials was up slightly. The production of nondurable materials edged down 0.1 percent, as decreases for paper materials and for chemical materials outweighed the rise for textile materials. The output of energy materials stepped up 0.4 percent. For the second quarter as a whole, energy materials advanced at an annual rate of 5.2 percent after having increased 2.2 percent in the first quarter. In contrast, the indexes for both durable and nondurable materials decreased last quarter after having recorded increases in the previous quarter. The output of total industrial materials increased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter, well below the gain of 3.4 percent in the first quarter.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/industrial-production-june-2013-2013-7#ixzz2ZE33fLTS