Pinball Legend Steve Kordek Passes Away; New Images for Wizard of Oz Pinball

I meant to get to this earlier this week as I caught a mention of it, but this past Sunday, legendary pinball designer Steve Kordek passed away at the age of 100. To get an idea of the games that he worked on and thus the influence that he had on the industry as a whole, take a look at this list of games under his name on ipdb.org – he made pinball what it is today by introducing the flipper and then some.

Steve Kordek (Pinballnews.com)

Replay Magazine – Game Biz Leaders Remember Steve Kordek (with thoughts by Eugene Jarvis and Malcolm Steinburg)

David Silverman’s Tribute on NPR (via Play Meter)

Pinballnews.com Tribute

Now on another pinball note that I think is fitting as like Steve, this is about innovation in pinball.  Let’s take a look at the latest developments on the next big thing, Wizard of Oz Pinball. Below is one animation for the multiball sequence, showing the much nicer utility of an LCD screen over a dot matrix one.

And here is Munchkinland mini-playfield now with playfield art and more.

Wizard of Oz Pinball begins production on March 13th. It also will use 11-ply plywood, something that JJP is stating is unique to their games to bring higher quality to the game.