This week was a little unusual for news on the site – there wasn’t any video arcade news to speak of really, it was all about pinball. With that in mind I figure why not end the week with a story about another pinball machine that is coming along which we have discussed before but not in sometime, the Predator pinball machine by Skit-B. In fact this week one story that had drawn a bit of attention is the Duck Hunt pinball game which was done by the same team. Unlike the Duck Hunt though, this machine is intended as a wide release.
To catch you up to speed, Predator Pinball is a licensed theme based upon the movies of the same name. Despite using an older license they are certainly looking to make the machine stand out in its own ways, including Predator vision modes with different general illumination lighting as well as some technical enhancements, such as a new power supply which will make switching voltages much easier than it is with current pinball machines (which is more complicated than flicking a switch or using a step-up/step-down transformer).
This video is the most recent update about the progress of the game, which is from January 2013. It’s still a prototype/beta but it won’t be for too much longer. The first few minutes are spent on talking about some of the tech, which may not be important to end players although from an operator or collector point of view I think it is interesting. Most of the time I have spent lamenting over the lack of innovations on the playfields of recent years has overlooked the need for innovations in the backbox as well such as providing smaller form factors for the game PCBs. The rest of the video spends some time on the playfield, to which I won’t say anymore and let you watch.
