UPDATE: The full playfield was just unveiled. Since it’s so soon and this story from the other day is still in the top 5, I’m just going to bump this up. According to Joe Balcer of JJP: “The game is all about Smaug and his extreme interaction with the player. Creating The Hobbit journey with a pinball layout is an awesome challenge that I have totally enjoyed putting together. Can’t wait to start shooting a full game!” From the looks of it, there are twp drops in the middle of the field, at least I assume those are for going under the playfield. Hopefully before too long we’ll see some whitewood examples with a few toys but I imagine it will be some time yet until we see the playfield with all artwork and toys.
Ok, finally something to report in the news drought that has been going on lately.
The Hobbit Pinball machine that was announced Jersey Jack Pinball some time ago, not much was seen about it except for a cabinet mock-up and a little later, a tiny portion of the lower playfield. Jump forward to today and JJP has unveiled more details about the game, which is certainly useful given the pre-orders they are taking on the game (intended release is next Summer). According to the email sent out “This will be a 4 flipper game with multiple shots from all 4 flippers. The upper flippers are very active with the game rules. ” They also plan on showing the entire playfield by the end of this month; the game development is moving along faster than with Wizard of Oz since WOZ had to establish a platform for their other games to use. With that out of the way, certain things don’t need to be done over again for The Hobbit and others.
In the mean time, here is pretty much the whole bottom part showing the 4 flippers:
http://www.pinballnews.com/games/hobbit/index5.html
Upper right corner revealed as well.
While I was surprised to see this being developed under the JJ label, I’m not sure Gary himself approves of it when you consider he’s got a competitor to lose potential licenses to.
But on the flip side, we really do need variety in the market and I can’t wait to see what gets done here.
Stern put out a string of pretty bad pins including Tron and Avatar. But ever since Jersey Jack came around it seems Stern has stepped it up since ACDC and X-Men were a lot better than those. So yeah, competition is a very good thing.
Wow, I think you’re one of the few people who thinks TRON was a bad pinball. I agree with Avatar but definitely not TRON. I’ve only played AC/DC premium and I also agree that’s a great pin. I haven’t played the pro version yet but I really dislike the Angus’ face on the pro version. I only played X-Men once so I can’t really speak for that one.
It’s possible I didn’t give Tron enough of a chance, there just appeared to be nothing special about it. I did like Iron Man although I’ve only seen it in one place. Transformers is so-so.
I think when you compare Stern’s tables to others, it makes itself clear how you feel when it comes to how you feel with the differences between them. I just got back from playing Austin Powers and as much fun as I had with it, it was sitting right next to South Park, which IMO destroyed it.
Stern’s tables seem more lax if anything.
Yeah it’s true. I played these games at 1UP when next to pinballs like Addam’s Family, Twilight Zone, Medievel Madness, etc, and the Stern games don’t hold a candle to them. Although AC/DC LE is a very solid game even next to the classics.
I sure hope that’s not the case since the pinball/arcade industry is pretty much on life support and needs more manufacturers. I would call it healthy competition since I feel with more pinball machines out in the field it generates more interests. I can’t tell you how many times where I’ve been at a location that had pinballs where I would hear people say “OMG pinballs! I haven’t played one of these in awhile”.
How is he handling distribution? On one of the forums I was digging through there was something mentioned that anyone carrying a JJ pinball will lose their right to purchase further tables from him. Even if it weren’t true, I don’t like the idea of hearing something like that at all.
There’s a distributor list on his website, so it looks like it isn’t only being sold directly through Jersey Jack. I’d be interested in finding out how they are doing both online pre-orders + selling it through distributors.
http://www.jerseyjackpinball.com/ourdistributors.aspx