Ghostbusters Pinball To Debut At Amusement Expo International 2016

The typical reveal of a new pinball machine is preceded by some rumors floating around on forums, with the full unveil happening on an entertainment website, podcast or company social media accounts. Against that, the story of Ghostbusters has been an odd one, with numerous detailed leaks coming out onto forums which we covered a little bit. Maybe it was part of the strategy to build hype for the game… or not. We’ll probably never know.

UPDATE: Stern has officially unveiled the game today via their social media channels.

Either way, thanks to the latest version of Replay Magazine (March 2016), we now know when the big debut for this game is going to be – Amusement Expo International 2016 in Las Vegas (March 16th-17th). Stern took out a full page ad for the upcoming game in Replay although it does not show anything from the game itself. A column in the magazine confirms the AE presence and that this marks the launch of the game for distribution. These pics were posted to the Pinside forums by user KingPinGames; I have been waiting for my copy of RM to show up in the mail but no luck yet – I should mention as disclosure that I have a column in there 😛

As such I’ll get some hands on time with the title there. Having been a huge Ghostbusters fan when I was a kid, I’ll have to try and temper my fandom as best as possible to look at it objectively. It is known that it is based on the original movies and not the sequel/remake which is launching this Summer – I imagine they will wait and see how that does before deciding to do a special Premium model as was recently done with Spiderman and has been done in the past with the AC/DC Luci model..

Already the rumors are stating that this is Stern’s last DMD game but I seem to recall that being said since Star Trek was allegedly going to include color and it didn’t(that was 2013). So, we’ll just wait and see. Speaking of Star Trek, I find it interesting that this is the 50th anniversary year for that franchise but the arcade industry is instead going full court press on Ghostbusters instead as we have the videmption games too. Granted, Ghostbusters is the easier franchise to convert into an arcade format – even Sega is sorta getting there with their Luigi Mansion Arcade that will launch this Summer. Regardless, what are your thoughts and hopes for this upcoming game?