Stern Pinball Announces Led Zeppelin

The battle of bands continues in the pinball space, as Stern Pinball has announced their first title for 2021, and the theme hearkens back to another influential rock band from ages past.

While I’m sort of familiar with Led Zeppelin, they are another band from before my time, so I can’t comment on how/if this one hits all the right notes for Zeppelin fans, but I assume it does from the 10 included songs and the artwork. Before we get to that though, what interests me more in this announcement are some new features/ideas that Stern is implementing. I think that these show that the competitive spirit brought about from other pinball options out there is working at making pinball better, release by release.

First from the press release:

Led Zeppelin includes an all new software controlled 10 band equalizer. Another new feature is owner adjustable automatic dimming of the backglass lighting during game play but not during attract mode

Given that pins often have too much reflection in the playfield glass, which can still occur with the less reflective stuff, this is one of those “why didn’t we think of that before?” kind of features that hopefully becomes the standard.  But that’s not all!

Positioned in pockets cut into Premium cabinet sides is an brightness adjustable rock concert Expression Lighting System™, with 96 intelligent RGB LED’s enabling full color spectrum control. Providing color themed illuminations directing light effects onto the full playfield, this integrated light system has custom synchronized light shows specifically designed for every song and dynamically responsive to game events. Pro cabinet sides are pre-cut to allow installation of an accessory Expression Lighting System, available in February.

It might just be lighting, but it’s still nice to see the tech being used in different, innovative ways.

Here are the cabinets, although instead of posting images, I’ll just post the Pro and Premium/LE trailers then link to the game page. I guess you’ll really need to be an LZ fan to appreciate the look of the Pro (Stern anticipates shipping Pros out in January):

For the more complete/detailed Premium & LE models (Premiums likely shipping February):

UPDATE: Here’s a trailer showing off the accessories:

You can find this listed on the Stern website here; Pricing also follows their new 2021 pricing guidelines which have been adjusted to take into account the realities of operating through 2020. They will also be launching some accessories for this, as they have done with all of their more recent games.

I know that no one outside of Stern has played this yet, but what do you think about it from the details shown so far?