Well the rumor of Venom pinball was way off course – reminding me why I generally avoid rumors – as Stern Pinball has teased their next design:
It’s unknown at the moment whether or not it’s focused on a single iteration of the world’s most famous spy or if it will feature all of them, allowing the player to choose their preferred Bond. I would hope it’s the latter – while people do generally accept Sean Connery as the best Bond, the others all vary wildly. That said, if they did focus on just a single Bond, it’d make sense to focus on Connery – I wouldn’t be surprised if something like the LE model will be focused on a single Bond. Here’s what we do know however, from the Stern State of the Union Address:
It’s said that this is a design by George Gomez but until such is confirmed, we’ll just have to keep waiting. If so, that’d be a very nice nod to George’s history – George was the designer behind Midway’s Spy Hunter, which would’ve used the James Bond theme music (and it was certainly influenced by the IP) had it not cost so much. We’ve also never had an official Bond game in arcades before (although there have been a few games which were certainly influenced by it, such as Spy Hunter, Top Secret, Edward Randy, etc.) EDIT: As a commenter pointed out my pinball ignorance, let me correct it here – this will be the 3rd James Bond themed pinball game, following Gottlieb’s James Bond in 1980 and Sega’s Goldeneye in 1996. There’s never been a video game version of Bond though so I wasn’t totally off in that regard.
What are your thoughts on this?
Writer of this article must not know too much about Pinball since they don’t realize Gottlieb made a 1980 James Bond and Sega Pinball made goldeneye from 1996.
Stern new title will be a 3rd pin based off of James Bond.
My ignorance on the history of every franchise to ever appear in pinball is real, I should have checked IPDB first. Thanks for the correction.