Our first story for 2023 involves Bond…James Bond. Particularly the teased 60th Anniversary Edition of Stern Pinball’s 007 game. The base game based upon Sean Connery’s rendition of the world’s most famous fictious spy has been out since last year but Stern decided to change things up a little by creating a completely different playfield for this model. While the previous editions were designed by George Gomez, this one is designed by Keith Elwin and it features every actor to play Bond instead of just one of them. Here’s the new trailer:
I’ll have to wait and see if any pinball expert out there can comment but the playfield seems familiar – I don’t know if it’s based upon an older game with some minor changes or if it’s wholly original. One thing surprising about it though is it doesn’t have any ramps or extra levels…it’s more early 80s in it’s style, kind of like how The Beatles was based upon Sea Witch. Quotes posted on Pinside suggest $20,000~$22,000 for this version, which much like the Beatles puts it firmly into the collector category and not really something that a location would want to host, although I’m sure that there will still be a few bars or pinball parlors out there who jump on it. Those who are a part of Stern Pinball’s All Access group are able to get first dibs; Overall Stern is only making 500 of these but it does count as the first coin-op game release of 2023.
Here’s a quote from Pinside on some of the base elements:
2 flippers
2 slings
4 opto spinners
2 saucers
1 4 bank of drops
1 3 bank of drops
1 3-in-line drops
1 horizontal spinner bash toy
2 pops
1 captive ballthen a few stand up targets
The topper looks sleek too. Here are the additional features in case some things weren’t obvious from the trailer above. The use of an LCD on the playfield itself is cool, reminding me a little of what Heighway Pinball used to do.
To me it looks far too simple for a $20k game but to be fair, I don’t know what a pinball machine could do at that price which would get me to jump in – unless it was posting the most amazing earnings ever seen. As a collector, I’m no where close to spending that money on themes but that’s because I’m a poor tight wad 😛
What do you think about it?
