The Uncanny X-MEN Revealed

It’s September 4th, and that means that Stern Pinball has pulled the curtain back on their newest creation, The Uncanny X-MEN. They previously created a machine based upon the IP, although this is completely different. Here’s the full walkthrough trailer:

Uncanny X-Men Analysis

As mentioned the other day, this is not the first time that Stern has tackled the X-MEN IP, however, it is a completely different design. Lead by Jack Danger, it actually has a very intriguing layout that looks to provide some “unexpected shots” and surprises. This is based upon the popular Days of Future Past and Mind out of time storylines (which was also done in the ’90s cartoon, as I recall), which involves time travel. Here’s the game page on Stern Pinball’s website.

Here’s the quicker trailer:

One thing I was told by a distributor is that Stern is producing the LE’s first and getting those shipped out to customers, before they do Premium then Pro. There are only 811 LEs being made. This is also why the trailer focuses on the LE so much at first. This new policy makes sense – LE customers are paying a lot more for their purchases, so they do deserve the VIP treatment.

The first thing that probably drew your attention was the unique layout of the lower playfield. It’s not the first game to move flippers around or to have three, but if there has been a design just like this, I don’t know what game it would belong to. I can say from having recently played some Atari pins that moved the flippers to be off-center, it takes some getting used to – so in case you’ve never played a game with off-center flippers before, you’ll probably want to give this one a few tries before passing final judgment on how it feels:

Here’s the comparison between the two playfields. It’s be nice if Stern made it easier to access their photos – they used to send out packets for press to use, but I haven’t seen any in a while, so you have to really go digging to find high quality versions of this stuff. Click to mutate it into a larger view:

The ramp layout and looping shots do look like they are a lot of fun; the Prem/LE is where its at though with things like the moving robot hand (although I doubt as I’ve mentioned that the models would earn much differently between one another in most locations):

Here is a shot of the rules. From this and the layout, it’s certainly aiming to be a fan favorite:

And here is the full features matrix. I don’t envy sales guys who get no time to study this stuff before they start getting phone calls from people demanding to know what the differences are, since they get it at the same time that buyers do:

Overall Thoughts

I enjoyed the X-MEN comics and cartoons back in the ’90s as many boys my age had; I kind of stopped caring after that lousy X-MEN 3 movie came along though. Overall as a gamer, I love how this looks. I still keep final judgment until I spend some time playing it, but I like how Jack has been allowed to be creative and innovative with the shots and layout. It looks like it should be a blast to play – I particularly am drawn to the unexpected from my pinball machines. The off-center thing might be a problem for some, though the flow of those loops and ramps could make up for it. I also can see how the Prem/LE looks more entertaining and exciting to play, which is what you want for that extra expense.

As an operator, while I’m not convinced that this will change much about the trajectory of how pins perform on location, I do think that my customers would enjoy it. Would I sell/trade one of my existing games like Mandalorian for it? Sure. If this became as strong an earner as Godzilla or Cactus Canyon, then that would make it easier to grab, although it will be a while before we know how that will pan out. I’m not buying machines out right anymore without the sell/trade of something else first, so I’ll let other ops who jump all over pins sight unseen take those bullets first.

What do you think about this one?