Artist Brian Allen on designing Gritty, remaking Tales of the Arabian Nights and Cirqus Voltaire, hidden Easter eggs, and why AI art is cheating.

Pokémon cools off, Transformers carries the summer, and operators take to Sonic

How to play Data East's Laser War (1987): lighting locks, 2- and 3-ball multiball, the Ion Jackpot, the numbered Base saucer awards, and the end-of-ball bonus.

Nick Weyna wins the D82 Summer Pinball Classic and Jason Zahler defends at the Northwest Pinball Championships, closing out August on the Stern Pro Circuit.

Zipper flippers, the 3-inch flipper and the first production 6-player game: what Ted Zale built at Bally between 1963 and 1973.

Stern reveals Fallout, James Fremont gets hands-on at media day, solar_espeon remembers Dolly Parton, and the IFPA Women's Championship Weekend heads to Chicago.

Hands-on with Stern's Fallout from media day: Elwin's Paragon pop, the V.A.T.S. Fat Man launcher, the Magna-Flip vault, and a shop you can rob.

American Pinball's Cirqus Voltaire remake is official, PinAccess relaunches, and Stern's Fallout is near. Plus a month of pinball stories you may have missed.

American Pinball announces Cirqus Voltaire in Classic and Ringmaster editions, $9,989 and $12,589, shipping October 2026 with both rulesets in the box.

Multimorphic founder Gerry Stellenberg on picking licenses nobody predicts, why the P³ screen is just another canvas, and the deals he walked away from.

From College Daze to Challenger: the Gottlieb designer who gave pinball the wedge head, the add-a-ball, and the first true multiplayer game.

154 years of pinball firsts: from an 1871 bagatelle patent to the largest homebrew ever built.

Jason Zahler wins a third straight Pinburgh, Stacey Moritz sweeps the WIPT, and Jack Slovacek takes The BEAST.

Don Berrios keeps a room of pinball behind the collectibles at his Somersworth, NH shop, and talks Sterns, maintenance, and what a location game costs to run.

Developers Conor Wilson, Ed Giardina, and Will Oetting talk about their latest projects amid an explosion of new services.

Tasker Smith launched Pinball: A Quest for Mastery in Natick — flow states, focus rituals, split flippers, and the 1974 Strato-Flite he brought in.

Tasker Smith launched Pinball: A Quest for Mastery in Natick — flow states, focus rituals, split flippers, and the 1974 Strato-Flite he brought in.

Three new games launched in two days, plus why the Bon Jovi reveal landed hard, a Galactic Tank Force send-off, and Tasker Smith's new book.

Tasker Smith on the decade he spent writing Pinball: A Quest for Mastery — the sensory deprivation tanks that didn't survive the edit, what his editor changed, and why he says pinball comes down to pl...

American Pinball announced Galactic Tank Force: Victory Edition this morning, a final run of one hundred units, alongside a hefty code update and some interesting clues as to where the company may be ...

Everything we know so far about the new Barrels of Fun pinball machine, Bon Jovi.

Multimorphic launches two P³ games at once — Dungeon Crawler Carl at $12,350, Ender's Game at $11,750, or $5,250 and $4,400 as kits for existing owners.

The ten best electromechanical pinball machines ever made, as rated by users of the Internet Pinball Database.

American Pinball owner J Bryan Vincent on taking AP into licensed games — a candid Hot Wheels post-mortem, remake economics, and the themes he's avoiding.

Stern's George Gomez on working with licensors — 100% approvals, walked-away deals, and why pinball doesn't fit neatly into anyone's product categories.

Matt ranks every pinball machine released in 1996 from worst to best — Flipper Football to Tales of the Arabian Nights — as the whole class turns 30.

LA comedian Matt O'Brien on the pinball obsession that turned into viral videos — and got Stern to loan him a machine.

The Dungeon Crawler Carl pinball teasers are escalating fast, from the book's own creative team, and a launch now looks like 2026. Here's who might be building it.

James Cardona of Cardona Pinball on the business of building officially licensed 2.0 upgrade kits for classic Bally/Williams machines.

On this edition of The Score Card, we're diving into a pair of competitions unlike any other: one that pulls hundreds of players to Alberta, Canada for a hefty amount of Match Play, as well as a brand...

Learn to play Stern Pinball's 2026 release, Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye in our expert tutorial.

Sonic the Hedgehog finally revealed, Slash hits the HoF, Transformers tutorial, and a fast spin through the rest.

Slash enters the U.K. Pinball Hall of Fame. Hear from Chairman Gary Flower, and watch video from the award presentation.

Everything we know about the release of Jersey Jack's Sonic the Hedgehog pinball machine so far!

Get a sneak peek of the full Sonic the Hedgehog game before its official release in a few hours.

JJP's next game is officially Sonic, Pedretti revives Tales of the Arabian Nights, Barrels launches a club, plus a bunch of rad interviews and more.

Bruce Sheldon self-publishes Pinball Frenzine, a low-tech DIY zine of hand-made pinball rules guides. He talks origins, process, and what's next.

On this special edition of The Score Card, we're taking a quick dive into IFPA21, tracking the close calls, surprise finishes, and of course, this year's big winner.

Barrels of Fun's $75-a-year Barrels Reserve club gives members a guaranteed second week to buy any machine that sells out in its first seven days.

Pedretti revealed its Tales of the Arabian Nights remake, a $10,999 Legacy Edition and a 399-unit, $11,999 30th Anniversary Edition with new Brian Allen art.

Spooky rules designer Hilton Jones on operating, his four tenets of ruleset design, Evil Dead, TCM, and building his arcade game Aliens of Destruction.

Pokémon eats the market, 2025 runs down 2024, and a first public look at our Production Estimation Model

Learn to play Bally's World Cup Soccer pinball machine in our expert tutorial.

Sonic's playfield leaked, and JJP is trolling the clue-hunters. Plus a Licensing Expo rumor dump, a surprise Resident Evil update, and three new contributor pieces.

An Australian maker is building a real-world version of Windows' 3D Space Cadet pinball. CNCDan on servos, 3D-printed flippers, and the ghost of Deeproot.

After considering which video modes were the worst efforts of the 90s in a previous list, it’s time to flip the script with our look at the best video modes of the 1990s.

Meet Sam, the man behind the popular restoration YouTube channel Rush Fan Pinball. Learn about his introduction to pinball, restoration philosophy, and more!

Impressions of Transformers: More than Meets the Eye from Stern's Media Day.