This year’s CES show, held in Las Vegas (4,500 exhibitors – 180,000 attendees), was an outstanding performance for Stern Pinball, both at its booth and its presence at the CES Unveiled and Pepcom press events.
Stern rolled out two new pinballs at CES 2019. The Beatles pinball features nine hit Beatle songs and immerses the players and spectators in a back to the 1960’s Beatlemania experience. USA Today captured Jack Danger playing at one of the events and named the Beatles pinball machine as ‘one of the coolest things/tech at CES’.
Stern also unveiled The Munsters, with the Stern Team, dressed up as the infamous cast members of The Munsters television series. Gary Stern (as Grandpa), Zach Sharpe (as Eddie Munster’s doll, Wolfy), and Jack Danger (as Herman Munster). Later that night Gary Stern (still dressed as Grandpa) was spotted and shown on the jumbotron at the Golden Night’s game (Las Vegas’ NHL team)! [Gary Stern is a master at getting positive national press coverage for the amusement game industry and we applaud him for his efforts and success.]
The Munsters Pinball (exactly as reported by Arcade Heros)
For the design, this is a game designed by John Borg (click for his extensive pinball resumé). It has Pro, Premium and LE models, with all three offering plenty of fun shots, ramp action, and six standard balls. There’s Herman Munster bash toy in all three, a scoop target, a magnet, and a cool hidden bash toy underneath the upper left ramp. Premium and LE versions have a lower playfield with two flippers and various shots; all models have the HD color screen, although Premium models come with B&W artwork to keep with the nature of the original show.
Here’s a trailer for the for Pro and Premium models:
Dead Flip has been streaming the LE version; they’ll be showing all three models over the next few days.
Here’s the features matrix:
The Cabinets
Let’s start with the Pro Model and work our way from there. As you can see from the features matrix, Pro’s don’t have huge differences or rules, only really lacking the lower playfield (Grandpa’s laboratory) and the extra pair of buttons that comes with; it also mentions a Grandpa bash toy for the Premium/LE and a digital display. Fortunately, the Pro model has wire ramps and not plastic.
I’m almost surprised that they did the Premium as the black & white art model and not the LE, but most likely they assumed that a lot of people will be wanting this model. It’s a good idea and apart from fitting with the show, looks good by what I can tell. Note that the lights still provide color for this one.
The LE model keeps the tradition of maintaining the same playfield layout, but goes full color; it also has different back glasses, an HD 3-channel sound system and not as many of these models will be made.
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