It's checkout time at the Holiday Inn hotel in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, so I'm sitting here in the lobby pecking away at my laptop because I couldn't wait to share all of the cool pictures that I took yesterday on the great tour that Jersey Jack Pinball gave several of us of its factory across the street. I got a chance to check out JJP's brand new machine Avatar: The Battle for Pandora and see the incredible amount of work that goes into creating such a beautiful game.
Jersey Jack recently revamped its production process with the help of the Company's new Chief Operating Officer Tom Kopera, Company veteran Eric Meunier and many others. The amount of thought that went into optimizing the pinball production process is truly mindboggling. JJP switched from two active production line to one single line in the interest of efficiency. They can however, switch the line over to work on a different game in a matter of hours, so they still have a tremendous amount of flexibility.
I took tons of pictures of the factory that I will share below. I personally find the production process absolutely fascinating. After the tour, we were given a presentation on the new Avatar game, led by the machine's designer Mark Seiden. Mark was very proud of what he and his team accomplished with the game and I can see why. The level of theme emersion that the game has is second to none. The licensor, Disney and Lightstorm entertainment provided JJP with an absolutely astonishing level of access to assets from the film. The game has everything… likeness and dialog from the majority of the main characters, custom callouts from Stephen Lang, who plays Colonel Quaritch in the films, amazing custom drawn art from new pinball artist Lea Faske and so much more.
For tons more details about the game, which played and looked fantastic, check out my initial article on it from launch day below:
Jersey Jack Pinball Officially Launches Avatar: The Battle for Pandora Pinball Machine
This article is more about the factory and additional details about the game and Jersey Jack that I learned on my trip. As you can see from my pictures, Jersey Jack has Limited Edition Avatar machines on the production line right now. These LE machines will start showing up at distributors on Monday (9/16). There is already one Avatar LE on the floor at Enterrium Arcade in Schaumburg, Illinois. There is also a game at this weekend's Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown and Gameroom Expo in Greenwood Village, Colorado.
The Collector's Edition of the game was not in production yet, but I did get to play games on a CE cabinet that had a LE playfield in it. The CE cabinet has different side art and inner art blades as well as a different backglass that has a Tri-Tone layered effect that almost makes it look like the Na'vi character on it is staring right into your soul. The CE also has an interactive holographic topper instead of the flat plastic topper that comes with the LE model. The CE topper mimics the actual displays in the ships and vehicles from the Avatar movies, courtesy of the tremendously detailed specs that Lightstoem provided JJP with.
The Limited Edition playfields, which have blue UV-interactive ink on them, are being produced by Mirco. The special Collector's Edition playfields are being made by the playfield manufacturer Bader. Bader used a special four step process to lay three different layers of UV-reactive ink on the playfields, that includes Red and Green in addition to the Blue that is on the LE. I got to see a prototype CE playfield and shine a blacklight on it at the factory and the layers of UV-reactive ink create an absolutely amazing effect. The Collector's Edition Avatar games are currently scheduled to go on the production line in November.
I also got a firsthand look at the Rad Cal decals that Jersey Jack uses to add side and inner art to all of its cabinets. They are made of a much thicker material than traditional side art decals. They're even thicker than translite material. The Rad Cals cost six times as much as traditional decals, but they look beautiful and make for much easier installation at the factory because they don't bubble or wrinkle.
I just uploaded a TON of pictures on what may be the slowest hotel WiFi in the universe, including the much requested pics of under the playfield.
I've gotta go catch a flight, but I have lots more pictures and info to come. Thanks for reading!
