The other day I gazed into my crystal ball and forecast what is in store for Stern Pinball in 2025 (Link: https://www.knapparcade.org/post/dungeons-dragons-1st-interview-1st-gameplay-what-s-next-from-stern-pinball-in-2025 ). Today I want to take a look at Chicago Gaming Company.
Many people consider Chicago Gaming Company aka CGC to have the best production quality in the industry. But that dedication to excellence comes at a cost...speed. CGC is also one of the slowest in the industry to get games out. Many see that as a fair tradeoff, but found the Company's lack of communication with the public off-putting. That lack of communication has changed recently. CGC has turned over a new leaf and has been much more communicative, which is very refreshing.
Yesterday, CGC shared a neat post on Facebook showing off the impressive silkscreening process that it uses to put art on its playfields. Specifically they showed pictures of a Pulp Fiction being Silkscreened. Very cool.
OK, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. What does Chicago Gaming have planned for us in 2025? Obviously first up they have to finish producing all of the long-awaited Pulp Fiction Limited Edition pinball machines. Pulp LEs have finally begin to ship in North America, so progress is happening.
CGC is also almost done with its promised expansion to its previous game Cactus Canyon. The addon includes both significantly expanded code and a hardware component. The code is nearly complete but that hardware aspect has run into a few snags and is holding things up a little bit.
After Pulp Fiction, Chicago Gaming is likely going to do its long-promised run of Medieval Madness. Just yesterday they confirmed that it is still coming in the comments section of the aforementioned silkscreen post. Not only that but supposedly CGC will announce pricing and trim levels for the game "soon."
It's hard to say how many Medievals CGC will run, but given how many have already been made in the past I can't imagine that it will be a huge run.
UPDATE: After this article went up, someone told me that they heard the initial Medieval Madness run will be a whopping 1,000 units. If that's true, Wow.
We'll see. If it's not, there likely will be time for them to build another game in 2025. What will that game be?
It will likely be one of two projects that I know for a fact that Chicago Gaming Company has been working on. The first is a remake of Bally's 1993 classic pinball machine Twilight Zone. This excites me for a number of reasons. Not only will it be cool to see what Chicago Gaming does with the game since they have a history of doing cool addons for their remakes, but it means that a widebody pinball machine is coming to market. Outside of Spooky Pinball, no other manufacturers are making widebodies right now. I know that some people say the geometry is inferior and don't like widebodies, but I love them. Widebody games are almost always packed with cool stuff.
Twilight Zone has been in the works at CGC for a number of years now so it might be next. However, I know that CGC is also likely going to make the next game from Raw Thrills / Play Mechanix. Game number two from them after Pulp Fiction is probably going to be a multi-level Mark Ritchie game based upon the video game franchise Halo.
Whatever the next game is, CGC was targeting to have it ready for Chicago Pinball Expo 2025, which is scheduled to take place from October 15th through the 18th. Now we all know that delays and CGC go hand in hand so don't hold me to that.
UPDATE: To give everyone an update on where Chicago Gaming is on the Pulp Fiction LE build, minutes ago they shared an update that they are up to #300 out of 1,000.
"Did you know that CGC playfields are silk screened by hand?
Silk screening is a printing process in which ink or paint is pushed through a mesh frame that contains a stencil of the desired image. Each screen corresponds to one color, and by layering multiple screens with different stencils, multicolored images can be made.
For our playfields, the stencil screens are well over 5 ft long. Pulp Fiction uses 6 screens, but some of our previous games have used as many as 14!
Curious to know more about about silk screening? Leave your questions in the comments, and I’ll pick a few to ask Gerardo (our silk screening pro) next week. 🎨"
