New Details on the Cactus Canyon Remake Expanded Code; Tons of Info From Gary Stern Interview

Good morning everyone. I've got FOUR articles in the queue in various stages of completion all lined up for this week. We're going to have lots of cool rumors and news to talk about.

First up, I have news on Chicago Gaming Company and Stern Pinball. Josh Sharpe, who is working on creating the upcoming code expansion for the game, recently shared two new screenshots from the new code on Pinside.

The first showed a teaser for a new mode in the game called "Drunken Multiball" in which the flippers are reversed. Pretty cool.

The second was even more revealing. It showed a reference to a new spinner for Cactus Canyon that will be included as part of the new updated code package. For years now (hard to believe it has been that long) there has been talk that the expanded Cactus Canyon code that will go on sale will include physical additions to the game. The early rumors talked about how it will include Saloon Doors that the player needs to shoot through to hit the game's protagonist Bart. It now appears that the package will either include a spinner instead or in addition to that.

Several months ago, I heard that the team working on the Cactus Canyon expansion was hoping to have it to show off at the upcoming Chicago Pinball Expo. Whether it will actually be ready then remains to be seen, but it sounds like whenever it's ready it's going to be really cool.

---

This weekend, Stern pinball's founder Gary Stern gave a presentation at the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown that PinPin Films was kind enough to upload a recording of to YouTube. Below are my notes from the very insightful discussion:

• Play on Stern Pinball’s Insider Connected is up 50% since May

• Stern is going to change some of the music in X-Men based on public feedback on the gameplay stream

• 70% of Stern games are sold for use in the home but 70% of the gameplay happens on location

• X-Men accessories are scheduled to launch in January 2025

• Stern is contracting with a mechanical design group to implement designers’ accessory concepts to market faster

• Gary thinks that Stern’s second Simpsons game was perfection and wouldn’t do that license again.

• In the process of testing the 2.0 version of the Insider Connected App & hoping to begin rolling it out in the next month or so

• Stern Pinball has secured Gary Stern’s dream license

• Home Leaderboards are in the works

• Stern bought the Wisconsin company that has been doing its clear coating for playfields and they are moving their operations into the factory

• They are looking into investing more into digital printing

On a related note, I recently listened to an Interview with George Gomez on the Phantom Tilt Pinball Podcast and George spoke about the long-delayed Venom accessories. He said that they are still coming and explained that they were delayed because they were trying to do something completely new that had never been done before but it ultimately didn’t work out.