After weeks of anticipation, this morning Stern Pinball officially unveiled its new Keith Elwin-designed James Bond 60th Anniversary Limited Edition pinball machine at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Limited to 500 units, the single-level game will feature scenes from every single James Bond movie ever produced.
First and foremost, we have the answer to the question that everyone has been asking...how much will the game cost? Stern is selling a limited number of games directly to All-Access Insider Connected customers through its website at a price of $19,999. The initial allotment of direct sale Bond 60ths quickly sold out. The remaining machines will be sold through Stern Pinball distributors.
Prominent features of the game include Oddjob’s kinetic spinning disc hat, 10 drop targets and 4 optical spinners (which incidentally is the most spinners ever included in a pin).
Rather than a large LCD screen and the backbox includes score reels. I've been going back and forth about whether these are actual mechanical reels or not. They weren't in the initial leaked Stern mockups of the game. I think that they are in the production version, but not in the traditional sense. According the Stern podcast that I reference below:
"These aren't like the score reels we used in the past. These are much more powerful and faster. Mark's done some pretty good emulating, making them look like actual score reels. Then we do stuff like the slot machine effect with them, which is really cool too for the match. I think he's been having a lot of fun with those...
No, we went back and forth with the score reels, even though they look like old school, they're modern stepper motors. We went back and forth a lot with what motor controller will give us the most accurate, the strongest pulse with the reels. And how quickly can we move them? How quickly can we stop them? What is as close as we can get to the old mechanism, but still using modern parts that people can service and take care of and will work accurately. We've got the reels on test. I think I was there yesterday and I'm at 4 million steps on the score reels going on test and still going strong. It is very much going to not break like an old game. It'll be a good solid modern game from the underside. It'll just look a little old school here and there."
Information and scenes from the movies will be displayed on a smaller screen on the playfield. Interestingly though, the initial video that Stern released of the game shows no movie scenes at all on the in-playfield mini screen. This probably means that programming for the game is in the very early stages or Stern has not received licensor-approval to show the video clips yet, or both.
Immediately after the game went on sale, Stern Pinball's Insiders Podcast host Nate Shivers released a brand new podcast about the machine, featuring designer Keith Elwin and a relatively new programmer to Stern, Mark Penacho. Mark is known for his programming work on games like Williams' Fish Tales and Roller Games and has been working on Stern's Insider Connected service. Below is a link to the transcript for the podcast, a link to the company's official press release and videos and pictures of the new game.
Frustratingly, it appears as though flippers are already trying to make a quick five grand by gobbling up spots to auction off to others on Pinside:
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