Next up in this week’s “What I’m Hearing” series of articles is Jersey Jack Pinball. I just met with JJP's management and the development team for its new game Avatar: The Battle for Pandora on Friday. I included a lot of the great information that I gathered from that in my article about the trip (link below).
JJP Avatar has begun arriving at distributors and is starting to show up on location this week. The first Avatar on location was at Enterrium in Schaumburg, Illinois. I also saw that one just arrived at the cool On Tilt pinball speakeasy at the Ayce Gogi Korean BBQ in Van Nuys, California. Joel Engelberth will be streaming the new Avatar live tonight on the Flip N Out Pinball YouTube channel. I streamed a couple of quick peeks of the game in action from JJP's factory, but Joel's stream will be a much better look at the game so make sure to check it out.
I was extremely impressed with JJP's Avatar game when I played it last weekend at the factory and later on at Enterrium. The first thing you notice about the game is how absolutely gorgeous it is. As a lover of Ocean-themed games, I've been hoping for a Way of the Water pinball machine for a couple of years now. Jersey Jack delivered and as an added bonus included content from the first Avatar movie, which is arguably the better film.
Beyond how the game looks, it plays great. Jersey Jack's new designer Mark Seiden delivered an absolutely loaded machine. Take a look at some of the under the playfield pictures in my factory article and you'll see that it is jam-packed with wires, coils, mechs, etc... The top portion of the playfield has tons of different shots for players to attempt, including one that turns from a scoop into a ramp - something that I've never seen before.
The one thing that I would change about the game would be to balance the scoring a little better. At this point, points seem to come in major bursts with lulls in between. That is easily fixable as the code matures though. This definitely isn't one of those low-scoring Jersey Jack games. I saw people who were really good players score in the billions.
If someone asked me how I would describe Avatar: The Battle for Pandora, I would call it an experience. The machine is very immersive. When you play it, the beautiful art, cool UV lighting effects and full assets from the films draw you in.
One key takeaway from my trip to JJP that I did not mention in that article is that Jersey Jack is working hard on cutting the time between game launches. They spoke a lot about how they've redesigned their factory to increase game production efficiency. This increased productivity seems to be enabling them to get games out faster. I spoke with two employees about when the Jersey Jack's next game will be revealed. One said “six months” and one said “six to nine months.” Wow, that is a lot sooner than I expected. Very exciting! That puts the next reveal at somewhere between March and June of 2025.
As far as what the next Jersey Jack game is goes, I know for a fact that it is being designed by Eric Meunier. So what's the theme? Well, I took some heat earlier this year for saying that Harry Potter was the next JJP game. Obviously, it wasn't. I quickly fixed that and called that it was Avatar. I’m going to pick myself up, dust off and go with the Harry Potter rumor again. Maybe the second time is the charm? I think so.
A Behind the Scenes Look at the Jersey Jack Pinball Factory and Its Newest Game Avatar: The Battle For Pandora
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