A few weeks ago I shared the news here that Ryan McQuaid, designer of the one of the most popular homebrew pinball machines of all-time, Sonic Spinball, had officially been hired by American Pinball.
The hiring naturally sparked speculation that American may try to build Ryan’s Sonic pinball machine. Zach Meny reported on a recent episode of The Pinball Show podcast that there is a rumor out there that another pinball company other than American had obtained the Sonic license.
This morning another source, Christopher Franchi, confirmed this rumor on a brand new episode of The Super Awesome Pinball Show podcast. Franchi stated that American Pinball had actually spoken and reached a tentative agreement with Sega about the Sonic license, but the company decided to think about it for a week. By the time they came back, another pinball company had already swooped in and taken the license. Despite American Pinball offering more money than had originally been agreed to the license was already gone.
So if this is true, who might this mysterious other pinball manufacturer be? If we remember back, when Spooky Pinball was interested in securing the Godzilla license, Stern swooped in and grabbed that license up out from under them. So one would have to assume that Stern did so again.
Stern actually built a Godzilla pinball machine after securing the rights. And by most accounts it’s the most well-received pin in modern history. So a Sonic the Hedgehog game May now be in the queue at Stern. There’s a lot of speculation in this post, but I believe that it’s very possible that we will see a Stern Sonic pinball machine. Time will tell…
Make sure to check out the latest episode of the awesome (is saying that redundant? lol) Super Awesome Pinball Show here:
