I know that it's only Spring, but I'm already keeping an eye on the Fall of 2024. Things may be shaping up for another exciting Perfect Storm of pinball reveals then, much like we saw at the Texas Pinball Festival two years ago when we had an absolute avalanche of new games.
The 40th annual Chicago Pinball Expo takes place in October. At the event, we should be getting the public debuts of a number of different new pinball machines. Likely the biggest of those reveals will be Dutch Pinball's next game - Back to the Future. I'm hearing rumblings that the machine will be revealed at a big party at the show.
Beyond Back to the Future, the show may mark the first public appearance of Stern Pinball's third cornerstone game of 2024, a new John Borg-designed Metallica pinball machine that features an all-new, more powerful Spike 3 board system. Stern typically reveals its new games on-line with pictures and videos rather than at show seminars, but I suspect that Expo will be the first public appearance of the new rock-themed game.
Another company that I just wrote about earlier this morning, Homepin, has previously stated that it will being its upcoming Blues Brothers pinball machine to the 2024 Pinball Expo.
American Pinball is pushing hard to have its upcoming licensed Ryan McQuaid-designed game ready by Expo as well, but they reportedly still have a lot of work to do to be ready for the event so an appearance there remains to be seen.
I'm not sure when Spooky Pinball plans to unveil its follow-up game to its current Looney Tunes / Texas Chainsaw Massacre duo. I don't believe that either of those games has sold out its entire 800 unit allotment yet, and Spooky has only manufactured only around 40 of each so far so they may wait until later in the year to show their next game, with rumored titles at this point including Evil Dead and Beetlejuice.
There's no chance that Chicago Gaming Company will be even close to finished with the production of its latest game, Pulp Fiction, at that point. Having said that, we do have their understandably delayed expanded code kit for Cactus Canyon coming at some point. I wonder if it will be ready to reveal at Expo? It's possible I suppose. I doubt that they even know for sure when it will be ready at this point. I can't wait to see what that's like. Besides a longstanding promise to do another run of Medieval Madness, next up for CGC is almost certainly a remake of Bally's classic 1993 game Twilight Zone.
Expo is only six months from now. It will be here before we know it.
