Stern Pinball's D&D Topper Will Have the Dreaded DLC; New Gameplay Video of the Latest Games; Manitou Springs Penny Arcade
- Jason
- 16 hours ago
- 3 min read
Stern pinball recently unveiled new character pages on its app for its Dungeons and Dragons pinball machine. The pages (which currently are next to impossible to find in the app) show off all of players accomplishments in the game, such as the level of their character, what items they have found and their stats. They're a fun addition.
When scrolling through the playable characters in the game, one can see a placeholder for a character named Rowan Freewander, a Human Fighter, that has the following message:
LOCKED
PLAY WITH TOPPER ATTACHED
I was afraid that this would happen. As an owner of Stern Pinball's latest pinball machine Dungeons and Dragons (Premium), I am really enjoying the game. I think that it's cool that players can unlock several new characters in the game by achieving certain objectives. It gives players and owners another objective to shoot for while playing. However, what I don't like is when Stern Pinball provides exclusive modes or features that are only available to people who buy its $1,000 to $2,000 official topper.
I personally own a bunch of Stern Pinball machines, but my basement drop ceiling is not high enough for me to put toppers on my games. I'm not sure that I want to spend another grand or two on a game that already cost over $9,000 in this case anyhow. If I had the ceiling clearance, I would probably suck it up and buy the official topper for D&D to unlock its exclusive content, but doing so would leave a very bad taste in my mouth. That's not the kind of feeling that a company wants to leave its customers with.
I'm not even completely opposed to the concept of DLC. If Stern was to create a second completely new campaign for its Dungeons and Dragons pinball machine with new characters, new enemies and a new story I'm pretty sure that I'd happily buy it. But the idea that I need to spend well over a thousand dollars for a physical topper that I can't fit in my arcade to unlock one little aspect of my game that could easily have been included is off-putting.
I typically try to stay away from stating my opinion like this here, but the Stern Topper exclusive content really bothers me. If they just made a super cool topper, like the one on Spooky Pinball's Evil Dead or Barrels of Fun's Labyrinth people would buy the heck out of it without the exclusive code gimmick.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a preview article for last weekend's Golden State Pinball Festival here:
Pinball Show Season is in Full Swing, Up Next...The Golden State Pinball Festival
By all accounts, the event was a blast. YouTuber Michael Mattsson, aka DRI374, reached out and shared a bunch of links of both walkthrough of the show and gameplay streams of the latest pinball machines out there with all of us. I have embedded them below for anyone who wants to check them out. I also included several pictures of the show from its Facebook page at the end.
Show Walkthrough:
Stream of Barrels of Fun's Dune
Stream of Multimorphic's Portal P3 Module:
Stream of Stern Pinball's King Kong Premium
Stream of Pinball Brothers' ABBA Voyage Edition
Stream of a cool Mad Max Fury Road Homebrew
Stream of Spooky Pinball's Evil Dead
Stream of Turner Pinball's Ninja Eclipse
Stream of Stern Pinball's King Kong Pro
Last up I'll share a quick update on a cool arcade that I visited last summer. I already mentioned this on Facebook, but a lot of people don't use that site so I figured that I'd share it here as well.
The famous Penny Arcade in Manitou Springs, Colorado is under new ownership.
Here's a link to my article on it from last summer. It's a really neat place.
Colorado Arcade Visits: Manitou Springs Penny Arcade
Historic Penny Arcade in under new ownership
