Stern Pinball's D&D Topper Will Have the Dreaded DLC; New Gameplay Video of the Latest Games; Manitou Springs Penny Arcade
- Jason
- May 19
- 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
You guys need to stand up to Stern and say NO we're not taking this anymore....stop letting Stern bully you guys around, I know that all you fanboys want to relive your youth and feel young again cause that's what Stern is selling you but they're manipulating you!!! You're middle-aged, i'm middle-aged, let's just enjoy it and make badass themes for us and not for the us of yesterday. stop buying nostalgia hits that never end up being good. dune looks horrible, D&D is a snoozer and now they're adding exclusive modes that cost 1k+???? DON'T LET THEM TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOU GUYS LIKE THIS, STAND UP AND SAY NO NO NO!!!!!
I really hope people just boycott buying whatever new game they come out with next. They are going to start doing it more if people just suck it up and buy the toppers. Don't just suck it up, freaking say no to the whole machine. There isn't a huge pinball buying community out there, so even if 50% of us say nah not going to buy your machine, they will feel the hit. If other companies see it working for Stern and Chicago Gaming, they will start doing it. They will for sure up the price on the toppers, if people are buying them. We need to shut that sh*t down now.
So here's the trick Stern doesn't want you to know... Buy an expression light kit. On the dip switches set it to what the topper address would be. Now the game thinks the topper is there and unlocks whatever it unlocks. I imagine this loophole will be addressed in Spike 3
You are right on about the topper DLC. Making you drop another $2k to get play options on something you already paid $10k for is a bit much. Maybe offer it out to non-toppers for some amount and its "free" with your topper.
DLC on toys that cost 200 to 400 dollars....sure! DLC for toys that cost 12000 bucks? Fuck No!