Earlier this week I wrote an article for the site that contained a lot of great information about Stern Pinball's recent meeting with distributors. In addition to Stern's newfound respect for Limited Edition games, I mentioned how Stern stated that it is strongly considering remastering DMD-era games if the demand warrants.
Whenever anyone hears that Stern may re-release DMD games, the immediately begin clamoring for remakes of Lord of the Rings and TRON. Those two titles would be very high on my list and very likely buys should Stern ever decide to remake them. One potential remake that I have been hearing chatter about from knowledgeable people for years is Ghostbusters. There's a number of people who know their stuff who have said that Stern has been working on a Ghostbusters Vault. Whether that is actually true or not remains to be seen.
Having mentioned those titles, to me the most likely candidate for Stern to dip its toe into remaking its first DMD game of the Spike 2 system era is probably...Spider-Man.
Originally released in 2007, this Steve Ritchie designed, Lyman Sheats coded classic is a fantastic game. When the game was released, Stern also produced a Limited number (500) of "Black" edition machines.
Spider-Man pinball was so popular that Stern has actually vaulted it once already. They released a Spider-Man Vault Edition in 2016 that featured a number of changes from the original game, including new and significantly improved (IMHO) Comic-style art, cool custom-molded toys of the game's characters a number of mechanical improvements and new somewhat derided callouts.
The question is, would Stern vault Spider-Man again? I'm guessing yes. Here's why.
Stern obviously has a very strong relationship with Disney, the current owner of the Marvel license, based on the two companies' history and the fact that Stern's current CEO Seth Davis is a former Disney employee. Stern wants to keep the Disney game pipeline rolling, but given the recent lack of success by a number of the new Marvel movies at the box office there's no film screaming for a game at the moment, at least in my opinion. So maybe Stern vaults one of its classic Marvel games?
Furthermore, according to the recent Pinball Show Podcast, during the aforementioned virtual meeting with dealers, Seth Davis had three Stern games that are currently in production in the background AND a playfield for Spider-Man! Below is a link to the show for anyone who wants to check the episode out:
Here's a number of pictures of all three versions of Spider-Man that I've taken at arcades over the years. I actually really like the game. I've toyed with the idea of buying one a number of times over the years, but...I already own a Stern Star Trek, which has a very similar Steve Ritchie layout to Spider-Man so I could never justify owning both games.
Will Stern use Spider-Man to dip its toe back into the world of DMD games? What DMD-era games would you like to see be remastered?
People are tired of Marvel and comic book properties. It’s been so overcooked. I’m sure there’s some people that will buy marvel items forever, but the mainstream culture has reached saturation. And Venom interest made the point.
Yes, the LOTR licensing aspects are certainly complex and super costly, but I really hope they can commit to it... It would be an instant buy for me, and so many other people - and I'm definitely not easily jumping on any new machine.
It’ll be iron man. They were about to make it during the pandemic so have the parts already.
A lotr with a few updates is an instant pre-order for me. Metallica or Sopranos with new features or code I'd want to see first before ordering.
Disney owns TRON rights as well, correct? It seems like the most likely remake, IMO. The demand for it seems to be very high. According to the Pinside estimates, TRON resale value is a lot higher than either LOTR and SPidey, but all three are pretty highly valued.