All of this talk about upgrade kits for Williams pinball machines lately (FunHouse and TOTAN) got me to thinking about what other games might get one. My leading candidate has been Williams Whirlwind, A) because it’s an amazing game and B) it’s one of the later pre-DMD pinball machines. When I mentioned that this might be next up in a conversation on Facebook, Jeffrey Jones chimed in and told me that a Whirlwind 2.0 is already being worked on. I was like “WHAT?!”
He directed me to a thread on Pinside that talks about how a gentleman from the UK named Jim aka applejuice, who is well-known in the pinball community for his coding prowess, has been working on an update to the iconic Whirlwind pin for seven years. Applejuice currently has the 2.0 code out there on 20 Whirlwinds being Beta tested by owners. In fact, one of these machines even made an appearance at last weekend’s Louisville Arcade Expo. Did anyone out there get a chance to play it? If so, what did you think? I would LOVE it if someone has pictures or video of it from the show that they’d be willing to share. I need to see what this game is like. Hopefully it’s awesome and a manufacturer picks up the rights to make it into an official Planetary Pinball-sanctioned kit.
Below I have shared videos of the DMD in action, an installed kit, a few pictures of the game and boards and a link to the discussion about Whirlwind 2.0 on Pinside:
UPDATE: Here’s a picture of the machine that was recently at the Louisville Show:
