Rumor [roo-mer], noun: a story or statement in general circulation without confirmation or certainty as to facts
Disclaimer section: At This Week in Pinball, we try to just stick to the facts. But hey, sometimes you have to speculate! There have been many rumors regarding upcoming machines from Stern Pinball, specifically Iron Maiden and Deadpool. Below is a rumor roundup – what we’ve been hearing from what we believe to be credible sources. Is it all true? Probably not. That is why it is a RUMOR roundup!
Backstory Regarding Iron Maiden and John Trudeau
From what TWIP has been told, the initial plan was for Iron Maiden to be released at Expo 2017 with John Trudeau as the designer. As you may already know, John Trudeau was arrested on August 25th, less than two months before Expo 2017. (For the full story about Trudeau, click here.) Trudeau and Stern parted ways, and it is our understanding that Trudeau’s Iron Maiden design was completely scrapped and redone.
Design Cycle
We have also been told that the design cycle for Stern was as follows:
- Iron Maiden
- Deadpool
- Guardians of the Galaxy
Just speculating here, but with Iron Maiden delayed, in order to keep the assembly line going they probably needed to bump up one of the other titles. If this is true, it could help explain why Guardians of the Galaxy shipped with v0.65 beta code, when Stern’s documentation listed v0.72 as the code at “Initial Release”. Why not go with Deadpool instead of Guardians if it was next? Could be a number of reasons – maybe something critical (art or parts or something) was delayed on Deadpool. You can ship a game with immature code, but you can’t ship it without artwork or if it is missing parts. (Insert Magic Girl joke.)
IRON MAIDEN
Don’t know much about Iron Maiden? They are an English heavy metal band that have released 38 albums and have played over 2,000 live shows. According to Wikipedia, “Despite little radio or television support, Iron Maiden are considered one of the most successful heavy metal bands in history, with The Sunday Times reporting in 2017 that the band have sold over 100 million copies of their albums worldwide.” Not sure if you know any songs? Here is a nine minute video on YouTube that plays snippets of a top 10 list of Iron Maiden songs.
What We’re Hearing about the pinball machine:
- that Iron Maiden will be the next title released
- that Keith Elwin is the designer
- that Zombie Yeti is the artist
- that it should ship with v1.0 code (!)
- that Lyman Sheets is on code…and that Keith Elwin is on code?
- Explanation: we first heard that Lyman was on code, but we also saw this post by Elwin on Tilt Forums which indicates Elwin himself is doing the rules. Perhaps it is something where they’re working together on rules?
- that Lyman Sheets is on code…and that Keith Elwin is on code?
- that it may have four flippers
- that it may be based on the layout from Archer, a home-brew machine designed previously by Keith Elwin
Keep in mind, those are all unconfirmed rumors! So when will Iron Maiden be revealed? We’re not sure. Texas Pinball Festival seems like a good choice, and TPF just announced in this post that George Gomez and Lyman Sheets would attending TPF and possibly doing a seminar. The Amusement Expo in Las Vegas is next week, which is another possibility.
DEADPOOL
Deadpool is a movie starring Ryan Reynolds. If you haven’t seen it, check out the trailer here. But as we mention below, the pinball machine sounds like it will be based on the comic books, not the movie version. To read about the Deadpool comic books, click here!
What We’re Hearing:
- that Deadpool will be released this summer
- Note: the movie Deadpool 2 has a release date of May 18th, 2018
- that it is based on the comic book, not the movie
- that the design looks George Gomez-ish
- that Zombie Yeti is the artist
- that there are two flippers
- that it is a unique layout with a very unusual right ramp shot
- that one of the orbits actually feeds the ball to a ramp
- that there is a sword ramp with a ball lock mech
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