Pinball is in the middle of a somewhat surprising resurgence, as young people (those who didn’t necessarily grow up playing pinball) flock to arcades and dive bars across the world to try their hand. If you’ve ever been in a pinball room, you know that the most popular machines are often tied to media franchises, like Alien or Lord of the Rings.
Stern Pinball is riding the wave of the pinball revival to massive sales bumps — to the tune of 40 percent year-over-year growth in 2017 and 2016. Digital Trends caught up with Stern at CES in Las Vegas, where he spoke with Zach Sharpe, Stern’s director of marketing, who also happens to be the top competitive pinballer on Earth, per the International Flipper Pinball Association (IFPA).
Stern specializes in making those licensed machines; at CES, it is showing off two Star Wars machines and one Guardians of the Galaxy rig. A full list of Stern machines can be found here.
“There are tournaments popping up all over the world, and there are 50,000 players ranked in the world, so I’ve only got one way to go, and that’s down,” Sharpe said with a laugh. Last year’s world championships were held in Denmark, and Stern has had a big hand in facilitating the pinball revolution, launching the Stern Pro Circuit, which offered more than $100,000 in total prize money over the course of 2017.
“You can find tournaments all over the world,” Sharpe said. “In fact, Portland (Oregon) has some of the most tournaments in the world. There’s [almost] a tournament every day out there!” Sharpe promises to play one-handed if he ever challenges the DT squad in a match.
Stern’s machines sell for anywhere between $5,500 and $9,500, but they don’t typically sell directly to consumers, so you’ll need to go through a distributor (or make some sort of Godfather offer) to get your hands on one personally. Want to try making your own pinball machine? That’s what Makerball is for, or you can even try your hand at making a two-player machine.
For more CES coverage, be sure to head to our official coverage page.
Update: We’ve fixed some errors regarding IFPA player rankings and Stern’s target sales markets.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.