I love pinball interviews. Kudos to all of the podcasters and content makers who conduct them because they’re a lot of work. George Gomez is one of the best interviews in the industry. Besides the fact that he’s a great guy, I almost always learn interesting things that I never knew before when I listen to him.
Yesterday afternoon Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast released a fantastic interview with George. The entire hour-long video is definitely worth watching, but below are a few highlights of new information that I picked up from it.
- George heard through the grapevine that one of Stern Pinball’s competitors has a DC Comics deal.
- A game ran into delays so they moved up X-Men from the normal 16 month design period to 12 months
- Stern Pinball had the license to Back to the Future but none of the designers wanted to make the game so they passed on it. Joe Kaminkow really pushed Stern to make BTTF.
- Crazy story from when George Gomez was a contract designer for Stern Pinball. He had just finished designing The Dark Knight and he told Gary Stern that he wanted to design The Matrix next. Gary had him create a pin for Lord of the Rings instead.
- The Jurassic Park Home Edition Plus is selling well at Costco. At this pace by Christmas it will be sold out. The Costco games all have the control buttons inside the coin door, but owners can also adjust settings on the game from their phones. That’s coming to all Stern pins.
