Stern Pin-Ball - CES 2014
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
870 words · ~4 min read
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Linus Tech tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by nc.com your source for
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great technology selection and service along with Corsair memory and Western
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Digital all right guys I'm here with Gary Stern from Stern Pinball Inc and
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we're checking out a pinball machine which is not necessarily something I expected to see when we came to CES but
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it's actually pretty awesome I grew up on pinball a little bit and my dad loves
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pinball all the time so what what's special about this machine I know you brought up LEDs what else is special
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about this machine well this this is obviously it's a Star Trek pinball
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machine um this is our Limited Edition version of it we make games in various
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versions uh three new titles a year we make a pro for operators and many
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homeowners we make a limited edition uh numbered games this is one of
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799 uh there will not be 800 and uh and
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then we make a premium which has all the Play features of the limited edition uh
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not quite as much eye candy this game has a few more bells and whistles and as
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to play features and some more ey cand your artwork
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now now those other tiers and this tier how much would that take you in the
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wallet uh take you in the wallet that's a good I like that phrase Luke um the
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limited edition will sell a little bit north of $88,000 uh the uh Pro the normal game uh
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which many operators use and many home owners is $5,000 plus or minus and the
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premium is oh $7,000 something like that
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we also make some games uh that are not coined op at all don't have a coin door
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like this one does and uh they are somewhat under $3,000 you'll see some of
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them at the show now the price tag might
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make some people surprised but there's a lot that goes into this this isn't
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exactly like just building a computer like a lot of you guys are going to be familiar with so what goes into building
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one of these first of all about a million dollars of design goes into it
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uh a very large staff designing the game uh between uh Playfield designers
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software rules designers they're not just programmers they're not just coders
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and uh artists and and mechanical engineers and what have you um as to the
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content what's in there material-wise there's 3,500 different parts in Parts
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in there okay there's 100 of this screw and 200 of that but a total of 3,500
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Parts over half a mile of wire uh printed circuit boards and more man
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hours of labor than uh than was in the four tourist when it used to be built
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not far from our plant in the Chicago land area so it's potential that if you
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buy this it took longer for this to be made than your car which is actually
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pretty interesting I played for a little while and it is really fun it's really
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interesting how it'll set you up to do different things and different goals in
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the game and I know there's other pinball machines that do that but I I liked how fluid this one was if you
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haven't ever played pinball before which I know a lot of our viewers will not
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have ever played pinball before that's amazing to me you have to play Pinball
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it's very important it's part of it's part of life you must play Pinball and a
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few of you that have will have played like 3D pinball back on XP or even some
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of the newer pinballs through Steam that I know a few of you have played it's not
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the same just just like everything you have to operate it you have to press the
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buttons on the side you have to feel the flipper move you have to nail the ball
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down the column on the right hand side it's very different it's a it's a ball
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and bat game uh and uh as Harry Williams
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a great pinball designer once said the ball is wild it's not programmed you
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know which you a simulated uh pinball on on video uh they're programmed uh and
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and some of our games are on far side for example to some of our games that's
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very interesting but the real game is the real game the ball is wild yeah and
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with computers things are prediction it might not be perfect and random number generators on computers are never really
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perfect this is actually what's happening because of physics thanks for
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watching all of our videos if you want to see all of our content at CES be sure to tune in and make sure you subscribe
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