Alien pinball

New Pinball Games To Be Revealed at Pinball Expo

October 17, 2023 By ausretrogamer

With Pinball Expo ’23 only a few days away, pinball manufacturers are clamouring to outdo each other in the new release stakes.

We already had Barrels of Fun announce their Labyrinth pinball game over the weekend (which will be playable at the expo), and now it’s Pinball Brothers’ turn with an Ellen Ripley edition of their Alien pinball machine. As Alien(s) fans, this definitely piques our interest!

This Ellen Ripley version of Alien pinball will come with new cabinet art, a loader battle translite, an updated software package (v4.0) and a bunch of extra movie scenes we have never seen in Alien Pinball before! Announcing their collaboration with modder Lior Rajwan from The Art of Pinball, this new machine will include hand-sculpted mini-screen, a hand-painted Xeno-head and a beautifully designed apron. Pinball Brothers are also planning an interactive topper which we hope they bring to the expo!

Alien Pinball – The Ellen Ripley Version

The Ellen Ripley Edition’s In-game Extras

Not to be outdone, Jersey Jack Pinball (JJP) will also announce Steve Ritchie’s next pinball machine on October 19 (US time), which is rumoured to be an Elton John music themed pin. We aren’t the biggest Elton John fans, but with Steve designing this one with a higher BoM (bill of materials), you can bet it will be an amazingly flowy (and possibly brutal) game, packed with cool mechs and toys – well, that’s the hope.

The Master of Flow – Steve Ritchie. JJP will showcase his latest game at Pinball Expo

Will it be Elton John? We’ll see on October 19 (US time)!

Oh how we wish we could be at Chicago this week to experience and play these new machines – if someone could fly us out to Chi-town, we’d be forever in their debt 😉

Alien Pinball by Pinball Brothers: The Beast Is Back

January 19, 2021 By ausretrogamer

It was all quiet on the Pinball Brothers front since the demise of the Heighway Pinball venture a few years ago.

Just like the rise of the phoenix (Ed: or should that be Xenomorph?), so have the Pinball Brothers ! Towards the end of 2020, we noticed that Pinball Brothers (PB) had quietly setup their online presence with a website and social media channels, which immediately piqued our interest and set off our motion tracker.

With nothing much to glean in the way of pinball news or information from their site initially, we kept a close eye on their cryptic social media posts, which were intriguing to say the least. With every tweet, Facebook and Instagram post, we were glued to our social timeline, trying to piece together their cryptic clues. Surely all of this was pointing to the resurrection of the Alien pinball machine.

Well, on December 18, 2020, all was answered of course when the Pinball Brothers team appeared on The Super Awesome Pinball Show (TSAPS podcast) – announcing that the coveted Alien pinball machine was going to be relaunched! For those that do not know the history of Alien pinball or Pinball Brothers’ involvement in the failed Heighway Pinball saga, we’ll spare you the sordid details here, as there are plenty of posts on forums and other pinball news sites that have documented their past quite well (Ed: Google is your friend!).

We first played the Heighway Pinball ALIEN machine at FlipOut 2018 – the theme integration was off the charts!

From their interview on TSAPS, the good news was that they were working on bringing back an Alien Standard Version (SV) first, followed by a Limited Version (LV) towards the middle of 2021. Even better news was that they were not going to take pre-order money this time, meaning that if you want one of their new Alien pinball machines, you would have to go via one of PB’s approved distributors (for those in Australia, the local distributor is Mr. Pinball Australia). As you could imagine, distributors were immediately inundated with pinballers clamouring to get on the list for an Alien Standard Version – the Limited Version order banks have not yet opened. Interestingly, PB did not disclose any more details about the features on the Limited Version of the machine, which has left folks speculating of what will (or won’t) appear on the high-end machine.

This Alien pinball remake has had a number of tweaks that distinguish it from the original Heighway Pinball version, including a standard backbox, wide-body Bally Williams style cabinet, removal of the LCD on the playfield above the flippers and a physical ball lock to name just a few. PB mentioned that they had also spent these last two years working under the hood to ensure that this new Alien pinball experience would be durable and reliable, something that the original was not (without a lot of tinkering and TLC).

Heighway Pinball’s ALIEN (left) and PB’s ALIEN remake (right)

With their almost indestructible playfields being produced in Germany by Buthamburg, the build and manufacturing of the machines will be in Italy, by Pedretti Gaming, who produce pinball replacement parts and sell used pinball machines. 2021 just got interesting, and rest assured, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this Xenomorphic pinball venture!

For now, it’s not GAME OVER for Alien pinball!

For more information on Alien, please visit the Pinball Brothers website.

PS: We will update this post once there is video footage of this machine being played!

image source: Pinball Brothers

Blast Some Xenomorphs in Alien Pinball

January 30, 2018 By ausretrogamer

Back in March 2017 we were going gaga over Heighway Pinball’s Alien machine. Fast forward almost a year and a lot has changed. We won’t go into specifics of the company upheaval from last year, but rest assured that the new Heighway owners weren’t going to let this important IP go to waste.

Eerie glowing egg bumpers and the Xenomorph waiting to snatch your ball!

We are finally seeing more and more Alien machines reaching their customers and hitting barcades across North America. We are hoping Australian establishments site this cool machine ASAP! We definitely want to wage a flippin war against the Xenomorphs, so we may need to visit Wayne at Mr Pinball, the Australian distributor of Heighway’s highly anticipated machine, in the very near future to get our Alien fix.

Choose your mission, Alien or Aliens and watch out for those pesky facehuggers!

Alien Pinball is an absolute treat for fans of the first two films of the classic sci-fi horror series. From the facehugger slingshots, glowing egg bumpers and the scary Xenomorph head that snatches balls from the playfield, it’s up to you, the pinball wizard, to complete the two sets of missions (there are five missions in each set) to reach the ‘All Out War’ multiball wizard mode.

Just like Ellen Ripley, the fate of the universe rests in your hands, so search and clear all decks, watch for the proximity alert, avoid the acid burn and before you yell “game over, man!” just remember, in space no one can hear you tilt!

Photos: Heighway Pinball

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Resurrecting Alien Pinball

March 6, 2017 By ausretrogamer

One of the most anticipated pinball machines in recent memory, Alien by Heighway Pinball, is finally starting to ship!

The shipment of Alien pinball machines is at a trickle for the moment (only a couple have reached their customers), but here’s hoping Heighway Pinball can start cranking up production and get those Alien beauties shipped out at a hundred per month, just like they mentioned not that long ago.

To whet your appetite and possibly fill you with dread (just like the movies did), Heighway Pinball has released a new overhead gameplay video (see below). Quite frankly, the video has wowed us at how great the whole package looks and plays; from the smooth and fast playfield, the lighting, toys (the Xenomorph picking up the ball off the magnet is just superb), to the atmospheric sounds plus the call outs just round out to what amounts to be a very special pinball machine.

Don’t forget, on March 6 (US time!), Dead Flip will be live streaming Alien pinball gameplay on Twitch!

source: Heighway Pinball