Skip to main content

At CES, Stern Pinball flexes its bumpers and tries not to tilt

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).

Recommended Videos

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. 

Nick Hastings
Former Staff Writer, Home Theater
Nick is a Portland native and a graduate of Saint Mary's College of California with a Bachelor's of Communication. Nick's…
If you need a new Nintendo Switch 2 game already, don’t miss Battle Train
A conductor sends a train car forward in Battle Train.

Whenever I get a new video game handheld (there are a lot of them these days), my first goal is always to find my "go-to game." I seek out the kind of replayable puzzlers or roguelikes that I will always keep installed and come back to whenever I don't have anything new to play. On Nintendo 3DS, it was Dr. Mario Miracle Cure. On Nintendo Switch, it was Tetris 99. On Steam Deck, it was Vampire Survivors. And now on Nintendo Switch 2, it's Battle Train.

The new deckbuilding roguelike, published by Bandai Namco, has everything I want from a long-term console staple. It has that all-important "one more run" hook, strategic depth that reveals itself with each attempt, and tons of unlockables. It's right up there with StarVaders as one of 2025's most inventive and purely pleasurable games.

Read more
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s cutscenes are so good, they’ll screen at a film festival
Henry of Skalitz looks at the camera.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has been criticized as an interactive movie, but now it's getting an actual movie of sorts: the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is showing a "cinematic cut" of the game on July 9. Warhorse Studios calls it a "proud moment for games as a serious storytelling medium."

What that cinematic cut will look like is anyone's guess, but unless it's absurdly long, it won't be able to capture the full story. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has somewhere around a dozen hours of cutscenes for just the main story alone, not to mention the many, many sidequests in the game. While it would be hilarious to see viewers roped into a 15-hour-long Let's Play, that seems unlikely.

Read more
Marathon has been delayed indefinitely after rocky Alpha playtest
A Runner getting shot in Marathon.

After hosting an Alpha playtest and taking in community feedback, Bungie has announced that Marathon will no longer be launching on September 23 as was originally planned. Currently, the extraction shooter has no set release date, but the team is committed to hosting more playtests to address community concerns and add new features.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlC31D_Rr-Y&t=6s

Read more