The Great British Pinball Podcast Episode 16! - SPECIAL XMEN EDITION
The Great British Pinball Podcast
1 hr 6 min
Summary
Neil McRae plays unreleased X-Men at Stern factory; praises innovative mechanics and shot design.
Neil McRae visited Stern Pinball's Chicago factory during Papa 21 and played the unreleased X-Men pinball machine for approximately one hour. He and co-host Scott Rundell discuss the game's exceptional shot design, innovative mechanical features (including a clever ball-locking finger mechanism and destructible ramp), and overall playfield flow, which Neil compares favorably to classic Williams/Bally-era games. Neil expresses strong confidence that X-Men will become a top-tier game despite initial community perception of X-Men as a niche license.
Highlights
- X-Men playfield has significantly more creative shot design and ball paths than previous recent Stern releases at similar price points
- X-Men uses a tiny mechanical finger (not a magnet) to lock the ball at the left ramp, which is difficult to see but highly functional
- The game features a ramp mechanism where a finger flicks the ball back down the ramp, blocked by a sentinel hand finger that flicks it back again
- Seth Stern is implementing customer-centric design improvements, including easier ball insertion on home games without removing glass
- X-Men playfield feels wider than it looks in photos due to Jack Danger's design choice to move the game sideways, integrating plunge lane into outlane
- X-Men is the first Stern game in recent memory to create genuinely innovative mechanical magic rather than iterating on known mechanics
- The game's prototype had no ball sticking issues, lost ball confusion, or mechanical glitches, unlike some other manufacturers' production releases
- X-Men Pro and LE versions have no significant gameplay factor differences
Send us Fan Mail Scott and Neil talk about Neil's trip to Chicago including a trip to Stern HQ and PAPA21!
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