The Mandalorian Pinball — The Best Star Wars Pinball Machine Ever Made

In 2021, Stern Pinball was riding pinball's modern golden age—and they handed one of the hottest licenses on the planet to a legend. Brian Eddy, the designer behind Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness, had walked away from pinball for nearly 20 years. The Mandalorian was only his second machine since coming back. In this episode of The Skill Shot, we step up to the most perfectly-timed Star Wars pin ever made: Stern's The Mandalorian. If you love the new-Stern launch streams on Dead Flip, the reviews and hot takes on Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, or the gameplay and tournament coverage on channels like Buffalo Pinball and This Week in Pinball, this deep dive into modern Stern history is right up your alley. We break down how this machine landed at the absolute peak of Baby Yoda mania, why Carl Weathers' original callouts as Greef Karga became some of his final recorded work, and how Ludwig Göransson's Emmy-winning theme turns the cabinet speakers into a goosebump machine. Then we walk the playfield to analyze one of the deeper modern Stern rulesets. The Mandalorian is built around story-driven missions, spending Beskar at the Foundry, and the rotating encounter mini-playfield on the Premium and LE—a second upper deck with its own flippers that physically tilts while you fight to keep the ball alive. I step up to the flippers to share the shot geometry, the edition differences (Pro vs. Premium vs. LE), and the road to the "This Is the Way" wizard mode. Finally, we run The Mandalorian through the FlipScore—my 100-point rubric checking Shots, Code/Depth, Theme, Build Quality, and Resale Value—to see if this 2021 blockbuster deserves a prime spot in your game room today.