Backbox of the Champion Edition
Following a demo game displayed at a Queen pop-up store in the fall of 2021, Pinball Brothers and Queen have finally announced their Queen – Live In Concert pinball machine to go into production. There will be two versions of the game, a Champion Edition and a Rhapsody Limited Edition (1,000 units), of which the latter will become available in the first quarter of 2023. The game features 14 songs from Queen’s well-known Wembley live shows from 1986.
Here are the close up playfield images provided by Pinball Brothers:
Player’s view
The upper playfield
The Red Special mini playfield with captive ball
Based on these photos the game appears to have two flippers in the standard position at the bottom of the playfield, a thrid flipper on the Red Special miniplayfield, three popbumpers, three shot-blocking droptargets, a huge metal center ramp, elevated static radio and Wembley Arena sculptures, numerous stand-up targets and one spinner.
From earlier rumors it is understood the game was originally designed by Dave Sanders and Barry Oursler during the days of Heighway Pinball. At that time the game was developed as a widebody design. Now that Pinball Brothers have taken over, the game has been modified into a standard width game by the Pinball Brothers Design Team and Alexander Spohr.
The art package of the Rhapsody LE differs from the Champion Edition, as can be seen below:
The Rhapsody LE artwork package
While the game is announced July 21st, 2022, production of the game will start in September 2022. As with Pinball Brothers’ previous title, Alien, production will be handled by Pedretti Gaming in Italy.
Additional info:
- Game Designer: Alexander Spohr
- Art: Stefan Akin
- Graphics & Animation: Kelly Mazurowski
- Rules Programming: Joe Schober
- Software Programming: Brian Dominy
- Music & Sound FX: Michael Stöckemann
- Game Engineering: Leon Brunner
- Initial Game Designs: Barry Oursler, Dave Sanders
- Executive Producers: Daniel Janson, Alexander Spohr
- Manufacturing: Pedretti Gaming
- Electronics: IOTA Electronics Ltd.
Below is the official announcement from the Pinball Brothers press release:
QUEEN AND PINBALL BROTHERS ANNOUNCES NEW PINBALL MACHINE: QUEEN – LIVE IN CONCERT!
With over 300 million albums sold worldwide, the iconic British rock band Queen are one of the biggest bands ever. Formed in London in 1971, Queen have released 15 studio albums, toured extensively, and produced innovative film, video and theatre shows for over 5 decades and they continue to pull in the crowds around the world.
The time has now come to honour this legendary band with a pinball machine based on their truly spellbinding songs – all played LIVE!
The game will be available in two different editions: Champions Edition and Rhapsody Edition. Rhapsody Edition is limited to a run of 1,000 numbered games and comes with a certificate of authenticity.
The limited Rhapsody Edition will come with a number of unique add-ons and the two editions will be different in appearance.
We have worked closely with the band to ensure their approval and it features the following live songs:
- A Kind Of Magic
- Another One Bites The Dust
- Bohemian Rhapsody
- Hammer To Fall
- I Want To Break Free
- Killer Queen
- One Vision
- Play The Game
- Radio Ga Ga
- Seven Seas Of Rhye
- Somebody To Love
- We Will Rock You
- We Are The Champions
- Who Wants To Live Forever
Game Features
The game features 14 live songs accompanied by call outs by the band, exclusively recorded for the game.
Featured also is Brian May’s legendary Red Special guitar, in the shape of an upper playfield where you can lock balls to start the Red Special multiball. Or you can visit the epic Wembley Stadium to lock balls to start yet another of the game’s many multiballs.
Keep an eye on the Radio – it might help you time your flips! Collect autographs, instruments, band members, tour passes and posters on your way to eventually reaching the final wizard mode »I Want it All!«
The game is presented with a breath-taking full RGB light show and a HiFidelity sound system, including an 8” bass speaker. It is hard to imagine a better way of experiencing Queen live, whether it be at the club or in your own living room. It is truly immersive!
Pricing and Availability
- Champions Edition (Orange artwork) 9,295 USD*
- Rhapsody Limited Edition (Golden artwork) 10,995 USD*
*Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (»MSRP«)
The Rhapsody Edition is limited to 1000 units and will be available through our global distributors.
The Champions Edition will become available in Q1 2023.
Pre-order through your local distributor today!
Pinball Brothers
Tune in for the upcoming Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast for more details about the Queen game.
The game went through numerous permutations at Heighway Pinball, but certain ideas like the 1986 Wembley Stadium and the Red Special guitar as an upper playfield were there from the beginning. Barry drew up the first widebody design, with continual changes and additions as more ideas from Andrew were thought up and approved. This was ending up complicating the design, so I started combining ideas and simplifying the build to remove redundant elements without compromising the flow and the shots that Barry had already done. This gave us the ‘official’ widebody design, which incorporated the 4-3 piano targets and the insert layout.
Further changes to the game’s style became necessary when the band and the licensors requested a specific visual look, iconography and theming of the playfield around the 1986 Magic Tour. We already had the song list, so this in itself wasn’t going to be a major issue. However the (correct) decision was taken then for the game to be converted into a standard by company management after Andrew had left. This was a task that I took on, along with James Rees as the Solidworks 3D engineer, and continued with after day-to-day operations of Heighway were shut down and Pinball Bros were poised to continue and then refine where operations had left off.
The challenge for me was the same – preserve the ideas and as much of Barry’s work as possible. At this point on the widebody, the Red Special field was on the left side, and the pop bumper area was on the right. Simply condensing it down would have left us with a game that was very reminiscent of the John Borg style of music pin layout, and this I wanted to avoid. A lot of ground-up reworking was thus required, so while the flow remained largely the same, the shot geometry was revised around a centre ramp shot, so that the upper field and pops were ‘flipped’ – guitar on the right, pops on the left. The 4-3 piano could stay where it was, and this also meant the game could take advantage of a left side kickback that could kick the ball behind it into multiple exits involving the top lanes, pops and orbit shot.
This layout would have been around 85 percent or so completed when my side of the task was then transferred over to the Pinball Bros for Alexander Spohr to finish off and customize using the parts, mechs and switches that PB were developing for the purpose, and quite a bit of additional refinement will have been done on his end since then. It’s most notable with the ramps and how the ball is diverted along new and extra pathways.