<\/p>\n
Representing Stern Pinball were Gary Stern, John Buscaglia and Dave Peterson. Dave was absent on the first day of the show, but is already in London and should be at the show on Wednesday and possibly Thursday.<\/p>\n Gary Stern showed how for European games the Spike 2 mainboard in the backbox has to be caged in order to prevent radio signals interfering with the board. Or that\u2019s what I understood. I\u2019m sure Martin Ayub of Pinball News will be able to describe that more accurately. The caging is apparently only required for games operating on 50 Hz.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I had actually traveled to London on Monday in order to interview Gary Stern for Pinball Magazine, but due to huge train delays that interview didn\u2019t happen. As Gary had some openings in his schedule on Tuesday we talked for about an hour over lunch. Don\u2019t expect to read this interview anytime soon as this is just the first part of a series of upcoming interviews that should cover Gary\u2019s career in pinball.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I played both new Stern games in the morning of the show, but wasn\u2019t able to put up any long games on them. Aerosmith<\/em> seems to have very short ball times (or my flipper skills were completely off). I still haven\u2019t figured out the rules, other than similar to KISS selecting a certain song will highlight certain shots on the playfield, of which in some cases the shots have to be made in order. That turned out actually a lot harder than it seemed. I don\u2019t think I ever managed to play a new Stern game and not get to Multiball, but today that was the case. Batman<\/em> is of course a different game, but it also plays completely different than Aerosmith<\/em>. Late in the afternoon I was able to put some longer games on there, but I\u2019ll have to play both game more before I can make up my mind on them.<\/p>\n The other present pinball manufacturer was Heighway Pinball, who booked quite a spacious stand at the show. When the show opened on Tuesday morning the company had three Full Throttle<\/em> games set up as well as two Alien<\/em> games and if I recall correctly a third Alien playfield lying on the floor under the desk in the center of the stand. The Alien<\/em> games however were still being worked on during the morning of the show and were removed from the stand in the afternoon. From what I understood backstage techs were continuing to work on the games. While I have no inside info on what the problems were with the games, and I absolutely understand the desire to show playable games, one can wonder whether removing the games from the floor is such a smart move. I was wondering why not just do as Stern did with Batman<\/em> during Pinball Expo 2016: have the games present, show them so people can see the product and just explain the code isn’t done yet (which probably is true anyway). As far as promotional items goes Heighway Pinball had flyers, banners, promotional plastics and a sticker for Alien<\/em> available on the desk in their booth, as well as a flyer for Full Throttle<\/em>. I also spotted a full-page ad for Alien<\/em> with different ad artwork than the flyer in two industry publications that are available for free at the show. Both the ad and the flyers say the game is shipping now…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.pinball-magazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Caged-Spike-2-PCB-in-Aerosmith-Photo-by-Pinball-Magazine.jpg\")
<\/a>\n<\/a>\n