The trailer reveals a machine packed with art assets both new and derived from the film. The backglass art by Michael Calandra shows Lo Pan (played by the eternal James Hong) in his final sorcerer form in a nod to the film’s climactic battle, while Brian Allen’s original playfield art is a comic book-style collage of notable scenes and characters. As the trailer reveals, that playfield’s a fully-featured modern pin, with multiple ramps and targets, a couple of magnets, a bash toy, and more, and the game itself has almost 20 different modes, including several missions based on the movie and four multiball modes. The game has original music by Scott Danesi (who designed one of my favorite pins ever, Total Nuclear Annihilation), and there are brand new recorded lines by James Pax, who played Lightning in the movie. And expect to see movie clips on the backglass screen, of course.
It’s a little surprising it’s taken this long for anybody, anywhere, to make a Big Trouble pin. John Carpenter’s 1986 martial arts fantasy-comedy wasn’t a hit at the time, but the people who saw it tended to love it—including an elementary school-aged me, who convinced my parents to take me to a screening in Tampa, Fla., after they dropped my teenaged brother and sister off at a concert by The Outfield and Lynyrd Skynyrd offshoot band Van Zant. That hype from the people who saw it in theaters helped make it a success on video and TV, and it’s long since been a well-regarded cult classic. Licensed pins weren’t as common in the ‘80s as they became in the ‘90s, when almost any major Hollywood genre flick got an official pinball tie-in, so it’s not too surprising there wasn’t a Big Trouble pin in 1986. Given the pin revival of the last 10 to 15 years, though, and the evergreen popularity of new machines based on movies loved by dudes between the ages of 40 and 65, Big Trouble has long stood out as a likely license for a pin manufacturer to pursue—especially since the story’s structure and light-hearted but adventurous tone are especially well-suited for the pin treatment. And hey, Indiana Jones has had two pins, with likely more on the way before everything’s said and done; Jack Burton and the Pork Chop Express can’t get one?
Well, they are now, thanks to Kyle Mudflaps. Unfortunately it’s not one you’ll be able to buy or play on location at your local pin arcade, but if you make it out to Pinball Expo (which runs from October 15 to 18 this year), or if Mudflaps brings it to a pinball show near you, maybe you’ll get to take a turn on it. Check out that video below, read more about the Big Trouble pin at Knapp Arcade, and learn more about Pinball Expo at its official site.
