# Metallica Remastered Gameplay Overview

**Source:** Stern Pinball  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2024-11-01  
**Duration:** 27m 14s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-K-McMA16Q

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## Analysis

John Borg and Ray Davidson demonstrate Metallica Remastered gameplay, showcasing new features including RGB mystery lighting, Sparky bash mechanism, multiple multiball modes (Electric Chair, Grave Marker, Coffin, Snake), Crank It Up mode, Hardwired shot sequences, 72 Seasons album mode, and Blackened wizard mode. The game features enhanced LCD display, new album modes, updated artwork, and refined playfield mechanics compared to the original 2013 version.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Production of Metallica Remastered begins next week with units shipping to homes and arcades — _John Borg closing statement: 'We're going to start production next week, and they'll be in your basements and arcades.'_
- [HIGH] RGB lighting added to mystery lamp and skulls on slingshots in Remastered version — _Ray Davidson: 'We uh added RGB to the mystery light and also the skulls on top of the slingshot.'_
- [HIGH] Sparky throw switch lamps are now RGB in Remastered, unlike 2013 original — _Ray Davidson: 'All the Sparky uh throw switch lamps are all RGB now too, where they aren't in the 2013 version.'_
- [HIGH] Electric Chair Multiball is the main multiball; activated by hitting and charging Sparky toy — _Ray Davidson: 'You have to hit Sparky, charge him up, start electric chair multiball. If you hit him right in the middle, right on the target, it'll count as a double hit.'_
- [HIGH] Blackened wizard mode requires completion of all four multiballs in same game — _Ray Davidson: 'If you get all four of the multiballs in the same game, that's the uh the Blackened wizard mode.'_

### Notable Quotes

> "We're going to start production next week, and they'll be in your basements and arcades."
> — **John Borg**, end of video
> _Official confirmation of production start date for Metallica Remastered; establishes timeline for availability_

> "We uh added RGB to the mystery light and also the skulls on top of the slingshot. So as you collect the three lanes on the bottom and the two lanes at the top uh it'll bump your mystery level up and change the color of the mystery lamp."
> — **Ray Davidson**, early gameplay
> _Details new visual enhancement distinguishing Remastered from original; mystery level progression mechanic_

> "If you get all four of the multiballs in the same game, that's the uh the Blackened wizard mode."
> — **Ray Davidson**, end of gameplay
> _Establishes Blackened as true wizard mode requiring maximum achievement_

> "You can actually work towards your other multiballs during coffin multiball. You can't do that with any other multiball."
> — **Ray Davidson**, coffin multiball section
> _Defines unique mechanical feature of Coffin Multiball; strategic gameplay differentiation_

> "So to to get the cross item, I need over there first, you got to hit the left orbit to kind of set that as the shot, and then you hit across."
> — **Ray Davidson**, Seek and Destroy explanation
> _Explains mini-wizard mode (Seek and Destroy) activation requirements and shot sequencing_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| John Borg | person | Stern Pinball designer demonstrating Metallica Remastered; confirmed as lead designer of remaster version |
| Ray Davidson | person | Code partner working with John Borg on Metallica Remastered; demonstrates gameplay and explains mechanics |
| Metallica Remastered | game | 2024 Stern Pinball remake of 2008-2013 original, featuring new toys (Sparky bash mechanism), LCD screen, new album modes (72 Seasons, Hardwired), RGB effects, and refined playfield mechanics |
| Stern Pinball Inc. | company | Manufacturer producing Metallica Remastered; confirmed production starting after demonstration |
| Electric Chair Multiball | product | Primary multiball mode in Metallica Remastered; activated by charging Sparky toy |
| Grave Marker Multiball | product | Secondary multiball mode; started by hitting all grave marker targets on left side |
| Coffin Multiball | product | Third multiball; unique feature allows working toward other multiballs simultaneously |
| Snake Multiball | product | Fourth multiball mode; described as hardest; focuses on combo shots and jaw-bashing mechanic |
| Crank It Up | product | Advanced mode requiring completion of 12 of each item type (snakes, chairs, crosses); stacks with Hardwired |
| Hardwired | product | New shot sequence mode based on Hardwired album; requires hitting white circular inserts at bottom of playfield |
| 72 Seasons | product | Album-themed mode requiring 72 switch hits; includes items from 72 Seasons album cover artwork on display |
| Seek and Destroy | product | Mini-wizard mode triggered by collecting all item shots (crosses, snakes, electric chairs); time-based mode |
| Blackened | product | True wizard mode requiring completion of all four multiballs (Electric Chair, Grave Marker, Coffin, Snake) in same game |
| Sparky | product | Bash toy mechanism in Metallica Remastered; charged to start Electric Chair Multiball; center-hit counts as double hit |
| Master of Puppets | product | Song mode selectable at start; multiball variant demonstrated during gameplay |
| Resurrect Save | product | Outlane save feature; lit by completing grave marker targets |
| Mystery Level System | product | Four-level progression system using in-lane and top-lane collection; RGB color-coding; affects reward values |

### Topics

- **Primary:** New Features in Remastered Version, Multiball Modes and Stacking, Wizard Mode and End-Game Content, Production Timeline and Availability
- **Secondary:** LED and RGB Lighting Enhancements, LCD Display and Album-Themed Content, Toy Mechanisms (Sparky Bash)

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.87) — Official product demonstration with enthusiastic tone from designers; confident in game quality and community reception; no criticism or concerns raised; celebratory closing about production start

### Signals

- **[competitive_signal]** Blackened wizard mode requiring all four multiballs in single game establishes high-difficulty end-game goal for competitive and skilled play (confidence: high) — Ray Davidson: 'If you get all four of the multiballs in the same game, that's the uh the Blackened wizard mode.'
- **[design_philosophy]** Metallica Remastered emphasizes multiball stacking complexity and strategic mode sequencing, particularly Coffin Multiball allowing simultaneous work on other multiballs (confidence: high) — Ray Davidson: 'You can actually work towards your other multiballs during coffin multiball. You can't do that with any other multiball.'
- **[announcement]** Official Stern gameplay demonstration of Metallica Remastered confirming production timeline and feature set (confidence: high) — John Borg: 'We're going to start production next week, and they'll be in your basements and arcades.'
- **[product_strategy]** New album modes (72 Seasons, Hardwired, Blackened) and enhanced toy mechanism (Sparky double-hit detection) represent significant mechanical and content improvements (confidence: high) — Demonstration of Hardwired mode, 72 Seasons switch-counting, and Sparky double-hit mechanics throughout gameplay
- **[technology_signal]** RGB lighting system implementation on mystery lamp and Sparky throw switch lamps distinguishing Remastered from 2013 original (confidence: high) — Ray Davidson: 'We uh added RGB to the mystery light and also the skulls on top of the slingshot... All the Sparky uh throw switch lamps are all RGB now too, where they aren't in the 2013 version.'

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## Transcript

hey James from Metallica Metallica pinball remastered is here wow new art new tracks new display hi everybody I'm John Borg from Stern Pinball Inc I'm here today with Ray a Davidson my partner in crime and we are going to demonstrate Metallica remastered pinball all right uh should I should I lead the way here John sure championship of the world so you can uh select your song there's a whole bunch of them this time are to go WR with Master of Puppets uh so you can either go for the regular skill shot by just plunging and choosing a lane or you can hold the left flipper and go all the way around the world hey that'll that'll count nice basically have to hit any shot certain shots will have uh benefits like if you hit the uh fuel Lane on the left it'll light double scoring hit the mystery it'll you know whoa uh speaking of mystery there's four different levels you can upgrade your level by hitting the uh the inlanes which you can change with your flippers uh John did something very special for the mystery level on this game you want to talk about the uh yeah we uh added RGB to the mystery light and also the skulls on top of the slingshot so as you collect the three lanes on the bottom and the two lanes at the top uh it'll bump your mystery level up and change the color of the mystery lamp um so the higher you get in levels the better your values are going to be yep all right here we go all right so I made a little progress on uh the electric chair and um that's uh probably the main multiballs you have to hit Sparky charge him up start electric chair multiball if you hit him right right in the middle right on the target it'll count as a double hit so that that can be a quick way to get that going hang in oh nice oh I got I got two Sparky hits for that one really now so you can also go after those grave markers on the left hit all those down and it will uh light grave marker multiball you will also light your outlane save called the resurrect save oh could have used that all right next ball you just hit one of those targets you'll get your outlan save I'll be good all right so after ball one pretty close close race here save all right go yeah he's getting fried all right one more Target to light my outline save oh these slingshots are scaring me John all right another thing uh you can see I've almost SP fuel over here so if you get one more letter on this fuel Target it'll like double scoring on the uh left lane that is very helpful well I lit and used my you resurrected yeah all right let's uh almost got almost got Sparky going uh the way the the rest of the kind of Playfield works is you're lighting these items so when I hit the snake it lit these three snakes over here so now every time I hit one of those snake shots it's uh collecting snakes and once you get 12 of them it will light solid and if you get 12 of all the items that's how you get your crank it yep and now notice over here I've actually got all three items on My Grave Lane so if I hit that it'll begin a hurry up and if I cash in that hurry up then my next ball it will stay locked in so you actually really want to oh not do that it's all right I got uh I got everything lit so yeah at the beginning of the ball all your items reset unless you get three in a row and you lock it in uh the other thing you can go for one of the new modes is the hardwired mode so you can see those little white circles that are blinking at the bottom of each shot there's one so looks like John needs the left ramp and the left orbit okay I got my outlan saves lit out lane saves are lit Sparky is ready and there we go for it all right John putting on the pressure now starting electric chair multiball uh during multiball if you hit the four guitar targets the 72 season targets of pick targets uh that will light your snake for a adab ball and double scoring yeah uh during this multiball it's all about switches so you want to hit those spinners that uh builds up the charge and once Sparky is fully charged you can hit Sparky for a Super Jackpot and every time you get a Super Jackpot the uh colors will change so you can kind of see your progress all right Super's ready John okay there it is H almost got all three of them oh and he locked the ball S I locked the ball in the snake and here they go oh no it's all right you had a ball in reserve that's right I did I forgot about looks like you got a cough and hurry up going right there oh missed it I think you got it just barely got it all right so now his grave Lane is locked in all right he started another hurry up and I have the casket lock lit nice look at that magnet just grab onto that ball so you light those locks by hitting the uh hammer uh enough time uh he did that in multiball so you can kind of work towards it in multiball but you can only lock it when you're outside of multiball and I have extra ball at the scoop oh that'll come in handy all have four more uh hammers to light lock one okay you just need the left orbit for your hardwired feature and you only need two more 72 Target for the 72 Seasons feature left orbit boom there we go extra B I've got two of my icons at the bottom of the Playfield I two more to get light Crank It Up There we go Master of Puppets multiball m multiball all right he's got double scoring lit on the left he got um he's lighting some locks so when he comes out of this he'll have more coffin locks ready during this multiball you hit the flashing gra Mar there one I got I got one grave marker the uh the cross itself will relight all the shots uh once you hit four four or five shot and it lights the Super Jackpot there's another one oh now oh no get in there get in there get in there oh I missed it it's all right oh uhoh resurrected got another lock for the there's two dude that magnet is now I'm going to need to get a few hits to get the third one lit you'll notice it say it said Robert collected so each multiball corresponds to a band member and depending on how well you do in that multiball you can get uh higher level band members if you get all the multi balls and therefore for all the band members it will qualify blackened okay I have a hardwired lit when I hit the scoop shot it'll relight all the five main shots oh this here we go get in oh you'll stack it with Crank It Up I got Crank It Up lit too yeah on all right well you got everything right oh you got nextra B same snake shoots again we're going to get that casket locked uh so let's see we played electri chair multiball we played great Mark multiball he's working towards his C coffin multiball uh snake is the fourth multiball and that one's probably the hardest you have to hit the snake to get a snake letter and then open the snake Again by either bashing his jaw or hitting any of the snake shots a who put that scoop way over there the good part about it being over there is you can you can allow your lanes to build up and keep bumping up that mystery level and go for level four and get something great all right there we go no messing around let's just start our right all right I let my double scoring so let's there oh didn't quite hit enough trying to get my uh standup targets here to light my snake there we go the snake is open get in there oh wait maybe I can bash it in a we got it all right all right we got our super lit got our super there we go it'll be doubled cuz I'm in the snake I got an extra ball let's see if I can start double scoring extra ball o all right the other thing is if you're hitting that fuel Target you're getting fuel in the middle there there we go double scoring is started I got my coffin hurry up running there we go there's a super super now I actually reopened my snake so I can actually stuff it in there again and get double scoring and since I have the other double scoring running it would have been 4X scoring looks like that one the other one ran out but that's okay okay snake is time the ball yeah it'll just hang out there for a little bit if I hit the uh guitar targets again I think I can extend the lock timer but I think I'm just going to use this to try to hit Spinners to try to get fuel all right almost got another Super ready here there we go all right yeah let's work on fuel here let's try to get fuel multiball there's a super not fuel multiball I'm sorry fuel fast scoring so that Mode's good to stack with a ready all right so now every switch is giving me points you can see the fuel jackpot is lit with that orange arrow Boom o that ball wanted out got three of the lower icons just oh crank it up as a bit there it is all right let's send that in there take a take a take a step back oh looks like John already locks him in the coffin for me so this one's going to come right out right scoot beautiful Crank It Up all right so see what we got here oh I didn't have enough I didn't have a very high mystery level so I could have got one of those better rewards if I had all right uh let's do some Fade to Black all right this is a switch switch hit mode so um you want to hit Spinners orbits and uh you can see your progress in the upper right corner so as I'm hitting switches I'm also still in the fuel mode so this is actually a perfect combination yeah and there's a pretty generous ball save at the beginning of a crank it up mode too just in case you drop the ball really quick you get it back there we go you can see my mode progress in the upper right is starting to fill in now if I hit all the items so there's a coffin there's a snake Sparky bam nice yeah the flashing light will um help you work towards the mode faster so it's actually up to you if you want to kind of slow roll it you know get more points or if you want to speedrun it try to get to the end um because each of the cranked up modes has a finishing condition all right let's hit the grave marker there we go so now Crank It Up jackpot is lit all right so now I could either continue and you see I got five and a half minutes left of the song or I can collect um all right I'm going to collect I'm I'm not going to get greedy we're just going to take our points but you could see how that could keep going get that quite large oh good thing I collected uh looks like I got to shoot again all right we got a coffin lock lit now the other thing is if you look on that back panel you can see the Metallica letters every time I hit a ramp it gives me a letter in Metallica spell Metallica there's a letter there we go think that's ball two for me I've also started the 72 Seasons features so you can see this light is kind of blinking so in the upper right corner you see that number you want to try to get 72 switches and that will start 72 season so let's good spin shot get you there one more there it is oh a couple more switch ques all right so now every switch I hit is building this jackpot value that I can collect on the four standup targets but ah so you kind of want to hold off on them because you can only hit each one once so you kind of want to you know build it up and then start cashing Spinners there's another one on accident the items that show up on the screen are actually items that are on the 72 Seasons album cover and Ray is trying to build up the jackpot value is just over a million now all right I think I might have spelled Metallica here uh one more letter from okay oh nice save shot's easy until you need it huh uh-huh there we go there it is so now we got now Injustice Lady Justice there we go so now and see every ramp now you want to Loop ramps and combo the ramps and you'll score a ton of points yeah it's actually you can see on the screen there's like left shots and right shots so right now it wants me to hit left shots and if you alternate that's where you get the bigger points oh nice sh there's another one that left ramp is probably easier from a moving ball it seems like it's kind of like it flows right from one ramp to the next all right we're almost to coffin multiball let's see if we can make that happen or maybe snake too there there's a snake there we go lock oh lock is lit there we go nice now what's unique about coffin multiball is you can actually work towards your other multiballs during coffin multiball you can't do that with any other multiball so I'm going to actually work on snake cough and multiball is very simple you hit any of the lit arrows and then that lights the coffin if you do that for every lit Arrow there we go then you get the Super Jackpot going to have my work cut out for me all right I got I got snake multiball lit all right come on let's start that snake multiball there we go there it is nice all right so this is the fourth multiball and this one is all about uh combos you want to hit a couple of shots and then combo them into the snake one it's actually this multiball is a little easier um with the snake jaw closed because you can just bash him in the jaw boom like that that's not nice now I can still try to open the jaw up by hitting the targets try to get an addab ball there we go there I'm almost to Seek and Destroy actually which is sort of a little mini wizard for hitting all of the item shots around the Playfield you can see I've got crosses and snakes and electric chairs everywhere oh there oh boo oh and then I was unfocused all right well that was still pretty good I'd say heck yeah got one more shoot again here you get extra Balls by yeah um the extra balls for um hitting the hammer a lot um you can also get extra balls if you get um enough combos you can also get them by collecting these blown Pistons over here so those are lit from the pop bumpers so you can see I got a little a little piston over there oh I started the uh Sparky second Sparky all the Sparky uh throw switch lamps are all RGB now too where they aren't in the 2013 version yes you can see I'm already on green level level green I want to try to get to Red that's when you get everything worth a allock I'm on level blue got another fast uh fuel mode lit started now I'm going to actually try to go for Seek and Destroy here so so to get Seek and Destroy you need to get uh all the items ohoo last second addable tastes like a so it looks like the only item I need is the cross on the left orbit and maybe the chair I'm not sure probably not so to to get the cross item I need over there first you got to hit the left orbit to kind of set that as the shot and then you hit across there we go so now because I hit the cross you can see they're all over there now so now if I hit that that'll start seeking destroy and this mode is fun because every time you hit a shot it uh adds time no oh all right well you'll have to get it to yourself to experience that mode but there you go I gave you the blueprint on how to how to start it uh all right you're up John all right oh I have my work cut out for me okay here we go all right you got to Crank It Up L just play one big Crank It Up and hard wire just live awesome oh yeah that's why we got to see that hardwired all right got this there it is nice all right here we go we're going to shock Sparky a little bit dur and Crank It Up Place some battery and hardwired will be lit at the same time so all all the five uh uh White uh round inserts and the the insert strings will be lit you want to hit all those and then when you have the last one lit the whole shot will strobe here we B all right so this Crank It Up mode is all about Sparky um you can hit the other shots to build the Sparky value or you can just B Sparky to try to get to the end of it quicker there you go one of the lights will be flashing that one will be um you know double the other shots there you go nice so Sparky gives you the award progresses the mode relights all your shots sooner all right well I think we actually managed to show everything initial right if you get all four of the mul balls in the same game that's the uh the black and wizard mode um but yeah we played all the other modes uh hope you enjoyed last yes uh you're all going to really enjoy this game I can't wait for you to get it we're going to start production next week and they'll be in your basements and arcade

_(Acquisition: youtube_auto_sub, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 53380baa-b941-4794-906d-063c2c459281*