Stern Pinball Led Zeppelin Revealed!

Cary Hardy·video·24m 26s·analyzed·Dec 15, 2020

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Led Zeppelin reveal: strong mechanics, weak aesthetics; LE powder coat color criticized

Summary

Cary Hardy provides a detailed breakdown of Stern Pinball's Led Zeppelin reveal, focusing heavily on aesthetic criticism across all three cabinet tiers (Pro/Premium/LE). While praising the gameplay innovation (song-based progression system) and mechanical design team, Hardy is highly critical of the artwork execution, particularly the Premium model's lazy album art reuse and the LE's poor color choice (baby blue powder coating). He notes the Pro model's missing upper-playfield wire ramp as a cost-cutting measure and highlights the centered rising mech as a potential flow concern, though he expresses interest in how the game actually plays.

Key Claims

Led Zeppelin is Stern's last cornerstone title for 2020, designed by Steve Ritchie with software by Tim Sexton
high confidence · Official Stern Pinball announcement via TWiP website and Stern's official channels
Pro model MSRP is $6,200, Premium $7,800, LE $9,200
high confidence · Hardy cites official pricing from Stern Pinball and TWiP websites
Only 500 LE units will be produced
high confidence · Official production limit cited from available sources
The game features 10 full-length licensed songs with song-divided sections (verses, chorus, solo, bridge) as a novel progression mechanic never done before in a music game
high confidence · Hardy cites TWiP website description of gameplay mechanics
Premium model artwork is directly reused album art from Led Zeppelin's first album without meaningful alterations, which Hardy characterizes as lazy design
high confidence · Visual inspection and Hardy's direct criticism of the cabinet imagery
The LE uses the Icarus symbol (Swan Song Records logo) with baby blue powder coating, which Hardy and his brother (a Led Zeppelin fan) both criticize as a poor color choice that clashes with the art
high confidence · Hardy's visual analysis and consultation with his brother who owns all Led Zeppelin albums
The Pro model is missing the upper-playfield wire ramp and ramp shot present on Premium/LE, removing an upper flipper shot option as a cost-cutting measure
high confidence · Detailed playfield layout comparison between Pro and Premium models shown in video
The centered rising mech with spinner is optical, not mechanical, and may create flow concerns by blocking direct shots to ramps behind it
medium confidence · Hardy's technical analysis of the mechanism and speculation about gameplay implications

Notable Quotes

“That's a little funny that they want to show off their game and reveal it on Facebook and all you get is video because the audio for it was claimed as copyright material.”
Cary Hardy@ 0:00 — Highlights the irony of revealing a Led Zeppelin game with muted audio due to copyright claims on the actual band's music
“The King of Flow is back. Well, the game might flow, but the aesthetics are about as rough as Mommy Dearest.”
Cary Hardy@ 0:16 — Sets the tone for Hardy's primary criticism: aesthetic design quality despite mechanical competence
“This is not good. I get it. I understand that this is taking it directly from their Zeppelin III album. So if you are a Zeppelin fan, then you probably look at this and go, this looks great... I look at this and I don't like it though.”
Cary Hardy@ 4:13 — Hardy acknowledges his bias as a non-fan but maintains critical stance on design execution
“You can't get any lazier than this. This is one of those where I'm like, okay, yeah, it's off their album, but it's the same image on every portion of the game except for the inside.”
Cary Hardy@ 4:44 — Direct criticism of Premium tier artwork reuse with minimal customization
“So, the only other color that looks as bad as baby blue is green.”
Cary Hardy's brother (unnamed Led Zeppelin fan)@ 9:44 — Even a Led Zeppelin fan (album collector) agrees the LE powder coat color is poorly chosen
“The Led Zeppelin Icarus symbol is actually based on a sketch done in 1869 by artist William Rimmer called 'evening the fall of the day' the sketch is currently being displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.”

Entities

Cary Hardyperson Steve Ritchieperson Tim SextonpersonStefan JensenpersonBob BaffeypersonChunk ErnstpersonJohn RothermelpersonElliot Eismanperson Rob Blakemanperson

Signals

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event_signal: Future gameplay stream will provide definitive answers on playfield flow mechanics that cannot be determined from reveal video alone
medium · Hardy references upcoming stream multiple times to resolve mechanical questions: 'That's going to be in the stream to really find that out.'
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competitive_signal: Stern positioned Led Zeppelin as 2020's 'cornerstone title,' establishing it as a marquee release alongside other major announcements
high · Hardy: 'stern has revealed their last cornerstone title for the year of 2020, and it is none other than Led Zeppelin.'
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design_philosophy: LE powder coating color (baby blue) poorly chosen and clashes with Icarus artwork; even a Led Zeppelin superfan (Hardy's brother) agrees the color selection is aesthetically unsuccessful
high · Brother's analysis: 'the only other color that looks as bad as baby blue is green.' Hardy notes the color would be first thing he'd change if given the machine.
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design_philosophy: Led Zeppelin centers on a rising mechanical mech with potential playfield flow implications; Hardy speculates on whether direct shots through the center to ramps behind it are possible, suggesting uncertainty about final gameplay flow
medium · Hardy's analysis: 'I just don't know the flow of the game yet. If you're able to hit straight through this and feed directly to the ramps behind it or not... That's going to be in the stream to really find that out.'
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market_signal: Stern is now revealing toppers simultaneously with game announcements for cornerstone titles (Avengers, Led Zeppelin); Hardy notes this as positive trend in communication

Transcript

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0:00

I gotta say that's a little funny that they want to show off their game and reveal it on Facebook and all you get is video because the audio for it was claimed as copyright material. That's a little funny. The King of Flow is back. Well, the game might flow, but the aesthetics are about as rough as Mommy Dearest. and your room looks like a two dollar a week place room in some stupid backstreet town what's up guys and welcome back to my channel where i talk and do everything pinball so if that sounds interesting to you then hit that subscribe button down below stern has revealed their last cornerstone title for the year of 2020, and it is none other than Led Zeppelin. A lot of the information that you're going to be getting from me is via Twip's website, as well as Stern Pinball's website as well. The game is designed by Steve Ritchie, also known as the King of Flow, that has done many games that a lot of you enjoy that you probably don't even realize those of you are new to the hobby. For instance, I own two of his titles back here the getaway and black knight 2000 now some may argue and debate about his latest titles are nowhere near as decent as his you know earlier titles that is obviously debatable his last title that we got was at the beginning of 2019 and that was black knight sort of rage where originally i first saw that game i wanted it but then i saw the stream and then i changed my mind and then I played it and I was like yeah I did I played it safe and I'm glad I did I did not get it not like it's a bad game it's just not one that I felt that I needed to own Tim Sexton is backing up Steve Ritchie with doing the software and the code rules all that stuff and junk so he uh was on sort of rage so he is also with Steve Ritchie again to do this title artwork is by Stefan Jensen. Lead sound by Bob Baffey. Graphic art, Chunk Ernst. The lead mech engineer is John Rothermel, and the mech engineers are Elliot Eisman and Rob Blakeman. The MSRPs for the three models are Pro is going to be $6,200, Premium at $7,800, and LE at $9,200. Now, going through the TWiP website and as the discussion talks about what you do with the game, I thought something that was that needed to be highlighted and was interesting where it says your progress through songs is something unique and something never done in a music game each song is divided into sections like your verses and chorus solo the bridge and each of those sections have their own rules to show which shots are available if you finish a song it will automatically transition to the next song so that's something that's a little bit different than what we are used to when it comes to like, hey, if you want to start a song, go into this area, then you start a mode, which starts a song. So that's different. All right, let's start talking about the artwork. This is the pro model cabinet right here. Now, let me just get this out of the way, guys. I am not a Led Zeppelin fan. Their band was obviously out and at their peak and everything and stuff like that before I was even born. So it's not like I can sit here and just praise to you on how awesome Led Zeppelin is and know all about them because it's before my time. Do I know a lot of their songs and have listened to them and enjoy them? Yes. But this pin obviously is not going to be speaking to me as much as it is to a lot of you out there. So with that being said, there's going to be a lot of things that I'm probably going to say or mention that you're not going to agree with because I'm not a Led Zeppelin fan. So I'm not harping on any of you guys that look at this and go, it's great. I look at this and I go, this is not good.

6:26

Like a baby blue at that. it is one of those things if it was presented like if it was um pitched before it was actually created it would have been one of those things where i would have been like well before we go spending money on actually powder coating this the color that you recommend let's have somebody in photoshop do something up really quick and the thing is i could easily give this image to my brother and be like hey can you just uh throw this into photoshop like five minutes five minutes i bet he could come up with a better color color you know what i will do that i want to try to get him to do something up that would have been a much better color sequence for this art i get it that there is blue at the bottom of it guys i get that but the blue that goes with this does not look good this looks it was one of those whatever it first got presented when i saw it i was like because i think i saw it might have been on pin side first i didn't think it was real i'm like no i can't be real and sure enough it is and i'm like oh and i'm a big fan of contrast guys i'm all about when you do like your powder coating to have that contrast you've seen it in my last action hero um and i've done it with like hurricane stuff i'm all about contrast but i'm also i try to make sure it's gonna go good with the art and everything and this just does not look like it does this is not appealing to my eyes it's actually just like just beating me over the head it seems like like you want an le you want an le here's your le right here and it's just like if someone was to give me this machine because i'm definitely not buying it if someone was to give me this machine the first thing i would do is take all that armor off and the t-molding and probably just go straight black with it. I mean, something else. I don't know. We'll see if I can get my brother to do an image, if I can put it into this video. If I can't put it into this video, I will try to get it out online for you guys to see what it looks like or something. I'll do something. I'll post it up on my YouTube community page. But yeah, the LE is not something that I enjoy looking at quick edit here guys i did manage to get a hold of my brother and had him look at the art and as someone who has all the led zeppelin albums and is a fan of led zeppelin when he saw the artwork that they decided to do for these cabinets he was definitely set back as well on the lack of effort and especially the choice of color on the powder coating for the le as well. He was one of those, like, why blue? Of all colors, why blue?

9:52

So, I've got a few other color choices for him that he put up and I'll show you right here guys. Now the artwork for this LE is not from an album. This is actually from their record label image, which is they're called it's called Icarus so I've actually got a little bit of information for you here so this might be the very first time ever guys for Kerry Hardy's history lesson the Led Zeppelin Icarus symbol is actually based on a sketch done in 1869 by artist William Rimmer called evening the fall of the day the sketch is currently being displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The Led Zeppelin Icarus logo was picked up by Zeppelin to be the logo of their record label, Swan Song Records, launched in 1974. Zeppelin launched Swan Song to promote Zeppelin works as well as the music of other bands. The most well-known band to sign with Swan Song, besides Zeppelin, was probably Bad Company. Swan Song also released music for the solo careers of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant after the breakup of Zeppelin. Now there's only going to be 500 of the LEs made. Now another common question that people have is what is not going to be in the pro in comparison to the premium LE? The most obvious thing that you will not be getting is the rising mech that is in the center of the play field that also has a locking mechanism for physical lock as well as a hold position for a ball with a spinner. I don't know if that spinner is going to be optic or mechanic. I'm going to lean towards it being optic, though. The Matrix states this is going to be used for multi-ball, frenzy, and rock out. You know what Penn Stadiums are. You know what the Hot Rails with the Guns N' Roses looks like. Now it time for Stern to release their version of that This is their trademark what it called expression lighting system now this is 96 intelligent rgb full spectrum synced and adjustable and it responds to game events that's going to be in the premium and the le as well that is up near the glass of the top portion that looks like it's been i think it even states that it's actually like cut into the cabinet for these led rails to work the way they do or they call it the expression lighting system uh els on the pro you're going to be getting 13 instead of the possible 68 software controlled leds you're also only going to be getting three instead of the four metal ramps that is my big complaint right there we'll get to that in just a second when i go over the play field two instead of three main multi balls ranging from two to six balls now one of the questions that some of you are asking is what songs are going to be in this game there's gonna be a total of 10 songs this is absolutely a horrible image let me get a better one there that's a little better so you're gonna get good times bad times communication breakdown whole lot of love immigrant song cashmere black dog ramble on rock and roll trampled underfoot the song remains the same. Something I wanted to note on this center portion right here, let me make this a little bigger, is that on the center portion, this is something that I think you guys should be aware of when it comes to changing the rubbers on this. You don't have much room right here. This looks like it's really close to the rim. So for those of you that want to put like super bands that tend to be a lot larger, that's something that you should just keep in mind right there. So here's an image right here showing off the ELS.

14:16

This is what it looks like on the Premium. him you would hit it with your upper flipper the only way to hit this shot it would feed directly to this wire form back to your right flipper this is completely missing from the pro all you're getting on the pro is a stand-up target that is back here that you hit so the main point of this upper flipper is to hit this stand-up target and you have some stand-up targets that are also right here that can be hit with your upper flipper but they are perfectly able to be hit from your lower flipper and it even shows in the video they just kind of like smoothly hit across right here as they're trying to go up the center ramp so as of right now it doesn't look like this upper flipper's got much to do other than hit this section right here i don't it doesn't look like you're going to be able to use this upper flipper to hit this center ramp or anything you might be able to we'll find out in a stream in the near future all right so the right orbit will feed past your upper flipper to the ball lock right here this is essentially just an out hole portion that just stops right here and you will either lock the ball and that's where it stays or just it's a virtual lock and shoots it back out i don't know if this has the option to just eject out and feed the pop bumpers but from the video that we saw it launches it back down the right orbit i would like to hope that it can feed your pop bumpers as well otherwise it doesn't look like you're going to be able to feed these pops unless you use the left flipper to go up here in between this area or a slow momentum ball to just barely make it up here and drop down in or chances are that is where the left spinner lane leads to also it leads to the pop bumpers you don't really get a good look at it in the video but i'm thinking that's where that lane ends up feeding to that would make more sense to go there i don't know if i like it feeding to the pop bumpers but that's where that lane more than likely leads to now the right ramp right here is one of those 180 flips like we've seen in many other games like a one off the top of my head is just like Munsters it's a Borg shot where it's a 180 flip and it's also like I said it's on many other games but like it comes up does a 180 flip and feeds right back to your right flipper. Now the middle rip comes up does a 180 and feeds down to a wire rail that feeds to the left flipper the left ramp comes up does a 180 and feeds to the same wire form as previous the multi-rail system is kind of what I like to call it because it basically you have multiple things that feed to another rail so just like your other portion right here it would feed to this side this left ramp feeds to the same wire form back to your left flipper now the other shot is your left orbit eject hole right here now this shot when I first saw it reminded me of the stranger things out hole on the left side but this actually has a purpose unlike that game oh man i just thinking about it again it's just like really stupid but like the on so like on stranger things you would hit it up in there and then the ball would just eject out towards like it would just it was pointless uh in my opinion but this one you actually have purpose to it where you come up here and you can either lock a ball you have the ability to gain an extra ball as well as something else I can't really see in this picture but if I had to guess it's probably like starting a tour or something like that I can really see but that pretty much the layout of the game you have a mixture of drop targets as well as stand targets you got a total of three drops four five six nine stand-ups if I see that correctly yeah let's see here I get a good image of the spinner to see if that is gonna be mechanical or opto and it's one of those things where you might be going what and that's mechanical so the switch next to the left ramp is mechanical now let me see if I can figure out of that switch inside the center is optical the center ramp or the the center portion has got to be optical that's definitely what's gonna be used to detect the ball being there for the magnet to work so it only makes sense to make the spinner optical as well right there all in one board so yes that center rising mech spinner is probably going to spin like nobody's business but my main concern with this is that this whole object in the middle of the play field is going to like be in the way at sometimes it may seem i mean i can assume that when this comes up that your main objective is to do something with it. I doubt very seriously this would come up and they would want you to hit things that are behind it, but maybe. I just don't know the flow of the game yet. If you're able to hit straight through this and feed directly to the ramps behind it or not. I don't know. That's going to be in the stream to really find that out. So when it comes to layout and things like that, I don't have any main complaints. For me, it's missing that wire form with the ramp on the Pro. That's a little bit of a stinger for me because I'm just like, really, how much? Well, let's see here. Yeah, how much extra would it cost to have that wire form and ramp on there to where it's like, nope, got to take it out? It's like there's so many other things that I think that I would have been fine taking out. I mean, but it is what it is. This game does not speak to me. I don't harp on those of you out there that it speaks to you. For me, it's like I look at this and I'm like, I'm not aesthetically attracted to this at all. It may shoot and play great, though. That is something that, I mean, I look forward to being able to shoot this, to play another Steve Ritchie game. This is something I'm excited about when it comes to that. It's just the looks of it are a little harsh. Now, something else that they've already mentioned and shown us is the additions to the games, like rails and stuff like that, and even the topper. So let's look at the rails. So here are the custom-cut Led Zeppelin rails, the armor for it. That looks pretty cool. Then you have the four-sided Led Zeppelin symbol shooter knob. To me, like I said, I'm not a Led Zeppelin fan, but this may be really cool to you guys. I don't know, it just seems kind of bulky and weird. There's a better image of it, though. The sculpting and everything looks nice, though. I'll give it that. And then you have the topper. Now, this is something where I got to give, I don't want to say, like, credit, but I will, like, you know, tip my hat to this, that the actual topper for this game looks to be cool. I mean, it's like, all right, cool. It goes with the theme. It's got moving parts to it. And, you know, it may be simple with the layered plastics once again, but you know you got a little bit of a light show going on it wouldn't surprise me if this was implemented not too long ago with the looks of what they saw on guns and roses and that's something i didn't bring up at the beginning of this video but i'm going to bring it up now is that everyone is going to be comparing this pen to guns and roses and you can't do that it's apples and oranges almost i mean you can compare it as a pinball machine but when it comes to quality especially assets i mean it's night and day difference here it's almost not even fair to compare the two because obviously guns and roses is going to have the more assets and yeah so but when it comes to what let me look at i got i can show you the video what this uh topper can do so here is the topper for this game as you can see it has the moving lights and spot lots to go across the ceiling like that so i think the topper looks pretty cool uh that's one uh thing to this machine at the of the announcement is one i'm glad that they finally are starting to show toppers to the games as the game is being revealed this that's two games in a row now if you don't count heavy metal but like a cornerstone title wise so you've had avengers and now Led Zeppelin that have revealed the game and the topper simultaneously. So, kudos to that, Stern. I think this is going to wrap up my preliminary launch announcement reveal video for Stern's Led Zeppelin. Let me know what you think about Stern's newest cornerstone title in the comments down below. If you like what you've seen here, give me the thumbs up. And if you haven't already, subscribe button down below. Until next time, guys.