ANOTHER NEW
PINBALL MANUFACTURER


Date: 4th May, 2012

The number of pinball makers has exploded over the past couple of years and now another name has joined the frey as Michigan-based Skit•B Pinball have formally announced their Predator game and have started taking pre-orders.

The intention to build the officially-licensed game based on the original Predator movie was first announced in June of last year, but excitement really began to take off when the first whitewood pictures were released on the company's website in March this year.

The Predator whitewood
The Predator whitewood

Then in April the first video of the whitewood being played was posted on YouTube and it really looked as though the game could become reality before too much longer.

The illuminated playfield
The illuminated playfield

The playfield with the display
The playfield with the display

Here's the video in full showing how the 'Hunt' mode and 'Hunt Multiball' operate.

The Skit•B video of Predator

The whitewood game has since appeared at the Michigan Pinball Expo in April followed by the Pinfest show in Allentown, PA.  Meanwhile more details about the game and the construction have been announced.

The intention is to build 250 machines at a cost of between $4,750 and $5,000 each.  The playfield as seen in the pictures and video above is a fairly conventional design without any obviously expensive mechanisms, however it has since been announced that Back Alley Creations will be producing "many" interactive toys for the Predator playfield, which suggests there is significantly more yet to be revealed.

Another recent announcement states that Marco Specialties will be providing the parts for the game. However, these are described as "brand new parts sourced from industry standard specs", suggesting they will not be officially licensed Williams/Bally or Stern parts but of a similar non-infringing design.

At the heart of the Predator game is the P-ROC system, as featured several time here at Pinball News, and the driver boards are also from Pinballcontrollers.com as shown in our recent P3 machine article. Predator uses a dot matrix display but this is a low power LED version rather than the high voltage gas plasma units used on Stern games until recently.

One of the innovative design features of the game is the use of UV reactive ink in the playfield printing process.  This reacts to UV LED lighting within the game which takes over during certain modes and changes the appearance of the playfield and its artwork.

So far the team at Skit•B are taking pre-orders which do not currently require any deposits or down payments.  Enquiries about the game and ordering can be made through the Skit•B website.

 

Back to the News page Like this page? Share it with your Facebook friends:
Back to the front page