Date: 26th September 2015

Playing digital pinball games on tablets, phone and desktop computers has long been seen as a valuable tool in introducing the next generation of players to the game. Now Stern Pinball has recognised this 'gateway' into playing the real thing through a partnership with FarSight Studios.

Digital pinball games, in one form or another, have been popular on desktops and consoles almost from the start of the home computer games craze. Atari's Arcade Pinball from 1980 may seem laughably simplistic these days, but that didn't stop it being re-released for the Xbox 360 in 2010. Meanwhile the inclusion of Maxis' Space Cadet game with Windows 95 and XP did more to put digital pinball in people's homes and offices than any standalone release.

While digital pinball is never going to be the same as playing the physical game, it's often inconvenient to take a 250lb pinball machine with you on every journey, while monetary and space restriction puts owning hundreds of machines out of the reach of most of us.

But digital pinball is no longer the poor relation to playing the physical equivalent. Ever since Visual Pinball was released in 2000, hundreds of original designs have been created and published. Future Pinball came along five years later, taking advantage of processing and rendering advances to produce much more realistic-looking games.

At various points along the way, digital pinball and physical pinball touched flippers. The Nightmare table - one of four in the Pinball Dreams release for the Amiga in 1992 - was a shameless copy of Terminator 2, while the Billion Dollar Gameshow gives more than a passing nod to The Bally Game Show.

It took until 2001 before a licensed digital copy of a physical machine became mainstream, with release of Encore Software's Williams Pinball Classics, which even managed to include a licensed title - Creature from the Black Lagoon - alongside the original Lost World, Black Rose and Tales of the Arabian Nights tables.

Since then, licensing physical game titles for emulation has become, if not exactly big business, certainly a reasonable business model for game developers.

FarSight Studios' Pinball Hall of Fame started with Gottlieb tables in 2004, before moving on to Williams' titles four years later.

But their most successful strand has been The Pinball Arcade which began in 2012.

From the very start they had a tie-up with Stern Pinball, including Ripley's Believe It Or Not! amongst their first four tables. Since then they have also recreated High Roller Casino, the classic Stern title Flight 2000, and Starship Troopers which was made by Stern's forerunner Sega Pinball.

FarSight have released most of the 'A-list' Williams/Bally titles, utilising Kickstarter funding where necessary to pay for the more expensive licences such as Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next generation. There is also talk of Stern's The Simpsons Pinball Party being their next Kickstarter-funded title.

So it makes sense for FarSight to turn their sights on Stern's portfolio of pinball titles, and for Stern to try to leverage those assets.

The big worry has always been that creating a digital version of a production pinball will reduce sales of the physical game, or reduce income from operated machines. Gary Stern has said several times that the company wouldn't help create digital versions of his titles for that very reason, and there has been a 'gentlemen's agreement' between Stern and Visual/Future Pinball game developers that no Stern tables would be created in digital form until three years after production of the game ended.

However, with Stern developing their Vault Edition range, where they reserve the right to re-run any of their older titles at any point, that agreement has become harder to abide by. There has also been a softening of Stern's position over the past few years as the potential of mobile gaming to bring new players - and buyers - into pinball has been acknowledged.

Now FarSight Studios have formed a partnership with Stern Pinball which will form the Stern Pinball Arcade series, where Stern's licensed titles will be recreated by FarSight in official digital form.

Using a licensed theme for digital tables has always been problematic, but the process should be simplified for new titles by negotiating the digital pinball rights at the same time as those for the physical pinball. For older titles, teaming up with the current or previous physical rights holder should also help smooth the acquisition of those same rights and assets for the digital game.

Here's how Stern announced the partnership:

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