Why Stern’s Long-Rumored Pokémon Pinball Machine Would and Wouldn’t Be a Surprise

By Garrett Martin | July 16, 2025 | 4:56pm

Pinball Features Pokémon

Why Stern’s Long-Rumored Pokémon Pinball Machine Would and Wouldn’t Be a Surprise

Is Stern really working on a Pokémon pinball machine? It’s been rumored for so long—since 2022—that it seems like there’s probably smoke to this fire. And Stern itself dumped lighter fluid all over it yesterday with a Facebook post asking which video game franchises should have a pinball machine. Stern’s next game hasn’t been announced yet, but we should know what it is before too long. Will it finally be time to catch ‘em all?

I’d be surprised at this point if a Pokémon machine isn’t at least in the planning stations at Stern. I’m still a little surprised they’d want to make one, though, simply going by the company’s history. Despite the license’s massive popularity and the obvious benefits to working with Nintendo, Pokémon just doesn’t seem like a game that will resonate with the loyal, dedicated pinball audience Stern heavily targets. And although there is undeniably an enormous Pokémon fan base that any company would love to tap into, I’m not sure how much interest those fans would have in pinball.

It’s no secret that Stern (and, really, pinball overall) strongly focuses on middle-aged men. Hey, no judgments there—I’m one myself. Some of us are pretty cool. (Not me, but, y’know, the cool guys are.) We’re the ones who’ve been playing pinball since before it all crashed at the end of the ‘90s, and given our age and amount of time in the workforce we’re more likely than younger people to be able to afford the very large prices to buy these machines—and to actually own a home big enough to put them in. And with the collapse of arcades driving companies like Stern to market directly to home consumers instead of operators, it makes sense to build stuff we’d want to buy.

Most Popular

Pokémon’s earliest players in America have hit middle age—if you were 13 when Pokémon first got big over here you’d be turning 40 this year—but it still feels pretty young for a current pinball license. And especially a Stern one; they typically play it safe (and smart, I assume) by sticking to movies, comics, and classic rock bands proven to be big with Baby Boomers and Gen X. That’s why the last decade has seen new machines themed on Sean Connery’s James Bond movies, and Jaws, and bands like Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden and Rush: old dudes love that stuff. (Again: that’s me. I’m old dudes.) Even the Stern machines that most appeal to a more all-ages audience—Marvel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars—involve properties that have been hugely popular for several decades. And when Stern does go more modern, it still sticks tight to the past; the Foo Fighters self-consciously style themselves as a traditional arena rock band, John Wick is an intentionally old-fashioned action franchise built around a star who’s been a big name since the ‘80s, and Stranger Things desperately wishes it was still the 1980s today. Stern almost never moves away from its target demo of people who graduated high school at any point in the 20th century, and that would make a Pokémon machine an uncharacteristic move for them.

Still, it makes sense for so many reasons, and that’s why the rumor won’t die even if there’s nothing to it. It would also be a reassuring sign of the renewed health of the industry, something that any pin should love to see.

If Stern is making a Pokémon machine, it could mean that they believe there’s now enough demand for new machines on location that they can be profitable by primarily targeting operators again instead of consumers. Pokémon would probably excel on location, and there seems to be more places to play pinball these days than at any point since the ‘90s. Just as an example, the Atlanta area (where I live) now has multiple arcades focusing on pinball, the oldest of which opened at the very end of 2017. As recently as eight years ago it was incredibly difficult to play pinball around here if you didn’t own your own machine; today I can name several arcades, bars, or restaurants with over 10 machines on site. And smaller cities throughout Georgia—Macon, Athens, the Savannah area—also have their own healthy pin arcades today. That market has clearly grown over the last decade, and perhaps a Pokémon machine would be Stern’s way of testing how successful they can be by prioritizing it instead of home collectors.

Pokémon is also the kind of machine a pinball company would make if their goal was to expand their audience. Few properties would be better at reaching a younger audience that might not feel welcomed by pinball. And I don’t just mean kids; Pokémon is no flash in the pan, and if you’re under the age of 40, there’s a very good chance you grew up playing the video games, collecting the cards, or watching the cartoons. If Stern could capture even a fraction of that audience, it’d bring vital new blood into pinball.

It’s also a license that could drive heavy repeat business simply by staying true to its most fundamental elements. “Catch ‘em all” isn’t just Pokémon’s slogan; that’s literally what the entire franchise compels its audience to do. Collectibility is the cornerstone of Pokémon, with over 1000 species of creatures to capture and train. There are so many obvious ways to design a pinball game around Pokémon, from collecting the various critters, to training them, to then pitting them in battle against each other. (Yes, the massively popular children’s franchise with the adorable yellow lightning mouse and a water turtle named Squirtle is basically one big introduction to cockfighting.) And with Stern heavily emphasizing the Stern Insider online network, which tracks your performance in their games and even bestows video game-style achievements, this license makes even more sense. A Pokémon machine wouldn’t just hoover up quarters as players trained their monsters, but would also drive engagement to Stern’s app—which, in turn, would make players want to spend even more money playing the pin.

And obviously getting in bed with Nintendo would be tremendous business for Stern. New machines based on Mario and Zelda, cross-promotion with Super Nintendo World at Universal’s Epic Universe theme park (with Stern Nintendo machines in every Universal hotel’s game room, of course), some kind of winking meta joke with Luigi playing the game in the next Super Mario animated movie… there’s no way Stern and other pin companies haven’t tried to nail that Nintendo license down, and given their market dominance Stern would make the most sense for the video game company to partner with.

This is all speculation, of course. I have no inside sources and no knowledge of what Stern might be working on. But these Pokémon rumors have been constant for years, and yesterday’s Facebook post makes it seem like Stern is on the verge of announcing something video game-related. It’d still be a surprise to see Stern making a Pokémon machine, but at this point it’d be just as surprising if they aren’t.

Editor-in-chief Garrett Martin writes about video games, pinball, theme parks and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.