The New King Kong Pinball Machine Looks Cool, but It Could Look a Lot Cooler

By Garrett Martin | April 24, 2025 | 1:30pm

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The New King Kong Pinball Machine Looks Cool, but It Could Look a Lot Cooler

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There are certain inalienable facts about Stern’s new pinball machines. New machines will be based on a license, that license will be popular with middle-aged men, and those machines will cost a small fortune that can only be afforded by older guys with solid jobs and disposable income. So it’s not a big surprise that their newest machine, announced last week, is based on King Kong—a character introduced 92 years ago that has never receded too far from the pop culture spotlight in the decades since.

The last new Stern machine that wasn’t based on a movie, band, TV show, or game was 2019’s Black Knight: Sword of Rage—which is a sequel to a beloved 1980 pinball machine that today’s pinball buyers are very familiar with. Although pinball is healthier today than it was 20 years ago, it’s still inherently risky—it remains a niche hobby, and these increasingly complex and complicated machines are costly to make—and so Stern, the biggest name in the game this century, understandably tries to mitigate that risk as much as possible by focusing on games that target the core demo like a laser. Sometimes these old guy interests overlap with general pop culture, as with recent games based on Stranger Things and The Mandalorian, but it’s also the reason we’ve gotten new pinball machines based on Elvira, The Munsters, and the band Rush in the last six years. (Again, I’m not complaining: I’m a middle-aged man myself, and thus perfectly in the key demographic here. Plus that Elvira game’s rad.) King Kong’s more universal than those three—I’m sure those newfangled Kong vs. Godzilla movies have brought a lot of kids under the great ape’s sway—but this particular pin is clearly for the real heads; it’s specifically based on the original movie and its characters and set in the 1930s.

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I’m not complaining about Kong one bit. King Kong is cool. King Kong has always been cool. There should be, like, a dozen different King Kong pinball games by now. Instead there are only two that you’re ever likely to play: Data East’s 1990 machine, and Stern’s new one. (Pinside lists a third one, made by a Brazilian company in 1978, but it seems to only exist today as a video pinball recreation.) It’s legitimately shocking that there wasn’t a King Kong pin made alongside the ‘70s movie, or even an earlier Stern game from this century. I haven’t had a chance to play Stern’s new one (which is officially called King Kong: Myth of Terror Island) but I can’t wait until it shows up at one of Atlanta’s pinball arcades. If I was rich beyond reason I would probably buy one.

It’s cool that Stern has made a new King Kong pin. I wish it was a little more stylish in its presentation, though.

King Kong pinball

The art’s good. It’s a really well done take on a classic comic book style, and it wonderfully captures the action and danger of a good King Kong movie. Three artists collaborated on it—Stern’s art director Jeremy Packer, previous art director Greg Feres, and Kevin O’Connor, a legendary pin artist whose career started in the ‘70s—and together they’ve created something that’s bright, colorful, eye-catching, and full of energy. It will fit in perfectly between other recent Sterns like last year’s X-Men game and this year’s Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye.

Still. This was a great opportunity to try something a little more distinctive and stylish—something more visually in sync with the original 1933 film. There have been black-and-white pinball machines before—Stern made a special limited edition black-and-white version of their excellent Godzilla machine just a few years ago—but it’s still rare enough for it to stand out. And King Kong is steeped in Art Deco, something that can’t be said for Godzilla; a King Kong pin that embraced the character’s 1930s origins and looked to the art and architectural movement that gave us the Empire State Building (as indelible a part of the film’s iconography as Kong himself) would’ve made a truly striking addition to any arcade or home gameroom. Myth of Terror Island is launching in three different editions, as is Stern’s usual policy; it’d be nice if at least one of them was a little more adventurous with its aesthetic.

Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Stern has already locked down plans for a monochrome, Art Deco limited edition of its Kong machine in the future. (Maybe for a 100th anniversary rerelease in a few years?) And I readily admit that the starkness of black-and-white can look off-puttingly old-fashioned or drab for many. And as always with pinball machines, there are definitely some issues about what names and images Stern could use without having to pay for the rights; it seems like they could probably have a building that clearly resembles the Empire State Building within their game, but couldn’t actually call it that unless they came to an agreement with the trust that manages the building—which would probably make the machine even more expensive than it already is.

Stern knows what they’re doing, and King Kong: Myth of Terror Island no doubt looks the way it does because they know that’ll be the easiest way to sell it. It just doesn’t look as interesting or exciting as a King Kong machine would if it stuck closer to how the original movie itself looks.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.