When we were in Las Vegas last week, we unexpectedly ran into some representatives from Stern Pinball, who said the company would be announcing a brand new game (Wrestlemania) that had been built on a brand new system (SPIKE). We took some quick pictures of the game and even hurriedly played it, but we caught up with Stern Director of Marketing Jody Dankberg this week to get a little more information.

For background on the game itself, we'll defer to Stern's website: “Wrestlemania calls players into the ring as WWE superstars embarking on a quest to become the WWE worldwide heavyweight champion. Players train their wrestlers and then compete in a series of matches leading them on the road to Wrestlemania.” Players can also choose from ten licensed WWE songs as their introduction music, and long time wrestling commentators Jerry “the King” Lawlor and Michael Cole have done custom voiceovers. As a bonus, Dankberg told Ars on Tuesday, WWE CEO Vince McMahon also recorded the introduction for the game at the very beginning.

Wrestlemania is also the illustrious pin maker's first game using its new modular SPIKE system. Ars asked Dankberg to explain the difference between the new SPIKE system and the SAM system, and he said that SPIKE primarily aims to reduce cost and increase convenience for new game owners.

The old system “has a half a mile of wires, one motherboard, and everything is connected through that,” Dankberg told Ars. “It really hasn't changed very much in the last 30 years.”

The SPIKE system, on the other hand, is more modern and modular. “We've eliminated the CPUs in the back box… on the play field there's a bus system, a series of the little node boards. The intelligence is distributed through the board,” Dankberg continued, adding that all of the lighting on Wrestlemania is LED rather than fluorescent.

Stern

Stern

“Pinball is making a comeback,” Dankberg explained, saying that for a lot of people, that half mile of wires can be intimidating. A more modular system like Spike, however, is “easy to repair, easy to diagnose, [it] eliminates time to manufacture, and everything's connected through data cables that are plug in as opposed to [requiring] soldering.”

Dankberg also said that because of the new modularity of the SPIKE system, parts will be more readily available and easier to fix. It's also scalable, so Stern plans to use the same boards to power full-color LCD displays, networked machines, diagnostic software, and even NFC systems like Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

As for the game software, a Stern representative told us at CES that it's based on Unix and has been designed to encourage people of all levels to keep playing, although details from that conversation were sparse. Dankberg also mentioned that in the Limited Edition of Wrestlemania there's a reproduction of WWE's Titantron on the field level that takes advantage of the game's software.

The Limited Edition version (which we have fresh-off-the-presses photos of below) will come autographed by Hulk Hogan, and MSRP is a pricy (but standard, for Stern LE pins) $8,595. The Pro model will be $5,495 MSRP.

Listing image by Stern