A good theme can turn a solid pinball into a great one, and themes in modern pinball are all about the licensing. Sure, tables like Earthshaker, Medieval Madness, Whirlwind and too many others to count were all originals, and Monsters of Rock could probably have gotten by with generic creatures rather than the Universal versions, but the one-two punch of being able to move pinball tables to both fans of the game and fans of the license is how pinball needs to work today. It can take a bit of creativity to make a theme work, as in the case of the excellent Iron Maiden pinball from a few years ago, but other licenses are tailor-made for a great table. Stern fully revealed its Dungeons & Dragons table today and it’s a perfect theme to make a pinball roar to life.
A Pinball Is Really Just a Shiny Metal Die With Infinite Sides
Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye is set in the classic D&D world of The Forgotten Realms, complete with dragons, liches, gelatinous cubes, trap doors, hidden passages and all the trappings of a campaign torn straight from the rulebooks. Which, granted, few players ever bother with once they’ve got a campaign or two under their belt, but for the sake of a table that makes sense, it’s probably best not to get into custom worlds and rule-sets. In the case of Tyrant’s Eye, though, Stern is really working its Insider Connected feature, letting the player save their progress as their characters level up and the journey across the world map affects the outcome of the story.
Hands-on with Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast Pinball
The major playfield feature of Tyrant’s Eye is the large dragon head of Rath the Relentless that tracks the ball as it rolls across the playfield and either blocks shots or avoids them, depending on whether it needs to play offense or defense at the moment, and also spits out pinballs for a multball mode. To top it off the dragon is voiced by Michael Dorn, probably best known as Pistachio Soup in Netflix’s Dogs in Space, but also playing a character on Star Trek back in the day. There’s a surprising amount of celebrity voice talent, in fact, including Gerard Way, Kevin Smith, Critical Role’s Marisha Ray and plenty of others bringing the fantasy cast to life.
The major playfield feature of Tyrant’s Eye is the large dragon head of Rath the Relentless.
There’s a lot of ambition behind Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye, with a top-notch license getting the full effort to really push what pinball can do. It’ll be interesting at the very least to see how a pinball with a full save-game system works, but even if you just want to plunk in a pile of quarters and bat the ball around, there are more than enough table toys to make for an entertaining couple of games. Granted, finding a table might be tricky, but Stern is releasing Tyrant’s Eye in its standard three-tier system of Pro (budget-ish priced), Premium (fancy) and Limited (fancy and shiny) editions, so if you’ve got a pinball bar nearby, they’ve got options to set off on one of the more unusual campaigns in D&D history.
