 | |
| Industry | Interactive entertainment |
|---|---|
| Founded | January 2011 |
| Founder | Jack Guarnieri |
| Headquarters | Elk Grove Village, Illinois, U.S. |
| Products | Pinball |
| Owner | Jack Guarnieri |
| Website | www |
Jersey Jack Pinball, Inc. is an American pinball machine manufacturing company that was established in 2011. The first table released by the company, The Wizard of Oz , appeared in 2013. [1]
Jersey Jack Pinball was founded in January 2011 by industry veteran Jack Guarnieri. Starting in 1975, he serviced electromechanical pinball tables for a living, and he created the website PinballSales.com in 1999. Guarnieri hired designer Joe Balcer and programmer Keith Johnson to work on the first machines. [2]
In 2013, the company released its first pinball machine, The Wizard of Oz. They spent $2 million in startup and development and sold the machines for $7,000 each. [3] Guarnieri's goal was to produce a high-quality pinball machine regardless of cost, and attract a larger female pinball audience than other manufacturers. [2] [3] The Wizard of Oz's release caught the attention of Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, who reached out to the company about collaborating on a pinball machine. [4]
Jersey Jack's machines have been used in donations by Project Pinball Charity in 2015, 2016, and 2019. [5]
In 2020, Jersey Jack relocated their manufacturing operations from their original location in Lakewood, New Jersey to Elk Grove Village, Illinois where their design team was already based. [6] The first machine produced at its new location was Guns N' Roses. [4] As of 2023 the company had over 100 employees. [7]
In September, 2024, the company announced that their next machine would be adapted from the Avatar franchise. [8]
Jersey Jack games have introduced several notable features over the years, including LCD screens, LED lighting, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, and camera integration. [9] The Wizard of Oz featured a 26-inch LCD monitor in the backglass. [10] Dialed In! featured a camera integrated into the game's backbox to facilitate selfie photography and Bluetooth capability. [11] [12]
| Year | Title | Designer | Comments | Citation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | The Wizard of Oz | Joe Balcer | ||
| 2016 | The Hobbit | Joe Balcer | ||
| 2017 | Dialed In! | Pat Lawlor | ||
| 2018 | Pirates of the Caribbean | Eric Meunier | ||
| 2019 | Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory | Pat Lawlor | [13] | |
| 2020 | Guns N' Roses | Eric Meunier Saul Hudson | [4] | |
| 2022 | Toy Story 4 | Pat Lawlor | Lawlor’s last game [14] | [15] |
| 2023 | The Godfather 50 years | Eric Meunier | ||
| 2023 | Elton John | Steve Ritchie | [16] | |
| 2024 | Avatar: The Battle for Pandora | Mark Seiden | [8] | |
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American MGM film starring Judy Garland based on the L. Frank Baum novel.
Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails called 'pins' and had hollows or pockets which scored points if the ball came to rest in them. Today, pinball is most commonly an arcade game in which the ball is fired into a specially designed cabinet known as a pinball machine, hitting various lights, bumpers, ramps, and other targets depending on its design.
WMS Industries, Inc. was an American electronic gaming and amusement manufacturer in Enterprise, Nevada. It was merged into Scientific Games in 2016. WMS's predecessor was the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded in 1943 by Harry E. Williams. However, the company that became WMS Industries was formally founded in 1974 as Williams Electronics, Inc.
Stern is the name of two different but related arcade gaming companies. Stern Electronics, Inc. manufactured arcade video games and pinball machines from 1977 until 1985, and was best known for Berzerk. Stern Pinball, Inc., founded in 1986 as Data East Pinball, is a manufacturer of pinball machines in North America.
A glossary of terms, commonly used in discussing pinball machines.
Christopher P. Granner is a freelance music composer, best known for composing music for video games and pinball games.
Patrick M. Lawlor is a video game and pinball machine designer.
Steven Scott Ritchie is an American pinball and video game designer. His career began in the 1970s. Ritchie holds the record for best-selling pinball designer in history. He has been called "The Master of Flow" due to the emphasis in his designs on ball speed, loops, and long smooth shots. Ritchie was also the original voice of Shao Kahn in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, serving as the announcer of Mortal Kombat II (1993), Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), and the updates to Mortal Kombat 3. He is the older brother of fellow pinball designer Mark Ritchie.
Checkpoint is a 1991 pinball machine released by Data East. It featured the first dot matrix display (DMD) ever incorporated into a pinball game. For Checkpoint, Data East used a "half-height" DMD. By way of comparison, Williams later produced machines with standard DMDs that were twice the height. Checkpoint also features video mode minigames on its display.
Red & Ted's Road Show is a 1994 widebody pinball game designed by Pat Lawlor and released by Williams. It is part of WMS' SuperPin line of widebody games.
Brian R. Eddy is an American game designer and programmer, best known for designing Attack From Mars pinball for Midway and programming FunHouse and, with Larry DeMar, The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot. While at Williams Electronics / Midway Games, he also designed Medieval Madness, and programmed Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure. Eddy holds three patents related to game design.
The Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard is a pinball machine based on the rock musical The Who's Tommy, based upon the band's 1969 rock opera album of the same name, which was also adapted into a 1975 motion picture. The machine features twenty-one songs from the musical sung by original Broadway cast members. The game was designed by Joe Kaminkow, Ed Cebula, Lonnie D. Ropp, and Lyman F. Sheats Jr. The machine was built using Solid-state electronics type components. The backbox of the machine has a dot matrix display with animations by Kurt Andersen and Markus Rothkranz. 4,700 machines were manufactured by Data East in January 1994.
Grandstand is a video game console and electronic game manufacturer and distributor. It was based in the United Kingdom and New Zealand and was active in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Northwest Pinball and Arcade Show is an annual pinball and arcade game festival held in Tacoma, Washington, United States.
The Wizard of Oz is an arcade coin pusher game based on the 1939 film that awards token chips and cards that are redeemable for prizes. The player shoots coins into the machine which drops chips and cards. The player collects the cards and chips that can be redeemed later for prizes. The coins are retained by the machine. Most arcades that have this game will award a jackpot for collecting the entire series of cards. It can be played by up to six players. The game is developed by Elaut Belgium and released in the fall of 2010. According to the company's press release, the game was very well received by players and amusement centers.
The Wizard of Oz is a Jersey Jack Pinball, Inc. pinball machine designed by Joe Balcer and released in April 2013. It is the first US pinball machine with an LCD in the back box as well as the first one to have color on the monitor produced in the US since the Pinball 2000 games. Although it is not the first pinball machine with a LCD worldwide because MarsaPlay in Spain manufactured a remake of Inder's original Canasta titled New Canasta, with an LCD screen in the backbox in 2010.
Heighway Pinball was a British company, established in 2012, that manufactured pinball machines. It was founded by Andrew Heighway in Merthyr Tydfil. The first table by the company, Full Throttle, was released in 2015. The racing-themed game features, as a speciality, a LCD screen for scores, info and animations on the playfield surface at player's eye view.
The Hobbit is a pinball machine designed by Joe Balcer and released by Jersey Jack Pinball in March 2016. It is based on The Hobbit films of the same name which is based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1937 novel The Hobbit.
