(Update at the end!)
I want to start this by saying I am a huge Stern Pinball fan!
All my favorite games to play (post-Bally/WIlliams) are modern Sterns. I have played over 1000 games of Godzilla (which I don’t own) and have already played over 100 games of Kong. I played Avengers Infinity Quest constantly during the pandemic all the way through to the Godzilla release and other favorites include Game of Thrones, Jurassic Park, and even Stern Trek.
I prefer Stern to get licenses that I am particularly interested in because I know that they will produce enough units at a fast enough pace that I will be able to find one (or many) to play. For a location player, this is a requirement. I don’t have the luxury to buy a machine that I want to play. I have to find them out in the wild!
So I love Stern’s product. I like and admire their manufacturing. But I hate how they release games!
The norm has become to release a new machine to the public with unfinished code. Grossly unfinished code!
This became glaringly apparent when I started getting serious about getting to 8th Wonder in King Kong. I climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and realized I might be able to get to the end of the game. So I started to pay attention to the requirements for 8th Wonder. And after a few games I managed to complete the panels for Kong Multiball, Defeating T-Rex, Biplanes Destroyed, Spider Pit Cleared, and Completed Climbing. I played all five Island Scenes and Crash the Gate. And NOTHING! The Complete Scenes panel didn’t light up and no 8th Wonder!
So I go online and do a little research. And it appears that 8th Wonder isn’t coded. It isn’t mentioned in the code update readme and the tilt forum rule sheet has it listed as TBD.
(Now there is a chance that 8th Wonder exists and you have to complete all the Island Scenes. But since the 10/27/25 update that added Crash the Gate was the first time you could retry a scene, that was the first time you could complete all scenes without doing it on the first try for all five. That would be a brutally tough requirement for getting to 8th Wonder because any missed completion would mean you couldn’t get to the end of the game.)
So now I am disappointed. I am frustrated. And a little pissed. I also am kind of apathetic about playing Kong now because there is no end wizard mode to try to get to (and yes that is my goal whenever I play any game).
The first time I felt that way about a Stern machine was Guardians of the Galaxy. I was a huge fan of the movie and was super excited to play it when it was released. I found one when playing a tournament at Free Gold Watch. Fed some quarters. And massive disappointment! Basically nothing to do but Groot multiball and modes that didn’t score significantly. Cherry Bomb wasn’t added until 3/29/18 when the game was released 11/28/17. And 1.0 code wasn’t reached until May 2018. The release was so bad that it didn’t sell very well. And now that the rules have been completed and tuned into an amazing game, there are almost none out in the wild to be able to play.
Back to Kong. It is now eight months since its release in April. We are only at .91 code. There doesn’t seem to be an 8th Wonder. Since release two NYC events, Crash the Gate, and the Spider Queen are all major features that have been added. A ton of smaller additions and refinements have been added like Island Jackpots. I am thankful for all these updates, but they do emphasize how many significant and basic features were missing on release. There is still no significant feature for completing climbing the building (which was a HUGE disappointment) and of course there is no 8th Wonder.
For a bit more context here is a list of games (with their release months) that still aren’t at 1.0 code:
King Kong 4/25
Dungeons & Dragons 1/25
Uncanny X-men 9/24
John Wick 5/24
And Jaws took 18 months (1/24-7/25) and Godzilla took 11 months (10/21-9/22) to reach 1.0 code!
(I admit that sometimes games are close to gameplay complete at .97 or .98 code, but not reaching 1.0 is an admission that there will be at least some significant adjustments.)
This pattern shows that Stern is using its player base as beta testers as part of their long term development cycle. They are shipping drastically incomplete games with the plan that the public will test their games for the next year-ish while they complete their programming. And the players just have to suck it up and deal.
It has gotten to the point that I don’t make an effort to play new games (except Elwin designs) in the first 6 months after their release.
Now I still think Kong is going to be an amazing machine! It is a ton of fun to shoot and I am looking forward to what additions are coming to get it up to 1.0 code. But this development/update cycle sucks for players!
1/5/26 Update:
I did manage to light the Island Scenes panel on the playfield by playing all five scenes and not playing Crash the Gate. I didn’t have everything else done so I don’t know if 8th Wonder would have been available. And I did not play Crash the Gate to see if it then deactivated the Island Scenes panel. But once again I am beta testing their software!
