On Monday of this week a pop-up store opened its doors on London’s Carnaby Street. Called Queen: The Greatest, the shop is dedicated to merchandise and memorabilia from the band Queen.
Upstairs are assorted posters, records, T-shirts, teddy bears, coasters, pencil sets, drinks bottles and lots more.
Downstairs you can find more merchandise along with a brand new Queen pinball machine from Pinball Brothers.
Queen was one of the titles being developed by Heighway Pinball before the company collapsed and was liquidated in May 2018. The game was designed by Dave Sanders and Barry Oursler as a widebody machine and used assets from Queen’s live performances rather than their studio albums or promotional videos.
The Pinball Brothers version continues with to be based on the live shows, but is now a standard width game with a redesigned playfield, although some elements from the original design remain.
Before we go any further, it is important to note that the game on display at the Queen: The Greatest store is a non-playable prototype. It is very much a work-in-progress which was brought to London purely for display at the store. There are several mechanisms missing and there is no software other than to produce a light show and play audio and videos of the live performances on the backbox LCD panel and through the speakers.
While this prototype will be available to view until the store closes early in January 2022, the finished game probably won’t be launched for another 6 months after that.
However, this does give us a good opportunity to see progress on the game so far. We were also fortunate to be able to speak with two of the Pinball Brothers about the machine and get a good understanding of the intended rules.
The images of the four band members were all based on actual photographs taken during their stage performances. They were then composited to fit within the backbox’s dimensions.
The backglass is secured in place with a cylinder lock, while it also has cutouts are the bottom for the sound from the stereo speakers.
So, let’s take a look at the playfield.
The game comes fitted with interior cabinet art.
Queen has three flippers; two in the usual position and a third on on a guitar-shaped mini-playfield at the top right.
Above the flippers are numerous inserts designed to show your progress through the game. One of the main rules is to complete all four band members. This works in a similar way to Monster Bash in that you can collect the instrument for each member, but also have to complete their individual objectives in order to fully light them and get their signatures.
On the left of the flippers are the inlane and outlane. The inlane is fed from the left ramp return and features a multiplier insert under a rather cloudy clear plastic. The outlane has a ‘Break Free!’ kickback lane with artwork featuring the hairstyles worn in the I Want To Break Free music video.
The Break Free kickback uses an up-post to stop the ball, but this post hadn’t been installed on this prototype machine. Both lanes use inductive switches rather than mechanical rollover switches.
Above the outlane are the piano drop targets. These are intended to match piano keys, with white drop targets in front which reveal black standup targets behind.
Moving up the playfield we have the left orbit lane.
This lane is colour coded and features the zodiac sign (Leo the lion) for drummer Roger Taylor. The band’s logo is comprised of the zodiac signs of each member.
The lane leads up to the top of the playfield and under a model of Wembley Stadium where there is a controlled gate which can stop the ball and send it through a set of rollover lanes and into the pop bumpers.
The ball exits the pop bumpers into the left orbit lane. There is also a spinner at the left entrance to the orbit lane featuring artwork from the show crew passes.
Next to the left orbit is a lane which is guarded by a drop target and leads to an upkicker.
When the drop target is down and the ball enters the saucer, it is kicked up through a flap onto the wireform above, much like the Spider Hole kicks the ball onto the Boney Beast ramp in Scared Stiff.
As this is a prototype, the flap wasn’t made of the correct spring steel which will be used in the production model.
Either side of the lane are two standup targets. The are two of the E-A-D-G set of four standups which represent the pitch of the four strings on the bass guitar.
To the right of the upkicker is the centre ramp.
This ramp represents Freddie Mercury, having the microphone artwork and also his Virgo zodiac sign.
The ramp feeds to the left, behind Wembley Stadium and onto the ramp return wireform, but there are three devices which can interrupt its journey.
Firstly, there is a controlled magnet which can grab the ball and drop it down into the rollover lanes. A soft shot to the ramp can also achieve the same effect.
Secondly, there is a three-ball lock device which is used to start Wembley Multiball. This device wasn’t fitted to this protoype game, but the opto switches for the locked balls are visible.
Finally, once balls exit the lock on the way to the left inlane, a diverter arm can activate to send them on another wireform across the playfield to the right return lane.
To the right of the centre ramp is another lane protected by a drop target.
This lane feeds under and feeds what is probably the game’s main ‘toy’ – the ‘Red Special’ guitar upper playfield.
A ball arrives on the upper playfield via an upkicker which send it onto the playfield on the right side. This then feeds the upper playfield’s full-size flipper.
The upper playfield flipper can shoot three illuminated standup targets which will light lock, an exit lane which leads to the three-ball lock below the guitar, or a captive ball.
The exit to the lock is to the right of the Radio GaGa model.
The captive ball and its ball guides were not installed on this prototype, but there’s quite some distance between the newton ball and the captive ball target.
The ball can also exit the upper playfield just below the flipper, which send it onto the centre ramp’s right return wireform and into the right inlane.
There are three further lanes to explore on the main playfield level.
Directly below the guitar upper playfield is the right ramp lane which feeds the ball onto the centre ramp and so can be variously stopped by the magnet and dropped into the pop bumpers, locked for Wembley Multiball or diverted to the right inlane.
Either side of the right ramp lane are the final two E-A-D-G standup targets.
The right orbit lane is next, featuring the crab of the Cancer zodiac sign of Brian May. This lane can also feed the upkicker onto the upper playfield when lit.
The final shot is to another lane on the right side of the playfield, the Q-U-E-E-N lane.
This lane is also blocked by a drop target which is used to collect a jackpot after making combo shots. At the end of the lane is a standup target which adds a letter to spell Q-U-E-E-N.
Below the Q-U-E-E-N lane we come to the right inlane and outlane. The right inlane also has a multiplier insert and is fed from the centre ramp’s right return wireform. The outlane features and Encore virtual ball save as opposed to the physical kickback on the left side.
You will notice that even the shooter lane has playfield artwork rather than the more usual bare wood.
Apart from the band members and instruments to collect, there are also albums to complete and four extra features – Frenzy, Eh-Ho, Wembley Multiball and Red Special Multiball (named after Brian May’s guitar) – to get to the wizard mode.
That concludes our first look at this prototype Queen pinball.
Finally, there was a flyer for the game on top of the backbox. This lists the 14 live tracks used.
If you are in London you can visit the game in the basement of Queen: The Greatest at the end of Carnaby Street until early January. No changes to the game on display are planned before the store closes, so the next time we see it will probably be when it is officially launched later in 2022.
After this preview, we look forward to seeing the completed game.
As an added bonus, here’s a short video of the game in its attract mode. Because it contains Queen music there’s a chance it will be taken down due to copyright infringement, but we’ll give it a go.
