Star Trek Pro (Stern, 2013): Where Ball Bearings Boldly Go
There it stood, humming like an over-caffeinated warp core at the back of the bowling alley arcade—Stern’s 2013 **Star Trek Pro** pinball machine. You couldn’t miss it if you tried: fever-bright LEDs painting your retinas blue, cabinet artwork with lens flares so aggressive they’d give even J.J. Abrams pause, and that sly, omnipresent Starfleet insignia beaming out a silent promise—“Hey kid, how about you save the galaxy with three steel spheres and the reflexes of a sleepless raccoon?”
Stern, the last gladiator in the battle royale of American pinball, rolled this beast out under the direction of Steve Ritchie, the designer who gave the ‘80s their loudest soundtrack and who, rumor has it, has never played a quiet game in his life. “The King of Flow,” they called him, and Star Trek Pro is his letter of recommendation: ramps that swoop and loop like U.S.S. Enterprise choreography, all adrenaline and chrome and the subtle threat of carpal tunnel.
Stern didn’t just tap into nostalgia for bearded Spocks and cardigan-wearing Kirks; this table is an ode to the glossy, lens-flared 2009 movie reboot. So forget the fake plywood of 1960s set design, or Shatner’s modest fencing. This is pure, full-throttle sci-fi spectacle—Klingon D7s exploding in rainbow strobes, audio callouts barking “Khan!” without irony, and a soundtrack that leaves the subtlety of Jerry Goldsmith behind in favor of warp engines and Michael Giacchino riffs.
Here’s how it works: you, a pair of twitching hands sticky from cheap cherry cola, are Starfleet’s last hope. Missions light up the triangle-filled playfield like a Christmas tree in a Red Alert—choose between stopping Nero from exploding Vulcan, rescuing crew members, or participating in a five-ball multiball that recreates the chaos of a Con suite dance floor at 1 a.m. The rules, it must be said, are deep but not impenetrable—there’s just enough labyrinthine complexity here to make you feel clever, presuming you can read the dot-matrix display faster than the ball can ricochet between “Warp Ramp” and “Vengeance Target Bank.” If not, no worries. The ball drains and so does your allowance, but that’s a ritual as old as Star Trek’s inevitable redshirt casualties.
The artwork—oh, the artwork! Glossy as a collector’s card, all icy blues and phaser flashes. Chris Pine stares at you, eyebrows furrowed in a way that says he’s never going to meet your mother, but he might save you from a Romulan doomsday device. The playfield has more starfields crammed into it than the Hubble’s Instagram, and there’s this marvelous illusion of speed: lasers, ship trails, kinetic energy ricocheting through the art as if each bumper triggers a spatial anomaly.
I’ll say this: Stern understands the experience is as psychosomatic as it is mechanical. The Pro model—for us mere mortals, because we’re not shelling out for a Limited Edition with moving Vengeance ships and pew-pewing RGBs—still hits that dopamine lever. It’s tactile satisfaction: a heavy ball launched at warp speed, the clack and rattle echoing through the glass, and the hit of dopamine when a mission lights up like you just saved the Alpha Quadrant armed only with your trigger finger and some choice profanity.
Cultural impact? Look, pinball has always been one degree away from the hard stuff. In the 1970s, Mr. Spock would’ve had you arrested for playing it in the wrong city. In 2013, it’s retro therapy—pressing Start is an act of hope. This was the moment pinball started believing it could be cool again, a last stand for analog fun in the century of doomscrolling. Real nerds—the ones with data crystal USB drives—know Star Trek is about optimism in the face of impossible odds. This table, with its pulsing ramps and “last ball, save the ship!” desperation, makes you feel that hope every time you plunge.
And then your ball drains. Because of course it does. That’s life: You think you’re Kirk. Turns out, you’re just another nameless redshirt, quarters emptied, staring at the high score display that will never, ever say your initials. But oh man—the adventure, the noise, the absurd hope. Five more credits, please, and set phasers to “always continue.”
