Welcome to the start of our coverage of the latest game from Stern Pinball - Star Trek. 

In a video released today, Stern Pinball officially announced what almost everyone already knew; that their next game will be Star Trek, designed by Steve Ritchie.

In the video, we can see snippets of the three version of the game - Pro, Premium and LE, and sections of the playfield. To help you make sense of it, we've put them all together into complete pictures.

So let's start with the playfield.

The Star Trek Playfield
(click to enlarge)

Like Steve's earlier Star Trek game made for Williams, there are three flippers - two at the bottom and one at the upper right - and three ramps - the Alpha, Beta and (no, not Delta) Warp.

The left and right ramps return the ball to their respective inlanes, while it looks like the Warp ramp feeds the ball into the USS Vengeance ship which fires it down the playfield, just like the equivalent Borg ship on The Next Generation.

The ship also appears to move forward and down the playfield, much like Brian Eddy planned for the saucer in Attack from Mars, although this may be restricted to the higher-priced variants.

The USS Vengeance

A centre shot protected with a drop target sits below the ship, there is a side lane on the left and an under-the-flipper lane on the right which rolls behind a bank of targets and into the inlane.

Physical ball locks are provided in the left side lane and under the ship, which navigates its way between two asteroids.

There are six main modes, started by shooting the left lane:

• Prime Directive
• Klingon Battle
• Space Jump
• Destroy the Drill
• Nero
• Save the Enterprise

and a wizard mode called The Captain's Chair.

The main modes

The modes are arranged in a triangular pattern, and completing three in a row advances towards the wizard mode.

The kickback makes a return to the left outlane, sending the ball to the upper flipper, while the game's sole spinner sits over the entrance to the left orbit lane.

There appear to be three different versions of Star Trek. Here's the Pro cabinet, trim and backglass.

The Pro model

The Premium adds red trim with different cabinet art and a different translite, as with AC/DC Premium.

The Premium model

The Limited Edition model features laser cut and etched side armour, blue trim, a backglass with different artwork and a plaque on the speaker panel, which includes the star trek logo on the speaker cutouts.

The Limited Edition model

The speaker panel on all three models is a new design which might be in preparation for Stern's new display. This was originally expected to debut on Star Trek, but has now been pushed back to a later game.

We'll have much more news about Stern's latest game right here at Pinball News.

© Pinball News 2012