Welcome to the start of our coverage of Stern Pinball's new Star Wars game.

The fact that Steve Ritchie's next game would be Star Wars had been pretty well-known
for several months, but an official announcement wasn't expected until June 4th, 2017.

Today though (May 31st), The Star Wars Show let the cat out of the bag with details and pictures of the new game.

As expected, there are the usual three variants - Pro, Premium and Limited Edition, with different art packages for all three. The Pro shows all the characters, while the Premium focuses on the Empire's forces, and the LE features the rebels.

The Pro edition

The Premium edition

The Limited Edition

Onto the playfield, and the Pro is lacking a number of features found on the higher models. Here's the full-featured Premium/LE playfield.

The Premium/LE playfield

Balls are locked in the Deathstar which breaks open to release them for multiball. A wireform loops around in front of the flippers to provide some additional entertainment when balls are locked or released, while the ball is initially plunged across the playfield at the F-O-R-C-E targets.

There appear to be four sets of three modes, each set represented by a colour and a playfield shot - Hoth (blue, centre lane), Death Star (purple, left lane), Tatooine (red, right scoop) and Endor (green, left ramp).

The Pro playfield

The Deathstar here appears to be a static toy, with plastic instead of metal ramps, no upper level to the right ramp, no loop-around wireform and no Millennium Falcon toy. The playfield art is very similar though, and all models feature a miniature LCD screen above the Tie-Fighter target bank and back panel artwork.

Stern Pinball will no doubt produce an official press release over the next day or so to bring us full details and prices, and Pinball News will bring you all that information just as soon as it's available.

© Pinball News 2017