Story dated 21st November, 2002.

More competition for Stern Pinball could be on the way, this time from Innovative Concepts in Entertainment (ICE).

ICE are rumoured to be working towards producing a pinball game. The company already manufactures a range of pushers, cranes, redemption and table games for the industry and now appears to have its sights set on adding pinball to that list.

This would make logistical sense as they already have the manufacturing and game design facilities in place along with a distribution network and now have pinball game designer John "Dr Flash" Trudeau at the company. You may remember from our Expo review how the former Williams/Bally designer stopped working on Churchill Cabinet's Vacation America game at to join ICE.

If they do eventually produce games, ICE will join Churchill Cabinets and possibly Chicago Flipper as new entrants to the pinball market, and will hopefully drive pinball into new markets and increase sales. The alternative is that they eat into Stern Pinball's sales and risk driving that company out of business.

Either way, it's an exciting time for pinball with some new ideas and some new faces getting involved and hopefully an increase in demand for the game.

ICE has a distribution agreements with Brent Leisure in the UK and earlier this year bought the pusher manufacturer Cromptons after it went into admistration.

More details on ICE's pinball venture when we receive them.