AVATAR: THE BATTLE FOR PANDORA REVEALED

Jersey Jack Pinball today revealed their tenth title, Avatar: The Battle for Pandora, based on the two James Cameron-created and directed movies, Avatar and Avatar: The Way Of Water.

With three more Avatar movies in production over the next seven years starting with Avatar: Fire and Ash which is scheduled for release in 2025, the franchise certainly has a strong future.

This is the first solo design for the company by Mark Seiden who joined Jersey Jack Pinball three years ago. Like other recent Jersey Jack Pinball titles, Avatar: The Battle for Pandora comes in two versions. There is a $12,000 Limited Edition which is restricted to a maximum of 5,000 units built, and the top-end $15,000 Collector’s Edition which has a maximum run of 1,000 machines.

Let’s take a look at them both, starting with the Collector’s Edition.

Collector’s Edition

 

The art for Avatar: The Battle for Pandora comes from Lea Faske who, since graduation with a Master of Arts in 2015, has been working on assorted video and mobile gaming projects for companies such as Ubisoft and Blizzard. This is her first pinball project.

The cabinet art for the Collector’s Edition features the leading characters Jake and Neytiri and is printed on the high gloss Radcals decals.

The legs, lock bar, shooter rod housing, side rails and backbox hinges are all decorated in a Na’vi design created using a dipping process which makes the pattern on each piece unique , while the shooter rod features arrow fletching matching that on arrows used by Neytiri.

While both editions include a topper, the Collector’s Edition has a three-dimensional cockpit window appearance, complete with a large ultra-wide head-up holographic display from the orbital shuttlecraft.

The display is fully interactive, responding to gameplay events and conveying information to the player and spectators.

Both versions also include individually-numbered plaques, although the Collector’s Edition appears to be missing the apostrophe in “Collector’s”.

The top-end model comes with a signed bottom apron card featuring signatures of game designer, Mark Seiden, and company founder, Jack Guarnieri, who signs as Jersey Jack.

The Collector’s Edition also includes external cabinet lighting effects.

Next, let’s look at the Limited Edition model.

Limited Edition

The Limited Edition cabinet artwork features the Tulkun – a huge but highly-intelligent aquatic creature from the second movie, Avatar: The Way of Water.

The rules card (not yet available) has a magnetic backing, giving the choice to install it or to retain the bottom arch’s artwork in full.

The topper on the Limited Edition is a simpler affair, featuring two flat, bottom-lit printed acrylic panels depicting the aerial battle between an RDA Scorpion gunship and a Na’vi-ridden Banshee.

Music is composed and performed by Grant Henry who goes by the professional moniker of Stemage, while custom voice work is provided by Steven Lang who plays the character Colonel Miles Quaritch who is the primary antagonist in the first two Avatar movies (first in human and then in clone form). Lang also provided custom voice work for the Stern Pinball Avatar game.

Display graphics are created by JP de Win – who has worked on all ten Jersey Jack Pinball games – Mark Molitor and Olaf Gremie.

With the action from the first Avatar movie based on land and air battles, while the second movie features much more underwater combat, the pinball design combines these to create above, on and under playfield action. There are six wireforms carrying the ball above the playfield and three in-playfield windows giving access to two lower playfields and a triple ball lock.

Avatar: The Battle for Pandora is a six-flipper, six ball game. In addition to the main two flippers, there is a full-size upper-right flipper, an upper-left mini-flipper and two more mini-flippers in the Deep Sea Crab Reef Battle lower playfield which features a Crab Suit toy, two standup targets and an orbit lane which are shot using a smaller-sized pinball.

The second lower playfield is called the Pandora Reef and it features a pop bumper to provide the ball action needed to complete the three-bank of standup targets.

The playfield artwork, mechs, sculpts and featureset for the Collector’s Edition and Limited Edition appear to be identical, but the Collector’s Edition has a hidden bonus which isn’t revealed until later in the game.

One of the key features of Avatar: The Battle for Pandora is the extensive use of UV-reactive components across the playfield. That includes playfield and plastic inks, sculpt paints, playfield silicone rings and the flipper bands. At specific points during gameplay, the lighting becomes ultra-violet, changing the look of the playfield and revealing hitherto hidden elements. The regular RGB hotrails which run down the inner sides of the cabinet have been upgraded to add UV capability, as has the back panel lighting, while there are also additional dedicated UV LED spotlights around the playfield.

The Collector’s Edition’s playfield has three different colours of UV-reactive ink which glow red, green and pale blue together with UV-reactive flipper bands, whereas the Limited Edition only has a single pale blue colour UV ink and regular non-UV-reactive silicone flipper bands.

So, as we look around the playfield, we’ll show you how the game looks in regular illumination as well as under UV light.

The bottom of the playfield has a conventional design, with one inlane and one outlane on either side. Both inlanes are fed from wireforms and both feature six arrowhead inserts which add temporary scoring multipliers and are some of the many items and people you need to collect during the game.

Above the flippers are the inserts showing your progress through the game. Several of them have names from the Na’vi language, so don’t immediately trip off the tongue. The line of seven square inserts spell out P-A-N-D-O-R-A, with each having four dedicated RGB inserts for colourful and intense lighting effects.

When the UV lighting is applied the silicone flipper bands and slingshot rings glow, while other hidden artwork elements emerge or change their appearance.

Avatar: The Battle for Pandora features an animated model in the form of the Amplified Mobility Platform or AMP Suit created by the company McFarlane Toys.

This appears to have an articulated left stabbing arm with a slingshot kicker below, but whether there are any other movements is not yet clear.

The AMP Suit has an adjacent UV spotlight covering it and other nearby playfield elements, including the upper left mini-flipper.

The AMP Suit is one of several models on the playfield. Another McFarlane Toys model is the Banshee. There are six different versions of the Banshee used across production games.

Additional playfield sculpts are created by Todd Hone.

On the right side is a model of an Ilu, an aquatic reptilian species.

The Hallelujah Mountains are a range of floating mountains on Pandora. There are two models of them here in the game too.

While we’re looking at the UV lighting effects, let’s take a look at those two lower playfields when lit with UV.

Here’s a comparison of the features found in the Limited Edition and Collector’s Edition models.

There is also a graphic representation of the games rules showing all the features which need to be completed in order to spell out P-A-N-D-O-R-A and reach the wizard mode of Eywa’Eveng (Na’vi for Pandora).

Flyers have been produced for both models. Here they are:

Collector’s Edition

Limited Edition