Gamescom 2026: A Pinball Machine for Your Living Room? Why Not!

You get older, hit a midlife crisis, and suddenly decide that your life is missing a spark. What do you do? A younger partner? A brightly colored convertible? Or perhaps all you need is to build the man cave you have always wanted – a beer tap in one corner, with a bar behind it, and an arcade machine in the other. A pinball machine, for example. You used to go admire those in arcades after the Iron Curtain fell, and maybe you would like to relive some of that childhood joy. But where do you get one, and how do you repair it? The old ones have really been through a lot.

Well, you can go for a new one, and there is no shortage of those. Now there are even more. Former Arcade1Up employees have put together a new company called Wonderland Amusements, where they want to create something similar – machines at a slightly reduced scale, but with just as much fun. They already have one pinball machine on the market, with another on the way. We got to try out the first one – Alice Goes to Wonderland Pinball. It is based on Alice in Wonderland and features a rich, detailed playfield with multiple objectives and challenging obstacles.

The machine is 80% the size of traditional ones, and assembling it is reportedly not difficult at all. It is said to take up to an hour, and you do not need any special tools or experience. You basically just connect the parts and the corresponding cables. Then you can play. The large playfield is complemented by a 7” display that shows various scenes. There are also speakers, making it a complete audiovisual experience. It runs on Android, so modifications are not difficult, and you can even customize the playfield to a limited extent.

I liked the build quality. It is substantial, feels durable and robust, yet remains pleasant to use. You will find the settings buttons on the front, and up to four people can play. The sides feature fairly large mechanical buttons for controlling the flippers themselves. You will be pounding on them when things are not going well and you watch the ball drop down the middle again, costing you a life. Exactly the same joy as back then. And the same frustration too, except that now you will not have to pull more coins out of your pocket.

If you own a machine like this, you have already taken plenty of them out before. Alice is not yet sold here, but it costs a thousand dollars. Here, you would have to add taxes and customs duties. The upcoming TMNT: Battle in the Sewer pinball machine will be even more expensive because of the license for the well-known brand, but it also looks very good. Is it worth the money? Not for me yet, but maybe in a few years. I admit that I am still eyeing something like this, and I really enjoyed my roughly 20 minutes of playing it at Gamescom.