When Jersey Jack Pinball tackled Peter Jackson’s trilogy, they didn’t just build a game — they engineered an absolute monster. Designed by Joe Balcer as the follow-up to Wizard of Oz, this episode of The Skill Shot steps up to the massive widebody cabinet of The Hobbit: four stage-molded pop-up beasts (warg, orc, goblin, and spider), a 27-inch full-color LCD playing real clips from the films, and a code base spanning 31 chapters built around the legendary Smaug multiball.
| FlipScore category | Score |
|---|---|
| Shots | 18 / 20 |
| Code & Depth | 19 / 20 |
| Theme | 19 / 20 |
| Build Quality | 17 / 20 |
| Resale Value | 14 / 20 |
| Total FlipScore | 87 / 100 |
The verdict: An 87 is a flat-out A, and it’s earned across the board — the shots are sharp, the code is some of the deepest in modern pinball, and the theme execution (that LCD, those pop-up beasts, Smaug himself) is as immersive as pinball gets. Build quality holds up too, though resale lags a bit behind everything else. Expect $6,500 to $8,500 depending on edition, more for the Smaug Gold Special Edition — steep, but for Tolkien fans or JJP collectors, this is one of the genre’s true modern giants.
← Newer: Ep. 8 — Twilight Zone (Bally, 1993) | Older: Ep. 6 — World Cup Soccer (Bally, 1994) →
Leave a Reply