Stern SPIKE 3

Stern SPIKE 3 is the third generation of Stern’s SPIKE control system, the embedded electronics platform inside its pinball machines. It arrived in September 2025 with Star Wars: Fall of the Empire, whose launch announcement introduced the next-generation platform alongside the game itself^[1][2][3] — the electronics were news in their own right, down to a SPIKE 3 stinger closing the game’s teaser trailer.^[4]

The hardware

Like the SPIKE generations before it, SPIKE 3 is a distributed system rather than a single board set: a CPU board holding the game software is networked with input/output boards over a custom control bus carried on ordinary Ethernet-style cabling, 48-volt boards driving the coils and flashers while bus-powered boards read the switches and drive the lamps.^[5] The generational change sits at the head of that bus: a custom processor built on the Raspberry Pi platform, with four times the computing and video power of Stern SPIKE 2 and twice its memory.^[6]

To the player the new capacity surfaces as presentation: a larger 18.5-inch full-HD display with greater color depth and a new immersive audio system, backed by more efficient power handling, improved Wi-Fi Connectivity and support for wireless headphones.^[1]

The machines

The Walking Dead Remastered (2025) followed two months after the Star Wars debut, John Borg reworking his own 2014 design around the new display and audio,^[7] and the pair of SPIKE 3 machines anchored Stern’s floor at CES 2026.^[8] The cornerstone titles that came next, Pokémon (2026) and Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye (2026), ship on the platform in every model.