Corona | Coming Attractions

I spend a lot of time every day connected to the internet and I see many things. Very few of them come as close to being as incredibly geeky and super-cool as what Benjamin J. Heckendorn is making in his off-time: the world's only and fully working pinball machine meant to honor the film career of Bill Paxton. Twister. Aliens. True Lies. Frailty. The Dark Backward. Weird Science. The Terminator. The man is worthy -- nay, OWED -- a pinball machine to his geek greatness.

Heckendorn has been working on his custom pinball machine since 2005; he is considered an expert game modder and so has a bunch of other projects on the go at any given time but now Heckendorn hopes to have his BPP game ready for playing next year. Based on the photos and videos he's showing us, the dream will be realized on time.

Heckendorn's pinball machine will be professional and worthy of playing in any arcade. He's come up with bitmap graphics for the pinball's LED score display, created custom artwork on the sides and display case using screengrabs from Paxton's movies and Big Love TV series and is knee-deep in designing the mini-games that the player will be able to score on. For example, one of the sections inside the case will be based on Titanic and allow the player to shoot the pinball into a replica of the sunken hold of the ship to achieve single, double or triple scores. Another section will be based on Aliens and feature two guns counting down from 99 as the player tries to achieve a bonus score. No word yet if, when the pinballer loses his last ball, the machine will feature Private Hudson's famous line "That's it man, game over, man! Game over!" -- BUT IT BETTER.

This is the coolest film-related homebrew thing that I have seen so far for 2009. Does our man Bill know about this?

And I found videos! There IS a God!

Thanks to the cool bunch at Filmrot for tweeting about this wonder of the modern world.