Trivia / Rush (2022)

• Content Leak: Stern inadvertently revealed the game's existence twice before the first official teaser was uploaded.
  • In October 2021, the company posted an article exclusive to their Insider Connected service detailing the development of Godzilla (Stern). A user on the pinball forum Pinside subsequently noticed that the first picture in the article showed the side of another machine in the background, with the edges of a logo visible. Closer analysis revealed that it was almost identical to the logo Rush used for their first album. After this discovery, Stern replaced the image with a version that crops out everything but the main playfield.
  • Shortly before the official announcement, a Pinside user noticed that Stern's official tutorial video for installing an Insider Connected kit showed a web browser with Rush-related sites visible in other tabs at one point. Afterward, the video was deleted and reuploaded to crop out the tabs during that particular sequence.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • John Borg was a big fan of Rush before he got to design a game based on their work.
  • Ed Robertson, simultaneously a massive fan of Rush and a pinball aficionado, was brought onto the project specifically because he'd met the band a few times and was knowledgeable about the medium.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Ed Robertson in an interview in a Stern Insider podcast, he and the two surviving members of Rush quickly agreed on the majority of the game's 16^note 17 if the two parts of "Cygnus-X1" are counted as separate songs tracks, there was still some disagreement. Geddy Lee wanted "YYZ" in, but Ed insisted that "La Villa Strangiato" was catchier; the latter song was ultimately the one that made it in.
  • An interview with John Borg on a special episode of the Stern Insider podcast provides several tidbits about early game mechanics:
    • The game's centerpiece was originally a bass drum that could suck up the ball. Ed Robertson later devised the idea of using a Time Machine for that purpose instead.
    • The two scoops were originally positioned farther away from each other, such that they could simultaneously shoot out balls to both flippers at the start of Far Cry Multiball.
    • The time machine's ramp was formerly lowered by hitting a specific target.
    • The motorized clock (located on the Premium and Limited editions' bass drum in the final game) was once placed on the back panel.
  • The initial reveal stream from Dead Flip used earlier code with a number of differences from the finished product:
    • When the ball is about to exit the scoop, the game originally played a quick series of high-pitched beeps to alert the player. After complaints from viewers that it was excessively shrill (many compared it to a microwave), it was changed to a much more subdued sound effect.
    • The Match Sequence was based on Power Windows' album artwork; one of the TVs on the front cover displayed the match number. The final game uses a different animation inspired by the cover of Fly by Night instead.

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