[mmetzger]

The article isn't really covering the modern pinball scene. While Stern is definitely the major manufacturer in play, Jersey Jack is growing and there are several more boutique manufacturers including:

Multimorphic - Offers the P3 pinball system integrating a full LCD panel with motion tracking into the playfield (as opposed to the backbox like JJ.) They also offer the P-ROC which allows replacing the CPU (a 6809/ASIC combo!) with a Spartan3 system allowing you to reprogram the rules on most 90's+ games.

Spooky Pinball - Ben Heck designed the America's Most Haunted machine, an "unlicensed" theme that is quite fun to play. I believe the first run was for 150 machines, with the next title to be announced in the near future.

Heighway Pinball - Manufacturer out of England with one title in production (Full Throttle, a motorbike theme) and are working on a licensed Alien themed pin.

There are a couple others including current and former game designers working on their own or with one of the manufacturers. This also says nothing of the pinball modding community, custom one-off games, etc.

EDIT: Completely forgot Planetary Pinball who is remaking late 90's pinball machines with modern electronics. First machine is Medieval Madness and is shipping now.

[joezydeco]

I'm curious if Planetary ever resolved their licensing issues and how they did it.

The prototypes they once showed were using MAME running on a Beaglebone Black to emulate the old Williams hardware.

[jgeorge]

Planetary's Medieval Madness remake does indeed use a BBB as a core CPU, connected to a driver board. I don't know exactly what it emulates, if it's emulating the original CPU or it's new code (I presume some emulation layer).

[joezydeco]

It's definitely an emulation layer. The original game was written in 6809 assembly language along with talking to custom hardware, some of it in an ASIC as well as an Analog Devices DSP for sound playback.

There's a branch of MAME called PinMAME that emulates this hardware, and that's what Planetary showed in their demonstrations.