Data East Pinball was a subsidiary of Data East which focused on development of pinball tables. This pinball division was created in 1985 by purchasing the pinball division of Stern Electronics and its factory and assets.
History[]
Data East Pinball made pinball tables from 1986 through 1996, and included innovations such as the first pinball to have stereo sound, the first usage of a small dot matrix display in Checkpoint, along with the first usage of a big DMD (192x64) in Maverick. In designing pinball machines they showed a strong preference for using high-profile (but expensive) licensed properties, rather than creating totally original machines, which did not help the financial difficulties the company began experiencing from 1990 on. Data East is the only company that manufactured custom pinball games (i.e. for Aaron Spelling, the movie Richie Rich or Michael Jordan), though these were basically mods of existing or soon to be released pinball machines (f.e. Lethal Weapon 3).
Amidst plummeting sales across the entire pinball market, Data East chose to exit the pinball business and sold the factory to Sega in 1996. The pinball factory changed hands one more time, with Gary Stern purchasing the factory outright in 1999 and renaming it Stern Pinball.